The social strategy game genre

Here is a quick list of games that resemble Clash of Clans in some ways. Some wargame mechanics may date back from RPGs of the 90s, such as Age of Empires, or even from tabletop wargames of old. These old games are off-limits.

Released	Name	Theme	Description
Sep. 2004	Travian	Antiquity	The player can pick one of three tribes: the aggressive Teutons, defensive Gauls, and average Romans. Teuton players usually farm resources from Gaul players. Players can trade resources, message each other, and join alliances. Troops take time to produce, and can be unlocked and upgraded. A hero can equip gear, complete quests, and gain XP in battles. The game ends when a player upgrades a Wonder building to level 100. Premium accounts finance the game and have game advantages over free accounts.
June 2009	Farmville	Farm	Facebook game by Zynga. The player plants crops that grow with time, but wither if not harvested on time. Players can receive crops or animals from friends. In-game promotional campaigns for real-life brands like McDonalds or 7-Eleven. Reached 80M MAU and 30M DAU in Feb 2010.
March 2010	Backyard Monsters	Gory monsters	Facebook game by Kixeye. The design goal was to play an RTS game in short sessions. The game targets a hardcore player segment in several ways. First, the art is unusually gory, bloody, and industrial for a Facebook game, yet it was praised as the prettiest game on Facebook when released. Second, the monetization relies on the players who hate losing and are ready to spend money to gain an advantage. As a result, 85% of the revenues come from selling speed ups, retention is 5x longer than other Facebook games, 97% of the player base are males between 25 and 45, and the average user plays 3-4 session per day for 30 minutes per session on average. They peaked at 4.5M MAU and 1M DAU in Summer 2011.
May 2011	Battle Pirates	Warships	By Kixeye. Peaked at 1.6M MAU and 240k DAU in Q4 2012. The player controls a military island, and can be attacked synchronously, in real-time, by the boats of other players. Watch some gameplay.
Aug. 2011	Edgeworld	Aliens	Facebook game by Kabam. 610k MAU in Dec 2011. The developers did not expect players to be attacking each other for resources.
Sep. 2011	War Commander	Post-apocalyptic	Facebook game by Kixeye. Peaked at 5.2M MAU and 660k DAU in Sep 2012.
Aug. 2012	Clash of Clans	Medieval Norse	One month of soft launch: first released in beta on the Canadian iOS appstore in July 2012, then on all iOS appstores in August 2012. Released on Android in October 2013. Supercell had two goals: adapting the genre for the tablet, and bringing new segments to the genre. The name of the strongest unit in CoC, P.E.K.K.A., reminds of the name of the strongest monster in Backyard Monsters: D.A.V.E.. Some say that CoC is Backyard Monsters with polish. Troops are consumed if they are deployed in battle: even if it stays alive until the battle times out, the player loses the troop for ever. A lot of community management and communication goes on between SuperCell and the players through the forums or Facebook. Depending on where you look, CoC had 8.5M DAU in April 2013, and 4.3M MAU and 2.7M DAU in January 2014.
July 2013	Ninja Kingdom	Medieval Japan	Also called Dojo Mojo. Facebook game by Zynga. The Jade Mine can only be staffed with captured enemy troops, not with the player's workers. Each captured enemy troop generate 1 jade per 24h. If destroyed by an enemy raid, all the jade in the mine is lost. 4.6M MAU and 600k DAU in January 2014.
July 2013	Battle Beach	Modern warfare	The troops are a complete ripoff from CoC. 21k MAU and 9k DAU in January 2014.
July 2013	Jungle Heat	Modern warfare in a tropical jungle	Android game by Mail.ru Games. The troops are a complete ripoff from CoC. 260k MAU and 110k DAU in January 2014.
July 2013	Castle Clash	Medieval Fantasy	Around 20 heroes with different skills. Twelve troops: 3 tiers of power for each of the 4 attack types: heavy (strong against ranged), ranged (beats magic), magic (beats heavy), and heavy anti-building.
Sep. 2013	Amazing Clan War	Medieval Norse	Blatant CoC ripoff by a Chinese company. Even the loading screens have the same layout.
Sep. 2013	Kingdom Clash	Medieval fantasy	Soft launch in Australia in May 2013. 5k MAU and 2k DAU in January 2014.
Sep. 2013	Total Conquest	Roman Empire	iOS and Android game by Gameloft. Soft launch in Canada and New Zealand app stores a month earlier. The troops are very similar to CoC, except they don't seem to fly. 100k MAU and 30k DAU in January 2014.
Oct. 2013	Lord of the Guardians	Forest animals	Three solo campaign modes (normal, heroic, legendary), each with 150 mission. 5k MAU and 2k DAU.
Oct. 2013	Samurai Siege	Medieval Japan	iOS and Android (implemented using Unity). 1.2M installs and 300k DAU when it launched, 100k MAU and 44k DAU in January 2014. Same core units as CoC. Troops and buildings are unlocked through the solo campaign. The campaign has a (mediocre) storyline. Loot items are stolen from other players. When all 6 of them are gathered, they provide an extra army camp (more troops) or a cannon (more defense). Alliance War pits groups of players against each other for 12 hours. This was probably based on the periodic trophy push organized on the CoC forums to break the farming routine.
Nov. 2013	Call to Arms	WWII	Developed by GREE. Soft launch in October. Lets you simulate an attack on your own base.
Nov. 2013	Galaxy Factions	Space	A month of soft launch. 10 heroes and 12 units.
Dec. 2013	Boom Beach	Pearl Harbor	Soft launch in November. Developed by SuperCell. Troops that stay alive at the end of a battle are available in the next battle. The player can direct the units to attack a particular building through flares. Explore the ocean (at a cost) to find islands controlled by NPCs and other players. Attacking a neighbor player also has a cost. Nearby captured islands generate resources for you. The units are inspired from Team Fortress.
Dec. 2013	Dark District	Dystopian futuristic city	Developed by Kabam. 6 months of soft launch, probably because of all the crashes and bugs. Assign your troops a building to attack.
Dec. 2013	Sensei Wars	Medieval China and Japan	Soft launch in New Zealand and Australia in October. Developed by 2k Play. 3D graphics. One hero available from the start. Heroes gain levels and learn skills. There is a skill tree, and skills can be reset by paying the hard in-game currency.

