Successful games and Good games are two different things...unfortunately.

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Original post by Falling Sky Successful games and Good games are two different things...unfortunately.

Often I'd agree with this statement. Except in the case of MMOs, I feel that having a mass market appeal is one of the factors that makes it "good", as you need by the very nature of the genre to have a substantial player base. In my opinion designing a niche MMO is a much riskier prospect than being "alternative" within other genres.

(Of course I can't comment on World of Warcraft's gameplay myself, as I don't play MMOs.)

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Original post by krez problem is, if you want to pull a profit (or even stay in business) you have to go the WoW way... if you just want a "good" (or even "great") experience, you have to create and/or play one of the text-based MUDs/MUSHs/whatevers. never expect the "best" from something that is the biggest money maker. humans on average are just average after all :) think about this the next time you eat at mcdonalds.

Least Common Denominators also tend to be cheaper/easier to produce....

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Original post by Falling Sky Successful games and Good games are two different things...unfortunately.

The Jerry Springer Effect .....

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Original post by CIJolly Let's say there are two kinds of good. One is exemplified by the works of Shakespeare, Mozart, Picasso, George Orwell, etc. The other is best displayed by works like Harry Potter, Britney Spears, most situation comedies, etc.

It's interesting that you put Mozart in that list, as I regard WoW as the "Mozart" of MMORPGs. By that I mean both may be described as "dull perfection". WoW stuck to a tight tested formula and never tried to introduce anything new, yet it worked because it got that formula bang on. If I had to segregate "good" into two catagories it would be that of perfection and that of innovation, much like if you compare Mozart to Beethoven. In this sense the OP is absolutely correct, in that if you try to emulate WoW you'll never make as good a game, because it already did everything correctly. To make a better game you're going to have to change things, i.e. introduce new ideas.

Anyway, although some do appear to take it too far, I do not have a problem with people criticising a popular game. It is only by pointing out faults in a particular formular that one can come up with a superior formula. As some genius at Honda once said: "It's good to hate".

I think matTd wanted me to post in this thread.

Luckily successful games and good games are synonymous by merit, not some fantastic puritanical ideal.

The idea that people who play WoW and PAY for WoW aren't enjoying themselves is contrary to any measure of reality. The OP admits that WoW plays on very subtle tendencies of humanity. There's nothing wrong with that and by admission, it's a successful method by which to invoke good feelings. If you play games for another reason, seek help.

-Don't try and emulate World of Warcraft in your design.
Um plz do.

Welcome to the real world.

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Original post by Jack9 Luckily successful games and good games are synonymous by merit, not some fantastic puritanical ideal.

"Merit" being somehow less puritanical than "quality?"

I'm not sure if anyone really knows what "consumerist," "materialistic," and "quality" mean anymore, let alone puritanical...

Equating success with some measure of quality should be obviously overreaching: can you name anything both successful and decidedly bad? Yes, you can. Things like ciagarettes. What does that prove? Nothing, aside from the fact that success is not an empirical proof of value, and that people often "feel good" doing things that are actually bad for them.

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The idea that people who play WoW and PAY for WoW aren't enjoying themselves is contrary to any measure of reality.

I haven't brought up that argument specifically, but we've already gone over how people can pay for and participate in things that really aren't fulfilling. Were it a point, it would be moot.

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The OP admits that WoW plays on very subtle tendencies of humanity.

There's a big difference between "playing on tendancies" and "capitalizing" on limitations. Humanity has alot of tendancies, which include but are not limited to murder, incest, rape...etc...

"Playing on subtle tendancies" of humanity leaves the discussion open to a bunch of things that aren't even topical and would only seem to provide an argument against games that function by "playing on tendancies" of any sort, and rather support those that allow the player to explore instead of trying to exploit the player's shortcomings.

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There's nothing wrong with that and by admission, it's a successful method by which to invoke good feelings.

So is drug abuse; I don't see your point. If a person sat around "invoking good feelings" at a computer screen for three-quarters of their life, would you consider it a waste? It is ultimately their choice, but not everyone is always in a clear state of mind when making choices. The fundamental principle behind any positive change is that even if people are "happy" with what they have now, happiness is relative, something that makes them more happy can come along, something that makes them happy with less negative impact can come along, something that fulfills their wants and more effectively considers their needs can come along.

