Dancer Archive
Thread: A look into Social Gaming inside of SWG
Page 1 of 2
Panthu
Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:17 pm
#1
First of all, here's a link to the article that finally made me pitch a fit and demand that my man try SWG with me. A girlfriend that I ran a Sims download site with (she did "objects", I did "meshes and skins") had disappeared for two weeks and I found out she, her man,her niece, and another real life friend of theirs were all playing SWG!
She was playing a Tailor andthefriend was playing a Dancer that needed clothes all the time!*waves to Lenore's friend who sometimes reads in here*
Anyway, I said "look, they are loving this and it sounds pretty neat, can we please go ahead and try it even though we know half of the content isn't in yet?"
Anyway, I said "look, they are loving this and it sounds pretty neat, can we please go ahead and try it even though we know half of the content isn't in yet?"Then I went out to arm myself with info on the game and this article did it for me. Here's a snippet:
Many in the industry argue that MMOGs won't become a breakout success until they can bring in a substantial number of women into the audience, and the Galaxies team says they have accounted for that.
"We're definitely including elements that will appeal to women," says Blackman, pointing in particular to the many ways players can customize the social interactivity aspects (like stylized chat text), and a far more granular selection of female character body types. (In previous MMORPGs, women often complained that the options for their online alter ego were restricted to thin and busty -- or, well, curvy and busty.) You can also customize appearance to an infinite degree-- every facial feature can be subtly altered with a slider control, as can skin tone -- to create a persona that's truly unique. Of the 700 or so learnable skills available, only a third are combat-related, with a number designed to appeal to women -- or at any rate to those less interested in a life of galactic swashbuckling. "I'm kind of embarrassed to mention this," says Blackman, "but we have a hairdressing skill tree."
This attentiveness will also be evident in the game's handling of the griefer problem, which anecdotal evidence suggests plagues female players disproportionately. The anti-griefer policy hasn't been totally enumerated yet, Blackman says, but will operate on a basic principle: "Anything that loses revenue is bad." So bad, the game will include a hot key for instant harassment reporting. (It also transmits a snapshot of the victim's last five minutes of conversation with the accused, allowing the company moderator to make a fair deliberation between them.) Still, of the 250,000 people registered on the Galaxies community site, LucasArts staffers estimate that only 10 to 15 percent are women.
It was clear to me that Entertainer was made with people like me in mind. I was psyched. I just don't understand why the ball has been dropped so much on this section of the game. Crafting was for casual gamers who wanted to be able to compete even if they were offline. Entertainer was for main-stream females and players that shared their interests (social players). This made total sense to me then and it still does now.
Why should these additions to the game ever have to be compromised to suit players that they were not even intended for in the first place? It doesn't work. It works much better to make these areas of the game be fun for the people they were actually designed for... this is mainly why the whole "AFK Entertainers have a use" thing just makes me shake my head.
They don't have a use for the people who are paying for this game because of the Ent professions and have in fact driven many of the intended audience off from the game entirely. Where is the usefulness in that?
Beyond the whole AFK nightmare though, this prof set still has a mess of issues it has had since they were first dreamed up - almost all revolving around the facts that there isn't enoughcreative freedomor enough activities designed with the Social player's fun in mind.
Panthu
Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:55 pm
#2
Real Social MMOs provide at least one of two things: a creative outlet or fun activities. Both are designed for the game desires of Social players. You can think of "Social players" as women or Bartle Socializers - it doesn't really matter, the goals are the same.
Creative outlet approach: Code Name"Doll House"
These games give Social players a space to act out Social play with other people and the freedom to create their own little part of the world. They provide tools for player made content, not just RP. The difference is that player made content tools allow players to actually realize something in a virtual space and have an attachment to it. Often games allow players to gain "fame" for being particularly skilled at creating fun things for other players to enjoy.
Play Goal: Letting Social Players have fun by getting their artistic, creative, inventive, or fame seekingneeds fulfilled.
FunActivitiesapproach: Code Name"Candy Land"
Social players will not grind endlessly to reach some game goal. They demand that the activity done on the way to the reward be just as much fun as the reward itself. This type of content can't be the same thing over and over again. It musthave replay value and be fun each time it is played (like online games such as Bejewled or Sudoku). These activities are usually short in time investment, quickly moving the social player on to the next fun activity before boredom can set in.