Improving the genre

In-game base building: During the first few weeks, shuffling the dozen-or-so buildings around and trying a new base design is quick and easy. Three months later, the village holds around 80 buildings and there is little room to move buildings around. Since players can't design their base in-game anymore, they turn to unofficial websites where they can share their designs and receive feedback. This is bad because 1) it's a feature needed by the players, and it's missing from the game, and 2) the game developers lose touch with their players.

Community: CoC clones do not have a large community. In fact, very few of them have a community at all. The CoC player community is large, and provides valuable feedback and ideas to SC for free! The recipe is simple: the large amount of player suggestions and feedback is filtered by the community managers who then forward the key parts to the developers. For example, a player sketched out a very convenient in-game base builder in the SC forums on September 11. 20 days later SC released a patch with a simpler version of that player's idea. In my opinion, the community is crucial for innovation and polish, and none of the clones have it.

Innovating the core mechanics: The clones must innovate if they want to have people playing their game. A player wrote: if I had invested a ton of money in Clash of Clans, I would find it unlikely that I would do that again in a game that is so similar. I think there is a spectrum of innovation. On one side, Amazing Clan War is a blatant ripoff of CoC (see the CoC vs Amazing Clan War loading screens below). When your power in the game is all about how much time you have been playing for, why would you switch? Most other clones are heavily inspired by CoC, but add, tweak, or twist a couple elements. Yet the core mechanics remain unchanged since Backyard Monsters! For example, all games have the slow meat-shield troops luring defense buildings and the fast and weak troops targeting resources. On the other hand, the hero skill tree in Sensei Wars, the jade mine of Ninja Kingdom, or the 12-hour inter-alliance war in Samurai Siege are very promising PvP concepts, but they're too shy and peripheral to really matter.

Soft launches: CoC clones follow CoC's formula to launch the game in Canada, Australia, or New Zealand one or two months before worldwide release. But since CoC clones are all about time, soft launches give a head start of a couple months to some privileged players. That is probably why SC had no trouble giving new players 500 gems to catch up when they released the game worldwide. Of course the Canadian players who had started playing during the soft launch were not happy - they missed out on 500 gems! How could a game soft-launch and make everyone happy?

Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities - Beenen 2004

Notes from Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities, by Beenen et al. 2004

• 830 respondents who rated rare movies on a movie recommendation website.
• Theoretical framing: social loafing/free riding
• Findings: the contribution of an individual may increase if:
  • his contribution seems unique to the group
  • specific benefits (ie individual-only or group-only) are not mentioned. The best is to not mention the benefits at all.
  • goals are specific
  • goals are framed for the group rather than for the individual
  • goals are challenging (but still within reach)

Connections:

• reasonable goals echoes intersubjective flow from Celia Pearce
• In MMOs, tank, DPS, and healer are unique roles. Does that make them play more/better towards the group?

[Literature] Retention in WoW

Thomas Debeauvais et al. 2011. If you build it, they might stay: Retention systems in World of Warcraft. In FDG2011.

I looked at what keeps people playing WoW and which mechanisms retain most effectively which kind of players. Here are my picks from the paper I wrote and sent to FDG2011.

Around 2800 WoW players from Europe, North-America and Asia completed an online questionnaire. Player commitment (and therefore retention) was measured by three metrics: weekly play time, ratio of respondents who have ever stopped playing, and number of years spent playing WoW. All the results mentioned in this article are significant with a p-value below 0.01.

• 96% of respondents have been playing WoW for more than a year, 70% for more than three years.
• 23% of respondents have stopped playing for more than 6 months and have never canceled their subscription - they keep paying even if they do not play!
• On average, people play 23h/week. Asians play more than Westerners. No noticeable difference between men and women.
• Achievement and social actions are motivations that increase the weekly play time. Immersion does not influence the weekly play time.

• Asians are more immersion-oriented than Westerners.
• A higher guild rank (officer or GM > basic member > non-guilded) increases retention.
• Women play with people from real-life more than men.
• People who play with their partner play less than single players, but more than players not playing with their partner. They also stop playing less often.
• 13% of players have found a real-life boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse in WoW.
• There are more players over 45 than players who play more than 40 hours per week (another sample may contain a different ratio, though)

[Literature] Communities of Play, book 2: The Uru Diaspora

Celia Pearce and Artemesia. 2009. Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds. The MIT Press.

Some notes on the second book of Communities of Play by Celia Pearce. You can also read a summary about Book 1: Play, community and emergent cultures.