I don't know about you, but given all the obesity and healthcare statistics and the time spent sitting at a computer playing a game like WoW, would you logically conclude that the required time investment to participate and reasonably enjoy that particular game is...reasonable?

Notice that I didn't say anything along the lines of "people who play WoW are fat, ugly, and unhealthy." All I'm implying is that, at the very least, there could and should be a game that allows you to "invoke good feelings" with less of the downside that WoW has. Regardless of your stance on whether or not WoW and MMO's in general "take up too much time" or contribute to health issues, you have to agree that more efficient ways of "invoking good feelings" are neccesarily better.

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If you play games for another reason, seek help.

That's like giving a person a pack of exploding matches and claiming innocence when they burn the house down: "Matches are for lighting birthday cakes. I don't know why this guy decided to set his house on fire, but if he's using the matches for another reason, he needs to seek help." While I do agree that people often misuse things that they are fairly warned against, that isn't a legitimate reason to put out products that are open to misuse. By that logic, safety mechanisms on things like pill bottles and kitchen cleaning supplies are pointless, because everyone knows what the intended use of those things is, and everyone can and should be expected to use things as they are intended. Given that you can, with video games, effectively put a "safety cap" on without harming the product (The same way you can with pills. It'd actually be less invasive even than the "push down and twist off" caps on some medicine containers).

No, I'm not talking about China's limited play time laws. I'm talking about designing games with far less of "gameplay" elements like grinds and perpetual material progress and character "development" cycles that don't purposefully puport things like "high consumer switching cost" and investment. Do you spend any time at all playing an MMO and not enjoying it? Do you know what that's called in normal games? Bad planning. People have been so indoctrinated with the MMO timesink scheme that they actually think it's a neccesary part of successful gameplay for the MMORPG genre.

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Welcome to the real world.

The real world...of online forum debates about the merits of game design practices? There is a real world out there, but we're certainly not exchanging discourse anywhere near it. It's ironic, because so many people seem to feel smug when they give some piece of information or argumentation that they think has opened up someone's "closed eyes" or mind. This is an extremely fringe and esoteric discussion; referencing the "real world" is an amazing irony, considering most of the real world has more pressing concerns than gameplay in some obscure genre and technology that 6,599,000,000 of its people don't play. Collapse your perspective: we're not talking about the fate of the universe. I know invoking things like discussion on drug abuse and ciagarettes might seem to contradict that notion, but that's just inability to percieve correlation and analogy in debate.

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Original post by makeshiftwings The development of video games is a result of capitalism and consumerism, and the purchasing of them only happens in societies where people have enough time and money to waste on frivolous toys. Yeah, China has the whole MMO sweatshops thing, but that's a different matter. My point is that all video games are a luxury and an excess, not just WoW.

The irony being that the first videogames were developed out of curiosity and marketed delibrately by prexisting companies to make a profit. They didn't come to be as frivolous luxuries to be sold to the pious masses, they came to be frivolous luxuries to be sold to the pious masses, in some cases, at least. Regardless, whether or not videogames are classified as an "excess" or a "luxury" is irrelevant to a discussion about the effectiveness of a certain genre and a particular game in that genre (MMO's;WoW) at being worthwhile to the end user. That's the basis of most definitions of "good product." Not the profit it makes for the company but the effectiveness to the end user: people don't buy things because they make companies rich, companies get rich because people buy their stuff. The prerequisite is that people buy things that are valueable to them and good for them in some way, shape, or form, and this can become corrupted when companies find effective ways to market products that draw more consumerbase than they should logically muster.

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Oh boy, the wikipedia quotes. :-|. Again, it's NOT a fallacy, because "good" does not have a definition in your argument.

I was using the generally accepted consumer definition of "good," further clarified above. In any case, of all the things that could be said given my argument with "good" left undefined, you still couldn't draw the conclusion that success == goodness, because goodness is still ambiguous, so it would be a fallacy. Given the clarified definition, it's still a fallacy.

