"The skill" and games

Yesterday's point was that permanent games must derive their fun value from challenging and honing "the skill". One time games can exploration based. Of course all games can be spice up with other sources of fun, but the main source must be honing a skill. We expect the players to play thousands of hours with their game and exploring won't last that long, other sources are simply beaten by competing non-games (like Facebook for social fun).

Now let's list the skills and see what kind of games can focus them. All skills can be sources of good games, but of different types:

• Physical strength and endurace: these skills were obviously useful for our prehistoric ancestors and for a lesser extent to us too. The genes that rewarded challenging these skills obviously increased survival chance, therefore spread. Animal cubs, long before the humans played wrestling to prepare for the hunt that will get them food as adults. Playing games challenging strength and endurace are obviously fun, that's why the countless sports exist. Unfortunately computer games have little place here with the current hardware.
• Dexterity, reaction time, hand-eye coordination: the usefulness of these skills are also straightforward, and genes that rewarded these activities with fun spread. There are countless computer games with limited content that exist for decades and still considered fun, pac-man is the most ancient example. Starcraft, HL Counterstrike are much more "recent" games, but still decades old. Yet they show no sign of "burning out".
• Thinking: I wouldn't separate intelligence from knowledge here, since we use while thinking about a problem. The fun from figuring something out, the "Euréka!" feeling, is well known. Chess, majong, go and similar games with very limited content are played for centuries because they reward using and honing the thinking skill.
• Social skills: the ability to get information from others and get them to cooperate with you, help you (and don't harm you). Obviously useful and gives the good feeling of power. Don't mix it with being social, the fun coming from friendship. EVE online, which is mostly about politics, spying, manipulation and such is running constantly, despite the computer games limit the social skills greatly by allowing only text or voice at best.
• "Work ethic", "hamstering", "completionalism": I don't have a good name for this skill, but I'm completely sure it exists. The lack of it provides the lazy bum, and we all know the good feeling of  "Well done!". The ancient hunter who went out hunting when he wasn't hungry had better chance of survival than the guy who started hunting when he was starving. The guy who felt fun from watching his pot filling up with beans had much better chances during winter than the guy who foraged just for today. We are descendants of hard working people and we inherited the genes that give the fun feeling when we see our stockpiles filling. The traditional MMO use this form of fun.
• "children skills": these skills are developed by children and every healthy adult has capped them. Hide and seek practices spatial awareness. Figuring out that Johnny can be behind a tree, but can't be behind a brick (as the brick is smaller than him) is a challenge for a small kid, but not for an adult. Obviously mainstream games can't aim on children skills.

You can design a game to any of these. However you shall focus on one. On the one hand people have different priorities on the forms and any kind of mixture would now and then force people to do a different form of activity. This is the infamous "I won't play a bad game until max level just to have fun later" problem. The game that focus on one form of skill will always provide fun to the player who want to experience the fun of honing his skill. If he gets tired or want to focus on another skill, he will not play for some time. But he is never ever annoyed by the game. The game that mixes two skills will fail because it's too X for one player and too Y for another. You can never hear a chess player whining that chess is too "thinky". He want to play on a thinking game or he wouldn't play chess at all.

The other problem with mixture is difficulty: the game must be just in the right difficulty for every player. If it's too easy, it's boring, if it's too hard, you learn nothing. You experience flow when the task is on your limits, but still doable. You might noticed that most long-living games are PvP. It's simply because in ladder PvP the difficulty is auto-adjusting. Every time you win, you get higher and face stronger opponents, every time you lose you get weaker opponents, you always oscillate around your limits. A PvE game with one flat difficulty is good for very few players. It's too hard or too easy for the vast majority. The solution is either multiple difficulty settings or gradually harder levels. In Tetris, which is a dexterity game (you have to recognize shapes in 3D and move fast accordingly), players are "stuck" on one level (someone on #5, other on #15) and have to practice on that level to improve.

You can easily see that MMOs, where you play the same match for years can only work with the "hard working" skill. You gather more and more resources, progress. In a dexterity game there is nothing you carry over, besides the skill itself. Series of short matches serves that much better.

Now let's analyze the glorious rise and then the shameful stagnation and fall of WoW. Vanilla WoW was a pure "hard working" game. Your progress depended on how much and how effectively you worked. There were action in the game, but due to the GCD and cast times, it demanded dexterity that vast majority of people easily had. Of course you had to understand the game, but for non-retards it wasn't a challenge. So you could concentrate on one form of skill: "hard working".

People completely wrongfully assume that WoW beaten EverQuest because it was "less grindy" or because it had smaller death penalty. No. It won because EverQuest had forced grouping, making the game mixed "hard working"-"social skills". WoW was pure "hard working" until the endgame, where raid organization needed social skills which did not belong to the game. No wonder everyone referred it as "the organizational nightmare".

To reach "more casual" players WoW allowed new players to "catch up", devaluing the previous work of the players. Remember "working" skill is not mindless slaving. It's about effective creation of value. If the most effective way to get an item is to not log in for 2 months and then get it for free, players will not log in. Casual players existed and were happy in Vanilla: they did the same as the hardcores, just on a lower level: gathered resources, progressed. They did not mind about their less progressed state more than the local team soccer player for not reaching World Championship. The gear resets took away the "hamstering fun" of the casual just as much as the HC. He was happy with and proud of his dungeon set and it was devalued too.

To make it worse, to make raiding accessible, but avoid total faceroll, the dance was introduced, making the game a dexterity one. Most of the current raiders are dexterity skilled, and they openly hate the leveling (which is still "hard working"). Raiding should exists as the test and trophy provider for the game. The better "hard worker" got better gear, and was rewarded by bosskills and boss trophies.

The good MMO raiding fits into the "hard working" scheme of MMOs: the performance both depend on the previous "hard work", and the raid itself needs accuracy, carefulness and concentration (but not intelligence or dexterity).