Episodic Content and the Vast Multiverse
Moorgard’s posted a bit about an alternative content model, and it dovetails rather well with some thoughts I’d been having after reading the Forge’s interview with Multiverse’s co-founder, Corey Bridges.
Moorgard compared MMO content updates to television episodes and asked whether frequent (say… as frequently as new TV episodes air) but short (say, about as long as a TV episode…) updates would be appealing to users. Now, that’s a far cry from the business model of providing replayable content for the players logging in 20-30 hours a week.Â
I’m not so sure that “fully episodic” (as some of the commenters, not Moorgard, seemed to advocate) is quite the right way to go. Even in small bites, content still costs too much to be expire that frequently. Why not leave some of that stuff available for new players and nostalgia-seekers? There IS merit to the model, though… particularly when you consider Multiverse.
In the Forge’s Multiverse interview, it was stated that 7,000 entities have signed up so far.  If even 1% of those produce a “good” world, that’s 70 new virtual worlds on the horizon. The number will certainly be less, but I’m still left wondering “how will I keep up with them all?”
I won’t, of course.
I’ve felt trapped in a “rat race” of leveling in EQ2 & I survived SWG’s hologrind. In City of Heroes, all my alts inch a little higher in level, but I still don’t have a level 50 (2 years and counting). I couldn’t follow even a half-dozen of those games (if I could afford that many subscriptions) if they followed the traditional models. No chance in heck- no matter how compelling the content was.
But… if some of those games weren’t designed for the grind… if they weren’t designed for anything more than a quiet evening once a week… 2-3 hours per week of play… if I could play the game THAT infrequently without the feeling that I’m being left in the dust…Â I could probably comfortably sit back and enjoy it one night a week, much like a TV show.Â
Is that the better-suited model for a Multiverse Indie?Â
Rather than trying to make the next world that people will want to live in 24/7, should we be looking at making a world that offers that evening’s worth of fresh content, then accepts that you’ll be adventuring elsewhere, exploring some of the sister games until the next release is ready?
December 20th, 2006 at 12:02 am
I think that last bit is sound philosophy. If your game works by monthly subscription, then the necessary perception of its value is analogous to that of getting a TV package by monthly subscription. TV customers don’t watch TV every night, and certainly not for regular intervals each day. They only need to feel that the subscription fee was justified by a cumulative entertainment value at the end of each month. Likewise, game subscribers don’t need to be convinced to exclude other game activities or log into the game every day, or even every week.
Of course, there are significant hurdles particular to MMOs.
One hurdle is player expectations. There are already plenty of MMO gamers who play irregularly, due to jobs or family or otherwise. But MMOs are like view-on-demand TV series (if such a thing existed)…they’re progressive adventures in which the player is free to break an entertainment schedule and needs to remember fairly well where they left off in order to fully enjoy their next sitting.
Another hurdle is that games, unlike TV series, are more often group-oriented. The longer and more irregular the intervals between an individual’s play-sessions, the more difficult it will likely be for that person to reconstitute familiar groups of players.
As for the more centrally episodic games, I’ll have to think on that a while, but my immediate hunch is that it could prove viable if the nature of expansion content was significantly different than traditional models. Most of the investment of traditional expansions, I’m guessing, goes toward the production of new art and programming assets. A development plan that focuses on widely negotiable employment of old assets might prove profitable in a fully or primarily episodic game.
December 20th, 2006 at 12:19 am
Before an MMO tries its hand at episodic content, I’d like to see a single player game pull it off well. Would you plunk down $50 for a game that contained a good set of content, then say $1-3 per “episode” for roughly a half hour to an hour of content each week? I might, if the content was good enough.
The main problem an MMO will face is what to do if players miss an episode. Can you just skip them? Do you need to catch up? What if you have two friends, one who did episode 7 and the other who missed it, can they play together?
December 20th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
I’d prefer “episodic” content that doesn’t necessarily negate the playability of previous content- at least, not right away. The TV show Law & Order always did a good job of keeping episodes completely stand-alone, but… if you watched them in order, you’d see a gradual character development over time. Det. Curtis’ dealing with his wife’s illness wasn’t central to any one episode, but the story evolved out on its own.
There also isn’t an immediate need to invalidate old content when done carefully, so the older story arcs could still be made available- giving people who ARE interested in more than a 1-night-a-week thing something to do:
In City of Heroes-talk:
- Your contact gives you rumor of a new villain in town. You investigate, running through a half-dozen mission maps, cutscenes, etc, pretty much a complete story. In the end, your contact’s gotta do some more footwork…
- Next week, new episode’s available. Now, your contact’s got some more leads- that bad guy you took out last episode (or… if you missed it & don’t want to go back… some bloke that just got arrested) had a bit of a network smuggling goods into the city- and they’re moving something big!
- The next week, a character development piece..
- And so on…
Finally, that arc wraps up. The next episode is initiated by a different contact.
If you followed along every week, you have the whole story as it went. If you missed a week or came in late, the contact can start you on the older content OR just let you jump in mid-stream- your choice… heck, if you really liked the content, maybe there’s a “retcon” mode that lets you replay older episodes at your leasure.
The old content can stay up as long as it doesn’t conflict with the continuity of another adventure- say… when your previous contact is murdered.
The idea would be to offer bite sized (Moorgard used “chewable content”) bits of story on a frequent schedule and really cater to the people interested in THAT KIND of content
December 20th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
I should add tht good “earth shattering” developments will, of course, eventually cause some material to be obsolete, but these don’t have to be THAT frequent.
December 21st, 2006 at 9:54 pm
In regard to NPCs like that mission-giver, I see no reason why characters like that should be prevented from growing and changing over time without catch-up mechanics for newcomers.
In real life, individuals are always changing and experiencing new things, yet we generally don’t feel cheated if we found out we missed something about that person or in that person’s life because we met the person when he or she was 40 and not 30. To the contrary, a lot of entertaining conversations involved the sharing of stories about things we missed…not just stories like “once, I…” but also “once, old John here…”. It’s common to talk about the experiences of friends and family, and not just ourselves.
It would be great if players shared such stories about changes in the lives of their favorite NPCs. In this way, one player might actually feel “closer” to a particular NPC than another player does, and might feel closer to one NPC than to another…thereby creating an illusion of a personally-relative community involving NPCs as well as players.
December 21st, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Precisely Aaron. The character can evolve, and when that evolution changes enough that it obsoletes some old content, it’ll have to be removed. I only wanted to stress that the new episodic content doesn’t necessarily HAVE TO mean the old stuff’s gone.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
My addition to this is a bit late, but…
I personally love the idea of episodic content in an MMO environment. Right from the start you’d design the game so that it would be fairly quick and easy to add new content on a weekly basis. It wouldn’t be huge amounts of content, but it’d be enough to tide people over until next thursday.
The game would have one huge story arc that would cover the the entire season and beyond. Each episode contains content that would drive it a little bit closer to that end. Within that season there would be smaller arcs that would last a few episodes and plenty that would last only one. Some of the content that drives the story becomes unplayable as the next episode is released (with a day or two grace period), but much of the content would be fairly independent from the main story, thus allowing play anytime.
New players start in the current episode.
There are no levels. There are skills, some gear… Some skills and gear are fairly rare (only a small handful of players could have it), but if you don’t use them, then you lose them. Alot of this gear and skill would be a part of the story, thus the turnover.