Build it and they will come

(Back to TOC)

24 November 2004

by Mike Rozak

A few years ago there was a movie about a corn farmer who heard a voice in his head saying "Build it, and they will come." So, just like any normal person would do, he built a baseball field in his corn field, and teams of ghostly baseball players showed up to play.

"Build it, and they will come" is also an implicit design model of many virtual worlds, where authors build a virtual world and hope that (a) people will just wander into the new virtual world, and (b) some of the wandering people will like it enough to stay. Of course, neither of these statements are necessarily true; A virtual world needs advertising to attract players, and good design to keep them.

One question which virtual world designers don't seem to ask much (at least publicly), is "Who will come?"

Maybe they don't ask because the answer is obvious: 20% male teenagers and 50% 20-something males. That's the trend with MMORPGs, and to a lesser extent, single-player computer games. (The other 30% are divided amongst females and aged 29+ males. See http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000194.php for the numbers.)

Why are teenagers and 20-something males so attracted to MMORPGs?

Or, to reverse the question: What features would be ideal to attract teenagers and 20-something males?

(NOTE: There are quite a few holes in this whitepaper's arguments. I almost didn't put it up, but I think it's worthwhile despite the holes.)

Attracting teenagers to virtual worlds

When I sit down and list what features would most attract a stereotypical teenager, here's what I come up with:

• Free or a one-time purchase - Teenagers often don't have money, and even fewer have their own credit cards. As a result, they find a $50 game expensive, and $15/month even more so. Contemporary MMORPGs charge both, which poses a bit of a problem.
  
  Some upcoming MMORPGs, like Guild Wars, have a retail box, no monthy fee, and semi-annual retail updates; The boxed set and updates can be purchased by the teenager, or acquired as a Christmas or birthday present, making Guild Wars an ideal place for teenagers to congregate. Does this mean Guild Wars will be overflowing with teenagers?
  
  
• 1000-hours of gameplay - Despite school, teenagers have plenty of time to play games. Combined with their lack of money, this means that the more entertainment a single game provides, the better.
  
  
• Combat and violence - Movies and TV shows targeted at male teenagers are rife with combat and violence. I assume this holds true for MMORPGs. (When I was a teenager I enjoyed violent games and movies more than I do now; perhaps I can emphasise with the digital deaths more now than when my brain wasn't fully matured.)
  
  
• Sex - Every notice how MMORPGs (targeted at males) are filled with scantily-clad female avatars? I need not say more.
  
  
• Action packed - A contiguous stream of action is the standard for male teenager-movies and TV shows. The same goes for male-teenager games.
  
  
• Status oriented - My recollection of teenagerdom is that teenagers are more materialistic and status-oriented than adults. (Of course, many adults have the same traits, but not as high a percentage.)
  
  
• Group activities - Teenagers like to congregate in groups more than adults. Perhaps its because they're indoctrinated into group activities by virtue of spending their lives in school, or perhaps its a personality trait that wanes with age. Either way, MMORPGs provide guilds, a sanctioned method to form gangs of marauding teenagers. (Adults also congregate in large groups at work, but less rarely than teenagers do... or at least that's the way I perceive it.)
  
  
• Text chat instead of voice chat - As a child (or teenager), you always want to be older than you really are. Except for behavioural give-aways, contemporary virtual worlds hide one's age completely. Because teenagers don't want their ages revealed, I don't think most teenagers would like voice chat since it inevitably gives away their age.
  
  
• Other teenagers - Teenagers will congregate where other teenagers congregate. Adults will often avoid places where teenagers congregate. Therefore, a virtual world that attracts teenagers because of its design, ends up attracting more teenagers and repelling adults, which in turn produces a positive feedback cycle.

MMORPG features are a great match for male teenagers. Despite the monthly fee, around 20% of MMORPG users are male teenagers.

20-something males

The other demographic that seems to be abundant in MMORPGs in virtual worlds are 20-something males. I want to redefine the category slightly, into "competitive adults" and "non-competitive adults".

Competitive adults are mostly male (very few females); with a tendency towards being single males, aged 20-29. They are Richard Bartle's "killer" and "achiever" player types.

Non-competitive adults are both male and female, and fit into the "socialiser" player type.

Married players can also be grouped into competitive and non-competitive adults, but when they have children (which is a fairly common result of marriage), their free time plummets and they are less likely to play virtual worlds.

Competitive adults

The typical competitive adult in a MMORPG is a 20-something single male. If I wanted to create a virtual world for stereotypical competitive 20-something males I would do the following:

• Less than 1000 hours of gameplay - Adults have to work, so they don't have as much time as teenagers. I'd make the game shorter to target this demographic, although too short and the game loses some of its competitiveness since players come and go too frequently for long-term rivalries to form.
  
