It seems to me that Shamus of Twenty Sided and I share many tastes when it comes to games, especially MMOs. His latest Escapist article neatly summarizes many things that I’ve written about more than once:
Experienced Points: The Playground Model
Twenty Sided blog mention of the same
In short, he notes that “grind” can broadly be thought of as anything that the player has to do before getting to the “good part”. Devs seem to want to steer players through game elements with their own assumption of what “the good part” is, which leads to some conflicts of interest.
As I note in my comment over at his blog, I lay a lot of blame for this sort of design on the business model. When you directly monetize time to access and play the game (not even time played, though that also leads to the same conclusion), the design impetus is to include things that take a lot of time. Players spending time directly translates to them spending more money.
It’s the dark, stinky underbelly of the subscription model, something those who constantly complain about the Item Shop model conveniently ignore in their headlong rush to condemn design decisions those games make to monetize players. True, many of those decisions are also stupid, but sub games are not saints. In all cases, the business model affects game design; you just have to pick your poison.
I find it interesting that consumer patterns track well across different purchases, too. I don’t rent cars, I buy used ones, paid in full, no financing. I don’t rent movies, I borrow or buy. Ditto for games, though I’ll usually buy when there’s a sale or used.
So I’m cheap. I call it thrifty.
Borrowing from Shamus’ playground analogy, I either take my kids to the local public parks or maybe buy a swingset. (We’re looking for one on sale.) We don’t go to the local theme park (Lagoon, in this case) to blow $70 or more on a single day of waiting in lines for a few minutes of fun. We certainly don’t buy season tickets.
To be sure, those offer great value to some people, but not to everyone. That’s what I keep trying to illustrate.
When those value equations sort out differently for different people, the game design itself is naturally pulled in different directions. The playground just doesn’t work the same for everyone… and that’s OK. There’s a natural tension between that variability and the “one size fits all” monetization schemes, though, and when the game is trying to appeal to all sorts of different players, well, it’s only natural that there will be tensions on the business side, too.
While I agree with much of what you said(it’s insightful!), I do disagree with the notion that spending more time in a game on sub costs more money. It does not. You pay the subscription regardless of the amount of time you play. If anything, less time spent in game is better for a company like Blizzard. They already have your money, and the less time you spend playing, the lower their bandwidth/support costs are.
There’s a significant difference between “time played” and “time per month played”. If someone can get all they want out of an MMO in the “free” thirty days, sure, that can be good value. That said, again, the design of these games is all about preventing just that, so that the subscription fees can start rolling in.
Yes, if you’re paying for the full month but only playing a few hours, Blizzard is happy, precisely because you’re going to take forever to get through the content, paying every month… but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about content generation and the business-model inspired impetus to make ever-more efficient treadmills to keep people hooked and playing. Whether you walk on that treadmill or run on it, you’re *still on the treadmill*, still paying. The longer the devs can keep you there, no matter the pace you’re on, the longer they can charge you for being on the treadmill.
Note, you get the exact same effect with per-hour or per-day charges, too. That’s one of my points; any time you’re charging for *time*, rather than *content*, time becomes the core of game design. It’s not about stellar content, story, graphics or anything else, except for how they serve the business model. That is, how well they serve to keep you playing and ultimately, paying for it. This need not even be a conscious nefarious plot, it’s just something woven into the fabric of the business model. It naturally flows into the game design because that’s what the game is built on. (At least, if it’s a commercial product.) Some devs push back on that natural drift better than others.
Contrast that with something like Portal. It’s a fairly short game, but it’s beautifully crafted and very well designed. People buy it and enjoy it at their own pace and never have to pay more money if they decide to replay it or take it at a different pace. It’s not grindy *because it doesn’t have to be*. The devs have your money, and *don’t particularly care* how long it takes you to play the game.
That’s why Guild Wars has such very different game design elements compared to something like WoW. It doesn’t have to be grindy, it has to be fun so that positive word of mouth drives more sales. (Also, to offset the noted bandwidth costs, it has to be fun in small bites with small groups.) Sub games have to be *fun enough* to overcome the inherent grind. They are deeply conflicted, always working against themselves, always balancing fun with grind, all because of the business model.
I think you’re giving most game designers too much credit here. I think few game designers really think about how the gameplay will encourage subscriptions. Honestly, most game developers not on the “live team” don’t get paid extra for having more subscriptions. Unless you have a super breakaway hit, the success of the MMO is going to have a small impact on your career. Just having experience at developing one is still a rare talent, and you can learn a lot even if your game doesn’t break WoW’s subscription records.