Play Goal: Letting Social Players have fun by getting their raw game challengeneeds fulfilled in a way that caters to the fun factor instead of the simulated "work" concept other player types seem to enjoy.
Message Edited by Panthu on 08-08-2005 05:00 PM
ZinaTheMaker
Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:14 pm
#3
*cheers for panthu*
you're such an asset to this community
*makes me wish i was a dancer...*
Panthu
Tue Aug 09, 2005 3:41 am
#4
Well honestly, I intended to breakdown the social games and what was working for them when I first posted. I just got distracted with Gamers' Legend stuff and have been knee deep in code since then, heh.
Anyway, there's a new Korean game that's supposed to be coming out this winter that has out and out said it's for "females" and it is one of the ones I think has some neat ideas. It's going to be a Candy Land type social game and has a real linear structure. I chatted with Eshie and Shailas a little bit about it and it got me going on this whole thing again.
As far as the female label goes, I personally could care less if they called us "Pink spotted elephant gamers." 
I know what I like and what I have in common with most of the players in here regardless of gender, age, or anything else. Social Gamer is the title I like best, but I'll take these goodies no matter what the label says as long as it fits.
I know what I like and what I have in common with most of the players in here regardless of gender, age, or anything else. Social Gamer is the title I like best, but I'll take these goodies no matter what the label says as long as it fits. The female thing is interesting to me being that I am a super girly gamer, but I don't think anyone will stick to these strong stereotypes once the genre has been firmly established. Of course, I thought gender biased children's toys and games were on the way out a decade ago, so I may be a little naive. 
Petronela
Tue Aug 09, 2005 4:22 am
#5
Very good find and good reading Panthu, thank you for posting it. Too bad in the end all those ideas sold out for copy-cat of any other two-bit game on the market. But I think there still may be hope.
On a side note,…. for some strange reason I now have an image stucked in my head of a roomful of nerds who’s last date was a deluxe blowup doll trying to figure out what appeals to real women
Oblox
Tue Aug 09, 2005 4:36 am
#6
Petronela wrote:
On a side note,…. for some strange reason I now have an image stucked in my head of a roomful of nerds who’s last date was a deluxe blowup doll trying to figure out what appeals to real women
The devs arent that bad....although female toons and hips seriously need some reworking.
ZinaTheMaker
Tue Aug 09, 2005 7:58 am
#7
Petronela wrote:
Very good find and good reading Panthu, thank you for posting it. Too bad in the end all those ideas sold out for copy-cat of any other two-bit game on the market. But I think there still may be hope.
On a side note,…. for some strange reason I now have an image stucked in my head of a roomful of nerds who’s last date was a deluxe blowup doll trying to figure out what appeals to real women
hmm, what features does the deluxe model have? i spent 99.95 for my standard model
Gothywench
Tue Aug 09, 2005 9:29 am
#8
Panthu...OMG. I may have downloaded things from you way back in The Day. ::grin::
It's funny reading this article. I beta'd The Sims Online. That's actually where I heard about SWG. A bunch of the guys also in TSO's beta had applications to get into SWG's beta. So, of course, Star Wars was WAY better than playing house, so I was all over it. I continued to play TSO once it went live...but as always, the turds and griefers showed up. I started playing beta 3 of SWG and loved it. Didn't know what the heck I was doing and had a blast.
It's funny reading this article. I beta'd The Sims Online. That's actually where I heard about SWG. A bunch of the guys also in TSO's beta had applications to get into SWG's beta. So, of course, Star Wars was WAY better than playing house, so I was all over it. I continued to play TSO once it went live...but as always, the turds and griefers showed up. I started playing beta 3 of SWG and loved it. Didn't know what the heck I was doing and had a blast.
Landlubber
Tue Aug 09, 2005 12:38 pm
#9
Wow, nice find here Panthu Thanks for posting this. But as for your question of why they've let this nice concept go to waste...
Thanks for posting this. But as for your question of why they've let this nice concept go to waste...
