Adventures in the Invisible Tent
Here’s a tent.
It’s invisible. But it is. There. Walk forward into the space it occupies, you find yourself within the tent.
The tent only exists when one is within it. When outside, we see the world without the tent.
This article explores the implication of this uncanny art form on how we build and use virtual environments. It first explains why this invisible tent is considered to be a software bug. The article explores how our ability to accept the uncanny varies from person to person. It then suggests that the spatial, built, environment is far less important than the social structures that exist within them. This topic contains a lot of images. Read more of this article »
De-Analysing Blizzard’s Starcraft 2 Marketplace
Earlier in 2009, Blizzard announced a non-commercial World of Warcraft add-on policy, which caused much discussion. Today at BlizzCon, Rob Pardo (illustrated) introduced the Starcraft 2 Marketplace: A future (after the game’s launch) system that would allow independent development teams to create custom “premium maps” for the game, and make money from them. That’s precisely what World of Warcraft add-on developers cannot do. So what’s changed?
Why Create a Starcraft 2 Marketplace?
Pardo stated:
“If you create a really cool map, with all original content, that’s awesome, you can put it up onto the service [Battle.net], and actually make money on your map.”
Blizzard is prepared to share a “portion” of the revenue if you create your own Intellectual Property, and don’t simply re-use their property. Seems reasonable.
The SC2 Marketplace is intended to allow parts of the mod‘ community to evolve from amateurs to professionals. “Fan made” maps were acknowledged as an important way to keep Starcraft alive – over time, players shifted from Blizzard-made maps to fan-made maps. But maps (Pardo used Warcraft 3 as an example) still tend to use Blizzard’s game assets (such as art textures), because creating original content takes a lot of effort. And passion alone does not pay the bills. By allowing map authors to earn money from popular maps, those people would be able to fund the creation of their own, original game assets.
There’s a real sense that Blizzard lost the chance to nurture and (commercially) gain from innovations within “their game engine”. Rob Pardo again:
“The Tower Defense maps came out of the Warcraft 3 community. And now you see Tower Defense in the PlayStation store…”
Earlier in the day Stompalina tweeted about the similarity between Battle.net (Blizzard’s community platform) and Steam (Valve’s community platform). And she’s not wrong.
Both companies are unusual. They have both escaped from the traditional publisher-funded business model that underpins most major (non-casual/Flash) game development and distribution. Valve’s Steam originally gained popularity from games like Half Life, but has now become a method of distributing games written by others – everyone from small college/”garage” projects, to mainstream titles, like Total War.
Valve is already ahead of Blizzard in constructing a social-gaming platform, even though Blizzard was there first, and should understand the media better (from developing World of Warcraft). So perhaps opening up Starcraft as a semi-commercial platform for third parties is a new strategy in that race?
Why Not Create a Marketplace in Other Games?
Competition with the wider gaming industry does not explain why Blizzard are so unwilling to adopt a similar approach within their other games. Some of us (and I include myself) would like to do this within World of Warcraft. I have previously demonstrated that WoW has a huge pool of talent among its players, and that pool of talent is increasingly reluctant to work within WoW because it has become afraid to make money. Something which we now all seem agree is required to support major (time-consuming) projects.
It is possible to create original IP within WoW. Technically this would be more difficult within a MMOG, because players that don’t buy your content, still need to interact with those that do. But there are creative methods of working round those limitations.
One possibility is that Starcraft 2 is a new product, which is politically (within Blizzard’s decision-making process) and technically (programmed to be supported from the outset) far easier to impose a new strategy on. And we might eventually see a more relaxed approach in Azeroth.
My fear is that World of Warcraft is being treated differently because its brand is to valuable at this stage in its life-cycle.
Shrewd observers will note that Blizzard have started “doing the Star Wars thing” with the WoW brand: The revenue directly from the game gradually becomes less important than all the merchandise and franchise opportunities. Soft drinks and Trading Card Games were just the beginning…
The problem for “fan-based” projects is:
- Franchise and license opportunities are not available to “the little guy”. They’re not the large businesses Blizzard look for.
- If you sell a license it has to be worth something. So a “fan project” cannot co-exist with a franchised project that it (often inadvertently) conflicts with.
There have been several examples over the last year where conflict has arisen. Unfortunately, I’m not able to publicly discuss all of them. Suffice to say the legal threats are very real: Suddenly one finds one’s self liable for lost earnings of the franchisee and Blizzard. That’s almost certainly more money than you have – few people are prepared to risk bankruptcy.
On the Road to Damascus
If Blizzard have had a change of heart, will anyone trust them? Sadly the answer is yes. Not least because individuals tend to confuse the company with its products. And the corpses of all those fallen add-on developers decay fast.
A marketplace doesn’t fit Blizzard’s culture – somewhat secretive, protective, and controlling of its work. But Blizzard seem very similar to Apple. And Apple have managed to sustain a very successful iPhone store, full of applications created by independant developers. If both parties benefit, these uncomfortable partnerships can thrive.
Perhaps there is hope after all?
Postscript
The following day, in an interview with DirectTV, Rob Pardo was asked this question directly: Why Blizzard are endorsing commercial SC2 mods, while they have just outlawed commercial WoW mods? His reply was:
“We’re not making money from the people that are doing third party things for WoW. It’s not really allowed to go out and make stuff around WoW without licensing it from us. It’s really us just protecting our Intellectual Property.”
Favorite Fishing Places
This article analyses the favourite fishing locations of World of Warcraft anglers. Both where and why.
The most popular single zone is the Grizzly Hills, with Azshara’s Bay of Storms and Wintergrasp in joint second place. Reasons are split into artistic (music, scenery), emotional (relaxation, memories), practical (fish caught, convenience), and social (companions, player interaction) themes. Overall, each theme has similar importance. The article discusses the apparent contardiction between desires for solitude, and to be surrounded by life.
