This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.

Author Topic: MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs  (Read 14607 times)

RSDancey

  • Most Dangerous Man
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 128
    • http://web.mac.com/rsdancey/RSDanceyBlog/
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #30 on: December 15, 2010, 02:05:43 PM »
Quote from: Grymbok;426407

The other challenge for MMOs, of course, is moving lots of PCs around at once, which makes all this stuff a lot harder to do at high-quality than in single player titles.


This is a huge problem, but not on the quality level.  Quality is on the client side, and even average game rigs in the 2010s will be able to support this level of detail for 100s of avatars.  The problem is the N^2 interprocess communication problems that stress the servers and the network connections.  But those are also problems that are being solved by Moore's law and by faster broadband rollouts.

Quote
In the past few years launching an MMO has seemed like nothing more than a good way to lose a lot of money, with only WoW and your own EVE being successful launches in years now.


Actually EVE predates WoW.  But there has been a noticeable change in the MMO market in the past 24 months.  We now live in an era where there are between 1 and 2 million "MMO Hobbyists" - people with allegiance to no game, but to the genre.  They switch from AAA to AAA MMO as they ship (virtually all of which are Theme Parks), burn through the content faster than the developers thought possible, and then quit with complaints that the game is "boring" or "too short".  This creates an "s-curve" of player participation which is actually really bad for MMOs - they have variable costs that scale with the size of the player base (servers, bandwidth, customer service, GMs, billing, etc.), but they take much longer to ramp up and ramp down than the length of the initial spike.  

Star Trek, Conan, Warhammer, and Aion all suffered from this problem spectacularly.

One of the things the next generation of MMOs is going to address is finding ways to moderate this effect.

On the other hand, there are games that are doing quite well.  Runescape has 5 million players (1 million paying $5/mo).  Aion still has about 200K Western full price subscribers, and a much much larger business in Asia.  Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons online have had a huge renewal once they went to a hybrid free-to-play/microtransaction model.  The next AAA MMO likely to ship will be Star Wars: The Old Republic (but it is barely an MMO in my opinion and should probably be classified into its own special category).

The market for subscription based Western MMOs is between 5 and 10 million people (its very hard to narrow that down because many people play more than one MMO at a time).  The market for some kind of F2P/MTX model is probably 50 million.  So there is a lot of upside yet to come from this space - it's barely been tapped in some ways.

RyanD
-----

Ryan S. Dancey
CEO, Goblinworks

Glazer

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 241
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #31 on: December 15, 2010, 02:12:36 PM »
Quote from: RSDancey;426412
The 1000 surveys were sent to people who self-identified as people who played games (not just TRPGs).

RyanD


And out of those 1,000, six per cent had played TRPGs?

Sorry to nag, I just want to make sure I understand where the numbers are coming from!
Glazer

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood."

RSDancey

  • Most Dangerous Man
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 128
    • http://web.mac.com/rsdancey/RSDanceyBlog/
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #32 on: December 15, 2010, 02:24:26 PM »
Quote from: Glazer;426417
And out of those 1,000, six per cent had played TRPGs?

Sorry to nag, I just want to make sure I understand where the numbers are coming from!

No.

We're talking about something I worked on nearly 12 years ago, so my memory is a little hazy.  We wanted to ensure that we had a statistically significant response from people who would be TRPG, CCG, CRPG, and miniatures wargamers (the 4 categories we expected to be producing for).  I think the goal was to have 200 of each in the response pool, and then 500 people who profiled as gamers but not people who were clearly in those 4 categories.  Because of overlap, that consumed the other 100 respondents.  Those actual numbers might be higher or lower, but there were more than 60 people in the TRPG category.

RyanD
-----

Ryan S. Dancey
CEO, Goblinworks

RSDancey

  • Most Dangerous Man
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 128
    • http://web.mac.com/rsdancey/RSDanceyBlog/
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #33 on: December 15, 2010, 02:30:17 PM »
Quote from: ggroy;426379
What's the possibility of "Thinker" types just walking away completely from tabletop rpgs, and moving on to something else that isn't gaming related?


First, remember that we're not talking about Thinkers in general.  We're talking about Thinkers who want the 8 basic elements in their gaming experience.

I think that 4e did a lot to drive these folks away.  One of the joys of being a Thinker is seeing how you could build a character to achieve a certain result.  The 4e system essentially forces characters into pre-defined "builds".  Thinkers also feel rewarded for planning ahead and being ready to react to a circumstance that everyone else didn't anticipate.  4e gives few of these kinds of challenges.  At each stage of the game the players know pretty much what they should be prepared to cope with, and flexibility in abilities allows them to adapt on the fly based on conditions.