Panthu wrote:
Why should these additions to the game ever have to be compromised to suit players that they were not even intended for in the first place?
The answer is actually in the snippet of the article you posted:
The anti-griefer policy hasn't been totally enumerated yet, Blackman says, but will operate on a basic principle: "Anything that loses revenue is bad."
SOE has merely taken this concept to its extreme. They have decided that social players are a minority and that most players are only in it for the combat, and further, that most of THESE players want to get Jedi. Therefore they are doing what to them shows the most promise for maximising their short-term revenue (and it should be pretty obvious by now that long-term health of the game is not a priority): concentrate all their efforts on Jedi (and consequently also on BH), and ignore the rest, apart from some token effort to keep those players that are not in their target audience paying for a bit longer.
And specifically, working on entertainers just isn't an efficient use of their time, given how few social players are left. Not when this time can be spent implementing a new FRS or giving the BH's new content.
A cynical interpretation of Blackman's quote? Well, yeah. But given the experiences of the past (and especially the last few months), I think also a reasonable one.
Caerwynn
Tue Aug 09, 2005 12:54 pm
#10
>"The gamers who would consider themselves mild Star Wars geeks won't subscribe to the game," game reviewer Peterson predicts, "because either they don't enjoy MMORPG games or they feel intimidated by both the more hardcore Star Wars geeks and the more hardcore gamers who play MMORPGs like they are a part-time job."
That statement has been proved wrong, I know quite a few players including myself who are 'mild Star Wars geeks'.
>"Of the 700 or so learnable skills available, only a third are combat-related, with a number designed to appeal to women -- or at any rate to those less interested in a life of galactic swashbuckling. "I'm kind of embarrassed to mention this," says Blackman, "but we have a hairdressing skill tree."
I resent the suggestion that women will only want to play social characters. Shows just how wrong they were, if that attitude still prevails (what, two years at least after that article was written?) no wonder Entertainer profs have been reduced to nothing much more than a bit of fluff. Yes, I know they are promising us more buffs, but Ents will still be little more than a sideline prof.
Panthu
Tue Aug 09, 2005 1:54 pm
#11
Gothywench wrote:
Panthu...OMG. I may have downloaded things from you way back in The Day. ::grin::
You probably did have some of my head meshes. For a long time I was the only person making them other than Fionn and Kyoen. It was weird, I put up this little site with original head meshes and next thing I knew they were everywhere, hehe.
psycocat
Wed Aug 10, 2005 3:09 am
#12
That article is cool. That was one thing I loved about SWG and makes it hard for me to go play other games like FFXI. The social aspect of SWG has so much potential it is ridiculous. If more time and money was put into letting the players create content (actual missions, more types of player bounties, etc.) no other game would be able to compare. I only wish that I could get more sp so I could use one character to be a master of both feilds.
Chessack
Thu Aug 11, 2005 4:32 pm
#13
Panthu wrote:
It was clear to me that Entertainer was made with people like me in mind. I was psyched. I just don't understand why the ball has been dropped so much on this section of the game. Crafting was for casual gamers who wanted to be able to compete even if they were offline. Entertainer was for main-stream females and players that shared their interests (social players). This made total sense to me then and it still does now.
It's quite simple Panth. The current crop of devs simply does not understand at all what holocron, Q, and the original guys were attempting to accomplish with the original design. Neeno, an occasional poster to the musician forums and in-game friend of mine, said it was quite clear from the Indy dev breakfast that other than "our" dev (whichever one that is) the others have no clue what players of entertainers want, or even why anyone would BOTHER to play an entertainer instead of a "real" class. When Neeno told them "Combat is the side game for me -- the main game is entertaining and crafting," their jaws hit the floor. They don't GET us AT ALL. It's quite clear from all the dev decisions that have been made since long before the CU. They get combat, and they get uber-hardcore-gamers -- that's it. And that's why the game has gone from one of interactive, modern-style capitalism, to one of kill-loot-trade medievalism. And it'll stay that way, until they get some new devs who DO get what Holo et al. were trying (maybe not succeeding, but at least trying) to accomplish.
C
Page 1 of 2