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If you take "good" to mean "something that a lot of people think is good", which is the generally accepted definition when used abstractly, then popularity does in fact prove "goodness".

See...there's the problem. The entire issue is that popularity does not prove "goodness." Oppresion of the hebrew peoples in Egypt was once popular amongst the Egyptians, slavery was once the popular modus operandi of the nation state, Hamas is the popularly elected government of Palestine (Which ironically muddles the Bush Administration's imperialistic pursuit of Democracy and fervent anti-terrorist stance...but that's a different argument), the numerous and the powerful are responsible for electing the Nazi party in Germany, the Somalian genocide...

Yes, these are all socio-political events, but that is the basis of the entire argument against quality being decided by the majority. The conventionally accepted wisdom is that the populous is not always "right," it's just better to leave things up to the populous in popular enterprises.

Luckily, in this way, game design IS NOT a popular entireprise. It is a pursuit of private business, so the desires of the populous cannot and should not have the same onus on that private enterprise as they do in popular proceedings. Yet, that leaves the question of what is "good" undefined: for the purposes of this debate, we have enough, however. What is good is surely not just what is popular.

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I'll link you to the wikipedia definition of tautology if you want. ;) If you take "good" to mean "your personal opinion of whether or not it's good", then sure, of course its popularlity is meaningless, but then you can't say anything abstract about whether WoW is good or not. If you're trying to claim that there is some universal quality of "goodness" in games that is irrelevant to whether or not anyone actually thinks it's personally good, then you need to define that.

Addressed above ^.

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Furthermore, I'd say we would need to question whether there is any reason to make this sort of "universally good" game if no one will actually think it's "personally good".

I think it's fairly logical to assume that given that people will tolerate most anything (Remember when 2D grayscale was the pinnacle of technology?), they'd tolerate a "universally good" game. Good grows on people, some good grows deeper than other good. Regardless, whether or not a "universally good" game is proposed is somewhat irrelevant to the topic.

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All games are like this. Unless you are competing in a tournament for actual money, there is no actual "reward" in any game, video or not, except your personal enjoyment.

If that's the case, why do so many World of Warcraft raiders complain about things like "casuals getting epics?"

Is their personal enjoyment at stake? Or is the game's purpose relegated to the pursuit of imaginary value in an already imaginary world?

Even if their "personal enjoyment" was at stake, wouldn't that just mean that a game that relied less on disenfranchising sections of the playerbase for some to enjoy themselves would be absolutely more good?

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Thus there can't be any "progress" since you're not supposed to be accomplishing something. You're supposed to be playing a game. In fact, I'd say the definition of "game" implies "feigning progress in a fictional contest under artificial rules". Where is this deeper progress you're alluding to in chess, tennis, or Halo?

If you're supposed to be playing a game, why are there time sinks, gear disparities, treadmills, grinds, and impermeable gameplay barriers that require things like adopting 40 hour a week schedules to surmount? You are supposed to partake in the illusion of accomplishment, yet there is no accomplishment.

If you invested the kind of time many invest into MMO's into playing chess or tennis, you'd likely get something out of it. But you don't...why? You don't have the talent or skill neccesary? Ok then, play them recreationally and for an amount of time that doesn't require justification in the form of real reward. There you go, fixed. Halo doesn't require players to take on the riddiculous and rewardless schedules that many MMO's and WoW do to complete the game's stated objectives. It's like comparing a balanced fast food to Salad: sure, you can eat them both, but one of them is good for you, and the other one is POPULAR.

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I'd say this is a flawed analogy since the loaded "evil" things are evil for reasons beyond their popularity. Drugs are bad because they kill people and they're illegal. Fast food is bad because it encourages animal slaughter and is unhealthy. The fact that they're profitable is unfortunate, but has nothing to do with why they are evil. However, you've made no case for WoW being evil, you have only said it's profitable. In that case, why not follow its example? Profitability + not evil = a good idea.