So I agree with you that a lot of Thinkers may have just stayed with 3.x (thus, Pathfinder being so successful.)  My intuition tells me that a lot of books being sold for 4e are being bought by storytellers but never used in games (ala 2e).  That can only last so long ... at some point, if that game isn't being widely played, now that there are options (OGL/D20, MMOs, etc.) the player network should decay much more rapidly than it did in the 2e era.
-----

Ryan S. Dancey
CEO, Goblinworks

arminius

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7270
    • http://ewilen.livejournal.com/
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #34 on: December 15, 2010, 02:46:15 PM »
Quote from: Glazer;426405
And "The particular individuals chosen to participate in this expanded
survey represent the population, as determined by the screener."

In the screener, 6.00% or so or so of the population had played TRPGs.

So of the 1,000 people surveyed, 60 had played TRPGS? And the data on TRPGs is therefore based on the views of 60 players? Is this right?

It sure looks like that to me. That seems like a pretty small number. [EDIT: see Ryan's answer above and my response below.] According to this paper, "the minimal sample size [ought] to include no less than 2^k cases (k = number of variables), preferably 5*2^k". In other words, if the number of questions asked, prior to doing the cluster analysis, was 100, you'd want an astronomical sample size (2^100). Even if many of those questions are considered duplicates (included for data checking), reducing the number of "significant" variables to 10 or so, you'd still want a minimum sample size of 1024 before you could have much confidence in your identification of clusters.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2010, 02:57:03 PM by Arminius »

RandallS

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2182
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #35 on: December 15, 2010, 02:53:02 PM »
Quote from: RSDancey;426264
22% of players fall into one of the 4 named groups, and 12% fall into the "basic roleplayer" segment.


If I am reading this correctly, that's only 34% of the players (22% in the four named groups, 12% in the "center" group). What about the other 66% of players? Where do they fit in to the picture. I think this is especially important to know as from these numbers it looks like a large majority of players don't fit into the segments at all.
Randall
Rules Light RPGs: Home of Microlite20 and Other Rules-Lite Tabletop RPGs

Omnifray

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • O
  • Posts: 1230
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #36 on: December 15, 2010, 02:55:54 PM »
Quote from: RSDancey;426423
No.

We're talking about something I worked on nearly 12 years ago, so my memory is a little hazy.  We wanted to ensure that we had a statistically significant response from people who would be TRPG, CCG, CRPG, and miniatures wargamers (the 4 categories we expected to be producing for).  I think the goal was to have 200 of each in the response pool, and then 500 people who profiled as gamers but not people who were clearly in those 4 categories.  Because of overlap, that consumed the other 100 respondents.  Those actual numbers might be higher or lower, but there were more than 60 people in the TRPG category.

RyanD

I think they have extrapolated from the data that 6% of the 65,000 people initially surveyed play TRPGs... those 3,900 people may have been disproportionately represented in the post-screen study population who filled in the questionnaires?
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

arminius

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7270
    • http://ewilen.livejournal.com/
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #37 on: December 15, 2010, 02:56:25 PM »
Quote from: RSDancey;426423
No.

We're talking about something I worked on nearly 12 years ago, so my memory is a little hazy.  We wanted to ensure that we had a statistically significant response from people who would be TRPG, CCG, CRPG, and miniatures wargamers (the 4 categories we expected to be producing for).  I think the goal was to have 200 of each in the response pool, and then 500 people who profiled as gamers but not people who were clearly in those 4 categories.  Because of overlap, that consumed the other 100 respondents.  Those actual numbers might be higher or lower, but there were more than 60 people in the TRPG category.

RyanD


This is reasonable on its face--the followup survey could have deliberately selected a higher proportion of game players than in the general population, and then statistical methods could be used to re-weigh and extrapolate. I would be wary of saying much about the non-gaming population using the followup survey, but that wouldn't be something you'd do anyway.

However, sample sizes in the hundreds might still be too low for reliable cluster analyss, depending on the number of variables.

Benoist

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 22049
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #38 on: December 15, 2010, 02:56:50 PM »
Quote from: RSDancey;426404
This was without question one of the most surprising results of the survey.  It doesn't segment.  And it's not central to the experience.  People talk about it until they're blue in the face, but what actually happened is that when a virtual game experience came along where most people play alone and can't see (and often can't hear) their companions, well, they had no problem whatsoever embracing it.

