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When crafting community, little goes a long way

Eliot Lefebvre — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:00:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, Forums, Grouping, Opinion

Yes, that looks like a typo in the subject line and it ought to be "a little goes a long way." It isn't. Little itself goes a long way in making a community, as discussed in this recent post by Eric Heimburg. Speaking from his experiences both on Asheron's Call 2 as a producer and Aion as a player, his core contention is that smaller communities decrease anonymity and make politeness far more common for interactions among strangers.

One of the core reasons behind this is the question of reliance. The community of group-based games tends to be stonger than that of games where you can be almost wholly independent, since you rely upon others to work with you. By way of contrast, examine some of the behavior found in World of Warcraft's random dungeon tool, where you find yourself working with people whom you're statistically unlikely to ever see again.

One of the laments about solo-friendly games is the death of community, and while that's not altogether true, Heimburg's post certainly makes a number of compelling points. Well worth examining if you're interested in building a community or just in the ways groups develop.

When crafting community, little goes a long way originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MMOS X: How the MMOs and the iPhone can meet.

Mark Crump — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Opinion, Virtual worlds, MMOS X

MMOS X is a bi-weekly column dedicated solely to gaming on the Macintosh natively. "Running Boot Camp or Parallels" is not an option here. This column is for people who want to get the most out of their Mac gaming, as meager as it is.

Originally, this week's column was going to be a technical how-to, but a series of snafus -- not the least of which included me slapping my head and going, "You moron, combat logs changed after patch 2.4. That's why this new analyzer you are looking at is barfing on your Karazhan logs from February." However, my focus changed when, like many of the Faithful, I turned my attention to the West Monday to see what our Leader had to say.

Frankly, all I wanted Jobs to say was, "with iPhone 2.0, now you can sync iCal tasks to the iPhone." I didn't get that. Instead, I got a bunch of technical jargon that went over my head. Really, who did he think he was talking to, a bunch of developers or something? When a couple of game developers got up to show off their new iPhone apps, a light bulb went off for this week's late column.

Continue reading MMOS X: How the MMOs and the iPhone can meet.

MMOS X: How the MMOs and the iPhone can meet. originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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38 studios developers speak up again

Michael Zenke — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Business models, Culture, Interviews, MMO industry, New titles

Just a few days ago we noted the first part of an interview with Steve Danuser and Jason Roberts, the community gurus at stealth-development house 38 Studios. Now MMO news site Ten Ton Hammer has posted the second part of the interview, further expanding Danuser and Roberts' commentary on the games industry. Many of these statements are likely to sound very familiar to anyone regularly reading the site. Topics discussing include the benefits of lower system requirements, the dynamics between hardcore and casual players, and the cost/benefit ratio between first and third-party forums.

Their analysis of story in online games is equally interesting. The issue of players powering through story and quests to gain levels, Danuser offers, can be overcome by painting in 'broad strokes'. "You'll have to assume that most players won't catch the fine details of your story ... they're playing through the experience and seeing it unfold, that gives them a sense of "oh that was really cool because I saw this happen, I helped make that tower fall down" even if they don't get the fine details of it."

38 studios developers speak up again originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 23 May 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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38 Studios developers finally speak up

Chris Chester — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Business models, Culture, Interviews, MMO industry, New titles

Though it seems like we've been reporting on 38 Studios forever, we still know precious little about the Boston-area company that has attracted so much industry talent and generated so much buzz with little more than a code-name for their top-secret fantasy MMO. We got a little preview of the 38 Studios approach when Steve Danuser moderated a panel on building community at ION, and now another interview has bubbled to the surface to give us even more insight on the burgeoning developer juggernaut.

Steve Danuser and Jason Roberts sit down to explain (as vaguely as possible) their approach to the challenges of entering an ever-crowded MMO space. They riff about about building on the model developed by Everquest and seemingly perfected by World of Warcraft, working with a fan community before they've even announced their game, and their long-term hopes for community management and engagement. It's really no substitute for concrete information about Copernicus, but it seems like we're finally getting closer to the point where that sort of information is going to leak out.

38 Studios developers finally speak up originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 21 May 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Guildcafe merges with Uberguilds

Mike Schramm — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Economy, Guilds, MMO industry, Raiding

Guild site hosting is an interesting business-- on the one hand, it's really an ISP function, where you've got to keep the site up and running and make sure it has enough power to take on all that traffic. But on the other hand, it's also a community building venture-- it's your job to put the tools in place to keep guilds together and progressing in game. I have no idea what kind of money is going through it (from my experience, it's mostly an ad-based business-- you provide free hosting in exchange for ad views), but as online games get more and more popular, there's bound to be larger and larger companies coming out of the mix.

And here's two now-- Guildcafe has announced on their blog that they've acquired Uberguilds. Guildcafe, from the press release, is apparently going to handle that technical side of things, and Uberguilds, with their broad reach of the community, is going to act as the "Guildcafe Alliance," and use Guildcafe's application to connect guilds and players together.

I don't have a lot of experience with either (my WoW guild uses Guildportal, and while it's super ugly, it gets the job done connecting us out of game), but this could be the start of something big-- an ISP/application site combining with known community builders might be just what this "guild hosting" industry needs to become even more widespread.

[Via Virgin Worlds]

Guildcafe merges with Uberguilds originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 22 Nov 2007 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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