I didn't say why fast food and drugs are "bad," I only said that they were in many ways annalogous to WoW. I think I've explained the relationship in less subjective and more foolproof terms than the ones you've used here, above ^.

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Define quality, and explain why it's a desirable thing if it's unrelated to success.

Lets say quality is "fulfilling the stated purpose with minimal detriment produced in doing so, provided the stated purpose is a decidedly good purpose in the first place."

In the case of games, it would be: "providing for desires with minimum compromisation of needs."

Essentially, a Salad that tasted like a hamburger would be better than a hamburger that tasted like a hamburger, because the desire fulfilled is equal but the detriment is lower. It's more efficient. Given that gameplay desires, like taste, are mostly acquired, quality can be logically boiled down to providing a product that can be enjoyed in some way that also provides more than just "fun."

Even in terms of business ethics: something that provides customer satisfaction to a competent customer.

Do the math.

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So do most of the people with "original" ideas, in fact, they fail worse. An unfortunate side effect of consolidated publishing and media. But using your wikipedia quotes, one could say the fact that some clones fail doesn't mean all will. In fact, most games that most people like follow established trends and genres.

I'm just saying that it's better to be original and risk failure than it is to be a copycat and risk failure, both financially and as far as "quality" is concerned. IMHO, you shouldn't get into game design just to make money, which is the only purpose in copycatting, given that many other career fields are open that can satisfy that need. Given that consumers don't like derivative crap and it dilutes the market and harms the industry, isn't it logical to say "take it elsewhere?"

It's the prostitution of the games industry, leave it in the "Las Vegas" of the game's industry while you're at it too, e.g., don't bring it to the industry at all.

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In summary, your argument seems to claim "Hey, WoW is popular, profitable, and morally neutral in comparison to any other video game.

Well, I think this is prematurely debunked.

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Also, I'm not saying it's bad.

I do believe I expressly said that I do believe it is bad, and that that belief is separate from argumentation about why success is not a means of judging worth.

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So, don't make games like it, because that would be bad." Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise, and your premise seems to mostly be ethereal complaining on undefinable terms.

Well, I think we can say those terms are now sufficiently concrete, regardless of whether or not they already were before this explication.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster Quote: Original post by Nytehauq World of Warcraft is popular because it capitalizes on the excesses of a consumerist and materialist society in the U.S. Umm, no.

Thank you, Mr. AP, for this brilliant insight into the discussion. Anywho, I'm a bit tired, so I'll retire for a bit. Maybe I'll have some more tomorrow in Programming, probably not.

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Original post by Nytehauq Regardless, whether or not videogames are classified as an "excess" or a "luxury" is irrelevant to a discussion about the effectiveness of a certain genre and a particular game in that genre (MMO's;WoW) at being worthwhile to the end user. That's the basis of most definitions of "good product." Not the profit it makes for the company but the effectiveness to the end user: people don't buy things because they make companies rich, companies get rich because people buy their stuff. The prerequisite is that people buy things that are valueable to them and good for them in some way, shape, or form, and this can become corrupted when companies find effective ways to market products that draw more consumerbase than they should logically muster. I was using the generally accepted consumer definition of "good," further clarified above.

Honestly, and I'm not trying to just be difficult here, I don't see a clear definition of "good", either in this quote or in the whole post above. I'm assuming that the definition of "good" that you're using is a combination of "healthy/beneficial" and "morally good". You gave a lot of examples of "bad", like cigarettes. Cigarettes are bad but popular, sure. Cigarettes are bad under two main definitions of the term, "bad = dangerous/unhealthy", because cigarettes are directly physically harmful, and "bad = evil", because the people selling them are doing so knowing that they are bad for you, and knowing that you will become physically addicted and continue to buy them even though they are killing you.

