The Game Game

Altair

are you saying a game owner/staff is fine with being "the backup" game and missing out on attendance on events to another game because they're just happy people are having fun?

I agree with @krmbm because "being a backup game" is not how I view this scenario.

I want a game I run to be someone's "main game" if it is where they have fun, and it is what suits their needs and expectations as a player in terms of theme, frequency of RP, culture, so on and so forth. What I find more demoralizing as an admin is seeing people sticking around, forcing it, even though the game is obviously not working for them. People in this situation tend to complain, and it's not fun for anyone.

I don't want people to humor me or force themselves to stay on my game if it isn't what they need or want. I want a playerbase who is on board for what I'm doing and the way in which I want to do it. If in this scenario, people are off on Arx and not populating my events, then I do not want to "do something so I can get them to stop being over there and drag them back to my game." Which is functionally what would have to happen. I would sooner keep running the game I want to run and then, if I missed playing with the absent people, go roll a character on Arx with them and enjoy some RP where I'm not an admin.

It's very obvious when a player is not meshing with a game, and their unhappiness and frustration can become much more disruptive and tiring for me to witness than if they simply amicably packed up and found another game on which they were happier.

Also concur on the game opening zergrush not being healthy or indicative of a game's success at all in the long run. Stability and happy players who mesh with the game are, I think, better indicators of health than login numbers or 10-person events every day.

Ghost

@Altair said in The Game Game:

I don't want people to humor me or force themselves to stay on my game if it isn't what they need or want. I want a playerbase who is on board for what I'm doing and the way in which I want to do it. If in this scenario, people are off on Arx and not populating my events, then I do not want to "do something so I can get them to stop being over there and drag them back to my game." Which is functionally what would have to happen. I would sooner keep running the game I want to run and then, if I missed playing with the absent people, go roll a character on Arx with them and enjoy some RP where I'm not an admin.

Counterpoint:

No ones saying to keep players on a game despite not having fun, nor them feeling stuck populating events on a game they dont enjoy. I've seen that happen; it's unendurable. Ugh.

Competition isnt about keeping people that aren't quality or aren't having fun/are absent. Competition is about wanting the game to have:

A) The best/active role players with as few drama problems as possible
B) More fun/events than other places to keep the momentum going

You cannot run a game without players, no matter how great you think your ideas are, if they're choosing to spend their time somewhere else. On some level to maintain whatever playspace you're paying for, you have to be a "draw".

TBH I'm kinda getting the sense that some of this non-competitive talk is probably aversion to the word lest games OPENLY talk about competing with one another, because I have heard plenty of competitive talk on staff channels and in private. I've seen staff wanting to boot problem players to competing games to strengthen their own playerbase draw, staff looking at other games for headcount, we've seen drive-by BBPOSTS of competing games on boards, etc. Theres a whole unspoken etiquette on how to make sure posting an advert (advertisement, key word here) for WoD game B on WoD game A's MU.

In fact, I'm willing to bet some people that are like "ohhhh it's no competition" aren't also secretly like "those fuckers are stealing my playerbase" but STATING it as a competition looks ugly next to people who say it isnt, so it happens on the quiet.

It's a thing you're supposed to say, but the reality is that all these WoD games have always been in competition with each other for time and attention, whether they chose to view it as a competition publicly, privately, or not.

krmbm

@Ghost said in The Game Game:

TBH I'm kinda getting the sense that some of this non-competitive talk is probably aversion to the word lest games OPENLY talk about competing with one another

Well, you're wrong.

@Tat shut her game to new players for months because it was too popular.

@bear_necessities and I have had many, MANY conversations about the frustration of being a place people play because it was the only place TO play for a while.

So you can "kinda get the sense" that we're just trying to look like bigger people on MSB than we actually are (which, honestly, why would we bother)... or you can accept that some people run games without wanting them to be the #1 place to play, just A place to play that people hopefully enjoy.

Ganymede

@Ghost said in The Game Game:

Competition isn't about keeping people that aren't quality or aren't having fun/are absent. Competition is about wanting the game to have:

A) The best/active role players with as few drama problems as possible
B) More fun/events than other places to keep the momentum going

You're mixing a lot of aims here. This may be your definition of "competition," but it is not mine.

This is closer to my definition of "quality." A quality game has few drama problems, active players, and events to keep momentum going. You can have a number of quality games within the same genre/setting/system/whatever. Similarly, you can have multiple quality restaurants and bars on the same street within spitting distance.