Ultimately, I think game designers do what they think is fun. As has been pointed out many times before, there’s no universal definition of what fun is to everyone. I still enjoy inventory manipulation, viewing it as a puzzle rather than a chore; I understand I’m in the minority here, which I believe makes me a better game designer. For some people, getting a reward after a long struggle is fun, even if that struggle doesn’t feel fun when you’re in the middle of it.
There’s also the issue that the core of any game is repetition. Boil Zelda down to the fundamentals and it’s all about moving your guy in the right position and hitting the attack or item button at the right time. Boiled down to that form, sounds less than exciting. But, throw in new powers, new places to explore, interesting puzzles and traps, and all the other frills and you have a beloved game. MMOs are no different, but it’s just easier to distill the system into an efficient path to take that removes a lot of the challenge, and therefore some (or even all) of the fun.
I’d also be hesitant to agree with Young’s assertion that the grind is anything you have to do to get to the fun part. The big example from LotRO are the kill deeds. Go slaughter hundreds of enemies for a small bonus to your stats. Is the bonus to your stats really “fun”? One would assume the player has some goal for wanting to complete this deed, so there’s motivation to get to the end.
I think the more accurate statement is that the grind is when you have to do something you don’t want to in order to achieve a goal you do want. In the case of LotRO’s kill deeds, the obnoxious ones are those that make you stick around killing monsters after you’ve exhausted all the other content in the zone. The deeds in starting zones aren’t so bad, because you can get most of the way there by simply doing the quests. In the later zones, you only get part way through the first deed that simply gives you a title (which is about 1/6th the way through until you finish the final deed which gives the stat bonus). Going and slaughtering monsters, especially ones that are hard to find or mingled in with monsters you don’t care about, is not exciting.
Hmm. I’m getting inspired to write more stuff on my own blog. Maybe it’s time to do that instead of leaving monster comments, eh?
Well, Brian, I did mention, albeit in passing, that this need not be a conscious design factor. It’s just there, in the back of the mind. It’s almost certainly high in the numbercrunchers’ minds, and I can’t help but think that filters through the dev processes via schedules if nothing else.
Like I’ve tried to assert; it’s a structural thing, game design being driven by the business model. You can also turn it around. Guild Wars really is a smaller game than WoW, in part perhaps because they don’t have the subscription revenue stream to keep generating new stuff. Each model comes with its own foibles, it just seems to me that the sub model’s inherent reliance on gating and grind (to pad out time) is its biggest flaw, one that can get out of hand. Look at the backlash against “Korean grinders”… and the curious reticence to look at the business model as a facet of the design. Look at the “the game starts at 80″ mindset of WoW; what would it do to sales and retention if you really could play *that* game out of the box?
It’s also worth noting that I personally don’t really consider leveling to be a grind most of the time. I like roaming around, seeing what there is to see. There are times when I have to go do the “real work” of the game to get past level gates, but in a well-paced game, I can meander and do odd jobs and leveling keeps up. (In a level-less game, it would be even better…)
I don’t like group content. In small doses, or first-time runs in dungeons, it’s OK and occasionally fun, but repeating the same content with new people get old fast, especially with jerks in the team. Some people simply thrive on that.
To each their own, sure.
I think that’s a key point, though. If you make it so that your crafting suite depends on combat leveling, someone who just wants to be an economic baron without playing the combat game will probably pass. The reverse is true, too; a combat loving player who doesn’t like the economic game or crafting will be annoyed if their progress is gated through the Auction House. I think that’s what Young is getting at:
Let players do the part they like and don’t make them qualify for it by doing the stuff they don’t.
I take it further to suggest that those artificial barriers feed nicely into the maw of the subscription model. It may not be conscious, but the feedback loop of where players spend their time and how long they pay for the game has to have some effect to make that sort of design desirable. Players still spend the time and money, after all, even if they aren’t having fun in the moment, because they hope to have fun later. (It’s bizarre, but common behavior.) I’m not sure on the metrics, but “time spent” and “money spent” don’t always equate to “fun was had”, but since fun is hard to quantify and time easy, it’s easy to run with design that players seem to play.
Also, if players could jump into the endgame on day one, they aren’t paying for all that time playing through the leveling content. Turn that around, too. I’m not interested in the endgame, so I’d just stop at the level cap. I’m not continuing to play and pay, I’m done. I’ve had my fun. Why do raid lovers have to go through my part of the game to get to their part that I don’t care for when I can just ignore their part without repercussion? This isn’t some nutty social equality concern, either, it’s about giving players fun for their money.