This is the second of several topics that explore the reasons people fish in a virtual world, ultimately drawing parallels with fishing in the physical world. Read more of this article »
Where We Fish
This article analyses where players fish in the game World of Warcraft. It reveals the role of daily quests in shaping our fishing habits, demonstrates just how popular city-fishing is, and starts to reveal why we fish. This is (hopefully) the first in a series of articles that collectively examine why people fish in this massively multiplayer online game.
The map shows number of successful fishing casts (diameter of each circle), by area. Numbers are daily totals for all United States and European realms combined, based on a sample in July 2009. Click the map for a larger view.
A successful cast is one that does not catch a junk item, which might occur if the anglers’ skill is to low. There are 14 million successful casts each day, catching 16 million fish: Some casts catch more than 1 fish. In addition, there are 4.5 million unsuccessful casts (that catch a junk item). Unsuccessful casts are not shown on the map.
“Old Azeroth” refers to the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms (the pre-expansion game). Within Northrend (the main area shown on the map), casts into coastal waters are shown separately from “inland” casts in other zones.
In each area, the total number of casts is divided into 3 parts:
- Open Water (dark blue) – Casts into bodies of open water.
- Daily-Related (gold) – Casts while trying to complete a daily fishing quest. This includes all casts while trying to complete the quest, not just those that catch a quest fish.
- Pools (light blue) – Casts into schools of fish.
Northrend is the continent hosting the current game expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. The continent is home to higher-level (more veteran) players. Expect to find most fishing activity here – and we do: There are 9.3 million daily casts in Northrend – two thirds of all successful casts.
A sixth of all casts are related to the daily quests, in spite of the fact that there is just one such quest available each day (the area varies between realms, randomly each day). The Northrend fishing quests are the most popular quests in the game – completed by over 300,000 characters each day. No, really – at least before patch 3.2 was launched, which made Heroic dungeons popular again. Anglers’ might be motivated by the additional reward. Or this might suggest a far greater need to guide players. Either way, it raises some questions, such as, why is there just one fishing quest per day in the current game expansion?
Ignoring daily quest-related fishing, the most popular single location is Dalaran’s Eventide Fountain, with 1.4 million casts per day – equivalent to 1 person on each realm fishing there for 12 hours each day. The irony is that Dalaran’s Eventide Fountain is also one of the smallest body of water in the entire game. Cities account for a third of all casts – Dalaran is not the only popular city. At least half of the “Old Azeroth (Inland)” casts are casts in the waters of major cities (such as Stormwind or Orgrimmar).
So, half of all fishing activity is either directed by quests, or occurs in cities. Training (cooking and/or fishing skills) is also an important reason to fish, although it is harder to estimate how important.
Pool fishing is normally the fastest way to catch “valuable” fish. Yet only 17% of casts are from pools. Even if we look at areas with no quests and desirable “Northrend” fish, like the Grizzly Hills, half of all casts are still in open water. This isn’t the only example that suggests that anglers really are quite lazy, and don’t want to much hassle when fishing.
The remainder of this article explores some of these issues in more detail, using information about where we fish to start to explain why we fish. It also describes the method behind the numbers, with a technical appendix containing data. Read more of this article »
De-Analysing Blizzard’s Add-On Policy
Blizzard Entertainment’s new add-on policy has been discussed by everyone from Lum to Slashdot. The number of developers directly affected by the change is small, since only a few add-ons are popular enough to be considered commercial ventures. The policy is more significant because it changes a lot of established conventions, and goes to the heart of how Blizzard embraces (or increasingly, shuns) the talent within its player community. This article is an attempt to analyse the real motivations behind the policy, and highlight the apparent contradiction in policy between in-game add-ons and web-based services. Read more of this article »
Exploration is Dead. Long Live Exploration!
Something happened at the start of July 2008 that only happens once every 2 years. For a brief period, everything about the world was not public knowledge. A handful of people worked day and night to fill this chasm of information. To document everything that was suddenly new and uncertain. Meanwhile the world filled up with hardened veterans, many of whom seem to struggle with, well, everything:
“How do I get to Northrend?” – Well, perhaps that new harbour or zeppelin tower that’s been built might give you a clue?
“Where’s Dalaran?” – Did you try riding to the end of the road and then looking up to see what’s blocking out the sun? (Dalaran is pictured right.)
The world is, of course, the World of Warcraft. And the 2-yearly occasion is the start of public testing of the latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King: The only time a significant proportion of the game world changes.
What’s alarming is that these questions are not from new, inexperienced players. These are from people that have already played the existing game for months or years. They clearly want to know, but seem to have lost the basic ability to explore the game world themselves.
This article explores the concept of “exploration”, and tries to explain how one of the most complex virtual worlds ever created has become popular among players that are not natural explorers. Read more of this article »
Frostmourne Cavern
This movie records one of the many lore-related events in World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. It’s a vision of Arthas and Muradin Bronzebeard discovering the sword, and in doing so, changing the “world” forever. The event is part of a single-player quest in Northrend, the expansion’s new continent. Previously events like this were found at the end of dungeons so hard that most players never saw them.
The aim of the game is changing. Previously the aim for a lot of players was to get to “the end”: To obtain the highest possible level, at which point they could embark on challenging group dungeons or player-vs-player battles. But Northrend is full of reasons to play the game in the middle. Not just this. There is a lot of high quality, fun, even inventive content coming with the new expansion. From aircraft combat and mass-slaughter shoot-em ups, to peace, love and harmony: Saving baby murlocs is enough to bring a tear to the eye, which is quite an achievement for any game.