Chapter 5: An imaginary homeland

Ethnography conducted in the TGU hood (the Uru version of a guild) from March 2004 to September 2005, following a method for research that serves to inform game design.

Uru is the MMOG version of the Myst series. It was developed by Cyan Worlds and published by Ubisoft in 1993. Myst was the best-selling PC game until The Sims came out in 2001, it sacrificed speed and action for visuals and audio. Most Uru players were Myst players. Hence the typical player was around 45-year old, did not really play other games but liked puzzles. Many write poems (later analyzed by the researcher). In many game communities, players may not be aware of the values and ideologies that attract them to a game. Uru could be played multiplayer connected to a server or single-player locally. In the game, players live in neighborhoods, aka hoods. The game company created artificial drama between players through paid actors. Books are used to teleport avatars between places.

Uru has several places of particular interest:

• Tutorial zone,
• Home: contains player's items, a library with books and a teleport link to the player's hood. More features are added to the home as the player progresses through the game.
• Hood: place where the hood (same name for the group of players) gathers. Contains a message board.
• City: public, shared by all players, uninhabited and in a poor state of devastation
• Ages: player-instantiated maps. Players can join other player's Age to solve the Age's puzzle collectively or chat. Seems similar to Furcadia's dreams.

Chapter 6: Identity as place

TGU was one of the biggest and most influential hoods of Uru. It formed during the beta of Uru and officially started accepting members in November 2003. At its maximum, it was so large (400+ members) its hood map required to be sharded in 3 different instances.

Invitations were sent to Myst players. A total of 10.000 players signed for the free beta and each beta cycle accepted 500 players of the waiting list, approximately every month (gating). Two clerical errors resulted in the entire beta list accepted in late December 2003 and late January 2004. Uru never made it to commercial release, it went on sale in November 2003 and the servers closed on February 2004. The last thing Uru players saw was a screen indicating an Internet error. Developer and publisher blamed the market for the lack of success of the game, players blamed the faulty technology and lack of marketing. Despite the 2.000 players who petitioned to pay a year of subscription in advance to keep the game running.

The Koalanet forum was opened by TGU members when the game closed. Members of TGU showed symptoms of posttraumatic stress, the shared trauma became a bonding experience. Poems expressed ethnic identity and diaspora. Players explored 2 alternatives: recreating Uru thanks to game development tools (eg virtools, VRML, Active Worlds, Atmosphere development environment or LSL scripts) or joining an existing ready-to-play virtual world (eg temporary text-based MUD, There.com or SL; EQ or Ryzom were considered too violent and competitive).

The hood leader joined There.com but said players could go anywhere, Koalanet would stay the main TGU hub. There.com's TGU club got up to 450 members, some not from Uru. The migration on a shard of There.com caused lag on this shard, hence griefing from indigenous. TGU became self-protective but There.com's community managers were accommodating. TGU members knew a permanent solution would be one not controlled by a corporation. Over time, TGU members integrated and some even became leaders in the There.com player culture.

One TGU player who wanted to program his own hood found that the fountain and water are attractors in public spaces. Other Uru players manage to reverse-engineer the game and were allowed by the developers to launch their own server "Until Uru". Some players did not want to come back to "Until Uru" because they wanted to move forward. Ubisoft and Cyan never attempted to intervene or interfere with any Uru player initiatives. In September 2005, the Myst franchise is retired, becoming a fan-owned and operated phenomenon.

Chapter 7: The inner lives of avatars

Avatar customization and animations matter. There provided little choice in customization, and SL animations were stiff. TGU players wanted to reproduce their Uru avatar. Avatars are intentional bodies, ie avatars' actions have been designed by the game makers (cf Taylor). If Uru avatars were humans, and not from any of the game's factions, it is because developers chose to position players as explorers, not as participants (unlike in WoW for instance). Because Uru came from Myst (a single player game), Uru avatars tended to look like an idealized version of players, hence little cross-gender (3 cross-gendered out of 450 TGU members).

The avatar was a re-embodiment for a player stuck in wheelchair. When the server shut down, players lost their virtual self and their friends. Avatars are a version of me that only exists in a particular mediated context. That part of the self expressed and projected through the avatar is as much a creation of the group as the group is the creation of the individuals within it. Avatar identity is an emergent collaboration between the individual player, the community and the designers, who present as the game and its ecosystem. UGC style and leadership of players were influenced by social feedback. A sense of social presence within the play space is more emotionally compelling to some players than a sense of physical presence.

Chapter 8: Communities and Cultures of play

A quarter of eligible (ie Myst) players signed up for the Uru beta.

Pearce challenges the Western assumption that play is a waste of time or "unproductive". She suggests that play may accelerate the process of social bonding. Uru players did not expect those bonds to happen. Disclosure of personal information was an indication of bonding. The game is virtual but connections between people are real.

Community of play: group of players who have switched from playing for the game to playing for the people. These communities share values. Intersubjective flow is the adaptation of Flow to a group of gamers. Selling user-generated content to other residents of Second Life or crafting elixirs for a WoW raiding guild are examples of intersubjective play. Intersubjective flow is an unconscious metagoal at the heart of play-based emergence. To achieve intersubjective flow, players need feedback and need to feel in a play practice, even if it's a professional activity. It can be solo play with the community in mind (eg crafting with raiding in mind).