Maybe the numbers suggest that people will grind through anyway, but what if that contributes to burnout? How many of those “70% who never get past level 10″ would have fun and stay with the game if they could raid before level 10, or jump directly into the endgame? These games bank on players chasing the next ding or rush, but if that’s 70 levels away and you’re not having fun *now*, that’s an exit point.
…
Which isn’t to say that I’m really disagreeing with the bulk of your comment, Brian… just clarifying what I’m getting at.
Thanks for chiming in, and I look forward to anything you write up at your place. Big comments are welcome here, too. It’s not like I often write little quips…
I understand. I think I know the specific part where we don’t agree, however:
[T]he feedback loop of where players spend their time and how long they pay for the game has to have some effect to make that sort of design desirable.
I don’t think that’s the case. I think that the design is popular because that’s what everyone else does. It’s how these games work.
It was a joke that the “perfect customer” for our games in the past was the person who pays for a subscription then never logs in. Someone playing obsessively is actually bad for a subscription-based game, because they consume more resources while not actually paying more money. The only way playing more would make more money is if we charged people on a finer time scale.
Like, say, hourly like the proprietary networks did for games before Meridian 59?
So, I believe this type of game design was inherited. And, I would even go so far to say that the game design is reinforced by the vast majority of people who prefer to keep playing the same type of game instead of exploring new ones.
I also think this type of design has been used to its own advantage. I’ve pointed out many times before that WoW feels more like the corner bar rather than a hard-core game. If you get used to showing up at the bar to meet with your friends, that increases their revenue over the long run. Corner bars don’t have to be slick, attractive places, either; one bar my friends went to in college was a real dive that changed names about once a semester. But, it was where they went to hang out isntead of going to the flashier (or even cleaner) bars.
As for the whole “doing things you don’t like to do the things you do like,” that’s a deep rabbit hole. I think the real issue here is making games that have to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Make raiding game where you don’t have to work up through the levels first? Sure, but then all the people who like working up through the levels and don’t like raiding are left out. Tesh, would you play a game like that? No? But you would probably still play WoW, a game that focuses largely on raiding at the high end. So, Blizzard gets money from both you and the hard-core raider. In order for there to be a business case for makinga focused game, you would have to be able to charge enough to make up money from the people who don’t like the focused gameplay. Until people are willing to pay higher subscriptions or accept microtransactions, that’s not happening.
Some food for thought. At least, another long comment for ya.
@Brian
If you’ve never played Sacred Gold before, you should check it out. (It’s cheeeep on gog.com!)
I *heart* their inventory management. As someone who played a nutty amount of Tetris way back when, I’d say Sacred Gold has the most enjoyable inventory system I’ve come across.
*hangs head* Sowwy Tesh, off-topic nugget is off-topic again.
Off topic? Pfft, since when did I *not* run tangents?
Brian, you’re right, and good call on the social aspect and historical inertia.
I should note that when I call for a game where raiders can raid out of the box, I’m talking about two different games. One is the game that’s all raiding, all the time, and the other is the “big tent” that has both leveling (or perhaps exploratory in a level-less system) content *and* raiding to cater to those different tastes. There’s also probably a not-insignificant part of the population that plays both anyway.
Could a split like Guild Wars’ instant-PvP level-capped characters vs. “leveling” characters work if the split were actually raiding vs. leveling? There might be significant tension there, especially if there’s a large gradated economy and wide power band… but if you make the “nonraid” content exploratory and have a very narrow level/power/economic band, it just might work.
Of course, then one has to ask “would it be fun?” A narrow power band game would almost have to be more about the gameplay than the loot, for better or worse.
I always kind of think grind was this sort of knee jerk, half assedly thought out responce to obsessive players. Like it went something like
“Holy crap, they just went through all our content…oh crap! Oh CRAP! Ummm, ummm! I know, up the monster kill requirement to get X! Up it by 100 times!”
And then after their knee jerk, didn’t think about the game design theory at all cause they wanted to save their jobs stage, they just kept repeating that pattern.
And then they start trying to patch it up with ‘rested experience’ so people who don’t play alot can somehow keep up with these bloated requirements.
They should just put a content timer on stuff…no grinding – you kill one monster, then three real life days from now you get X.
Yeah, it’d be nakedly obvious a way of extending subscription times. But do bloated kill counts really fool anyone that they aren’t about bloating subscription time?
