New Players in Virtual Spaces
An interview with Richard Bartle

Posted on December 30th, 2007

by Gamer-girl

Buy Designing Virtual Worlds here

Photo courtesy of Richard Bartle

Richard A. Bartle co-wrote the first virtual world, MUD, in 1978; he has thus been at the forefront of the industry from its very inception. He divides his time equally between being an industry consultant and an academic (Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, UK). His 2003 book, Designing Virtual Worlds, is the standard text on the subject, and he is an influential writer on all aspects of virtual world design and development.

G-G: Thanks for granting us another interview! What are you up to these days?

Richard: Oh, much the same as before. I divide my professional time between teaching computer game design at the University of Essex and doing consultancy for virtual world developers. My leisure time is spent mainly playing and designing games.

G-G: Your specialty is naturally in virtual worlds. In case anyone hasn't read your book, can you describe what that term refers to? Are there any other helpful terms that are often misunderstood or misused?

Richard: Hmm. Well the problem is, people are always trying to come up with new names for what's actually quite a narrow subject: persistent, shared virtual environments with and through which individuals can act and interact. No sooner has an umbrella term gained general currency than it's either appropriated by some sub-group or extended to some wider context.

What I mean by "virtual worlds" is exemplified by World of Warcraft, Second Life, Maple Story, Gemstone IV, Ultima Online, LambdaMOO, Club Penguin, MUD1 and several thousand other systems most of which neither you nor I have heard of. However, although people in the game-like worlds are fairly OK with such a definition, people in the social worlds tend to use "virtual world" to mean only those social worlds (Second Life et al), with the game-like worlds being called MMORPGs, MMOGs or MMOs.

Furthermore, some people who either want to make social worlds look distinct or to make their own pet project seem to be more than it is may lump game-like virtual worlds together with games that aren't virtual worlds at all, like first-person shooters played online, adding the MMO prefix to give a bunch of ever-more stupidly wacky acronyms (look up MMO in Wikipedia for a number of self-serving examples).

The situation is further complicated in that corporate types seem to regard the likes of Facebook and Myspace as "virtual worlds". They see no distinction between social web sites and social worlds, because hey, both as "social spaces", right? Augh! No! Not right! Facebook is no more a virtual world than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is Narnia.

At the moment, although "virtual world" isn't a great turn of phrase, it's nevertheless the best one we have; I'll continue using it until the next umbrella term comes along. If you don't like it, just macro replace it here with "things like WoW and SL" and that'll work.

G-G: How do you feel about the current state of virtual world development?

Richard: Miserable.

G-G: What would make you happier?

Richard: What would make me happier is if I were able to create my own large scale virtual worlds. However, all I get to do is comment on other people's designs and teach people to design. I'm good at both, and it pays the bills, but there are things I want to say through virtual worlds that can't be said any other way, and I'm frustrated at not being able to say them. That's why I'm miserable.

Lest I'm giving the impression that I resent money being made available to inexperienced designers who don't yet fully understand what it is they're designing, I'd like to stress that I don't. Everyone has to learn their craft somewhere, and we won't get new ideas unless new designers are there to provide them. Where I am disappointed is in the lack of fire in the bellies of designers; they have a glorious opportunity not only to shape virtual worlds but to shape the real world through their actions, yet they don't seem to understand the power they have. Too many are designing what they think people want them to design, rather than what they, themselves, need to design. They should trust to their own instincts more.

Hmm, that's a frustration thing rather than a miserable thing. I guess I'm just too impatient...

G-G: Every few years since Ultima Online, there is another hit MMO that seems it's hit the 'maximum' number of users and nobody could possibly do better. These days the favorite is World of Warcraft. Do you think the market is finally saturated, or will there be one that tops even WoW? Presumably a limit -does- exist...

Richard: Well obviously a limit does exist, because there's a finite number of people in the real world.

As for whether anything can do better than WoW, well there are already several virtual worlds that have more players. Most of these are social worlds, though, and as you said "MMO" I guess that indicates you just mean game-like worlds. Even so, there are some in the Far East that probably have more players than WoW, although it's hard to tell because of differing business models.

G-G: Where do you think virtual worlds are headed over the next few years?

Richard: The bigger worlds will become even more anodyne than they are at the moment, as the preponderance of child-oriented social worlds takes its toll. However, new tools for creating smaller virtual worlds will come on stream, enabling people to build worlds of their own; when that happens, we can expect to see a flood of creativity, with virtual worlds able to become fun once more.

G-G: I was hoping to talk to you today about newbies. Although I wasn't there to experience the very first virtual worlds, I assume their original designs weren't as accomodating as they are now. Did MUD change at all over time to better welcome new players? If so, how?

Richard: It depends what you mean by "accommodating". If you mean they didn't wrap newbies in bushed cotton and feed them sweet marshmallows on silver spoons, then yes, they weren't so accommodating. They were, however, more immediately fun.

Smaller virtual worlds have an easier time of welcoming newbies than large-scale ones, because there are more admins per newbie so you can deal with them as individuals. That said, yes, I did improve the newbie experience for MUD2, mainly by adding more help and a series of (very popular and successful) automated tours.

G-G: What unique challenges do developers face when considering newbies in virtual spaces?

Richard: So, there are usually two kinds of newbie:
1) People who are new to all virtual worlds.
2) People who are new to this particular virtual world.

Of this, 1) are the best because people always adore the first virtual world they get into, and judge all others in the light of their experience there. They are loyal, and they will bring in their friends. They're a joy to have as players, too. Unfortunately, they're also very hard to come by - there are fewer and fewer seams to be mined.