Chapter 9: Patterns of emergence

Play styles are engines for emergence. Emergence is play beyond the original game design. Play styles can be: spatial literacy, exploration, puzzle-solving, cleverness and creativity, mastery, games within games, togetherness, wordplay and multimodal communication (ie voice + text chat), horseplay, dancing and acrobatics, spontaneous leadership, etc.

Chapter 10: Productive play: cultural production, meaning-making and agency

Productive play is creativity around play. Unlike Trekkies or cosplay, MMO fans can modify the world they come from. In the case of TGU, productive play consisted of inventing new games and practices, carrying their culture to other virtual worlds and UGC/artisans (ie creating game environments).

The Uru nostalgia increased group cohesion. Uru was also a source of creative inspiration: wherever Uru players went to, they created artifacts of their culture. Players who become versed in a game's content may [...] take possession of that content. Cyan, the owner of Uru, let players do their project. There were no pursuits for copyright infringement. Cyan was not only permissive but also supportive of fan creation. Original business models could leverage player creativity.

Chapter 11: Porous magic circles and the ludisphere

Arguably, each VW or MMOG is contained in its own magic circle. However, there are ludic leakages: TGU players carried and adapted their play style across magic circles. They had itinerant or portable identities: each person had avatars in many different online places. Intergame migration and multiworld identities could be useful for MMOG designers. Players who migrate a lot become particularly adept at spontaneously adapting new spaces to their own play requirements.

Chapter 12: Emergence as design material

The more agency players are given to design, the more emergence (and the more diverse). Emergence is an inevitable outcome of a large number of players within a network. More people means more emergence. Fixed synthetic worlds (MMOG) provide less emergence than co-created worlds (VW). Communities of play, social construction of identity, intersubjective flow, productive play and porous magic circles are contributing factors to emergence.

Addendum from Books 3 and 4

After having completed her PhD work dealing with the Uru Diaspora, Pearce was asked in Spring 2006 to do consulting for Cyan as to whether Uru could reopen. Uru later reopened in 2007, and closed again in 2008.

MMOG players have viewed their game's designers as deities of sort.

Designers should not try to step in to fix games that are already in the midst of emergent processes. The failure of The Sims Online is a prime example of a complete disconnect between designers and emergent cultures: researchers said player-made avatar skins were vital, and the designers went against it. The game industry has no such [ethnographic] research tradition, while big IT companies such as Microsoft or IBM have participatory or community design. Community managers have an important role to play in knowing the player community. Player representation can help.

Edit: PopMatters also has valuable reading notes.

Ethnographic play on a 25-rate RO private server

I wanted to play RO for some days. Something quick, but not too easy, and with not too many people to have to talk to while leveling. Kind of a nostalgic try. So I picked a private server which drop and XP rates are 25. That means killing a monster brings 25 times more XP to the avatar than on the official servers, and a 1% chance to drop an item becomes 25% on this server. I conducted an «ethnographic» play: based on my (relatively extended) knowledge of the game I analyzed the server through player avatars in the game but also on the control panel of the website. I found the private server on ratemyserver.net (RMS), but I will not write its name here so that nothing bad happens to its administrator. Launching a private server is an illegal activity after all.

Demographics

At 3pm on Friday, the control panel showed 2 players were connected: T an Assassin and J a Hunter, both around level 80. These are the most solo classes of the game. When I logged in, it was not long before T arrived and, without a word, sent me an invitation to join guild G1, which he was the guild master of. I accepted, and saw in the guild panel that J the Hunter was also in the guild. Three days later, on Sunday night, there were 9 players connected on the server at 7pm. Among them, 4 belonged to guild G1, 2 to guild G2, 2 were not in a guild and 1 was an AFK merchant, used as a mule selling items to other players.

As mentioned before, the guild master of guild G1 was T, an Assassin. He had spent the last 2 days camping equipment on a low-level randomly-appearing monster called Ghostring. He had reached level 98 and had not made any other character. He was very confident and experienced in the game, and gave advice to the other 2 players he had recently recruited in his guild. IRL he was a 19-year-old jobless American. He started playing RO in 2007, had played on iRO Loki (official international server) and 5 other (much more populated) private servers, ranging from 6 to very high rates.
The sub Guild Master was J, the Hunter. He had actually played a lot and was now a lvl-96 Sniper. He had managed to collect a few Field Manuals in fishing, a custom activity of the server. When used by a player, manuals give 3 times more XP for 30 minutes. Although J seemed less confident than T, he said he started playing RO in 2006 on RuRO, the official Russian server. He gave spontaneously several items to other guild members. J and T talked quite much together in the guild chat. IRL, J was a 19-year-old Russian who worked in a call-center. He found his job boring and managed to play at work.
A was recruited after J. He was a lvl-90 Monk, a quite complex class combining support and high damage attacks. He was a basic member of the guild but talked a lot with J and T when he was connected. Each of them gave advice about where to XP or which equipment to get. He said he started playing on several euRO free-trial accounts in 2004, and tried another private server later. He looked quite unexperienced. IRL, he was a 19-year-old German working in a call-center as well (but not playing at work). When they realized through the guild chat that they were all the same age and two of them had the same job, they enthusiastically sent Facebook invitations to each other.
B was a lvl-96 Rogue recruited last. Rogues are a mixed class between Assassin and Hunter. B was not connected at that time.