My definition of "competition" is where there is a motivation or drive to be the best. To that end, while some MUSHes aim to be the best game out there it is not a universal aim. For example, I don't think Fate's Harvest ever wanted to be the best game in the WoD field, but it is a quality game that has a very steady group of participants. As another example, I don't think Apos aimed to create the best game out there, but Arx is undeniably a quality game that attracts a lot of people.

To be frank, I know of very few people who aim to have the best game out there, which means there's no competition. What I think designers want to build is a quality game and there is certainly room for as many of those as we, as a community, can support with our time.

You cannot run a game without players, no matter how great you think your ideas are, if they're choosing to spend their time somewhere else. On some level to maintain whatever playspace you're paying for, you have to be a "draw".

Being a "draw," though, isn't really about competition: it is about having something about your game that people enjoy. Further, whatever satisfaction a designer or operator derives from their playspace is individual and subjective. For example, Fate's Harvest is a small game, but this does not dissuade Anna from operating it; as another example, Tat's game was wildly successful but that's not what brought her satisfaction.

I see what you're getting at, but I disagree with the implications of what you are presenting as universal truths.

Tinuviel

@Ganymede said in The Game Game:

I see what you're getting at, but I disagree with the implications of what you are presenting as universal truths.

I need to keep a copy of this for any time @Ghost posts anything else.

Ghost

@krmbm said in The Game Game:

@Ghost said in The Game Game:

TBH I'm kinda getting the sense that some of this non-competitive talk is probably aversion to the word lest games OPENLY talk about competing with one another

Well, you're wrong.

@Tat shut her game to new players for months because it was too popular.

@bear_necessities and I have had many, MANY conversations about the frustration of being a place people play because it was the only place TO play for a while.

So you can "kinda get the sense" that we're just trying to look like bigger people on MSB than we actually are (which, honestly, why would we bother)... or you can accept that some people run games without wanting them to be the #1 place to play, just A place to play that people hopefully enjoy.

Allow me again to counterpoint.

No one would close off a game for being "too popular". Popularity is not the reason.

The reason a game would close its doors to new applications due to too many requests is because an influx in apps, population, or concepts would spread thin staff, bloat the game, risk of multitudes of non-quality players, and thus lower the quality to existing staffers and players. Everyone wants a thing to be popular and for people to be excited about it, but there comes a point where too much interest will affect the quality of the product.

I'd believe that the game being too popular was an applying factor in the reasons why the game closed off apps, but wasn't the true reason on the backend.

Misadventure

I guess I am dumb.

I see it this way: players have limited time to play. Skip the part where there are mental and participation efficiencies, there are limited hours.

People here bemoan it, they don't have enough time to play.

I don't think it's very direct competition usually, but that previously ignored mental grip on events and current enough participation and face time with folks do matter. This is why many folks don't divvy up 10% of their RP time to play at one more place.

Ghost

@Ganymede said in The Game Game:

This may be your definition of "competition," but it is not mine.

Hence why this conversation is a discussion and a sharing of opinions and not an election.

I think, too often, these conversations are taken as "who is right and who is wrong", but topics like "do games compete with each other?" is not a binary topic.

Ghost

@Tinuviel said in The Game Game:

@Ganymede said in The Game Game:

I see what you're getting at, but I disagree with the implications of what you are presenting as universal truths.

I need to keep a copy of this for any time @Ghost posts anything else.

Mildly constructive thread.

mietze

@Prototart oh yes, forgot about that! I would imagine it's similar with any game with FCs!

Ganymede

@Ghost said in The Game Game:

Popularity is not the reason.

Your attempt to distinguish "closing due to overpopularity" from "closing due to a lack of staff support" is yet another matter of semantics and attempt to move goalposts.

krmbm

@Ghost Thanks for explaining how I'm obviously wrong and/or lying about how I feel about my game and other open games. I'm much better informed now.

Ghost

@Ganymede said in The Game Game:

@Ghost said in The Game Game:

Popularity is not the reason.

Your attempt to distinguish "closing due to overpopularity" from "closing due to a lack of staff support" is yet another matter of semantics and attempt to move goalposts.

I didnt say "due to lack of staff support". I said "due to risks to quality of the existing game".

