/Hail

http://www.informatik.umu.se/nlrg/beyond_kansas.pdf

The first step into a virtual world is indeed daunting - the lost child comparison fits. There is feelings of great uncertainty, even fear, as well as infinite possibility. Over time, one learns the limits of the virtual world (as governed by its technology and creators). In the case of "Confuse," the inhabitant wanted to push the world to its limit, not settling for the conference space the designers intended. Moreover, they wanted create things in the space that would not possible (or would be tremendously difficult) in real life.

The users in "Confuse" wanted to stick close to their real world identities as they built their virtual homes. The authors discussed that not all users go to virtual worlds to focus on building or achievement; some put their energy into being rather than doing. A good interface is burdened with making both of these actions possible, at the same time attempting to entice the "childlike" new users. The goal would be to stay flexible to the user's desires, striking the balance between transience and permanence, for themselves and their world. Maybe you can't change your virtual name or knock down a city (things that would be highly disrupted to other users and the world as a whole), but you could modify your appearance or renovate a building. Customization, when presented comfortably, is nearly always welcome. The user "Benny" remarked he preferred building worlds to inhabiting them; with some creativity, it should be possible to do both at once.

http://www.zubek.net/robert//publications/towards-social-interaction.pdf

Aside from human players, many online world are populated by very dense NPCs. As the author mentioned, there are few examples outside of greetings, dialog trees, and merchant interfaces. His suggestion to make NPCs more eager and believable in their human interaction is a good one; it has potential for making better human-to-human interaction. For example, an NPC could mediate a contest between several players or make a certain player a preferred customer. Granted, such systems exist in today's MMORPGs, but they are usually controlled by the game world, and do not take into account if an NPC is asleep, distracted, biased, vindictive, etc.

NPCs are unusually empowered in the "The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion," and have a mix of remember player action and dynamic AI that make them appear more realistic. However, the game is single-player, and thus the entire world turns on one player's decisions. I'd like to see a tug of war for NPCs respect (or a group of NPCs battling each other to win a player's favor!). It would be exciting to go beyond completing quest or correct dialog boxes to win affection. A pivotal NPC could observe players or guilds when they didn't expect it, watching how they treat each other as well as friends and enemies. It would go a long way to creating more intelligent cooperation and competition among players, the heart of any good MMORPG.

http://codebook.jot.com/Book/Chapter6

The author references LambdaMOO, an arguable precursor to the MMORPGs of today. The online "rape" of female characters raises significant security and communication issues. Like LambdaMOO, most MMORPGs are communities that take some time (and often money) to get into, building attachment. In the case of LambdaMOO, the commands were adaptable enough at the time to give one user power over another's text. But even in text-based MMORPGs today, there are smaller tricks to make one player appear to be doing something against their will, such as the manipulation of emotes.

He also argues that in text based games and communities the deaf and blind were nearly impossible to distinguish from unimpaired users. As games evolve, good graphics and sound become more integral and there is more to miss out on if you can't see or hear. It begs the question of what further innovations could decrease online anonymity. Ideally, one could combine impressive multimedia with impressive accessibility. At the least, keeping in-game text a core component of social interaction allows communication to extend to more people than it would offline.

http://www.tol.oulu.fi/~tmannine/publications/CRIWG2000_final.pdf

I agree that real-world social patterns could be better incorporated into today's games and interfaces. It seems we are currently at a level of direct action and reaction. The communication options for users have expanded since the time the article was written, but speed and control of response is still problematic. The user need to do quite a bit of thinking before a "reaction" can be carried out.

The limited gestures mentioned do represent a common problem. Even when key-binding several commonly used commands, it lacks an organic feeling. That is, one needs to manually type out (or click a pre-bound shortcut) for reactions such as shrugs, winks, and snarls. One can extend their hand in friendship in several titles, but can another player actually grasp and shake it? I'm curious if there's a online game, RPG, shooter, or otherwise, with a system for automatically reacting to other players gestures and emotes. If the system is too simple or obvious, however, it would face the same issues.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/3/c/33c82055-c4bc-4354-bb1b-24358a950937/mgsut_F02.doc.doc

While the article is generalizable to many game genres, I believe there are several important lessons here for the MMORPG interface. For example, the balance of feedback from game designers/professionals AND "casual" game players. I wholeheartedly agree that some designers have more esoteric tastes than the average consumer, especially in aesthetic presentation and communication style. For example, World of Warcraft recently made a public chat channel to allow 50% of the players on one server to chat simultaneously. This understandably worked quite well when tested by designers or demo'd by a small user sample, but easily degrades into nonsense with 2,000+
members.