Oh, crap…they probably do. They all talk about “you can’t get something without earning it” and tragically buy into it.
Ok, how about we nuke it all from orbit???!?
I’ve always been against “grind” but because I’m not a games designer I don’t think I can fully appreciate some of the reasoning behind it.
Obviously I hate the idea that grinds are put in to keep players subscribed longer but I can appreciate that they are easy mechanics to use to give items and actions in the game world value but connecting them with time. For instance, in EQ you had to camp boss spawns for hours, sometimes days, to get the loot you wanted which immediately get the item a value associated with it’s rarity and time it took to acquire. The downside is that this sort of thing rewards time over play skill and essentially you could be the best player in the world but have a fulltime career and family and never be as “good” as a kid on their school holidays.
I think until MMORPGs become more skill based (and more twitchy even) it will be hard to separate rewards from time.
I think even further it’s perhaps a mental issue associating time with value.
For example, when it comes to boring things, the natural human responce is to do something else. Paint drying? Grass growing? Go do something else.
The mmorpg player? The vast majority assign value to something being boring and are attracted to it. The normal, natural human responce to boring things has been broken over the mmorpgs knee.
I really enjoy reading your articles.
Most of the material I have to read in the finance sector is recycled bullshit bingo presented in power point karaoke. Phrases on glossy paper, usually indicating, that the debitor considers himself smarter than the other participants, but the sad thing is, that they get through with beating the drum, as long as it is in-sync to the market habits.
In very rare cases, I do meet people, who actually try to understand the motivation of the participants, following the red line in the overwhelming noise.
Sadly, these people avoid getting into the front line. Either they abandon their ideas, because the anticipate problems, that the noisy ones do not see, or they panic when they find themselves around polished wooden tables, surrounded by black suits looking like the cat who swallowed the canary and their savoir-vivre show-up.
Although, I do think that you panic, I hope to see your ideas one day hitting the round table.
Coming back to your article, I see your point, but although I agree with what your observation, I would like to add that it’s evaluation is strongly influenced by your attitude and personal preference.
A content oriented payment model is ideal for your person, free allocation of time, exploration rather than progression and rarely social activities.
Looking at our preferences, they match, besides in one detail: I love social activities (in the meaning of team play, not progression forced unification or Scheduled meetings).
Paying for content would divide the customers/community. Business wise, this may adds another dimension for the customer to buy additional content, but it interrupts the game play. Sure, paying for content, does expose yourself to new customers (people who do not just play one game and are aware of running expenses or those who simply do not trust the subscription model), but it limits you in establishing social engagement, which is the only added value of online gaming.
Probably the ideal solution would be, offering both, subscription and content based payment.
Both requires a standing development team and reinvesting revenues into the development.
For any reason we seem to have agreed on RPGs to be progression based. If we could lose ourselves from this perspective, maybe we could try a personal progression model that relies more on learning to play better.
This implies of course a active combat model as Dark Fall or Fallen Earth uses, with an emphasis on tactic (more timing, than trigger happy).
A level free systems, eliminates the boundaries, you can join any player, no matcher whether he spend 1 or 80 hours within the game. The Monsters or other players will be equally hard for both, besides that the experience player will know better how to control his character and how the Monster reacts. Still gained XP and Gear does improve the character, but to a lesser extend as it does in level and tier divided content.
Hach, again wrote much more than intended, I will stop here, you certainly work your way from that point.
Tesh, but F2P games even when using the item shop have worse grind than P2P.
F2P games enable you to pay to make grind easier. That means they have to include grind as an active moneymaking scheme. They need the grind to be insane so you are convinced to buy all the exp potions and various cash shop goods so they can make money.
P2P includes grind mostly just to keep players occupied. The profit is more that they want you to keep playing the game, but they don’t have to make grind as central to it. It’s because they don’t need to force their casuals to convert to an item shop to make money. The casuals can play at their own pace and money is made.
That’s what sunk Allods: the fact that Astrum Nival used grind in the form of PvP downtime among others to force people to buy at the cash shop, and it’s not alone among F2P games to do so. It seemed shocking because so many Allods players had never played F2P before.
I don’t think the p2p business model promotes grind as much as you think. The grindiest games I have played were f2p, and you can see that often in their max levels. 200+ is not unheard of.
Item Shop games, yes. Subscriptionless games, no. Both have been lumped under the F2P moniker. Still, just because they are “grindier”, it doesn’t mean that sub games are exonerated from their own inherent grind.