Shameless Lecture Slide Dump
What is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game?
- Online-only
- Client / Server Architecture
- Persistent World
- Multiplayer interaction
- (Text / Emotes)
- (Virtual Identity)
Korea
- No consoles
- Very high speed internet
- Very densely populated
- PC Rooms (Baangs)
- MMOGs thrived
Why is the industry interested?
- Industry is Hits Based
- Require regular / stable income (Easy for MMOs-Monthly Subscription fees)
- ‘Churn’ out sequels
Costs
- Normal development costs
- Technically more difficult
- Server upkeep
- Bandwidth costs
- Customer Support
- Continued Development
Technical Difficulties
- Providing a service
- High performance servers
- Persistent world
- Hackers
- Internet Conditions
Important MMORPG People
Richard Bartle
Richard Allan Bartle (born January 10, 1960, in England) is a British writer and game researcher, best known for being the co-author of MUD, the first multi-user dungeon.
He is one of the pioneers of the massively multiplayer online game industry.
In 2003, he wrote Designing Virtual Worlds, a book about the history, ethics, structure, and technology of massively multiplayer games.
Bartle did research on player personality types in massively-multiplayer online games. In Bartle's analysis, players of massively multiplayer online games can be divided into four types: achievers, explorers, socializers and killers. This idea has been adapted into a popular online test generally referred to as the Bartle Test. The test is very popular and scores are often exchanged on popular MMORPG forums, or networking sites.
Richard Bartle was awarded the International Game Developers Association's "First Penguin Award", at the 2005 Game Developers Choice Awards, for being the first penguin, or possibly for his part in creating the first MUD.
Richard Garriott
Richard Allen Garriott (born July 4, 1961) was originally a game designer and programmer, but now engages in various aspects of computer game development.
Previously worked at Origin Systems, who worked on the Ultima series of games.
Richard Garriott has been involved in a number of early and more recent MMO Games, including all of the 'Ultima' games, and more recently the City of Heroes and Tabula Rasa games.
Raph Koster
Raphael "Raph" Koster (7 September 1971—) is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and author, who worked with Richard Garriott at Origin Systems.
Koster is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies.
Worked for a few years at Sony Online Entertainment, however since July 2006, he has been working as the founder and president of Areae producing an upcoming platform for online games called Metaplace.
Wrote a book titled 'A Theory of Fun for Game Design' in 2004 which states that games are all essentially edutainment, teaching us the skills we might need in real life in a safe, low-stakes environment. A good game, according to him, is "one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing."
Edward Castronova
Edward Castronova is Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University Bloomington, and has done research into MMOs in the past.
His paper on Norrath, a fictional planet in the EverQuest universe, Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier (2001) is available on SSRN. It claims, for example, that Norrath has a GDP per capita somewhere between that of Russia and Bulgaria, higher than that of China and India, and that a unit of EverQuest currency is worth more than the Yen or Lira.
He is currently working on an academic experiment in massively multiplayer online gaming, a game titled Arden: The World of Shakespeare, which is planned to be used for the unusual purpose of running academic social experiments, in addition to teaching players about the works of William Shakespeare.
Additional Information
- MMO Ratings - http://www.mmogchart.com/
- MMO News - http://www.stratics.com/
- Nick Yee Blog - http://www.nickyee.com/