  
• Status oriented competition - While most adults are not status oriented, competitive adults certainly are. The virtual world should provide many ways for players to compete with one another. PvP worlds are ideal for this.
  
  
• Group activities - To compete properly in a virtual world, a player needs to be part of a large group. Those few players that run a large group also earn more social status.
  
  
• Buying equipment/characters with real money - Adults have jobs, and hence money to spare. A competitive player can use this money to buy equipment and characters, thereby increasing his status without having to spend hundreds of hours earning it. Teenagers cannot.
  
  
• Women - An ideal world for 20-something competitive single males would also include females.
  
  
• No teenagers - Teenagers are generally found to be an annoyance to most adults. Because MMORPGs charging a monthly fee should contain a lower density of teenagers, I suspect competitive adults will tend to use virtual worlds with a monthly fee.

MMORPGs do pretty well covering the requirements of competitive adults. They do miss a few areas, most noticeably being the lack of real women (although virtual ones abound).

Non-competitive adults

Non-competitive adults are male or female, aged 20+. Most of the gameplaying kind are single, so I'll focus on them for the stereotype.

Non-competitive singles have very different requirements than competitive adults...

It's obvious why competitive players like virtual worlds: Competition with real people (as opposed to AIs) is more intense and meaningful. They cannot get the same satisfaction from playing a single-player game.

Why would a non-competitive person wish to endure the technical headaches and financial costs of playing a virtual world?

Socialisation, of course.

I suspect the main reason that many non-competitive singles would partake in virtual worlds, as opposed to playing a single-player computer game, is to meet other singles with similar interests, preferably of the opposite gender. Entertainment is also important, although I couldn't say which is more important, entertainment or socialisation.

You could argue that non-competitive singles don't behave this way at the moment, and I'd agree. However, if a world were targeted at them, and it made the obvious marketing choice of creating a shard per city, then non-competitive singles would use virtual worlds as meeting places.

If you agree with this hypothesis, then a virtual world designed for non-competitive singles would have:

• 100 hours of gameplay - Most singles have other activities besides gameplay. 1000 hours is far too long a commitment, and 10 hours doesn't provide the necessary social interaction.
  
  
• Social interaction - One of the major reasons singles will enter a virtual world is to meet other singles, preferably of the opposite gender and in the same city. Think of the virtual world as a virtual singles-bar, at least for some of the players. "Chat" functionality is consequently very important.
  
  
• Voice chat - People who only use text chat may be masquerading their gender or age. Voice chat is one way to minimise the chance of deception.
  
  
• Cooperative activities - Activities that encourage a small group of strangers to work together encourage socialisation. Light-hearted competition, such as the equivalent of miniature golf, also works well.
  
  
• Non-violent activities - Taking a first date out to a violent movie doesn't produce a very good impression, nor does an avatar wielding a huge battle axe covered with blood, even if it isn't a date.
  
  
• Characters are virtually equal - MMORPGs pride themselves in having level-100 characters be infinitely stronger than level-1 characters. While this is great for people wanting power, it also makes it impossible for players with level-1 characters to play along side players with level-100 characters. If the purpose of the world is to meet people, the difference between level 1 and level 100 must be small enough that the two characters can play together.
  
  
• Philosophically targeted - Singles who join church social groups do so to meet other singles who are also religious. Those joining hiking clubs wish to meet outdoors-oriented singles. Likewise, virtual worlds that are designed to help people meet will be targeted at "artsy" vs. "techie" personalities, "conservative" vs. "liberal", "religious" vs."non-religious", etc. An avatar's appearance could also say something about the player's philosophical leanings, just as real-life wedding rings indicate someone's availability.
  
  
• No teenagers - The last thing you want in a virtual world that's intended to help adults meet one another is to have teenagers running around and cluttering up the landscape, particularly teenagers masquerading as adults. Anything that reduces the teenage population is acceptable, including monthly credit-card fees and content that would bore teenagers to death.

Married adults without children are more likely to use virtual worlds as an entertainment than a virtual nightclub, although many will still be interested in meeting people. Married adults may have less time to play a virtual world, though.

Those with children are unlikely to have any time at all to play. If they do have time, they may wish to spend it online with their children. (See below.)

Other age-groups

Just in case you haven't noticed, I just segregated the user-base into different age-groups and figured out what a stereotypical member of that age-group would want in a virtual world. Stereotyping players based on age group divides the population into:

• Children
  
  
• Teenagers - Already discussed.
  
  
• Competitive adults - Already discussed.
  