In the other guild, the guild master was a quite experienced lvl-98 Hunter very in view on the forum. He had, among others, argued that the custom items provided by the administrator were balanced while another player thought they were not. The second player in the guild was a cheerful Bard, a support and/or high-attack version of Hunter. I was enrolled by him in the guild, and he even asked if I needed any piece of equipment. During week days, they were never connected before 5pm, I concluded they worked or went to school. Most of the time they were connected, the guild chat stood silent. When they happened to speak, it was in German to each other and out of the guild chat. Later, the Bard added that the 25-rate server opened following the wipe of a high-rate server. Maybe they knew each other before the low-rate server opened?

Server features

The capital city was Prontera. @go was given to players, but not @storage or @warp; this meant players had to go back to the capital to go where they wanted or use their storage. In my opinion, this increased the frequency of little social events that happened in the capital between players. The custom NPC were those usually found on any private server; they were:

• The Warpra teleports players wherever they want for free. This solves the problem of long and boring transportation time when there is no player to teleport other players to their destination.
• The Healer heals players and solves the scarcity of support-class avatars who, most of the time, need a group to XP quickly.
• Stat and Skill Reseter: resets the avatar skill and stat points. If a player wants to change his character build (eg from a Support Paladin to a Tank Paladin), she can.
• Job Master saves players the time to do job changing quests.
• Banker, Identifier, Bonus skill giver (to save time to the player), Universal Renter (for Cart, Falcon or mount)

There was also a Kafra Employee that lets the player save his respawn point when dead or open his storage, but this is an NPC found on official servers as well. A vending zone had been added as well where Merchants could set up their shops, but the server population was too small to have any virtual economy. The guild versus guild event, the WoE, was supposed to happen twice a week but was deactivated by S, the administrator of the server, probably because there were not big enough guilds.

S was German, although his advertising for the server on RMS mentioned the server and forum language was English. He came on the forum once or twice a day to reply to suggestions or technical problems with the game. He did not harass players for votes or donations, and stayed remarkably quiet. In the game, his player account was the Monk A. As a Game Master, He never improvised any live event for the players. Technically, he designed and coded his own website and control panel, manipulated client-side files, added and edited a few small NPCs in the game, tried (and failed...) to balance his custom items (eg the fishing rewards) but never seemed to have modified the server source code.

Conclusion

Certainly, the players from this private server had different origins (Russia, Germany, France, US) and had different gaming expertise. However, all the players were all males of the same age (16-25) and had all tried official servers and/or private servers before. They all played solo but their belonging to a guild showed they wanted to socialize with other players. Alone Together.

This private server had several custom hats. They all required grinding at least a hundred items, and rewarded the player with unbalanced items (eg inflicting +12% damage on other players). Somehow, it was too easy, but players did not seem to see it this way, or at least they did not complain about it - for now... I doubt the administrator had the community management, game design, programming, and graphic skills required to make his server grow as much as he would like to, but I am sure he had the will. Private server administrators are a particular kind of consumer of MMOG company's products - they use the game client. Of course, this is an illegal activity, or maybe a not-yet-channeled activity. MMOG companies could choose to design their games and pay attention to these determined and skilled consumers. They could be included in the product community as content contributors.

Introductions

To introduce (someone) means to bring in for the first time and also to cause to be acquainted. In other words, a good introduction is twofold: welcoming and accustoming. Using a Las Vegas-like hotel resort metaphor, welcoming newcomers is the reception desk's job, while accustoming, pleasing or securing the loyalty of clients is the spa, restaurant or other activities' role.

WoW has been the first MMOG to reach more than 10 million subscribers, presumably reaching new market segments. If the MMOG industry as a whole wants to keep reaching new segments and become the media of the 21st century, then new players' integration should be the main focus point. A college student recently told me that he believed the success of any MMOG depends on the first five hours of play. Although I do not disagree, I have not found any professional source confirming or infirming that. "Easy to learn but difficult to master" is a well-known game design quality, but MMOG also have to provide a spotless QoS. Even though perfect QoS is not yet a standard, this article does not focus on QoS but rather on some social (and eventually game design) issues during newcomers' introductions.

Welcoming

New players continually join the game. This flow of customers consists of solo players, who know no one in the virtual world, as well as groups of players, who knew each other before starting the game. I think the Uru Diaspora players mentioned by Celia Pearce fit into the second category. They cause an increase in the flow of newcomers and have to be welcomed as a group, not as distinct individuals. This is crucial for the game design of low-level zones: both solo players and group of players must be satisfied. There is an apparent contradiction: fast and easy leveling structures exist for solo players, but very few low-level group activities exist for people who already knew each other beforehand.

The problem can be seen from a different angle. IRL, introduction acts are mostly done by third party (friends, colleagues) that helps you get into the circle. For instance:

• in the blogosphere: guest posts.
• in the musical community: small groups playing for the opening acts of more famous musicians.
• in the musical community within a city: Some young saxophonists told me they had to join "the musician mafia cloud" to find musician jobs/opportunities in their area, otherwise they would not be able to open the doors by themselves
• in the research community: publishing in journals is the principal activity, but one has to find an advisor in one's area to know where to publish, get a Ph D and gain credibility. Most of the time, only fifth year students happen to figure in peer-reviews.

As for groups in MMOG, there is no such introduction process: a player groups with another, they have the quest done and split. Selective guilds have to set up their own website and check for applicants through this website and until now, I have not seen any IG interface that fosters meetings between guildless players and guild recruiters. Although capital cities such as Stormwind in WoW, Prontera in RO or Coronet in SWG gather all kinds of players in the same place, they are mostly used for trading or services, not for welcomings.

