Dominion's balance

Chapel

One of the cards in the Dominion base set is considered slightly better than most: the Chapel. Some simply say This is the best card in the game.. Others suggest that Chapel is very overpowered and should cost more. Vaccarino, Dominion's designer, is quite present on board game forums, and has stepped up to answer players' suggestions. Surprisingly, he admitted himself that Chapel is the most powerful Dominion card relative to its cost. This is the occasion to glean interesting tidbits about game balance!

First, since both players can buy the same cards, poorly balanced cards don't make the game unfair, [...] but they do make the game worse. It seems that as long as an unbalanced card makes the game fun, it should stay (and probably be tweaked).

Let's start with adjusting the cost. If Chapel cost more, it would be much weaker, and would not be used at all. This would reduce the number of options available in the game. Since it's more fun to have more options, increasing the cost is not a good solution. Ideally, everything gets played sometimes, and the only weak cards are those that are overrated. That is why to keep the metagame and discussion interesting, Vaccarino would rather avoid commenting himself.

This does not mean that overpowered cards are better than underpowered cards: if a card is so strong it is unavoidable, then cards that do not combo well with it will never be played, which is a waste. When using Chapel, a lot is left up to you. This provides a lot of diverse game play, which means Chapel has a strong play value, and the game benefits from it overall. As they progress, players learn using Chapel in new ways, which is a long-term rewarding experience:

1. why would I ever buy this when Witch isn't out?
2. trash your Estates with it and just have one dead card instead of three
3. trash your coppers [and estates] with it, and get a thin deck
4. is Chapel / Militia better so I can hurt other Chapel decks, or should I go Chapel / Spy to ensure trashing 4 cards
5. Chapel / Throne Room / Remodel

Another player suggested nerfing Chapel from trashing 4 cards to only 3 cards. Vaccarino seems to agree: in general, overpowered or underpowered cards can only be fixed by changing what the card does, not by changing their cost. But during playtesting, Chapel with "trash up to 3" was way slower than trashing up to 4, and Vaccarino couldn't win with it.

And this is how Chapel stayed at trashing up to 4 cards for a cost of 2 coins.

Playtesting

The play space of Dominion is quite big: there are around 10^15 possible combinations of 10 cards among the 157 available as of 2012. Therefore not all combinations of cards can be checked during playtesting. Since games get played way more than they get playtested, there may be some card combos that go unchecked until release. If a single card is overpowered, it is quite easy to spot and will be fixed. Two-card combos happen more rarely, so if one of them is overpowered, it may not be spotted as easily, but will also matter less. As for overpowered three-card combos, the Dominion developers aren't necessarily finding them. But if one happens during a game, and a player figures it out, it is highly unlikely that the player will face these three cards again in another game.

Playtesting can also reveal interesting/core design ideas. For example, Vaccarino was worried that drawing your whole deck would be bad. Soon [he] realized it was in fact fun.

Flair, learning and visuals in Wario Land and Wario Land II

Wario Land and Wario Land II are two Gameboy (and/or Gameboy Color) games from 1994 and 1998 respectively. They have a few features I found worth an article.

Flair, or Get smart

Think outside the box

Very fancy mechanics such as breaking the fourth wall happen during boss fights, such as the one with Psycho Mantis. In Wario Land and Wario Land II, the player has to break the wall of the level very often in order to collect coins or find a path to the end of the level. At first sight, this breaking the level could have a negative influence on the magic circle. But in practice, it just rewarded the player for thinking harder about exploration. It certainly did not give the level an impression of open-sandbox-world because the breaking could only happen once in a while, and not everywhere. But it added fun and rewarded the searching player nicely.

In fact, the feeling of a destroyable world was nearly never felt in the two games, except a few times such as during the Wario Land battle with boss Funfun.

In the first level of Wario Land II, the player can choose to stay asleep in doing nothing. This lets Wario sleep and opens a branching in the story. It took me quite much time to figure the way to unlock the alternate story branch, because doing nothing was not an intuitive way to solve a problem. But I found it very funny when I saw Wario concluding the level still sleeping (middle screenshot), while he is usually congratulating the player for the money and treasures he gathered (right screenshot). So it was not frustrating and somewhat rewarding to see this scene happen.

Monster infighting

Monster infighting is tricking enemy monsters into fighting each other. It happens in Doom and (apparently) 70 other games. There is also a little trace of monster infighting in Wario Land, but it is more rewarded than in Doom. Mostly only Pouncers (heavy falling spiked cubes) and Pikkarikun (a cloud throwing lightning bolts) could turn other enemies (such as the small Pirate Gooms) into gold coins. Unlike Doom, there was a strategy for each of Pouncer and Pikkarikun to use them as "infighters". For Pouncer, the Gooms had to be thrown under it when it was up. For Pikkarikun, Wario had to be protected under a floor and a Goom had to pass between Wario and Pikkarikun.