The physical aspects of gaming are vastly over-rated.  In fact, my pet theory is that they're actually a band-aid on how challenging the hobby is to engage with.  Many people who might have given it up in frustration or disappointment kept playing because they just liked hanging out with their friends.  But when a better format came along, they switched, and found other ways to socialize.  Anyone who thinks that social contact is a unique value proposition of tabletop games has to question why people's actual behavior doesn't seem to back that up.

In fact, the MMO network is actually much more focused on community than the TRPG audience.  TRPG networks rarely extend to more than a dozen people or so (but there are many links to other networks).  MMO networks rarely have less than a hundred.  In EVE, there are multi-thousand person organizations.  This sense of larger community is actually more social and more likely to produce off-line friendships than the tighter knit, smaller TRPG network.  Its extremely attractive to people with poor social skills but who crave social contact.  Plus, it's where the girls are.

BTW:  TRPG theorists are not the only ones to make this mistake.  The Poker community never thought on-line play would ever become significant; there's no way to use body language skills to deduce strategy, its easy to cheat, collusion is rampant, and "people like to see who they're playing with", etc.  Turns out, not so much - on-line play offers people a play-anywhere, play any time, easily trackable, anonymous, "don't have to go to a scary casino full of scary poker pros" experience that was a better fit for many people than live casino games ever were.
I'm kind of flabbergasted that it didn't occur to anyone that the type of socialization that exists in role playing games is not the same that exists amongst players of MMOs. EVEN if we consider these things to be equal/similar enough for people who have moved on to MMOs to not care about them, it still surprises me that it didn't occur to anyone that people who are choosing to stick with role playing actually do see a difference between the two, whether it is accurate or not.

It further puzzles me that someone would suggest that from there, the solution to the conundrum would be to apply an MMO logic to RPGs, discard its socialization aspects altogether, modify TRPGs mechanics as to make them more in line with a public familiar with MMOs, all the while ensuring that TRPGs would be put in direct competition with MMOs (instead of promoting them as a medium of their own), thus ensuring that TRPGs would LOSE the favor of BOTH people who chose to stick with them in the first place, AND people who have already moved on and are satisfied with their MMO experience and have no reason, whatsoever, to revert back to TRPGs when all things being equal, MMOs are just more convenient.

The logic of it all just baffles me.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2010, 02:59:13 PM by Benoist »

Omnifray

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • O
  • Posts: 1230
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #39 on: December 15, 2010, 02:57:43 PM »
Quote from: RandallS;426429
If I am reading this correctly, that's only 34% of the players (22% in the four named groups, 12% in the "center" group). What about the other 66% of players? Where do they fit in to the picture. I think this is especially important to know as from these numbers it looks like a large majority of players don't fit into the segments at all.


No it's 22% (of TRPGers) + 22% (of TRPGers) + 22% (of TRPGers) + 22% (of TRPGers) + 12% = 100% (of TRPGers)
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

Peregrin

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2807
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #40 on: December 15, 2010, 02:58:44 PM »
I'm curious, though, Mr. Dancey -- why the emphasis on MMOs, when home-console and portable sales still dwarf them in the Japanese and Western markets?  Isn't the fact that home-console/local multiplayer games are the new cultural gauges for social competence among males in Western society more of a threat to tabletop games than MMOs, which tend to attract a more dedicated "hardcore" market in the West?  Do you really think virtual worlds will outpace "traditional" video-games in the Western markets?

Quote from: Ben
The logic of it all just baffles me.

It's weird, but psychologically speaking, it works. It's just a matter of how the mind perceives things.
“In a way, the Lands of Dream are far more brutal than the worlds of most mainstream games. All of the games set there have a bittersweetness that I find much harder to take than the ridiculous adolescent posturing of so-called 'grittily realistic' games. So maybe one reason I like them as a setting is because they are far more like the real world: colourful, crazy, full of strange creatures and people, eternal and yet changing, deeply beautiful and sometimes profoundly bitter.”

arminius

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7270
    • http://ewilen.livejournal.com/
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #41 on: December 15, 2010, 02:59:18 PM »
Quote from: RandallS;426429
If I am reading this correctly, that's only 34% of the players (22% in the four named groups, 12% in the "center" group). What about the other 66% of players? Where do they fit in to the picture. I think this is especially important to know as from these numbers it looks like a large majority of players don't fit into the segments at all.