Accustoming and pleasing

In 2004, Shannon Appelcline explained that the average player stays for approximately 18 months. She defined critical mass as the minimum number of players simultaneously online that is required to make the game fun. She also coined user plateaus, which are other threshold of the number of players. The first user plateau is the critical mass. When a plateau is reached, the community size stagnates, and the game designer must come up with new ideas to keep the players interested and get past this threshold.

RO bosses

Appearances and atmospheres

The Mummies series follow the same principle seen with Doom II monsters. A Mummy can first be encountered on the second and third floors of Pyramid dungeon. Then, on the fourth floor of Pyramid dungeon, Ancient Mummies appear, along with Osiris, a MVP. The higher the pyramid floor, the more difficult the Mummies, until Osiris at the fourth floor of the Pyramid. In my opinion, putting in parallel a spatial feeling of "going up the floors" and increasing the monster difficulty makes the player excited about "what's next floor?" and "will I be strong enough to kill them?".

As I described before, the atmosphere really matters to introduce the boss. In a video from Doddler fighting one of the last boss, Nidhoggur Shadow, a particular importance is given to the NPC broadcast in the area. Naght Siegel, the MVP standing at the top of Endless Tower required to empty all the floors of the tower during 2 hours and a half.

The game evolves

RO Vanilla

Golden Thief Bug is one of the first bosses of RO. It has always been in the game since its first launch in August 2002, along with Baphomet or Eddga. But after 7 years for kRO and 6 years for iRO, the players have started to kill these MVP very fast: less than 15 seconds for Eddga, 40 seconds for Baphomet and Golden Thief Bug in 50s.

And even without being totally "overpowered", some players find ways to exploit/use the system to kill MVP, such as this wizard using the warp as a protection to kill GTB, or this wizard killing Turtle General in 5 minutes with Ice Wall. I am obviously not talking about high-rate-server no-cast Creators inflicting ridiculously big damage to any monster (but "Hakuna Matata" in Portuguese is really cool!).

Episode 10 and after

However, Gravity game designers have realized their 200,000-HP 3k-attack MVP were not a challenge for high-level players anymore, and they progressively increased the difficulty of the MVP they released such as Lord Knight Seyren (1.6M HP, 10k attack) in the Episode 10.2 of March 2006, Gloom Under Night (2.3M HP, 7k attack) in the Episode 11.1 of May 2007, or Satan Morocc (20M+15M HP, 32k attack) in the Episode 12 of December 2008. At the same time, Gravity game designers also increased previous MVP such as Orc Lord which was granted the Earthquake skill, inflicting ridiculous damage. As Doddler writes:

Basically, earthquake is an extremely powerful attack that strikes all players on screen. Its based on the monsters physical attack power, though it is calculated as a magical attack. The key feature of earthquake is that the damage it deals is split across all players on screen. The more people who are within range of the boss monster when it casts the skill, the less damage the player takes.

But groups in RO are limited to 12 players, and as Doddler wrote when commenting (look for the "Orc Lord on Valkyrie" post) a video he recorded while fighting Orc Lord,

Like many earthquake MVPs, Orc Lord basically doesn't do anything that can be seen as a challenge other than earthquake. Unfortunately, earthquake is really a bad thing to deal with when you have no cranials, immunes, and limited access to assumptio. As you can see, our strategy generally involved simply falling over when it did end up using earthquake. More than that, the plan was to burn it down in a way that it would never use earthquake while in power up. We were successful in that, though just barely. Another 2 seconds and we would have been toast.

However, RO game designers also tried to innovate and create group strategies to beat MVP. MVP are no longer solo-able but require highly-organized players to group together. This new MVP design provided a challenging non-PvP activity for guilds. As Doddler writes,

The MVP's that I think gravity has done a 'good' job in making fun requiring interesting strategies to beat are:

Beelzebub - For reasons mentioned above [even though it is hard to coordinate the group, his attacks can be countered and his hellflys should be tanked as well, see Doddler's post for a full description]

Fallen Bishop - Same as beelzebub really but scaled down to be easier. Pneuma blocks hells judgement, sanctuary blocks evil land, magnetic earth stops dark/holy grand cross. Tank holds the whole crowd with evil armor... Holy cross will hurt but its managable (crusaders have 50% resist to holy so they're the best tanks). You can counter critical wounds with sacrifice if you need to but its not required here. If you can kill the banshees with an AoE (like focus arrow strike), its even easier. Could probably be done in a killer/priest/bard/scholar/tank combo.

Ktullanux - Textbook boss control. Split mob/boss on different tanks, counter stormgust knockback by using the terrain, block physical hits with safety wall. Ever use magic rod to counter his waterball? Its pretty cool.

Gloom Under Night - Very powerful physically but his abnormally slow attack speed and reaction time highlight defensive skills.

Atroce - Throws around some hefty attack power at high speeds. Pulse strike keeps you watching where you're standing but can be blocked, and you have to watch out for his magnum break counter to being attacked by multiple melee attackers. His two hand quick is scary, but it can be dispelled.

Kiel-D-01 - High powered melee attack, a powerful fire attack and a deadly dark blessing make Kiel tough, but his mob can be reduced drastically, and constant safety wall will keep the tank safe from his relatively slow attacks. Don't forget green potions.