Can we get off this assumption that everything is about goals and/or goalposts? There was no "attempt" nor nefarious reasoning. It was a shared perspective, not that your own "you said it was about staff support" when I was talking about something different wasn't a "shifting on the goalposts" by itself.

This isn't an argument.

Ghost

<groan>

Okay, enjoy your echo chamber.

Sunny

The only time I really see a consistent use of 'competition' in the hobby in terms of these games is in problematic game runners. It's used as an excuse as to why their game is failing (this came up often with Serenity games), or when they are trying to ensure they are the only game in town (literally, in terms of Game of Thrones). It's an excuse bad game leadership makes when their game cannot stand on its own merits, and they need something to blame for their failure that isn't them.

Two games in the same genre aren't competition. People play multiple games, and someone's interest/investment in one can actually charge their batteries up to play on more. I guess maybe it's counter-intuitive, here -- the more fun people are having, the more fun they are likely to spread? So more than one game within a genre is absolutely, 100%, a positive gain for the other games within the genre.

Sunny

That isn't to say that it hasn't been looked at this way in the past; I was cautioned against creating Ashes because it would be competing with GraniteMUSH, and there was at least one game out there that you had to "certify" that you weren't playing on a different game to play there, so these things DID happen.

They just weren't done by the reasonable game runners who contribute quality things to the hobby.

bear_necessities

I agree with @krmbm. I really really really wish there were at least a few more games out there so all the pegs can find the right holes in which to insert themselves into.

bored

Weird thread. Obviously there's competition. There are finite players with finite time. Games advertise, innovate, and push unique code as competitive advantages. Games use mechanisms for competitive player retention that are well-studied in the professional game industry and abused by predatory mobile games. We have GOMO as a term, and with it many games I could recount, by name, that have been created explicitly with the goal of stealing a portion of an existing playerbase. People steal code, steal databases. People are right now discussing UH's trash fire as an opportunity to swoop in. Why not build that game before, if it's just about delivering your own vision?

What is any of this, if not competition?

Now, like anything, it can be healthy or not. Striving to create a good game that people will want to play on as much as other existing games is (at least partly) competitive but not inherently bad. Arguably, the UH situation demonstrates where lack of competition allows for stagnant design and poor behavior to flourish. But let's not fluff ourselves too hard here, pretending we're above these considerations.

Apos

So my opinion on this changed a good bit while running Arx. I think @Ghost and others feel that game runners are disingenuous when we say we don't feel in competition because people mostly just play one main game so clearly we must be competing for players. But that misunderstands how a ton of people play games, especially the people that just have one game at one time.

So MUSHes, as we all know, are all about storytelling. But people's engagement, what they are excited about, these are all cyclical- they go in periods where they are excited about it, where they burn out, where they need a change of pace, where they get excited about doing another story. Most games that don't account for that even have a life cycle themselves where they have new stories people get excited about, but don't deviate from that so people's interest wanders.

What happens with more games I find is people are just more likely to stick in the hobby and eventually return to one game or another as their interest waxes and wanes. This definitely is not true for everyone, but it's true for a lot of people. What more games are doing is usually not stealing players from one another, but giving them a place to get over burnout and stay in the hobby.

Altair

I don't really dispute that there can be a sense of competition between games, especially within the same genre. Yes, people have finite time and they will select certain games over others in order to spend their time upon. Yes, you need to be competitive in order to secure that attention, in the sense of competitive which means "offering a quality experience that makes people want to come play." I just don't know that being the most competitive game out there matters to the same degree to everyone out there making a game, which is probably where the disconnect in this thread is.

There are things I could do in order to make a game I run "the best game available," compared to other games, so that people will leave that game and come to mine. I don't think there is a staff corp out there that doesn't wonder "what can we do to be attractive and get people to come play here?"

But there is a balancing point there, at least for me. At some point it starts to run into compromising what I want the game to be about, thematically, and how I want it to run, in order to secure more players. And I know there have been multiple conversations on MSB about how more staff should hold firm to their personal visions and themes, and how trying to change your game around in order to make everyone happy is ultimately a losing proposition.

Ultimately we are all here to get to RP and play some games and I don't feel "more choices out there as to where and how to do that" is a negative. People should be able to move around naturally to games that jive with their particular interests at any given time, and on a personal level I just don't want to break my brain trying to capture and hold the attentions of people whose interests will naturally fluctuate over time.