  
• Non-competitive adults - Already discussed.
  
  
• Married couples without children - Already discussed.
  
  
• Married couples with children - I'll lump "Married couples with children" in with children since it's unlikely they'll have time to play virtual worlds for themselves, but they may play with their children.
  
  
• Retirees - I'll ignore this group. Although retirees have the time and potential reasons for visiting for virtual worlds, most contemporary retirees are computer phobic. 20+ years from now this won't be the case and virtual worlds will probably be teeming with retirees.

That only leaves the "children" stereotype to discuss...

Children (and their parents)

Children are not customers in their own right since their parents inevitably do the purchasing. As a result, both the children's and parents' interests need to be taken into account when designing a virtual world:

• 10-hour to 100-hour game - While children have a lot of time, they don't have the attention span for a long game, nor do their parents want them to spend their lives in front of a computer. (Parents don't want teenagers to spend all their time in front of a monitor either, but teenagers are much more difficult to control.)
  
  
• Social safety - Children must be protected from strangers on the Internet, or so parents think. Consequently, chat in virtual worlds must be limited to trusted friends or non-exploitable pre-packed phrases like Disney's ToonTown has.
  
  
• No violence and tame PvP - It must all be rated G, and any player vs. player activities need to be muted. Player-with-player is encouraged though.
  
  
• Educational - Parents like buying educational toys for their children, whether or not the children actually enjoy them. An educational virtual world might include learning typing skills (through chat), mathematics, geography, etc.
  
  
• Simple user-interface and game-play - Of course.
  
  
• Parents play online with children - What if parents could spend "quality" time with their children in a virtual world? When households commonly have two computers, parents may wish to play online along side their children. Alternatively, what if parents could check a web page from work and verify that their latch-key child was safely at home playing on the computer and know who they were playing with? (Might the virtual world E-mail the parent if their child failed to log on, so the parent could call home?)

Other stereotype categories...

Of course, stereotyping your market based on age will only get you so far. It's better than nothing though, as long as you don't believe your conclusions too much.

Other divisions for stereotyping target markets exist, each with their own ways of attracting specific users:

• "Artsy" vs. "Techie" users - Contemporary MMORPGs shows lots of numbers, revel in convoluted algorithms that players need to reverse-engineer in order to succeed, have puzzles, and even built-in programming languages; these all attract "techie" players. (Think science and engineering majors.) If you want to attract artsy players you need to have artistic imagery, sound, and ambience, along with complex social interactions, artistically subtle world design, and maybe the creation of in-game buildings and art. (Think humanities majors.).
  
  Notice the right-brained vs. left-brained associations of artsy vs. techie... I'm not sure what to make of it, but it might prove useful.
  
  
• Religious vs. non-religious - A virtual world where players must choose to worship a fictitious deity might offend religious players. A virtual world with a strong Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc. leaning will attract religious players but push away non-religious ones.
  
  
• Conservative vs. liberal - Given the current political climate in the US, it would be interesting to funnel conservative players into one realm, liberal players into another realm, and let them fight it out.
  
  
• Educational stereotyping - I'm not sure how to attract more/less educated players to a specific virtual world, but it's a possibility.
  
  
• Financial stereotyping - Expensive virtual worlds will attract higher-income earners (assuming the costs provides benefits, such as better customer support, more GMs, and better player screening), while free ones will attract lower income earners (like teenagers).
  
  
• Die-hard fans vs. casual players - If you make a Star Trek virtual world that takes 1000 hours to complete and requires players to memorise the layout of the Enterprise, the virtual world will only attract die-hard fans. If the world only has 10 hours of content and doesn't require any knowledge of Star-Trek backstory, it'll attract casual players and be dismissed by the die-hard fans.
  
  
• Distance from reality - I'll discuss this below.
  
  
• Etc. - Of course, there are many more ways to divide a population into a target market.

Distance from reality

Most MMORPGs are fantasy or science-fiction based. This is interesting, because most television shows and movies are based on near-reality...

Let me explain what I mean by "near reality" and a few other definitions:

• Reality is what most of us experience in our everyday lives. While it may be interesting, we're so jaded by reality that we often crave something different.
  
  
• Near-reality is reality with a few changes to make it interesting. Cop-shows, hospital shows, dramas, soap operas, and sitcoms are near reality. They could take place in reality if enough improbable events stacked up together to make reality interesting. (As in the case of the 1980's murder-mystery series, Murder She Wrote, a world in which one woman's friends and acquaintances were so likely to be murdered that she became quite a good detective.)
  
  
• Far-reality is a reality unlike what we currently experience.