Learning design

The game design = learning design talk by Gee at FDG2010 is illustrated very often in the two games, but particularly well in Wario Land II. The Big Kamukamu (a fish) boss encounter, for instance, is a check that the player can make his/her avatar swim well enough to kill the boss.

As usual, most bosses strategies deal with dodging their attacks, finding their weak point(s) and attacking at the good time. Most have three phases, the third one killing the boss being the hardest and the most intense. However, there is a learning-by-the-example phase before two bosses: Awabo (a bubble) and Ghost. Before those two encounters, Wario sees Captain Syrup, the final boss, being imprisoned by the boss. It ignites a bit of schadenfreude from the player towards the Captain. However, the player is warned: the way Syrup is kicked out is what Wario must avoid when he fights.

Visuals

Except throwing enemies, burping is the only ranged-attack (first on the left). Japanese version of Crazy Wario is actually Drunk Wario, and Penguins throw beer mugs (second). Surrealism (third). Typical Japanese TV entertainment color shades? (fourth)

[Conf] Game design = learning design = game design

On June 19th, James Gee gave the opening keynote at FDG2010. You can find the abstract page xix. Here are some notes I took during the talk.

Games convey learning better than schools do.

A concentrated sample is a basic language sample for a 1-year-old kid learning language. But people do not speak simply enough, they do not send basic samples only. Nature's solution is: kids filter and simplify what they receive, they can only process simple sentences. Kids are built to be limited. What could be a boss battle in language? For games, the problem is: how to be sure players get only the bits of information they need to progress. Games are guided experience on concentrated sample for future learning. Each level is a preparation for the following level, each level is learning. A boss is here only to test if the player is prepared to learn more. A better player is a better learner.

Experts only know one thing, they overvalue it and undervalue their other knowledge. WoW is distributed experts who also understand other classes' expertise. With the Damage Meter add-on, DPS free-riders are spotted.

Learning is helped by the emotional impact found in games. Why would I save people in the game? Why would I play? The story is here to kick-in emotions and motivate players. Stories are the only way to do it.

There is always performance before competence. The problem is trainees need to trust their trainers, otherwise they fear to perform. In games, there is performance: it is players looking at other players or NPC. Bonus: the intelligence is distributed. The community helps learning. This works particularly well with modding.

A game is fair when players admit I can win if I get better.

For Baby Boomers, intelligence meant speed and efficiency. For today kids, it is adaptation.

[Conf] Digital Literacy and Play in MMOs and VW for Young Children

In April, Jackie Marsh gave an account of her work with children playingClub Penguin and Barbiegirls.com. Marsh talked mostly about Club Penguin.

Club Penguin is a F2P game with real-money transactions. Some kids reported playing the DS version of Club Penguin when they could not be online. The player is granted a certain amount of the virtual currency if he/she has the DS game. Similarly, players can become VIP in Barbie Girls only if they have bought the official MP3 player. Like in many other F2P online games, players can choose to pay a monthly subscription. Marsh mentioned some kids aready rejected other players who did not subscribe. The subscription system enables players to edit the background of their avatar photo. A kid reported I don't add plain background [ie non-subscribing] players to my friends, I already got plenty. Interestingly, during the interviews with Club Penguin players, Marsh noted that girls focused mostly on products and avatar appearances. Boys, on the other hand, talked a lot about the gameplay.

Kids do not type fast. Hence they often reported they preferred clicking than typing. Some said that when they wanted to write something, their interlocutor was gone in the time they finished typing. Moreover, some kids sometimes send letters to the game moderators, and some are published in an in-game journal. Surprisingly, kids were not frustrated that their letters were not published. I wonder about the affordances kids gain when they play Club Penguin. For most of them, they have just learned to read. Does playing Club Penguin train them to read faster? To type faster? Can Club Penguin develop the communication skills of kids shy in real-life?

Some kids stopped playing because they were bored. They asked adults to collect coins for them. In fact, adults are being dragged into the world by children. Mums were the most outraged when a virtual world closed. James Bower, a founder of Whyville, went in that direction as well in October 2009. He mentioned the Whyville-Walmart partnership. Mothers learn about Whyville at Walmart. Hence they let their kids play on Whyville. On the other hand, the virtual Walmart put in Whyville invites kids to go to Walmart in real-life. A win-win strategy!

