Multiplayer Games

1
Multi-player Games

• CS 5125
• Loren Terveen
• April 18, 2007

2
Design Brief Presentations

• Time 1 6 minutes 2 10 minutes 3 13
  minutes
• Short intro to the problem (1-2 minutes max)
• area and specific challenge(s)
• Why this is still a problem / how current
  solutions fall short 
• Describe your design
• Presumably youll want to show your prototype
• Include rationale / why/how your design solves
  the problem
• Most of presentation delivers their design
• May include brief anecdotes re lessons learned
  along the way

3
Multi-player online games

• WoW
• Ultima Online
• Second Life

4
This paper

• Alone Together? , Ducheneaut et al.

5
What they did

• Studied sociality in WoW
• How they computed sociality
• of time in (ad-hoc) groups
• Guilds hard challenges require guild
• Size varies a lot lots of churn, too
• Most players are in guilds
• Players in guilds group more often
• Social networks in builds
• Method 1 online at the same time
• Method 2 in the same zone at the same time

6
What next?

• Proposal what to study next?
• Say, in a semester long project
• Examples
• Different methods for computing sociality
• Focus on core groups
• Do overall stats hide patches of intense
  sociality?
• Is a virtual (or even fake) audience enough?

7
Their interpretations

• Game design and social features
• Leveling as a reward/incentive
• Type of cooperation required to succeed at game
  activities
• Other players friends or audience
• Reputation

8
Measuring sociality in games

• Metrics
• In-game vs. out-of-game (online, FTF)
• How accurate were their metrics?
• Methods?
• How would you study this and other phenomena in
  MMPORGS?

9
Link between real world and online worlds

• Communicating with people you already know
  (offline) vs. those that you dont
• How strong are the bonds that are created?
• How to measure?
• Eventually meeting FTF
• Selling characters for real

10
Serious Games

• For business, military, education
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_Game
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Serious_Games
  
• Newsgaming.com
• Far transfer
• Your experience / ideas?

11
A Funeral in WoW
12
Setup

• Memorial to Fayejin
• On Tuesday February 28th Illidan lost not only a
  good mage, but a good person. For those of you
  who knew her, Fayejin was one of the nicest
  people you could ever meet. On Tuesday she
  suffered from a stroke and passed away later than
  night.
• I'm making this post basically to inform everyone
  that might have known her. Also tomorrow, at 530
  server time March 4th, we will have an in-game
  meorial for her so that her friends can pay their
  respects. We will be having it at the Frostfire
  Hot Springs in Winterspring because she loved to
  fish in the game (she liked the sound of the
  water, it was calming for her), and she loved
  snow.
• If you would like to come show your respects,
  please do. -) Thanks everyone.

13
One reaction

• Re Memorial to Fayejin
• We're planning some cool stuff and we're going to
  make a video of it to show her family. -) So I
  would appreciate it if nobody comes to mess
  things up.
• (A horde guild on our server decided to hold a
  funeral service ingame in a contested area. They
  posted all the info on our realm forums and
  naturally we had to crash it.)
• Horde vs. Alliance
• Serenity Now is an Alliance Guild
• Fayejin belonged to a Horde Guild

14
Lets watch the video
15
Some reactions to the raid

• "Yes, its real easy to be an asshole behind a
  keyboard and get away with it..."
• "Congradulations you have stopped lower than any
  other guild in MMO history."
• "See what happens when u let 12 year olds get
  control of computer?"
• "I hope azshira's dad dies of a heart attack,
  then at the funeral some guy runs in naked and
  pushes the coffin over and runs around slapping
  people screaming LOL OWNED, then releases a video
  of it."

16
More reactions

• "lol that is hilarious how lame to have a in game
  funeral I would have wrecked it too. Also by the
  way roleplayers cry more.
• "I hate allies, but i gotta say they went about
  this whole funeral thing the wrong way. Keep it
  low profile, gents. Otherwise you're advertising
  to the enemy. It was low, but that had every
  right. world of WARCRAFT, not squirmishcraft.
  They made war. It was a smart move on their
  part...for once. Trust me, I dispise them, but if
  the tables had been turned...thing on it, chaps.
  Alliance funeral. Everyone in their dressies. No
  armor. PvP. Slaughter. Plain and simple."

17
Social Presence

• Social Presence Theory
• The degree to which other people are perceived to
  be real in CMC environments
• Social watching
• Justin Weisz et al. watching movies together
• Amento watching TV shows together
  asynchronously