The New Monuments of Man

The new monuments of man will not be built of stone and steel. Their columns will be made of code, and their vast murals, nothing more than pixels on a screen.

From the pyramids of Giza to the skyscrapers of today, grandiose monuments have arisen wherever population amasses. There are more humans and more advanced technology in the world today than any point in previous history. But how will this shape the great works that will come to define our era? Will we merely improve upon what was started long ago in Babylon, or does today herald the birth of a new form of monument?

In China, megalopolises have sprung up from the earth in a handful of years. The benefits of technology will soon be placed at an unprecedented number of fingertips in every corner of the world. With metropolitan areas reaching populations in the tens of millions, one cannot help but wonder about the fantastical monuments that these cities could build.

But there is a place where population will soon be measured in billions rather than millions. It is a place that is neither here nor there, but everywhere. It is the world of cyberspace.

Game Development: A Monumental Task

The impetus behind monument building has not only found its way into modern art, embodied by enormous sculptures, it has given rise to Hollywood's blockbusters and more recently to blockbuster games.

While the budgets for big films typically exceed 100 million US dollars, “blockbuster” games cost far less. Uncharted 2’s budget was a mere 20 million, while GTA IV broke records with its 100 million dollar budget. But this may all be about to change with the continued progression of one type of game in particular: the MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game).

At the 2008 Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium, Activison’s CEO, Bobby Kotick, said that even with a “USD 500 million or billion-dollar investment,” he didn’t think his company could produce a game to compete with their own flagship title, World of Warcraft. This may sound like a preposterous claim, but when you consider the sheer numbers behind WoW, his statement seems far less outlandish.

Although I don’t believe that a budget of that size is required to produce a game which can engage players as well as WoW, MMOs are expected to produce around 11 billion in revenues during 2009, making the potential for games of this magnitude an increasing possibility.

If Khufu had a game made, it would be an MMOG

If World of Warcraft were a pyramid, what size would it be? If we were to arbitrarily compare every 100 lines of code, out of WoW's 5.5 million, to blocks of sandstone, the pyramid they'd form would only stand 65 steps high, compared to the 201 of Khufu's. Granted that code is only one aspect of a game, but the number of the pyramid's steps are just one of its many amazing features as well. And even though this comparison doesn't consider WoW's 1.5 million art assets, its 1.3 petabytes of storage, or 11 million gamers, it's still safe to say that the industry has a long way to go before its accomplishments can rival the Great Pyramids of Giza.

What would constitute a "monumental" game?

You can certainly make the argument that certain smaller-scale works of art are monuments of their own, and that quality can make a work stand taller than quantity. Yet, in the case of most monuments, the safest bet is to build it bigger.

You may then find yourself asking, "how much bigger do the worlds of MMOGs need to get?" and, "do they even need to be bigger?" Perhaps the trick is to build them up rather than out, or taller instead of wider. Regardless of your choice in words, this implies packing more into less.

The environments in MMOs and other free-roaming games can seem quite vast. But, much like in reality, these expanses can be full of a whole lot of nothing. What if we were to take the scale and "width" of an MMO's world and fill it with the same meticulous detail applied to the level design in Uncharted 2? The resulting game would be the nearest man has come to building a fully-articulated, entirely new world -- a truly monumental endeavor. But how much would a game like this cost to make? Would Kotick's prediction suffice?

Living in the shadow of the monument

What will happen to games that are built to current scale? They will likely find themselves dwarfed, but not eclipsed. Just as smaller games coexist with larger ones today, the games of tomorrow may find themselves adjusting to the presence of this new category of mega-games.

It may also be interesting to see if there will be an increase in the inner-connectivity between games. Currently, the only thing that follows players across most games is the gamer score, which is merely a sum of trophies and accomplishments. But some developers are beginning to take a closer look at the possibility for a greater carryover from other games. Mass Effect 2, for instance, will allow players to load their saved games from its prequel, which will affect elements of the plot within the new game.