Bosses and game mechanics

In a previous post I explained bosses often have a special appearance or atmosphere surrounding them in order to make the player understand the encounter moment is particular. The game mechanics part of a boss is as unique and special as its appearance: there is an extra-ordinary strategy to follow in order to win the fight, but the player keeps his/her ordinary abilities : run, jump, throw/shoot, smash, etc.

Taxonomy

According to en.allexperts.com, a boss can be:

Adjective	Description	Example
strong	more life, more damage, usually has a weakness revealed from time to time	Mushihime-sama: this boss
stylish	medium-sized but faster than the player, more skilled, nearly perfect, often the antagonist seen as a better protagonist	Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroth
giant	big, single weak point or simply a bigger version of a normal monster	Final Fantasy X: Sin
stealthy	hidden or invisible, need to be revealed	MGS: The Fear
final	the antagonist, the bad guy behind the plot, has at least several phases/battles	Mystic Quest: Dark King
mini boss	weaker than "normal" boss, special strategy which has to be learnt but can become common	Doom II: Hell Knight
non-antagonist	not a fight but rather a competition/challenge to win	Super Mario 64: racing versus Koopa the Quick
stalker	repeatedly seen in different stages of the game, getting stronger at each new encounter, troublemakers, the hero and him/her may become friends after the last encounter	Pokémon Red/Blue: Giovanni or the Rival
hidden	fought just before or just after the supposedly-final boss, needs a task to be done before, might sometimes be totally unbalanced so that the player keeps trying to finish the game	Golden Sun: Deadbeard
team	multiple normal or a bit better than normal monsters acting together, combos	Tales of Symphonia: Defense System, Zelda Ocarina of Time: Twinrova
puzzle	invulnerable unless a puzzle is solved; the puzzle grants the player a super weapon, lowers the boss' defense or traps the boss	God of War: Minotaur
tricky	can not be defeated with the current abilities, but a special item can be used to kill the boss instantly	Warcraft III: the Mannoroth blood fountain where Grom Hellscream drinks to kill Cenarius
timed	player-independent, wait for the boss to die or kill him before a certain time	Final Fantasy VII: Emerald Weapon
multistage	change depending on how heavily damaged	Wario Land II: Captain Syrup
unbeatable	invincible or way too powerful, it is written in the storyline that the player has to loose, the boss becomes defeatable later in the story	Baldur's Gate II: first encounter with Jon Irenicus
easy	after a hard lvl, surprise!	Incredible Hulk: The Leader

In practice

Bosses combine multiple of the aspects mentioned above (you can use the checkboxes to determine in which categories your favorite boss fit). In MGS for instance, Snake, the hero, can fake death to kill The Fear. The Fear is supposedly a stealth boss, but this secret way to kill him makes him a trick boss. Similarly, Ugh Zan III, the very last bost in Serious Sam, combines strength, a puzzle, a giant shape, multistage and it is the final boss (killing it ends the story). I find the Croteam studio has done a very good work on Ugh Zan III, whether about the plot leading to the boss encounter, the 3D design or the puzzle the player has to solve to kill it. This is worth a video :-)

A boss is an opportunity for the game designer to be creative and try new things. The innovation can sometimes be really appreciated by the plaers, and become new standards for boss startegies. For instance, in MGS, if the player does not wish to struggle through this battle [against The End], the player [...] can simply turn off the console and wait for seven days (or set the system clock a week ahead). This will result in a secret cutscene in which The End has died of old age (according to wikipedia about The End). Another boss in MGS, Psycho Mantis, breaks the fourth wall, according to destructoid:

Psycho Mantis begins showing off and bragging about his telekinetic powers.
First off, Psycho Mantis proceeds to read the actual memory card you have in your system. If you have played any other popular Konami game at the time (particularly Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) Psycho Mantis will remind you how much you like “Castlevania,” eventually even commenting on how much you have saved during the game.
After displaying this impressive (and pretty darn innovative) feat, he asks you, the actual player (!), to place your controller on the floor so he can show you how powerful he really is. Upon your abiding to the creepy video game boss’s wish, Psycho Mantis grabs his head and, using the built in rumble of the DualShock, has the controller shake uncontrollably, even, if you happen to have to set it on a high table, making it fly in the air and tumble to the ground below.
If that weren’t already enough, once the battle begins you realize that there is no way to beat Mantis. Since he can read minds, he manages to dodge every single attack you throw at him.
Through trial and error (and most likely a guide), you eventually figure out that, in order to beat him, you must unhook your controller from port #1 and attach it to port #2. Once this is accomplished, Psycho Mantis will actually comment how he can’t read your mind anymore.

