OOCing around
I’m perpetually astonished by the general ignorance of the phenomenally successful Habbo Hotel in the US. Habbo’s got a real claim to be the biggest MMORPG in the world, with (last I heard) 6 million users in the trailing 30 days — given typical figures for the percentage of a userbase that isn’t as active as that, this may put it above WoW in terms of total users worldwide.
Many seem to dismiss it because “it isn’t a game” — even though it embeds numerous minigames. Many seem to disregard it because its peak concurrency isn’t that high — disregarding industry stats that show that social games tend to have far lower tie ratios than the MMORPGs do.
Now PlayNoEvil brings us word that Habbo Hotel in China will sell real items. Buy virtual flowers, and take receipt of a real bouquet the next day.
This is something that has been talked about for a long time, and it’s good to see it finally getting tried. I think it’s significant that it takes a social world to try doing this. The interesting thing about social worlds is how many of the taboos regarding alternate business models simply fade away when there is no single unifying theme or context in which the world is set. This opens the door for greater experimentation on many levels.
Years ago, on LegendMUD, I added a feature called the OOC Lounge. Basically, it was a command you could type, OOC, which stands for Out of Character. This command could only be issued when not in a fight and at certain locations in the game. It would teleport you to a special disconnected area designed for out of character interaction. Over the years, this place has gained a lot of features. There was a bar staffed by the Beatles. There was a flower shop with a variety of gifts you could buy and send through the mail system to other players, such as birthday cards, candy, or even lingerie. There was a costume shop that sold non-stat-affecting clothes for special events, such as wedding gowns. There was an auditorium used for public events, and a graveyard for Halloween stories.
This sort of segmented approach permitted things like a lecture series that ran for years, bringing in guest speakers (such as the estimable Dr Bartle!) or even just allowing users to get together and swap recipes. And of course, open forums on the future of the game were also critical to setting the tone for the world.
Today we see stuff like readings in Second Life, but by and large this crossover between the real world and the virtual is something that has seemed somewhat taboo in the game worlds. But we see the same impulse: player lunches and gatherings are rife, people enthusiastically pay steep prices to attend conventions, and of course, the real life ties that manifest in forums are evidence of how much real life intrudes.
We should expect more, not less, of the real world manifesting in the virtual worlds, and we should expect that many of these eruptions will take place via commercial channels. Of course, the more crassly commercial they are, the more they will be rejected by the segment of the audience that sees these worlds as places to escape to.
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Imagine a business publication for in-game commerce. That’s a really strange thought.
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I’m still expecting the lord-of-the-rings online to sell T-shirts like, “My brother went to Mordor, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”
OOC lounge – I understand the advantage of a “not in the world” place for chat, but why does it need to be accessed by a special command? Why not have it an in-world place that’s easy to get to using normal movement? (Such as a pub in a central city.)
You reached it via a command so that it was more easily accessible. It also reinforced the idea that the game world was In Character.
Legend didn’t have one central city, either.
I think Hobbo gets dismissed because it’s not “sexy” or “cool”. The graphics are about 2 generations old.
Most TinyMUDs I’ve been on have followed the exact same line of thinking. Basically, you have a multidimensional space of connected rooms. Now, when new players enter the game, they usually get dumped into the same area, but you don’t want to overwhelm newbies with the initial experience. Like most modern MMOGs, they get dropped into the same area with other newbies.
But old-timers looking to socialize want a common place to meet other players, yet with the world so big, people could be anywhere. One of the first places created in the original TinyMUD was “The Rec Room”, a place not far from the beginning area which could be easily reached if you just wanted to go socialize with friends you met online rather than “play the game” by exploring other rooms or solving puzzles or whatever. Islandia developed the same thing with The Tree House, and often these places got connected via global commands so you could get to them easily from anywhere without having to remember exactly where they were in the “world” and tediously navigate to them.
But I believe it’s a well-known thing in social grouping that once you reach a certain size, all those people who come together to share interests start to sub-divide, as a certain critical mass is reached of sub-interests that aren’t shared by the whole. And so most modern MUDs actually have a variety of different hangouts, each catering to its own particular interest or social group, much like how USENET also fragmented into different discussion groups. There are usually a couple that get the most traffic, and also serve as a sort-of “general” hangout as well, but there’s a strong tendency once too many people congregate in a certain area that some people want to move away someplace “quieter” so they can talk with particular others without all the “spam” of everyone else’s chatter.
Bruce
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Lineage 2 has a segmented area that can be reached from the gatekeeper of any town called the “Monster Derby”. Almost any player of any level can reach the area easily, which, unfortunately has a meager 2 activities to take part in.
You can bet on a monster race (like horse racing, with MOBs), or you can go into the PvP arena. It doesn’t really convey a sense of being outside of the “game”, but that’s probably more of an issue with the way Lineage 2 is played. Not many people feel the need to socialize outside of their little clan/alliance community, and there are limited socializing features. Also this separated area is frequently used as a trade point in order to trade items/money between characters without actually having them travel to each other in the world.
Sometimes I wonder if in-game socialization has died or is dying. Sitting in a tavern (cantina even!) and chatting. But then I remember that not all games are designed to be played in cafe’s where you’re supposed to be literally socializing outside of the game as you play! Maybe that’s why we all use voice chat in L2 to compensate 😀
first?
oh my gooses.
Your name is Raphael!? WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU BEEN HIDING?
*dryly* It’s in the About Raph link. Third word. =P
What’s not to love about Habbo’s graphics?
Nvidia’s really done a number on the business, pushing its cards at the expense of alternatives to high-res graphics games.
There’s a lot to be said of games where graphics are simple, even abstract or primitive. Simple, black-outlined graphics in Crayola colors are attractive in their own way, for one. Games like UO had the advantage of allowing people to craft hot tubs for their homes out of planks, colored cloth, and cotton.
Even if you can’t tell what something is, (“Is that a piece of driftwood or a dead kangaroo?”) you start to fire people’s imaginations, if there are strong lines that the brain can take hold of and try to make sense of. If you go too high-res or try to scan things instead of providing the lines, on the other hand, it starts to all look like static, and your brain isn’t given enough cues to make any sense of it at all.
About who now?
Top left corner. =P