However, I think comparing Blizzard to Phillip Morris is a huge stretch. The only case you make for WoW being dangerous/unhealthy is that people are sitting in front of a computer instead of exercising outside, which is true of every video game. The only case you make for it being morally evil is that the developers use its "addictiveness" to make you keep paying for it, but, and this is very important, there is no actual physical addictiveness in video games. This is a whole separate argument, but you should be willing to admit at least that if your argument centers around "people are forced to play against their will because they're psychologically addicted", that everything in existence is potentially psychologically addictive, and psychological addiction is primarily the problem of an addictive personality. And again, every video game, and in fact, every luxury, by definition, uses some form of this method. You don't actually "need" any luxury like video games, tv's, stereos, new clothes, fancy cars... you only get them because you "want" them, and it's pretty easy to switch out "want" into "addiction" in an argument.

So I'd restate what I said earlier, you're only showing that WoW is an example of a video game, more or less neutral to all of the others. You seem to be claiming that all video games are a waste of time and energy, and that we should be out saving the world if we want to be good people. I'll agree with that. But I don't agree that WoW is "more" evil just because it has a longer play time. In general if hardcore gamers weren't playing WoW, they'd probably be playing a different game. They wouldn't be out joining the zapatistas or the peace corps.

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See...there's the problem. The entire issue is that popularity does not prove "goodness." Oppresion of the hebrew peoples in Egypt was once popular amongst the Egyptians, slavery was once the popular modus operandi of the nation state, Hamas is the popularly elected government of Palestine (Which ironically muddles the Bush Administration's imperialistic pursuit of Democracy and fervent anti-terrorist stance...but that's a different argument), the numerous and the powerful are responsible for electing the Nazi party in Germany, the Somalian genocide...

I mistook your definition of "goodness". I thought you meant good as in "enjoyable" or "fun", rather than "morally good". And yes, I'd say at the time, the slave owners and oppressors did think slavery and oppression was quite enjoyable and fun for them, in a manner of speaking.

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I think it's fairly logical to assume that given that people will tolerate most anything (Remember when 2D grayscale was the pinnacle of technology?), they'd tolerate a "universally good" game. Good grows on people, some good grows deeper than other good. Regardless, whether or not a "universally good" game is proposed is somewhat irrelevant to the topic.

Ok, since it's more clear that you mean "morally good" rather than just "more fun", then sure, I'd be willing to sacrifice a certain amount of popularity if I thought my cause was good. However, I don't think game developers necessarily have a responsibility to be leading advocates for social change. I'd say they have a responsibility to try and be morally neutral or better, and even then, morals are sort of hazy and hard to deal with. For example, I think it's important that games and movies be able to portray violence and evil, and possibly even glorify it, as that is an important part of art and human experience. I don't think it would be right for a game developer to secretly market something that was actually physically harmful, but WoW is not doing that.

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If that's the case, why do so many World of Warcraft raiders complain about things like "casuals getting epics?"

The same reason people would complain if you were playing poker and someone started just taking chips from the pot without actually winning. The game is set up under certain rules; the rules are basically a long-term risk vs reward. Obviously, yes, people want the rewards; that is part of the game. But the rewards are not just shiny carrots, they help you fight better, thus letting you fight harder things, and get better things, ad inifinitum. That is basically what video RPG's are, and have been since their inception. WoW did not invent this, and they're not particularly different than any other RPG in the world, single or multiplayer.

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Even if their "personal enjoyment" was at stake, wouldn't that just mean that a game that relied less on disenfranchising sections of the playerbase for some to enjoy themselves would be absolutely more good?

No. Because then the ideal game would be one where everyone wins, and everyone is equal all the time. Maybe that's a good idea for a utopian society, but not for a game. Games are usually supposed to have a contest, a winner and a loser. Calling this "evil" is a stretch. It's not like the losers at WoW are getting physically harmed.

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If you're supposed to be playing a game, why are there time sinks, gear disparities, treadmills, grinds, and impermeable gameplay barriers that require things like adopting 40 hour a week schedules to surmount? You are supposed to partake in the illusion of accomplishment, yet there is no accomplishment.

Most of that is "game balance" combined with "the definition of RPG". RPG's are not player-skill-based games, they are stat and character building games. That's what people like about them. People don't think "Oh my god I can't believe I have to play 100 hours to get the best sword, this sucks", they think "Wow! 100 hours of playtime! Awesome!" The only reason you would need to adopt a 40 hour a week schedule in WoW is if you wanted to be the Grand Marshal PvP rank on your server. And the easy answer is, if you don't have that sort of time to waste, then don't worry about being the Grand Marshal. It's not that important. I'll agree that the Grand Marshal and high rank PvP honor system in WoW is pretty wonky and even "bad" as in "not fun" or "a poor design decision", but not "bad" as in "morally evil".

