Timmy, Johnny, & Spike play MMOs

I am a big fan of Mark Rosewater's columns. Rosewater is the Lead Designer of Magic: the Gathering and has written a lot about game design, over ten years worth of weekly articles. Most of the articles deal with things specific to Magic design, but sometimes he does more general articles. One of the big tools for design he talks about are the psychographic profiles for Magic players. Essentially he breaks down the player base into reasons why people play. He also has named the three Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. The nice thing about these profiles is they can be easily applied to other games as complex as Magic, like MMOs.

"Timmy wants to experience something." At the heart of what drives a Timmy is the need for fun. Be it acting out the dream of being a space pirate, letting out one's inner LeeRoy Jenkins, or simply shooting the breeze with friends, Timmies are looking to enjoy the game. Things like efficiency, amount of Gold, or killboard stats are of secondary importance.

EVE online is a mixed bag for Timmies. Some of the most obvious things that Timmy would find fun, like the massive and incredible powerful Titan class ships, are incredibly time and resource intensive. For Titans it takes literally years to train into the ship, the pilot is stuck in the ship as he can't dock, and moving the ship around requires coordination with other players. But Timmies still have a place, even if it not in the most obvious locations. Many are social creatures and just enjoy hanging out with friends, regardless of the activity. Others are looking for the raw adrenaline rush of combat and engage anything that looks fun regardless of if thinks he can win or not. Still others are happy to sit in NPC corps because it lets them fly their space ship in relative safety.

"Johnny wants to express something." Johnnies tend to be the explorers and inventors. They are looking to show a piece of themselves through their actions in game. This expression ranges from off beat constructions, to in game art, to finding a new way to do a mission.

Johnnies have the most to do right after new content is released because there is new things to explore and tinker with. At this point old assumptions can be proven wrong and new ways of specing characters with new synergies emerge. This is not to say that Johnnies have nothing to do in-between patches, there are always things to test or self-imposed challenges to lay down. Often Johnnies are the players that stumble upon a new concept in their constant quest to carve out their niche in the game.

"Spike plays to prove something." Spikes are easily stereotyped as the jerks that just want to win. Though there are many different types of ways to quantify winning and each Spike picks a different one. Some go for raw killboard efficiency. Others use only the optimal way to run missions and accumulate resources. Finally some want to master the politics and control a large empire.

In many ways EVE Online is a game built for Spikes. The entire idea behind the game is ruthless competition in any arena a player wishes, be it combat, politics, or commerce. Often well know players will be Spikes exactly because spikes are out to prove something which goes hand in hand with fame.


This post was meant to be a brief overview of the player types and how they can be adapted to other settings. In the future I hope to go into detail on them more. In particular there is a dimension of leadership, apart from the political dominance, that it is not clear to me how it interacts with they types. The existence of groups and group activities is one of the big differences between MMOs and Magic. The closest analogy for Magic would be player groups testing the meta-game and selecting decks to complement each other.

Technological Change & Consumers

The background for this post is a new patch just came out in EVE Online which tweaked an old system. One of the Largest Alliances in game found a loophole and mass produced some rarer items with it. The details are in the first 3 posts of this thread:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=124145&find=unread

I have seen people say that this alliance, called the Goons, created ISK. This is patently false. They actually destroyed ISK by paying it to NPCs to get these items. The Goons did create Value. There are now many more of these formerly expensive items in game for players to use. People should be thanking the Goons for making these items easier to acquire.

Essentially what the Goons discovered was a new way to manufacture some items, akin to discovering a new technology. This makes the items cheaper for everyone to purchase and allows the Goons to make a nice profit underselling people using the old technology. Granted players who used to make a living off these items are harmed, but they can now shift into other endeavors and by the now cheaper items in the market instead of producing them.

Unfortunately, from the consumer's perspective anyway, CCP declared this method of creating items an exploit and have patched away the ability to do this. In essence destroying a more productive technology. While I am sure CCP has some other macro concerns, we should not forget the Noob who can now afford +4 implants because of the ingenuity of the Goons.

Value vs. ISK: The Macroeconomics of Fiat Money

Sorry for the dearth of posts, life got quite busy for me.

This post was motivated by a discussion in an EVE chat channel about how "destroying ships destroys ISK," which is patently false. The problem is people are conflating ISK with value as the statement "destroying ships destroys value" makes perfect sense. The reason people are making this conflation is to the player ISK and value are nearly the same, but to the developer these are vastly different notions.

To a player it is very easy to change back and forth between ISK and the assets which allows him to play the game. The thing is ISK is not actually used to accomplish playing EVE. In theory, players could simply barter for what they want and some alternate currency would probably develop. This happened in Diablo II with the Stone of Jordan as Gold is too common in the game. In this sense removing ISK from EVE would not remove any value from the game. (Slight caveot: ISK's value to EVE is smoothing transaction costs. But having one ISK more or one ISK less circulating doesn't hurt at the margin.)

