Laralyn McWilliams
Creative Director, Free Realms SOE

Designing a Casual MMO

Casual game audience differences – play sessions, competition, distractions, skill level, tastes, genre preference.

Change the way you think. Keep focus on the players. Don’t base it on what you like or prefer, don’t rely on your own judgment over focus and usability. Question “the way things have to be”. You aren’t the target audience! Be able to speak with your audience’s voice, be the advocate for your target gamer. “What I think doesn’t matter”

Design theory / Examples / Hindsight. Would have been better off to have the theory > practice > results cycle during the development process itself.

Tour bus: drivers and passengers. Designers are drivers – plan the route, equip the bus, determine the cost, provide entertainment. All that control makes the driver feel important. But the passengers are in control. Their money, their time. Can talk about how bad the trip is. Enough unhappy or bored passengers will shut you down.

Identify the passengers > set guideposts > assess competition > clear the path > design the experience > head out!

Identify: Who is this game for? How do they spend money – pre-planned vs impulse, small vs large, convenience vs function vs vanity. What other games do they play (and what TV, talking about, etc.)? Maple Story – good example of the conv / func / vanity breakdown (same with Combat Arms).

Understanding! We feel normal but we’re not. We = Battlestar Galactica. Everyone Else = Desparate Housewives. Zandl Group (www.zandlgroup.com/hotsheet.html), iconoculture, intelligence group intell-group.com, look-look.com.

Free Realms = Primary 10-15 yrs, boys and girls equally. Secondary casuals + parents/family. Understand them and become their advocate. Bionic dog, but also the pink princess cat. Have enough options so that people feel welcome.

Set Guideposts. Short set of goals, check them with every decision. Include development goals.

Free Realms:
- virtual world for tweens and teens and casuals.
- Adventure + minigames + simulation + socialization.
- Quick to start
- Easy to understand
- Rewarding to play
- Never assumes based on age or gender

Key Design Decision: Wide variety of activities that are all option but all equally rewarding. Do what you want to do and feel like the game is made just for them.

FR interaction-reward cycle. Used as a tool to step through possibilities. Needs > Interactions > Rewards. Need for relationships, so NPC friends for those who can’t chat.

Assess Competition: Tons of free MMOs out there in every category. Similar landscapes, but also broad evaluation. Club Penguin, Runescape, Maple Story, Dungeon Runners, Habbo Hotel. Also: EQ, WoW, Animal Crossing, Viva Pinata, Cooking Mama, Puzzle Quest. Can get inspiration from anywhere if you look at mechanics separate from setting.

Clear the path. Look at your assumptions from the passenger’s POV. Analyze each feature, challenge every assumption. “In writing, you must kill your darlings” – William Faulkner. Is it fun? Is it essential? Sometimes improving means hiding it behind graphics or responsiveness tricks.

Design the experience. Disneyland – Disney is the best at controlling / insuring a great experience. Want people to take away memories, need to remind them of it. Design the entire experience. Plan for passenger + speak with passenger voice + from passenger POV = SCRUM user stories. User story is a passenger telling you what he expects out of his trip.

User Stories + Solution + Implementation = Game Design Doc. At the top of every doc!

Assumption > problems > user story > other games > solution > hindsight

Servers: character locked to a server, “play with friends on diff servers” “don’t want tech problems to stop me from playing”. Play on any server, any time. Should have done server transfer at launch. All languages + all servers = new problems. Need better server recommendation logic. Jumping to a friend may mean a long download.

Classes: Locked into class at character create. Don’t understand the choice when never played the game, and if it gets too boring having to make a whole new character. “try different classes to see what I like”. Solution: can unlock and play any class, any time. Too many choices! Job cool = investment = expectation that other jobs will be as robust. Mix of raising level cap and making new jobs. Putting job choice up front, stronger link between jobs and identity. Gleam and Gloam (good and evil) are important to give a sense of purpose.

Inventory: assumption that it is limited, have to earn/buy more, inventory tetris. Don’t like to throw away stuff! Solution = unlimited inventory. Buying is like going to Target = housewares, pets, automotives not just swords and potions. Single char inventory 2 MB and growing, before housing. Unwanted + can’t delete = oops. Adding limits, but much higher. Closet in the house to help players organize.