Original

Chad Concelmo, the destructoid game critique for the encounter with Psycho Mantis, wonders why more game designers have not experimented with this innovative and ridiculously original gameplay technique. I think the reason is playing with the fourth wall might become dangerous as the player is not immersed in the game anymore. A boss should not be taken only as a punctual challenge to the player, it is also, as I explained a situation of narratic climax. The encounters with The End, The Fear or other Psycho Mantis in MGS are memorable (this word appears 8 times in Conselmo's article) because each of them is unique. These humans with super powers and weird physical particularities (The End was born in the early 1860s and can summon the spirits of the "holy forest" he waits in to revive his stamina through directed sunlight according to wikipedia, The Fear has a 20-cm long tongue, Psycho Mantis' has mental powers and a mask covering his horrible face) are beaten by Snake, a normal-looking soldier with exceptional capacities, not weird powers. Psycho Mantis predicting the player's moves seemed previously unfair, but the fight becomes more achievable when the player learns how to kill him. And when the boss is finally killed by the player, the first reaction is "I did it!". Thus, breaking the fourth wall seems to work fine if the aim is to make the player solve himself the puzzle boss he/she is fighting. It is like boxing in Wii sports: the fight occurs also outside of the game, and that immerses the player even more.

Breaking the fourth wall "the other side" could consist of a mise en abyme. In a PS3 game for instance, it could be funny to play the same or another console game. Beating the boss at this console game inside the PS3 game could be the only way to defeat him/her/it. You could think about playing GTA 2 versus Jimmy Pegorino in GTA IV. In all Pokémon games, the protagonist's bedroom contains a console (Nes, SNES, Game Cube, Wii) but I do not think the protagonist can use them to play actual games.

Don'ts

Repetitive bosses always following the same strategies in a game are boring. Creativity matters.

Players can cheat often in boss battles. For instance, in Mystic Quest, casting Heal on the Dark King deals ridiculous damage (more than 20K while the boss has 40K HP) on the boss, ending the fight in 2 or 3 turns. In Mega Man 1, when fighting against the Yellow Devil the player can exploit the Pause Button/Thunder Beam glitch. This glitch seems to be known from many players. use Pause with a special gun to shoot each time the game starts again. In repeating Pause/Start, the player can shoot without being shot. To my mind, this is a bad design (or a bug) that should have been addressed when conceiving the weapon behaviors.

You have to burn the rope is a concept-game in which the player only faces a boss. The strategy to kill it is obvious and reminded to the player. I think easy bosses should not appear too often, otherwise players get bored of the lack of challenge. Anyway, I wonder which percentage of players go directly to burn the rope, and which percentage try to kill it by other means (eg throwing axes or jumping above).

What is a boss?

(Geek) historical and cultural fact: the first game in which a boss appeared was dnd in 1974. In this dungeon-crawl RPG, a golden dragon was keeping the last treasure of a dungeon.

In single-player games, a boss is used to ensure a player has taken the time to level-up (raise their abilities through fighting anonymous easier foes) before progressing to a new section of the game. A boss is also a closure of Gameplay Progress according to Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen in Patterns in Game Design, p229.

A boss is usually bigger than the hero. As an example I found a kind of evolution in the difficulty of Doom II monsters:

• the Imp (brown) throws fire balls but can be killed in one shot (60 HP)
• the Hell Knight (light brown, horns) needs a bit more work (500 HP)
• the Baron of Hell is really resilient (1000 HP)
• and finally the Cyberdemon has an audible step when he moves (4000 HP)

In the early levels, the player may consider a Hell Knight as a difficult monster, maybe an end-of-level boss. But in the last levels, Hell Knights are very common. The player has become used to it and has possibly found a strategy to kill them (a particularly relevant one can be monster infighting). Only the Cyberdemon could be considered as a real big boss: it appears once or twice in the whole game (I remember having encountered it at least once with the ultra violence difficulty level). Anyway, the encounter with this boss (particularly in the 8th level) should teach the player that he/she should use monster infighting to be able to kill difficult monsters. The same principle is followed in Dildo Tank: the end-of-level boss is a common monster in the next levels, but the player knows which strategy to follow to beat them, and even sometimes many of them at a time. Bosses teach the player some play skills.

By the way, from an art design perspective, the monster sprites are set once and for all. As the player progresses in the game, there is no need to add new sprites: the previous end-of-level boss's sprite still fits "normal" monsters. This makes the art designer focus on fewer but higher quality monster appearances.

On another hand, a boss is an element of the scenario/storyline. In Wario Land III, killing a boss sometimes gives a music box, but ending a level gives a new power like swimming or brawling. In Mystic Quest, battlefields (see screenshot nearby) can help the player earn more experience before trying to enter a dungeon and kill the boss at the very bottom of the dungeon. This is rather a grinding/bashing solution which is not really pleasant as it does not really teach the player anything, but simply increases the level of the character.

[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.