Getting user feedback may be the best option to improve today's game, as we seem to be fast approaching a pinnacle in graphics, sound, and control options. I like Microsoft's approach in small playtest groups, but I would like to see more improvements in beta testing. It seems many companies believe a chance to play a game early is enough of a reward to make a consumer spend hours evaluating a product before market. However, this is a small slice of the gaming population and possibly one that is too well behaved. In other words, how can we make a testing system where the obnoxious players will do their best to make them game unpleasant for others, thereby showing the developers the weak points in the game design?

http://www.eltrun.gr/papers/papa.pdf

The guilds the authors describe seems very rigidly structured and efficient. It bears the question of whether guilds should be an easy thing that a group of friends can create or if they must be pillars of the community, held to high standards. If the structure is truly as inflexible as the authors say, I'm curious if that contributed to the short-life of the game.

If one's online social group does run that smoothly, it certainly makes for a better play experience. On the other hand, guilds with such functional economy, membership, reputation, and skill are usually hard to find in MMORPGS. Guilds that do effectively juggle all these factors can also run the risk of inciting drama (negative attention from the rest of the game community or within the guild). I've seen many a player lament that when their companions put too much effort into building an organization, it can suck the fun out of the game.

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1028078
(click the PDF link near the top of the page)

An obtuse game interface can easily break a title; I feel I usually need a lot of other positives to keep me engaged if basic interaction is a chore. Their citation of "Halo" (a first-person shooter with an acclaimed single-player campaign as well as small group multiplayer) is a good example. Great graphics, music, atmosphere, hype, and challenge kept me playing long enough to cope with the controls and menu system, which felt unintuitive and uncomfortable for many hours. Being eased into a game's interface, through strong (but optional) tutorials, tooltips, and/or practice events can greatly contribute to the fun factor.

It could be argued that complex or incomplete game interfaces give rise to interesting social situations. A confused newbie, unsure of how to perform an action, may receive aid from another friendly player and forge a positive relationship. Alternatively, said newbie may become the subject of ridicule from all nearby players and be discouraged to keep playing. Some users also write interface "mods" (modification programs) to correct or expand on the basic interface of the developers, fostering a community of game-playing programmers. (the exact type of people the article wants to get more involved in the commercial software industry!)

http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~barry/papers/There.pdf

Like the authors, I've never heard of an MMORPG that streamlines simultaneous conversations in texts, so maybe "There" is on to something. Large group chat (20+ members) can get very cumbersome, and even a screen-wide chat window can fill up quickly. Many guilds use teamspeak or ventrilo VoiP programs to speak instead of type, but interruptions are still a problem, especially with moderate lag. On the other hand, would an existing community want everyone to see the speed they type, mistakes and all? One nice (if underused in online games) feature about text chat is one can proofread and formulate their thoughts clearly before displaying them on the screen.

"There"'s other social tools, such as built in event scheduling, are quite appealing. I believe several MMORPGs have incorporated versions of these tools in guild interfaces and in-game bulletin boards. Both are efficient means of distributing information, provided the tools are accessible and popular with the playerbase (i.e. A bulletin board stranded in the back corner of a newbie zone may not get much attention, no matter how useful the interface) A common alternative to in-game scheduling is using a seperate website to handle events, although this can be costly, exclusive, and insecure depending on the people and software involved.

-Jeremy

I'm feeling very ill today. I'm going to post the next entry over the weekend, instead of Friday as planned.

-Jeremy

http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Jakobsson.pdf

Although the article is a few years old, I think the social currency idea is still very relevant. The EQ designer commented that the trust-building nature of the game was successful in keeping players coming back for more. The thrill of beating challenging encounters with group trust and teamwork is certainly real, but I think players would rather the game enforce morality. Instead of having "Phrank" hold an item until everyone rolled and expect him to deliver an item to the winning roll, why not have the game store the item somewhere safe and automatically award the winning player?

Also, does the mafia comparison strike anyone as silly? I do see parallels with the exclusive of nature of big guilds, as well as the enormous consequences of betraying online party members or guildmates. However, it seems a stretch to associate all big guild with criminal or exploitative activity, or to imply that many have huge influence over the bulk of the game world.

Hello!

The purpose of this journal to evaluate and discuss various articles about online game interfaces and social interaction. I will be posting one article roughly every week (or two weeks if it's especially complex) from now until the beginning of December. After writing up some thoughts on the topic, I welcome any discussion, criticism, or other commentary. At the conclusion of the Fall semester, I will take what I've learned from the articles and user commentary and jot it down in a term paper.

I welcome all constructive commentary, whether you are a researcher, student, and/or player of any online game. If you inhabit or study one of the environments under discussion and think an article is complete BS, please say why!

I do not know exactly where this exercise will lead and what will happen in the end... but that's the fun part!

-Jeremy