No, that was worded poorly. He means 22% fell into each of the four groups, and then 12% in the center group. I'm skeptical about the validity of that result (as I mentioned earlier in the thread), but at least it adds up to 100%.

arminius

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7270
    • http://ewilen.livejournal.com/
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #42 on: December 15, 2010, 03:00:40 PM »
Quote from: Omnifray;426432
I think they have extrapolated from the data that 6% of the 65,000 people initially surveyed play TRPGs... those 3,900 people may have been disproportionately represented in the post-screen study population who filled in the questionnaires?


Exactly, that seems to be what was done.

Omnifray

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • O
  • Posts: 1230
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #43 on: December 15, 2010, 03:12:40 PM »
Quote from: RSDancey;426404
This was without question one of the most surprising results of the survey.  It doesn't segment.  And it's not central to the experience.  People talk about it until they're blue in the face, but what actually happened is that when a virtual game experience came along where most people play alone and can't see (and often can't hear) their companions, well, they had no problem whatsoever embracing it.

The physical aspects of gaming are vastly over-rated.  In fact, my pet theory is that they're actually a band-aid on how challenging the hobby is to engage with.  Many people who might have given it up in frustration or disappointment kept playing because they just liked hanging out with their friends.  But when a better format came along, they switched, and found other ways to socialize.  Anyone who thinks that social contact is a unique value proposition of tabletop games has to question why people's actual behavior doesn't seem to back that up.

In fact, the MMO network is actually much more focused on community than the TRPG audience.  TRPG networks rarely extend to more than a dozen people or so (but there are many links to other networks).  MMO networks rarely have less than a hundred.  In EVE, there are multi-thousand person organizations.  This sense of larger community is actually more social and more likely to produce off-line friendships than the tighter knit, smaller TRPG network.  Its extremely attractive to people with poor social skills but who crave social contact.  Plus, it's where the girls are.

BTW:  TRPG theorists are not the only ones to make this mistake.  The Poker community never thought on-line play would ever become significant; there's no way to use body language skills to deduce strategy, its easy to cheat, collusion is rampant, and "people like to see who they're playing with", etc.  Turns out, not so much - on-line play offers people a play-anywhere, play any time, easily trackable, anonymous, "don't have to go to a scary casino full of scary poker pros" experience that was a better fit for many people than live casino games ever were.

Well, I dunno. I know plenty of people who play WoW and LARP, and plenty who play TRPGs and LARP, and plenty who do all three. A lot of them are young adults aged 18 to 25. A conurbation of 1 million people can easily support two specialist retailers with significant space devoted to RPGs. (Even in the age of Amazon etc.)

I mean, your hair falling on shoulders graphics and cloth interacting with environment graphics are amazing, but I would rather play monopoly with a bunch of mates than the most amazing online game ever.

Also, from Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0:-

One conclusion we draw from this data is that people who play electronic
games still find time to play TRPGs; it appears that these two pursuits are
ìcomplementaryî or ìnoncompetitiveî outside the scope of the macroeconomic
ìdisposable incomeî competition.


If that logic still holds true, WoW won't be stealing gamers. It may even be supplying them. And this fits my experience. I know gamers through MET-LARP who are avid WoW-players and who also play TRPGs. I know gamers through boffer LARP who are avid WoW-players. Most of them rate LARP highest as an experience, though I do know TRPGers who also LARP but rate TRPGs higher (I can't quite understand that, as LARPing is a lot of effort if you don't love it... I guess they play what's available, and a large LARP may be less likely to cancel on you at short notice or have small-group type issues). Or - are you saying that this finding is no longer valid because the electronic games now completely replace TRPGs because they are so much better than they were? (But my LARPer WoW-gamer friends rate LARP higher! - OK, by definition these people are people willing to go to the effort of LARPing, but still.)

This "play-anywhere, play any time, easily trackable, anonymous, 'don't have to go to a scary casino full of scary poker pros' experience" you mention - this is exactly what I was suggesting were advantages of online games, and yes they draw lots of people. But there is still room for people who want to play tabletop, I feel.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2010, 03:22:39 PM by Omnifray »
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

Benoist

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 22049
MMOs, Storygaming, and 3.x TRPGs
« Reply #44 on: December 15, 2010, 03:16:45 PM »
Quote from: Peregrin;426438
It's weird, but psychologically speaking, it works. It's just a matter of how the mind perceives things.
Maybe I could have been clearer, but I wasn't talking about the logic of people migrating from one medium to the other. It is what it is (assuming the data is correct in the first place, of course). I was thinking of the analysis of the data, what RPG designers chose to do with it. How TRPG design evolved from there. Read my post again.