“The Fun”: MMOs about systems and rewards, not gameplay. Expect moment to moment fun. Have fun actually playing. – Puzzle Quest, Puzzle Pirates. Emphasize interactions and rewards equally. For each mini-game target a specific gender and age. Match 3 game, targeted to younger girls, content skinning for both genders. Mining = boys, Harvesting = girls, Sorting = both. Also, have a sense of humor! More fun if funny. Game developers are not normal, not as much fun as expected. 2D games really popular, 3d games too hard to play, need to make easier. Improving the camera. 3d exploration is a dealbreaker, should have been optional. Activities need to be clearly marked. All playstyles of all minigames need rewards and progression. Tower Defense playable for leaderboard status only, add rewards and it gets played a ton. Racing had no progression, once added = through the roof.

Players love making their own fun! Surprised at how popular parties were. Always a gathering at most popular places. Sometimes just want to hang out with crazy outfits.

Stats: MMO & RPGs have a lot of stats. Don’t want to use calculator to choose a pair of pants! Understand choices without stats. Very common assumption. There are a few stats, only use derived stats – so no STR, only damage at HP. Everything explicit. Separation of what you look like and what your stats are coming from (shard system). Power rating to make decision easier. Did need a little more depth (difference between high stat and low stat). Adding more between level 15 and 20. People want to fight in the hotdog suit! Should allow someone to be a Ninja Banana. Need to enhance high end wearables to be “walking leaderboard” status.

Look & Feel: High Fantasy is cool! No, it’s really not. It is for nerds. Don’t want to be embarrassed to talk about game. Want a character that looks like me. Same race and gender as player, 90%, for both boys and girls. FR has to be socially acceptable, appeal to the guy who beats up the kid who plays WoW. WoW != getting dates. Mix of real world and fantasy. Jeans, military helmet, car – or a wizard! Costume outfits vs Freestyle outfits. Costume = I’m a Ninja. Freestyle = regular clothes, mix and match. Need more clothing choices in character create. More bad-ass options for boys. Elaborate differences as progression rewards.

Progression: Leveling only through combat. What if I don’t want to fight? If you like crafting, it’s not as “important” as combat. Bejeweled! Want to be rewarded doing what I want to do, figure out what I like on my own. Very job levels up. Need more meaningful items! Non-combat jobs not as good. Need more consistency among jobs, no place to spend XP outside of combat. 5 million players, no one can get on any leaderboard, still working on this problem. Achivements coming online soon, that will be very significant. Figuring out how a Postman and a Ninja level up in a consistent world = Designer Hell. Carnival vibe, where everything is unrelated is a risk.

Sessions: Many hours to earn the best things, only fair to do same effort for same reward. Want to spend more money on the game, why can’t I do that? Session time a key part of that, people without time or too much time. Maple Story, Combat Arms, Runescape. 15-minute chunks, no dungeons in FR longer than 15 minutes. Frequent rewards, quit after 5 minutes and did something. Game changing items available in store. FR shipped too easy – younger boys think it is for babies (combat in particular). Re-itemizing all 30,000 items so that best gear is dropped not bought. Marketplace should buy things to help you get things more easily, not just buy them directly. More limited time items, those sell well. Prize wheel once a day, helps with short sessions.

The Open Road: How do you know if this will work? You don’t until you start trying it. Solutions lead to new problems – uber leaderboards, difficulty in shallow progression, dealing with hackers when all accounts are free, understanding unlimited inventory. Referee shirts, Enforcer character. Players learn what those mean, particularly kids. Enforcer can tell people to stop and that’s as effective as banning.

Satisfying both casual and dedicated players may be impossible. New stuff goes to which group? How do you balance so many things? Boots that were way overpowered, had to be nerfed, players flipped out. Un-nerfed it, but made new boots as the reward.

Design cycle: re-assess that entire set of processes. Who is actually playing? What is most important to the current players? Has the competition changed? Did we make wrong assumptions? Can we use data to refine or re-design? Did the changes we made improve the player’s experience? Postman changes, what did that actually modify in behaviors, purchasing, gameplay, job choice.

Stay focused on goals. Find creative solutions. Understand that solutions create new problems. Play the game in your head and look ahead for edge cases (encounter them in your head, not in the game). Evaluate each decision against your guideposts.

Design every system to be as flexible as you can! If you are terribly wrong, you can change it, and you ARE going to be wrong. Don’t argue when you can put something out there that allows you to take real data to make decisions. Be willing to cut anything, and to take risks. Kill it early if it will fail. Be willing to kill your darlings. Stay in touch with your audience!!