Most newbies are of type 2). They played some other virtual world in the past, they like the look of yours enough to try it but still want it to be exactly the same as their first love, and they'll go to the next big shiny if you can't hook them. If you spent a lot of advertising money to attract them from other virtual worlds, you've got them for just as long as someone doesn't outspend you (because, by definition, these are people whose play can be bought).

Right now, new products are aiming more and more to get virtual world virgins, because of the loyalty problems inherent in trying to lure players from existing virtual worlds. Where can they find them, though? Well, the hot spot at the moment is the casual market, but this means designers have to make their worlds less intense, less conflicting, and less of what makes them special in the first place. Furthermore, because these newbies then judge all virtual worlds to be like this, it means the worlds they play next will also have to be similarly devoid of any real sense of immersion.

This is one reason I'm not at all happy at the way virtual worlds are being pitched at children - they're going to think all virtual worlds are (and, worse, should be) like what they play, and we could end up with a future made of weak, wishy-washy, adventure-free, aweless virtual worlds that only exist to sell virtual objects to increasingly cynical players.

However, I'm not entirely pessimistic, in that I see a new kind of newbie emerging:

3) Lapsed players.

EverQuest managed to sell well over a million boxes in computer game stores, but they never had a million subscribers. People came, they dipped their toes in the water, they didn't like the temperature, and they left. They liked the idea of virtual worlds, but not the execution in EverQuest. I have a very strong suspicion that a good many of those lapsed EQ players signed up for WoW, and brought along friends and family, too.

The situation with Second Life is even more pronounced: as of the time I'm writing this, 719,336 people have played it in the past 30 days out of 11,675,693 who have played it in total. What that's saying is that there are between 10 and 11 million people who were intrigued enough by the thought of virtual worlds to give SL a try, but who didn't think it was for them. However, if some new virtual world came along that took out what they didn't like and gave them more of what they did like, then I'd expect a large percentage of those people to give it a whirl.

WoW's big innovation was a reversion to allowing solo play, which EQ had dropped (earlier textual worlds had featured it) in the belief that if people were bound to groups they were less likely to quit; this was true, but people who couldn't get into a group outnumbered them and also quit. Who knows what the follow-up to SL will fix that will pull in all those ex-SL players who want to play a virtual worlds, just not SL?

G-G: What is the best way to approach the design problem of welcoming new players to a virtual world?

Richard: Design problem? Who says it's a problem? It's not actually all that hard to welcome players into a virtual world. The hard part is getting them through the door so you can talk to them at all. Basically, all you have to do is bear in mind who your prospective players are, understand that they're not all the same, and it all flows from there. Note that "welcome" doesn't necessarily mean giving them a hug and a cup of tea, it depends on the genre: being welcomed into a Fantasy world would be different to being welcomed into an Escape from Colditz world, for example.

That said, plenty of virtual worlds don't seem to get it...

G-G: Do you have any virtual worlds you could point to as being leaders in this area?

Richard: Most are serviceable rather than excellent, as they tend to regard their players as all needing the same things. Yes, most people probably do want to get playing as soon as possible, but a significant number want to invest more time in preparation before they set foot through the door. Yes, ease of use is key, but that doesn't mean you can't have different, equally-easy ways to do things available.

If you'd have asked me for virtual worlds that are leaders in having poor welcomes for newbies, that would have been much easier! Yes, Second Life, I'm talking about you...

G-G: Finally, do you have any interesting ideas for new virtual worlds (or their development) you can share with us?

Richard: I have hundreds of ideas! My main concern isn't the lack of new ideas so much as the wholesale disregard for old ideas that we see so often these days. Too few designers know what it is they're designing. I don't mind people disregarding old ideas if they know about them and have reasons for dumping them; I do mind when people are looking for solutions to problems that only arose because someone in the past threw out something they didn't like without realising it would lead to the problem.

Example: if you have a game-like world with levels and experience points and stuff, and your character loses a fight, should you also lose some experience points? The designer who asks the question will weigh up notions of speed of advancement, class balance, sense of achievement, player expectations, consequences for the elder game, and so on. They will basically have to decide whether they want players to value the levelling game or the elder (usually raiding) game most. That's their call.

Blizzard thought about it, and went with the no-XP penalty approach. Anyone with enough time to reach the highest level will indeed reach that level. If they'd penalised character death with XP loss in addition to a corpse run time penalty and repair costs, then it would have been possible for players to reach a plateau, in which they gained XP at roughly the same rate that they lost it, which occasionally happened in EverQuest (WoW's inspiration).

Now suppose 5 years later some new designer comes along who grew up playing WoW, but who dislikes its double-gameplay model and wishes to remove the raiding game for their new, purer WoW++. What's going to happen is that after a few months the characters are going to be bunched up at the highest level. What's the new designer going to do? Well if they knew why the characters were bunching up in the first place (no XP penalty for fight losses) then they'd know that was a possible solution; they might not want to run with it, but they'd know it was available. If they knew of even earlier solutions, such as remorting from the old text MUD days, they'd have more weapons in their armoury to solve the problem.

If they went so far as to look at the underlying theories as to why people play virtual worlds, they may even decide that it's not a problem so much as an inevitable and desirable consequence, and celebrate the end of every player's game rather than attempt to extend it indefinitely. The point is, the more they understand why it is they're in the position they are now, the better able they are to decide how to address their situation. They can disregard all the accumulated wisdom if they like (how else is new wisdow ever arrived at?), but the more they know about what they're designing, the better their decisions are going to be. If you know there's a wheel, at least you have the choice as to whether to use it or reinvent it.

If you want me to say what virtual world I'd create if someone were to throw a $50m budget in my direction, I'd go for one based on the 1001 Nights universe.

G-G: And that's it! Thank you very much, again.

Richard: You're welcome.

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