Taking a more Macro perspective, it is clear that when a ship gets blown up no ISK is removed from the game. The player probably purchased the ship with ISK and definitely lost a valuable asset with its destruction, but the ISK he spent is still in game, in the hands of the player who sold the ship. It is this perspective that CCP must take as they are essentially the monetary authority of EVE and need to worry about inflation. This is a serious problem in MMOs as once ISK enters a player's hands, the only way to make it leave the system is through players conducting transactions with NPCs.

Note that the destruction of ships actually places strong inflationary pressures on the game. First a valuable asset is destroyed without a corresponding drop in money supply. Hence the ISK is chasing fewer goods. Second, when a player loses a ship, he then needs a new one to fly. This means that as more ships are blown up ISK is changing hands faster which increases its velocity. So ship destruction both decreases the total real value of assets in the game and increases velocity, which is worrying for the state of the economy if CCP keeps pushing PvP.

For the uninitiated ISK stands for Icelandic Króna InterStellar Kredits, the unit of currency in EVE Online.

WOW Promotions: Manifestations of the DBZ effect

An Anonymous recently posted a comment in The Dragon Ball Z effect. What follows is the comment:

Ok, so I wanted to know what people thought of the following thing.
So its obvious that the number of people playing WoW has dropped considerably in the last year or so, and blizzard has made a wide variety of attempts to improve the number of people playing. These attempts include playing for free up to level 20, commercials starring Chuck Norris, getting a free copy of Diablo 3 with a one year subscription to WoW. These are at least the ones that I've seen, and come to mind when I think about an aggressive advertising campaign to improve subscribers. But now there is a new one that I think is worth mentioning.
So the next "upgrade/promotion" I've seen is something called the scroll of resurrection which is when a player gets a super pimped out mount, in return for getting an inactive player (not a new player, but a player who has been inactive since march 4th). The returning player gets the following stuff
7 days of free game time, a optional free character move (to another server), a FREE upgrade to cataclysm (the most recent massive game update), and in my opinion the most interesting thing of all, is a free upgrade to boost a single character to level 80!
I'm curious to know what people think about this, having a character instantly moved to level 80. That seems...pretty crazy.

This is interesting. I had seen the free to 20 promotion. And it is true that WOW has lost a significant portion of its player base recently. The last promotion indicates that Blizzard thinks ex-players is a significant enough market to directly target it. I like the structure of the promotion as odds are good that some current player knows the person, either a real life friend or guildmate. Though I agree that a free level 80 character is very interesting. I think that it signals there is a barrier to entry of some sort. Whether it is new players getting discouraged and quitting or old players not wanting to grind up to max level with an older character or new class they want to try.

In any case this seems like the WOW monolith is starting to collapse under the weight of years of new content and playtime. I wonder if there will be another MMO that becomes such a market force? I doubt that one will given current MMO designs. In particular any game like WOW will suffer a similar fate. As I have indicated before, I think something new is needed for there to be a really enduring MMO.

Standard Conventions: Mouse Wheel Zooming

I was using Google maps today and kept having problems with the zoom functions. It became clear to me that EVE Online uses the exact opposite convention. For Google maps, forward is in and backward is out. EVE is the reverse. It is very disconcerting going from one to the other. Especially after having played EVE a bit too much and trained myself for the other convention. In looking at the timeline, EVE predates Google Maps, but is no where near as popular. So while I wish EVE would move to the industry standard, it is highly unlikely due to hysteresis. Yeah for learning the same thing two different ways.

Summoning the Calvo Faerie

I recently noticed that my main ammo type (Trauma Heavy Missiles) almost doubled in price in the past two weeks, from 44ISK to 77ISK. I knew that recently the price of Tritanium had risen to over 4ISK. (Think over $4 gas.) But the rise in material price has been going on for about 2 months and really just now the price of ammo is jumping. In thinking through this problem I stumbled upon a model of downwardly sticky prices that does not rely on adjustment costs and has more of a prisoner's dilemma feel.

In the setup there are many identical firms and consumers. The firms buy raw materials and convert them into finished products which the consumers buy and consume. The wrinkle is firms post sell orders with prices and quantity available. Consumers purchase from these orders and can buy partial quantities. Then if there is a sudden shock to the raw materials, one would expect that prices would immediately rise to be profit maximizing given the now higher replacement costs. The problem is if you are the only producer to adjust your price upward, you lose on sales until the current market orders expire. If there is a cash flow constraint on the producer side then having to wait on sales would harm current production, completely disrupting the firms profit flows. And because the firm doesn't see enough other firms changing their prices, the firm chooses not to adjust due to these disruptions.