Memory of Thanatos - Weaker than most people give him credit for. His main strength is in his mob, which can be mostly removed without problem. Exile really means you need two people that can take his hits, but otherwise its a simple exercise in monster control. If you can dispel his two hand quicken, its easier to just tank him on a magnetic earth than to use safety walls, as the magic is more destructive than his melee.

This might seem a blunt copy/pasting of Doddler's post, but I could not formulate it better and with more details.

Complaints

As Doddler explains in a RO's MVP System and it's Flaws post in April 2008, weaker MVP's can be killed in a very small group, some are even easy enough to take solo, with the high tier bosses taking a sizable party with many player roles and coordination, and the higher tier MVPs are harder to deal with, usually requiring anywhere from 5-10 people to properly fight. This system of weak, medium and strong MVP seems to provide an appropriate challenge to lower-, medium- and higher-skilled players. However, bosses are free for all, that is to say bosses are what would be referred to as world bosses in other MMORPG's, bosses that appear within the game world where any other players in the game world can attack, influence and interfere with bosses as you fight them. Except for Endless Tower and Orc Recollection, there is no instance.

As a result, some players often stay "camping" on a map, they wait for the monster's re-appearance to kill it first and get the drops. While Heimdallr, a community manager on iRO's forums, wrote he was sure that instancing will become more common in RO as time continues, MVPs are still wandering freely outside instances and are still being camped. A very common strategy consists of sending the same Monk character, capable of inflicting much of damage in one shot, in suicide missions. A player writes Champ solo Atroce really, /memo, fist, inn regen, buff, warp back rince and repeat. I actually mention this problem in my paper about RO private servers. As one of the main activities for high-level players is hunting MVP (along with WoE), camping Champions are spoilsports. A potential solution could be to let many MVPs use the Full Heal skill: this skill can only be used in an idle state (ie not in combat) and regenerates the all the HP of a monster. This happens naturally for all monsters in other MMOGs such as WoW.

Doddler also complained about MVPs. He listed 4 major points to fix:

• A too big contrast between frequently dropped mudflated useless items, and valuable rare (less than 1% drop chance) drops
• Players should play by the boss set of rules, not the opposite (RO game designers tried to address this with the post Episode 10 MVPs, see previous section)
• Ankle Snare, a Hunter skill used to trap monsters, works on MVP
• Earthquake, especially when MVP are in Power Up mode (attack and def multiplied by 3, cf Episode 10.3 monsters), deals ridiculously big damage to players

Even though I have played RO, I am not a RO expert as much as Doddler. However, I think that Earthquake requires really good gears and can be tanked by a party. Bosses in WoW sometimes require weeks to understand, see for instance Yogg-Saron's world first by Ensidia. Not all monsters can use Earthquake, and maybe those who can use Earthquake require the group to follow specific strategies yet undiscovered? Nevertheless, I perfectly understand how frustrating it can be to keep facing failure when trying to kill a boss because not everyone in the group has godly equipments such as Asprika (reduces 30% of elemental attacks, ie 30% of the damage received from Earthquake!). But these god equipments require items (only collectible in very coveted guild castles) to unlock painful long quests to accomplish, such as The Seals or Fallacious Okolnir.

[Literature] Strangers and Friends: Collaborative Play in WoW

Bonnie Nardi and Justin Harris, 2006. Qualitative work (semi-structured interviews and field observations). play is characterized by a multiplicity of collaborations. Indeed, the classes asymmetrical strengths and weaknesses encourage collaboration during battle as well as in brief encounters.

The fun of collaborating with strangers

Buffs are the simplest way of engagement between players. Buffs happen in a cohesive group but also from a player to another he/she does not even know. In the latter case, authors explain that on a volontary basis, players commit small acts of kindness to maintain a mutually beneficial atmosphere. On the other hand, ganking consists of players waiting for killing other players weakened by fights with monsters. Not all interactions are beneficial for everyone.

The authors explain that with the freer atmosphere of online communities, players do IG things they would never do IRL, such as dancing naked in a fountain, following a conga-line or flirt.

Guilds, knots and friends - social structures in WoW

The authors argue that having different possible ways to collaborate in the game provides a versatile, robust environnement for play and learning. Indeed, playing in a guild requires much more involvement than taking part in a "pick-up" battleground party. To my mind, the underlying game design suggestion is: include as many and various ways for players to interact with one another as possible.

Learning

Moreover, the article mentions 2 key game activities: having fun and learning the game. It depends on what is meant by "fun", but I am not sure if these are the only interesting activities possible in the game. Anyway, Nardi explains that the social structures in WoW provide an environement for learning. The zone of proximal development (see figure nearby) introduced by Vygotsky consists of the knowledge or skills a child can learn at the moment, that is to say the difference between what the learner can perform alone and perform helped by a teacher (ie "collective performance"). Ang and Zaphiris in Social learning in MMOG: an activity theoretical perspective have argued that WoW players learn new skills or information if this knowledge belongs to their ZPD.

