Of mice and elephants

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20 July 2005

by Mike Rozak

I am a single person trying to create a virtual world in a real world where virtual worlds have budgets of $20M and rising. ($20M = about 200 man years). I am a mouse scampering amongst the titanic feet of elephants.

Consequently, I spend a large amount of time figuring out where the elephants will be heading, to help ensure I don't get trodden on.

I have written some of my thoughts about the subject in Small VW operators vs. large, and Text vs. graphics. I have some more thoughts, or at least some realignment of thoughts, that I thought I'd share...

In the last six months I have played both World of Warcraft and Everquest II. Both of them are very impressive, with copious content and stunning eye candy. There is no way I can compete on that playing field. I could spend three years developing quests and graphics equivalent to WoW and EQII, and not produce 1/10th of what WoW and EQII contain. The prognosis gets even worse since the bleeding edge is a moving target. Both these games were conceived and budgeted over three years ago. The mass-market worlds begun today will have even larger budgets (probably double, at $40M), and will be even more titanic.

Therefore, I must admit to myself the following facts:

• I cannot create a world as large as WoW or EQII, both of which easily have 500 hours of content. Even if I were to create an entirely text version of the two, it would take many years to reach 500 hours. Since current text worlds have 1/100th to 1/1000th of the users of the major graphical worlds, I'd be lucky to have 2000 players... who would then baulk at any payment for a mere text game. (Besides, there are already dozens of free text-MUDs with an equivalent amount of content.)
  
  
• I cannot create a world with as much eye candy as WoW or EQII. I can easily see how much work goes into the eye candy, and can just as easily guess how much more work will go into eye candy in future releases.

I could try to create an army of volunteers to create an open-source WoW or EQII, but then I wouldn't be a mouse any more. Herding such an army would be a feat akin to herding cats, something I'm not terribly excited about doing. People more politically skilled than I can do that.

So what does this mean about any world I (or other mice) try to create? And what are the implications?

1. Content will be limited, perhaps to 50 hours.
   
   At 50 hours of content, the entire game changes. The experience will be more like a single player game that you can play with friends or use to meet people. It will have a beginning, middle, and end, and many of the sub-games that MMORPGs rely upon, such as guilds and trading, won't exist. Players will regularly jump from one world to the next. See my Anti-MMORPG writeup.
   
   My realisation that I will have less content than a mass-market MMORPG is interesting; I often think of my role as the author of a novel, while a mass-market MMORPG is a movie. Since movies are shorter than novels, I would expect niche-market worlds to take longer to play than mass-market worlds. The opposite appears to be the case. Coincidentally, graphical worlds become more cost effective as they get larger because art assets (and actor's voices) can be reused.
   
   
2. Eye candy will be limited. Graphics will still be needed, or the world won't attract any paying players. The eye candy won't be stellar though.
   
   I need to replace the lost graphics with something, and that something is text. However, text and graphics don't mix so I'll need to use speech. Since recorded speech is too expensive, I must use synthesised speech.
   
   
3. Mice eat the food that's too small for the elephants to see, or which is impossible for elephants to get to. A mouse can eat the nutritious grass seeds while elephants must consume the entire grass, which is mostly indigestible fibre. As a mouse, I will have to target niche-market audiences that elephants can't/won't reach.
   
   
4. It's cheaper to maintain a virtual world than to build a new one from scratch. Does this mean that small virtual worlds authors will create one world, and continually evolve it for the rest of their lives? This sounds boring to me, although it's precisely what Tolkien did. I'd rather spend a year creating a world, then move onto another one, and then another. Unfortunately, such a course would leave me with several small worlds, all but one being "dead"; a dead world might still have players, but it wouldn't be updated nor would it be monitored much.
   
   This is a dilemma for me: A small corporation could stick to one world since as employees get bored with the world they move to a different corporation. A single author doesn't have the option to move, and since they'd get bored, I suspect single authors will abandon the old world to create a new one.

The implications have implications:

1. A 50-hour experience means:
   
   
   1. The experience will have a beginning, middle, and end, and probably incorporate story similar to the way an adventure game or CRPG does.
      
      
   2. The player's role within the world will be specialised; players can be "forced" into the role of detective or coal miner, and the experience can revolve around being a detective or a coal miner. The traditional MMORPG tank, spell caster, and healer will be rare.
      
      
   3. Some plots simply cannot be maintained for a long period of time, but might be possible in shorter form. You wouldn't want to spend 500 hours experiencing what it's like to live in a concentration camp, but 5 hours of the horrendous experience might be palatable and prove to be very educational.
      
      
   4. Players will be able to play with friends, or team up with players online. Many players will partake in these virtual worlds for the sole purpose of meeting people (that they can then meet in the real world), using them as a form of dating service. PvP, guilds, and other MMORPG social institutions are unlikely.
      
      
   5. For every elephant that roaming the savannas, there are thousands of mice. Likewise, there will be many more 50-hour worlds than large worlds.
      
      By the way, this has a sub-implication about procedural content... Smaller worlds will reply on procedural graphics to cut costs, but content will be hand crafted. Procedural content is most useful in everlasting experiences like Diablo.
      
      
   6. Shorter worlds will target gamers who only play five (or fewer) hours a week.
      
      
2. A verbal world can produce some forms of content that a mostly-visual world cannot:
   
   
   1. Narration works much better verbally than visually; "Orsin thoughtfully caressed the rim of his wine glass with his finger before taking a small sip to taste, and then quaffing the lot." You can try to animate this sentence, but it will be very expensive (particularly when multiplied by the thousands of NPCs, each with their own animation) and won't ever convey the same meaning.
      
      
   2. Similarly, role players can use narration to enhance their role play.
      
      
   3. Non-Euclidean space and non-contiguous time are much easier to handle verbally.
      
      
   4. A verbal description can gloss over unimportant information; "The princess lived in a white tower with a single window at the top." What architectural style was the tower built in? What material? How big was the window? Etc. Someone creating an image for the tower must fill in all this information even though it isn't important for understanding the experience.
      
      
   5. A narrative world lends itself to text (or speech recognition) commands from the player. Verbal commands can convey more complex actions than point-and-click.
      
      
3. Niche markets include:
   
   
   1. More intellectual.
      
      
   2. People who speak languages other than the top-6 languages. Similarly, a niche world could target a Native American myths rather than relying on a European or Asian mythology.
      
      
   3. More experimental.
      
      
   4. More extreme - Large worlds can't be offensive or contain any ideas other than the bland; Small worlds can have opinions.
      
      
   5. Special interest groups - A virtual world based on Mycenaean trading, for example.
      
      
4. "Dead" worlds - I'm not certain about the implications of dead worlds. Maybe I'll write something up later.