Far-reality includes:

• Science fiction is reality as it could be in the future. There are different levels of future-ness. Some science fiction takes place in the near future (such as Stargate), while other in the medium-term future (such as Star Trek). Science fiction in the far future (such as the ending of Steven Spielberg's AI)  is uncommon, for reasons I'll discuss below.
  
  
• Historical reality is reality that takes place in the past. Television shows and movies that take place in the recent past (50 years) are common, but ones set several centuries ago are rarer. In terms of the time-dimension, historical reality is the opposite of science fiction.
  
  
• Magical reality involves worlds where the laws of physics differ from our own. Adding a little bit of magical reality to a television show can create the classic, Bewitched, or a Stephen King horror film. Adding a lot of "magic" creates a dream-like world.
  
  
• Alternate realities are those where the same technology and world physics exists, but where something different happened in the past to make the alternate reality differ from our reality. George Orwell's 1984, while once science fiction, is now an alternate reality. Children's anthropomorphic cartoons are also alternate realities, since intelligent talking animals are possible using our reality's physics. (Assuming you ignore the physics of the animal's vocal tract.)
  
  A world based on a different culture could also be considered alternate reality. For a westerner, a virtual world that takes place in feudal Japan is not only historical reality, it's alternate reality.

The reason why having most virtual worlds based on fantasy or science fiction realities is surprising, is because most adults don't seem to like realities that are too distant from "reality". (Children don't seem to mind though.) Just take a quick survey of television shows and movies... Very few TV shows are based on reality, since that would be boring. Most are cop shows, hospital shows, and reality-TV shows, which are all near reality. A few occur in the near past, the near future, or include minor amounts of magic and alternate realities.

Most television shows and movies plant themselves firmly in a neighbouring reality. Very few venture further...

• Even science fiction classics like Star Trek, which are based in a medium-term future, bear a striking resemblance to our times. People still wear clothes, they are not genetically engineered nor are their pets, they worry about the same things we worry about, computers (except for Commander Data) are non-sentient, and aliens look like people with rubber glued to their face. Of course, aliens look like this because CGI aliens are too expensive to produce. However, when CGI is possible and a really alien-looking alien is created, such as the bugs in Starship Troopers, it almost always ends up being an enemy, not a friendly creature.
  
  
• Likewise, historical shows based on the 1950's-2000's are fairly common. Those based on the 1800's are less common. True 13th century dramas are rare. (Although quasi-medieval settings are more popular. They tend to use half medieval "reality" and half modern "reality", such as modern ways that characters think about the world). Roman and Greek epics are only occasionally produced. Movies occurring before the Greeks are very rare: How many stone-age romances have you seen recently? Or even bronze-aged?
  
  
• Magical reality in television and movies is often limited to a "low-entropy" environment where only a small portion of the population wields magic, such as in Harry Potter. A world where everyone is magical is shied away from. A world based on dreams is even rarer for mass-market entertainment.
  
  
• Likewise, alternate realities may contemplate what would happen if Stalin took over the world, but a distant alternative like anthropomorphic reality is almost unheard of... except for childrens' stories, which seem to gravitate towards anthropomorphics. Even then, the talking and walking animals are just humans that look like animals, containing few of the original species' traits.
  
  Part of the reason why there aren't adult anthropomorphics is that realistic-looking computer-animated characters are too expensive, and cartoons, which are affordable, are associated with children's entertainments (in the west). The two ideas have linked, and anthropomorphics are similarly associated with children's programming.

Basically, the further away an invented reality gets away from "reality", the less mass-market appeal it has, which is why virtual worlds based on fantasy and science fiction are surprising. (Also surprising is that reality-based virtual worlds, like the Sims Online, have done quite poorly.)

I suspect there are reasons why fantasy and science-fiction are the preferred virtual world though:

• Running around the streets of a virtual-LA killing virtual enemies would raise some eyebrows. Running around the streets of Gondor killing virtual orcs does not.
  
  I am interested to see how well The Matrix virtual-world does, since it will involve characters running around the streets of a virtual-Sydney (where The Matrix city-scenes were filmed) killing evil programs that look like FBI agents.
  
  
• Fantasy and science fiction virtual worlds keep their reality fairly close to "reality". They are not that really that far from near-reality. For example, a real medieval society (which fantasy is based on) would also include feudalism and other restrictions that westerners would grumble at, so they unwanted aspects are conveniently removed from the virtual world (and many TV shows). In science fiction virtual worlds, players run around killing monsters with light sabres (glowing swords) and laser weapons (basically modern day guns that make a laser-sound instead of a bang), rather than using biological eradication methods or some other unfamiliar but more effective technology.
  