It is true that their are implicitly costs of changing the price and production plan, but they are more part of market equilibrium than firm structure. The key components to this model are the structure of market orders and the credit constraints. Relaxing either would cause prices to adjust immediately. There also needs to be some assumptions on speculator, namely they are not big enough to affect the market, and probably a credit constraint on consumers as well. The other problem is I am not sure what market in the real world has this structure. Any ideas or critiques of the model?

Technological Change and Inflation in EVE

The latest patch for EVE Online added some new battlecruisers. The production of these new ships and modules for the ships has increased the demand for Tritanium. This is the basic mineral in the game and essentially every item is produced using it. The increased demand has caused the price of Tritanium to rise, which causes the price of everything else to rise in game. Essentially there is inflation caused by the resource requirements for a new technology.

The effect of the inflation is asymmetric across professions. Mining has become more profitable as its end product has a high demand, but there has been no shift in mining technology. Though the fixed cost of entering the profession has risen due to the general price rise. This increase in fixed cost is true for essentially all professions. Mission running, Wormholes, and complexes appear to be less profitable due to the increase in both fixed costs (ships, rigs, and modules) and variable costs (ammo). Further a negative wealth effect on these professions and PVPers decreases demand for the rewards of these professions. Finally, the bounty and mission rewards have not increased with the inflation, decreasing the lucrativeness of this profession.

For producers the effect is ambiguous, but probably positive. On the negative side, the production materials have a higher cost. Further there is a fixed cost to entering production of the new ships from the blueprints & research. But these new items have a high demand and, as ships take time to produce, the producers can discriminate on price by charging the early buyers more, forcing those with a lower valuation to wait.

Granted all of this is dis-equilibrium dynamics. Until the supply flow of ships matches the flow demand of ships there will be inflationary pressure. Once there is a large enough stock of these new ships, the market will be able to settle into a new equilibrium as there is no time-demand friction.

Bots and Mechanization

One part of MMOs that most players find boring is the repeated gathering of resources known as farming. The tasks are repetitive and very formulaic In most cases they could be done by a computer program, or bot. The innate tension of these tasks is resource farming tends to be central to the in game economies, like ore in EVE Online, but bots tend to be hated by players and against the game EULAs. Essentially the developers and fellow players are try to force people to do the routine tasks necessary for the economy to function even though there is an automated way to accomplish the same goal.

This situation is completely dual to the issues surrounding mechanization in the real world. Every time machines replace workers there are always those who object even though it increases the efficiency of the system as a whole. This frees up labor to be used in other ways and for a wider variety of goods to be produced. In the modern world the progress of mechanization tends not to be inhibited by governments because in the long run it improves the situation of everyone.

The question is why, even though these situations are dual, do games not use the real world solution. I think there are two reasons for this. The first is, unlike the real world, games are finite. There are no new products or technologies unless the developers add them. This limits the quantity and variety of activities available. Hence letting the players restrict this further by using bots is harmful as the rate of new activity innovation is slower than the real world as there are fewer people who can bring new things into the world. Second, when people play an MMO, they expect to be able to interact with other players. Having some avatars be computer programs when people are expecting humans harms the social aspect of the game. This is why many EULAs forbid bots even though the real world analogs are beneficial.

Specialization and Trade, the Opposite of DBZ

The recent post on Power Creep (The DBZ Effect) sparked a fair amount of discussion and it deserves to be revisited. One thing mentioned in the comments that I will discuss in much more detail later is the issue of why people play that Matt M brought up. This question is very important to whether power creep is a problem, but I can't adequately address it in this post.

The basic idea of power creep is as an MMO progresses and new content is added, the cap between new players and the top tier increases. This is entirely natural as veterans demand new content. The problem is this increases the barrier to entry of the game though increased time required to be able to play at the top level.

One solution is what Magic: the Gathering uses: restart the game every so often. (Actually this is what all games did before the advent of the MMO.) Using this there is no gap in availability of items or character level, but veteran experience still matters through play skills instead of in-game statistics. This model definitely is feasible as evidenced by the Diablo II ladder system which resets every so often. (FoolHardy1729) This solution does not work for all player types though. Consider someone like Matt M who has emotional investment in the character. Constantly making a new character takes some of the fun out of the game. Resetting the game is geared for players who are mostly interested in testing their mastery of the game.