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If you invested the kind of time many invest into MMO's into playing chess or tennis, you'd likely get something out of it.

Like what? Money for winning a tournament? If you could win WoW tournaments, would this somehow make the game morally good? Besides, you already can make money off WoW, for example, China.

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But you don't...why? You don't have the talent or skill neccesary? Ok then, play them recreationally and for an amount of time that doesn't require justification in the form of real reward. There you go, fixed.

That's how I play WoW. It is possible, you know.

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Halo doesn't require players to take on the riddiculous and rewardless schedules that many MMO's and WoW do to complete the game's stated objectives.

It does if you're "addicted" to Halo. And I know quite a few people who are.

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It's like comparing a balanced fast food to Salad: sure, you can eat them both, but one of them is good for you, and the other one is POPULAR.

Halo is NOT good for you, and WoW is NOT bad for you. They are both morally and physiologically equal. The only difference I can see you making is that people generally play WoW longer than they do Halo, which is not necessarily true. Even if it were, the people who play Halo but get bored of it quickly will often put in another game, or sit around watching a movie, or surf the net, or argue on the Game Design forum of gamedev.net. Regardless, both people are sitting around in front of a screen doing nothing of moral value.

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Lets say quality is "fulfilling the stated purpose with minimal detriment produced in doing so, provided the stated purpose is a decidedly good purpose in the first place." In the case of games, it would be: "providing for desires with minimum compromisation of needs."

WoW does not compromise needs. People prioritize their own lives badly, because they are bored and don't like doing "good" things. You seem to be saying that we as developers have a responsibility to ensure that no one likes our games too much, because it's our responsibility to make sure they do something other than play video games. Not only is this not our responsibility, but it's impossible to make a fun game that no one will find fun enough to prioritize. There is always someone who will find something fun enough to skip work or miss a date with their girlfriend or whatever "morally evil" consequence we're talking about, regardless of what that fun thing actually is. Slackers and deadbeats have existed long before WoW ever came into existence. Now they're just sitting in front of computers instead of in front of the TV.

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Essentially, a Salad that tasted like a hamburger would be better than a hamburger that tasted like a hamburger, because the desire fulfilled is equal but the detriment is lower. It's more efficient. Given that gameplay desires, like taste, are mostly acquired, quality can be logically boiled down to providing a product that can be enjoyed in some way that also provides more than just "fun."

Like what? Education? Political ideology? Religious indoctrination? This is not why people buy video games. Sure, video games can be used as a platform to spread an ideology that you find morally good, just as books and movies are, but I don't think developers are evil if they're not pushing radical ideology. They're morally neutral. Art, movies, and books would be incredibly boring if ALL of them were thinly veiled liberal propaganda.

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I'm just saying that it's better to be original and risk failure than it is to be a copycat and risk failure, both financially and as far as "quality" is concerned. IMHO, you shouldn't get into game design just to make money, which is the only purpose in copycatting,

I disagree. I like elves and orcs and swords, I like the classic RPG format. It has nothing to do with me thinking that elves are profitable. I highly doubt that the million people who play WoW only play it because they think orcs are profitable. They legitimately like fantasy RPG's. And most developers who make fantasy RPG's do legitimately like what they are doing. I'm pretty certain that most Blizzard employees do love the world of Azeroth that they have crafted over the many years of the Warcraft franchise. They are not all sitting their fuming wishing they could make some obscure genre-defying game set in a completely alien and inaccesible setting.

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Given that consumers don't like derivative crap and it dilutes the market and harms the industry, isn't it logical to say "take it elsewhere?"

Consumers DO like "derivative crap". But we call it "genres" and "game standards". And it is the lifeblood of the industry, without it, there would be no industry. Originality has its place, but it's not the most important thing in games or art.