Smaller games may find themselves needing to network their efforts in order to provide the same depth of experience as their monumental counterparts, but it is more likely that consumers will merely learn to trend their expectations as they have with movies since the late 70s.

Has World of Warcraft become the McDonald's of MMOs?

Both McDonald's and World of Warcraft are intended to appeal to the masses. WoW boasts about its millions of players and McDonald's about its billions served. They both epitomize their respective industries, but has Word of Warcraft truly turned into the McDonald's of MMOs? And moreover, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

When WoW first launched, it was touted as the next big step in MMORPGs, but it was more of an incorporation than an innovation. It borrowed elements from its direct predecessors, such as EQ and DAoC, and similar games from other genres, such as Diablo. Likewise, McDonald's did not invent the burger, pre-packaged goods, or the efficiency of assembly line-like production, but it certainly put all of these facets together. It is this amalgam of tried-and-true elements that perhaps has given these businesses such success.

So what's the point of the comparison? I'm not writing this to suggest that gnomes and orcs should make an appearance in McDonald's next batch of Happy Meals, or to advocate the creation a "Gamer Meal," featuring nuggets, a burger, and fries all in an easy dip-no-drip tray, including a plastic flagon of neon-flavored energy swill. The intent of this post is to point out two groups of players that WoW has alienated with its super-status, which can be easily related to certain demographics that McDonald's has lost for similar reasons.

The Gourmands

The first of the two groups are the gaming equivalent of foodies; we can call them gamies, if you can stomach the term. Just as foodies may find McDonald's cuisine beneath their epicurean palates, gamies may find World of Warcraft beneath their sophisticated tastes in MMOs.

You don't have to poke around many forums to find gamies expressing their indignant biases against WoW. Looking down upon the most successful MMO of all time may seem absurd to some, but to this group of gamers it's no different than laughing a McDonald's entry from a culinary competition.

However, in WoW and McDonald's defense, the reason they've both come to seem so pedestrian to the connoisseur is because of the vast amount of imitators.

The Health Nuts

The reason I don't eat much fast food is not because I don't like it -- I can't get enough of it -- but because I don't want to rely on a Rascal Scooter (Forklift Edition) as a means of conveyance. Similarly, there are many potential players of WoW that have refrained from ever trying the game because they're afraid of becoming addicted. The resulting sedentary lifestyle can have very similar effects on a person's weight and health; and before you know it, it's Rascal time again.

Chicken Selects

A lesson the MMO industry can learn from the mistakes of fast food franchises is not to try to coerce these lost consumers back with false promises. For instance, when McDonald's introduced Chicken Selects, they were billed as "premium-quality, 100 percent white chicken breast meat." They were suppose to provide consumers with an alternative to their infamous nuggets, but a quick look into their nutritional facts reveals that they're even worse for you.

Gamers are a notoriously jaded group of consumers. Employing similar tactics in the gaming industry will not only sharpen their bias, but is generally followed by a vociferous backlash, sweeping across forums and blogs across the net.

This problem extends to the implicit promises of expansions and sequels. Players often expect more from these installments than is intended by their developers, as demonstrated by the recent Left4Dead 2 boycott.

In the end, you can't please everyone. But will the Goblins and Worgen in WoW's next expansion, Cataclysm, be the Chicken Selects of the MMO industry? Personally, I think they're more like the McRib.

Questioning the Quest Hub

The MMORPG convention of the quest hub, which swamps players with dozens of tasks as soon as they reach a new area, has become stale and is in need of a rethink.

The quest hub has entrenched itself into modern MMORPG design since before the days of WoW. Although it can be argued that its extensive use in WoW is what has made it such a staple in current design.

Its benefits to a game are well explored. They give players something to do, help standardize loot distribution, and can guide players' travels. They provide impetus and give designers greater control over players' experiences. But do players like this sort of hand holding?

