CSIRO ICT Centre

The expansion of the internet has enabled the creation of large scale massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). One of the more formidable design challenges created by these games is the need to provide players with things to do for the long duration of these games. For example, a single player game normally offers between 20 and 60 hours of gameplay. Participants of MMOGs will often play 20 hours per week, and expect to remain involved for 2-3 years, a total of more than 3000 hours of gameplay.

The traditional solution has been to build MMOGs around a simple "hunting and gathering" model. The aim of the game is to make your character more powerful by locating and killing creatures, and by collecting the most effective equipment in the game. The problem is that as the market becomes more crowded this simple experience is no longer enough to compete at a commercial level. It is not commercially viable to create the content by hand. Mechanisms are needed to generate richer interactive experiences.

How do we create richer gaming experiences? To be successful we need to recognise that online games are inescapably social in nature. The other players represent the single most important and interesting feature of the MMOG environment and helping players entertain each other is one of the keys to creating a compelling online experience. This is not simply game design or computer science, but applied social science. This paper looks at some strategies for generating game content "on demand", looks at the implications of the social on the design of these kinds of mechanisms and discusses some higher-level issues raised by this type of generative system.

Short resume

Paul is a cultural anthropologist and archaeologist by training, who interrupted his PhD candidature in anthropology to work for Micro Forte as social scientist, then as game designer. He has been designing games as long as he can remember, wrote his first computer game in the early 1980s on a Dick Smith Wizard, his first RPG in 1983 and has been creating computer games and RPGs ever since. He has a Graduate Diploma in Computer Science, where he gained an interest in HCI research and simulations, a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in anthropology, where he gained an interest in general social theory (particularly as it applies to game design), cognitive science, prehistoric archaeology, online communities and the anthropology of play. In the mid 1990s he was actively involved in the MUD design community, serving as an immortal on a number of MUDs.

Once more, with meaning: anthropology, generative systems and content creation in massively multiplayer online games.

Abstract

Short resume