Another solution is shortening the time between the beginning and end of the game in response to new content. This is the approach that WOW has taken. This solution has the benefit of players keeping their characters and new players take as long as veterans took to reach the top. There are three issues with this plan that I can see. The first is this sort of change is fairly invisible to the untrained eye (new player), so whether they will see that the barrier to entry has not changed is ambiguous. Though this is a minor quibble,. The people who will notice this change in speed are the veterans who could conceivable be annoyed that their effort is worth less due to the new system. The final problem is subtler, by packing everyone near the top through increased speed, there will be a bigger competition for any marginal improvement in statistics. Players want to stand above their piers even if only by a mole hill's amount. This solution exacerbates the already present phenomenon of exponential price increases for the same marginal stat bonus.

I think that the fundamental problem is players are essentially driven by their statistics, which are just a bunch of numbers. In essence players are looking for how to have the highest set of numbers. One way to combat this is to simply add new systems to the game. This way, the old and new players start on the same footing in the new system, which the old players still have their area which they dominate new players. This is analogous to specialization and creating new markets. Everyone has a level, or at least more level, playing field and new entrants can specialize in the new product, which the established players keep their power in the old market. The trick from the game design perspective is how to add a new system in a balanced manner so that it is relevant, but not so that everyone must switch or be completely left behind. The other concern is this solution does not preclude increasing the potency of players in old systems, so power creep could still enter. Though is gives added valves to mitigate its consequences.

The Enemy's Gate is Down

I was playing EVE last night and something about the way the ships fly started to bug me. They always reorient so that "down" is along the plane of orbit in the system. This is completely arbitrary. There is no reason in game reason to do this. (Also there are 2 possible "down" directions for any solar system using the convention of the game.) I guess the developers do it as people's instincts demand an up and down. Though this removes the possibility of pulling a Top Gun like maneuver, which is a shame.

A related issue in game is the camera has points it cant cross at the North and South poles of the ship. This is far more annoying if I am buzzing enemy ships from above or below I can smoothly keep the camera trained on them. I am not too familiar with the coding of games, but this seems like an artificial restriction and I wish it was removed.

The Dragon Ball Z effect

I was chatting with my roommate last night and he mentioned how the definition of a big number in WOW has changed. What was once considered an amazing amount of damage is now commonplace and the frontier of power is many orders of magnitude bigger. This is exactly like Dragon Ball Z. The power of the fighters starts low and keeps climbing to 9,000 and beyond.

This steady climb is required for the already invested player. Without it the game loses its appeal as there are no new mountains to climb. Imagine DBZ where Goku fights Vegeta over and over again. Bad example, I mean Goku and Piccolo fight Raditz repeatedly without any of the three getting stronger. It is not interesting as we already know the outcome. (Spoiler the Saiyans both die.) Clearly this power creep must exist for combat games to be interesting.

Now imagine you're a new player to an MMO that has been around for awhile. The gap between you and the top tier is so much bigger than it would have been if you had started earlier. There is a big feeling of uselessness because you can't affect the world the way the veterans can and it takes so long to reach the veterans' level. Look at Hercule in the Cell Saga. Completely useless and can't even process how powerful the Z fighters are.

This power creep increases the barrier to entry of new players, which is clearly detrimental to the health of a game. The question is then how do you balance the needs of veterans for new heights with beginners feeling the game is accessible?

NPCs Should not drop Gold

One problem any RPG style game has is inflation. I know that there are already many posts on this topic, but this seems like something games have a problem doing right. I think that one of the big culprits is the ability of players to create gold (or any other in-game currency), usually though killing NPC monsters. Granted, the game must introduce gold to the players in some manner so it can circulate. And there is usually NPCs who take gold out of circulation in exchange for items. But to have monsters drop gold, especially in large amounts, means that every player has access to his or her own private printing press in the form of monster mobs. If everybody could print dollars the massive inflationary outcome in the real world is clear, so why do developers let players do this in game?

Monsters dropping equipment, crafting materials, or other items players use is not an issue. This is because the price of these items should be player driven through trades or auctions houses. If one of these items is over farmed, its price will drop, sending the signal to stop farming it. The reverse happens if the price is high. This is standard market adjustment, which is what players expect.

The picky reader will point out that inflation and deflation are just changes in the price of money and should also be considered natural market phenomenon. The problem is developers, like government, set certain expectations on how currency should behave. In particular it should be a store of value, which inflation destroys. Hence allowing in-game inflation goes against the expectations for money established in the real world, which is a bad thing.

Monsters dropping gold stems mostly from tradition. We see it starting all the way back in the 8-bit era with Mario stepping on Goombas for coins. The trend even predates video games. In particular, I blame Dungeons & Dragons for this convention. This is ok in a world inhabited by a few Players run from on high by an omnipotent GM. But it really falls apart without constant active intervention on the developer's part to keep things balanced. This is infeasible when there are so many other minds trying to break the game. Hence, NPCs dropping gold is one tradition games should discard.