A poll on Kotaku revealed that the boredom of mundane tasks is the main barrier preventing surveyed players from enjoying their time in traditional RPGs. And yet the mundanity of tasks in RPGs are usually eclipsed by random MMORPG quests, such those that would have you kill 10 wolves or collect 10 boar hooves.

For all that quest hubs add to a game, they can also detract. While they can channel players to particular areas, they are in a sense forced to go there. This discourages exploration of locations that do not deal with quests, while diminishing the value of exploring those that are. You will often find large populations of players in area where a particular quest is completed. You will often have to compete with those players for kills and pick-ups in order to complete the quest. Saving an orphan from a band of orcs seems somehow less meaningful when your primary concern is to beat other would-be heroes to the punch right as the event spawns.

Quest hubs also have a negative impact on environmental design that is typified by a grotto filled with forty growling brown bears. The phenomenon of having to cram a lot of identical creatures into a small area is an unfortunate side-effect of quests that would have you kill them en masse.

Doing away with the quest hub format, grants level designers more freedom to create the environment and fill it as they please. But more importantly, it grants players more freedom to explore that environment. They can remain in an area or move on as they please, no longer concerned with whether or not they are progressing a quest.

Turning Everquest into Neverquest?

I am not suggesting doing away with quests altogether, simply lowering the amount of quests. It's not about reducing the game to a mindless grind of random enemies, but it should be pointed out that forcing players to grind quests, as you did in WoW: Wrath of the Lich King, is not much better.

It's a matter of quality over quantity. I would estimate that during a typical experience in an MMORPG, I only truly enjoy about 1 in 20 quests. Combining elements of these standout quests into a central, story-driven quest would perhaps be preferable to spacing them out over dozens of smaller, less meaningful tasks. A great example of the type of quest I'm alluding to can be found in the Lord of the Rings Online's main storyline. Yet between the various stages of the story, LOTRO resorts to the quest hub format.

Dynamic Events

How can designers remove quest hubs without losing most of their benefits? The answer may be through a more involving environment filled with dynamic events. Dynamic events can be anything from encounters with special, or named, mobs to rescuing a villager from a pack of hungry wolves. In either case, it is important that the location and details of the event are fluid. The products of the dynamic event are similar to those of the simple quest: experience, coin, faction, and gear for the player. The difference is that they are not forced to seek them out. They should encounter events such as these along their journeys, regardless of where they decide to explore.

Dynamic events can be found in Cryptic's City of Heroes or Champions Online. In CO, a citizen saved from a group of thugs may give a player a simple task to complete in an instance. This is an excellent example of a direction designers can take to avoid the quest hub.

Achievements

Another way to minimize the need for quest hubs is through a mechanism present in almost every modern game: achievements. Instead of having a farmer ask you to slay 10 rooting pigs, designers can simply include an achievement that yields an experience or monetary bonus when completed. Killing 10 of a kind can be a default achievement, which essentially gives players the quest of killing 10 of every enemy in the world. Warhammer: Age of Reckoning's tome of knowledge has shown how this type of system could be possible.

Making Sense

The dismemberment of the quest hub can also help make players' journeys make more sense. I've often found myself asking, "Why do I need a quest to save this child from the goblin camp? I'm here, the child is getting poked by spears, yet I have to go talk to her distressed mother back in the village before coming back and saving the kid." Then there is the sheriff that asks you to kill 12 bandits, after you've just returned from slaughtering their camp. Why can't you just tell him they're already taken care of?

Dynamic events are basically small quests that unfold in real time. They break the stodgy regimen of the MMORPG quest and prevent a lot of senseless traveling, which is a contributing factor to the loss of players -- as demonstrated by the fact that WoW keeps lowering the level required to utilize a mount.

The Love of Exploration

The point here is to minimize the presence of meaningless tasks, while re-embracing the love of exploration, which is so crucial to nonlinear games. Guiding the player to general locations can still be handled through the primary quest line.

If players want to go spelunking, they are rewarded for doing so. If they want to climb a mountain, let them. The dynamic events, just like quests, will exist only to add more color and variety to what should already be a fun journey.