  
• Contemporary MMORPG players are not mass-market, and are not interested in a near-reality experience.

So what does this have to do with "Build it and they will come"?

I suspect that if you build a world based on near-reality, you'll get one type of player. A world based on distant realities, such as a dream world, will attract a completely different type of player.

• Players that like the real world as it is will play reality-based virtual worlds... or they'll just walk out their door into the real world, which is a high-resolution version of a reality-based world. (I'm being a bit facetious here.)
  
  Maybe "The Sims Online" failed because it was targeting reality-based personalities using a technology (virtual worlds) which has only recently been intellectually grasped by players who are far-reality oriented? Would The Sims Online have succeeded if it were released in 10-20 years when virtual worlds might be publicly known/accepted entertainments?
  
  
• Players that think the real world is an OK place, but just a tad boring, might prefer near-realty virtual worlds like cop-shows or sitcom-based virtual worlds.
  
  As someone that likes far-reality, I'd claim such people are less creative and less willing to accept change than people interested in far-reality like science-fiction and magic. However, near-reality people are probably much-better "adjusted" than me, and they're certainly the mass-market.
  

• Those that think the real world isn't a very nice place to exist, and who would like it re-ordered differently, might prefer historical, alternate reality, and occasionally science fiction worlds. Ultimately, all these realities can be seen as a world based on real-life physics, but different "content".
  
  I say, "occasionally science fiction", because science fiction is usually (but not always) based around some new discoveries about the laws of physics that enable wondrous inventions, which in turn change the world. For example: Star Trek relies heavily on "warp" and "dematerialization", two elements of physics that may not really be possible. Conversely, the technology in the movie, Alien, doesn't seem too far fetched given our current knowledge of physics. A Star Trek world requires both invented physics and new content, while Aliens is mostly a change in content.
  
  
• Players who do not like the laws of physics will opt for a magical or science-fiction reality.
  
  Changing the laws of physics always has implications on the ordering ("content") of a virtual world; add even a handful of wizards to our real-world and it will change significantly... unless the author finds a way to subvert this change, such as in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, where wizards unbelievably stay hidden instead of taking positions of power in society, which at least some of them would.

You can boil this analysis down even further into a two-dimensional graph, with one axis being the amount of alternate reality in the world, and the other the amount of change to the laws of physics. The further from (0,0) a virtual world gets, the fewer adults will be interested.

Conclusion

Build it, and they will come... Yes, but you need to know who is "they" before you can build it. A baseball field built in a corn field will attract ghostly baseball players. A golf course in the Australian outback might attract entirely different sorts.

Most contemporary virtual worlds are built to attract:

1. Teenagers and 20-something competitive male players.
2. Technically minded players (as opposed to artistically minded).
3. Players that like a weakly alternate world (fantasy or science fiction) with some weak changes to physics (magic and spaceflight).

Virtual worlds designed for these demographics have attracted the largest populations.

Worlds targeting other demographics have been less successful:

• A tale in the Desert targets both competitive and non-competitive adults. It is a historical (and somewhat alternate) virtual world.
  
  
• Furcadia targets non-competitive adults, and due to its low-price, some non-competitive teenagers. It is more artsy than techie, and is an strongly-alternate anthropomorphic reality.
  
  
• Second Life targets non-competitive players. It attracts technically minded people (who write the scripts) as well as artsy people (who build the content). The world can be almost dream-like because of the players' freedom to modify the world's physics.
  
  
• The Sims Online targets non-competitive players interested in a reality-based setting.
  
  
• Uru Live targeted non-competitive adults. I suspect the puzzles would have attracted both techies and artsy-types depending upon the specific puzzle, while the beauty of the world would pull in even more artistically-minded people. The world was based on an alternate reality, with bits of magic (linking books) thrown in.

Demographics affect more than just the number of players that will be attracted to a virtual world...

The specific activities that the world provides are affected. For example, a car-racing sub-game would appeal to teenagers (because they don't yet spend an hour a day driving their car to and from work) and competitive adults (as a race). To attract people interested in alternate-reality you'd need to change the car to a spaceship, submarine, or battleship. To appeal to alternate physics crowd, the spaceship would need to warp space as a defence, or employ other non-Newtonian physics. To appeal to artsy types, players would need to be able to customise the car (or spaceship) with accessories and paint-jobs. (See Virtual World as Platform and The attraction of impossibility.)

The demographic also affects how long a player will be willing to spend. Teenagers will want longer games than most adults. (See Steady-state approximation.)

The sub-games and duration of a virtual world, in turn, affect everything about the world.

Maybe asking who "they" are is a very important question...