As taught in HCI classes, the interviewed players reported they learned mostly through trial and error: people eventually read the manual after they have tried (and failed). In collaborative activities, players acquire new information not only by themselves, but also by other players. Unless reading forums or databases, a Mage player can not know that a Paladin is particularly efficient against undead monsters until he/she has played with a Paladin. In the end, players can choose among various learning resources (asking other players, consulting websites or trying solo) the one(s) that best suit(s) them. IG, both the game design and the (relatively) friendly social environnement help players learn. But outside of the game, a new player may read websites or forums to increase his/her knowledge, while an expert player will find the appropriate add-on on curse.com. A "social" player may post his/her questions on forums while a solo player may read but not particularly post on forums and if he/she can not find the answer, he/she may try by himself/herself until he/she finds what he/she wants. Giving so many kinds of players the information they want the way they want may be one of the reasons why WoW has become so popular.

Friends

Weak-tie

According to Rapoport, if B and C are linked to A (cf figure nearby), there is a high probability that B and C are linked together. A weak tie is the link between B and C. A weak tie is the social network link between two acquaintances, whereas the link between two close friends or members of the same family is a strong tie. According to Granovetter, only a weak tie can connect two strong-tied social networks. I am taking an exampleFor instance, the Jones have seen on TV a commercial for a detergent. Their neighbors, the Smiths have no TV and therefore are supposedly not reachable by the detergent marketing. However, word-of-mouth marketing relies on this weak tie (neighborhood) between the Jones and the Smith, to make the no-TV family hear about the detergent.

Nardi et al. suggest that "friends" in WoW are not weak ties because in the game, friends do not help connecting strong social networks together and friendship remains a one-to-one relation. In WoW, the friends of a player appear in the friends list. The player can not organize conversations between a group of friends without being in the same party. So, except for guilds of friends, the usual interaction between friends is whispering, a typical one-to-one relation. Maybe players want to have this one-to-one exclusive chanel functionality with their actual friends, and use a more collective broadcast-like chanel for their guildmates who might not all be friends. In the end, I wonder if an "interconnected friends" functionality in the friends list in WoW could not make the one-to-one friend relations evolve into solid clusters of friends.

Guilds

This paper gives a very interesting (and inspirational) definition of guilds: named groups of players that socialize and play together. This definition seems to put in parallel play and socialize. However, I think the reason why people socialize in a guild is because they have chosen to play together. Were they no guild activities, there would not be any socialization. In other words, socialization in WoW is a consequence of the game design.

Illustrating their argument with the small tightknit European villages of the 19th century where everyone knew one another and everyone shared the same history and tradition, the authors explain that guilds look like Gemeinschaft communities. However, guilds are not as isolated as 19th century villages: their members can easily group with strangers and find new people to talk to. While playing in a guild sometimes require an overhead of collaborating, playing solo may look like a break from the guild: assembling 25 players for a raid means waiting for the latecomers and forbearing the clumsy players, but exploring new places and accomplishing new quests alone or with players met on the way has a taste of freedom. PvP is another way to play solo.

Knots

According to the authors, knots are unique groups that form to complete a task of realtively short duration, like an airline crew or international research workshops. The concept of knots has been first described by Engeström et al.. Examples of knots in WoW are "pick-up" teams, trade partners, duelists or strangers dancing together.

To my mind, knots are the transitional phase between perfect strangers and in-game acquaintances and friends (see table below). A player who feels he/she truly belongs to a human-size community such as a guild (but not such as a 11-million-player game community) has a reason to stay in the game. I think game designers know very well how playing is not exactly what keeps players in a MMOG. As an example, between the solo-player and the guild master, who do you think is going to stay in the game longer? Hence a good MMOG game design should encourage players to participate in knot-like situations so that they later can get involved in guilds.

strangers	->	knots	->	acquaintances	->	friends
solo players, auction house interactions		parties, raids, duels, trades, global chanels of discussion		guild membership, social events, private chanels of discussion		guild creation/management, chitchat, oral chanels of discussion

A very interesting idea given by the authors is to tailor MMOG to fit elderly people's interests. Through knots of such an MMOG, elderly people could meet new players with whom they could share topics of mutual interest and participate in activities that provide mental stimulation. Hospitalized people could also benefit from MMOG knots. I recently read about the Compuserve story of Joan and Alex on Yann Leroux's blog: in the 1980's Joan has had a severe car accident leaving her disfigured and in a rolling chair. She decides to participate in the Compuserve forums and shortly becomes a model for her pugnacity. However, behind Joan was actually Alex, a prominent Jewish New York psychiatrist in his early fifties according to meatballwiki.org. This story makes me think that MMOG for specific "weak" populations (elderly fighting dementia or hospitalized children) can lead to many identity deception cases, and maybe cause particularly big trouble among these "weak" populations.

Playing WoW: escaping or increasing offline relations

The authors argue that sometimes players enjoy the virtual world because they want to escape the real one. A player acknowledges that playing WoW has made [him] less social in real life. Another explains that she uses the game as a break from real life: Her in-game friends were refreshingly casual and she sometimes likes to go and play alone.

On the other hand, the authors suggest that sometimes, playing WoW increases offline relations. They give examples of people of the same family playing together. One mother was thrilled to play with her son who lives in another state. For another mother, playing WoW with her children was just another shared activity. A third mother uses WoW to teach her children typing and mathematics. A brother explained that playing WoW with his much older brother made them share a common discussion topic.

The very last sentence of the paper suggests that WoW joins a long tradition of card and board games in which family and friends of different ages and genders may play together. Is WoW the new Monopoly? Ironically, according to an interview she gave to the Department of Informatics of UCI, Monopoly is the last game Nardi played before trying WoW.