FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION

Design Issues for Online Gaming

This section addresses some design issues peculiar to online games: the problems presented by players arriving or disappearing during play, the pros and cons of real­time versus turn-based play, things to consider when providing a chat feature, and a variety of issues regarding security and the prevention of cheating.

Arriving Players

Players can log on wanting to play your game at any time, and the game must be capable of dealing with them intelligently. In most noncomputer games, all the players must be present at the beginning of the match or it won't be fair. In Monopoly, for example, anyone who entered the game late would be at a significant disadvan - tage—the others would have already grabbed the best properties, and the game's built-in inflation would swiftly bankrupt newcomers.

The usual solution for this problem is to start new matches at frequent intervals and to have a waiting area, or lounge, where the players can hang around while they
wait for a new match to begin. In a game that can be played with any number of players, such as bingo, you can simply start a new match, say, every three minutes, and whoever is waiting may play. In games requiring a fixed number of players, such as bridge, you will need to establish a matchmaking service that allows them to form groups and to wait (more or less patiently) for enough players to join a par­ticular group; the game begins as soon as the required number of players arrives. The number of players needed for a game should be small, however, to minimize waiting times. Any game that requires more than about eight players risks alienat­ing players who do not want to wait.

In some games, players can join almost immediately without any disadvantage— poker, for instance. Each hand takes little time, and new players can join at the end of the current hand. Tournament play, of course, has a definite start, and play­ers cannot join after the game begins. For games of indefinite duration, such as persistent worlds, you can't do anything about the fact that some players possess advantages other players don't. The players who began the earliest and who devote the most time to play will always have an advantage (unless you allow players to purchase prebuilt characters for real money on eBay, but that just shifts the advan­tage from players who have the most time to players who have the most money). You can, however, prevent those advantages from spoiling the game for other players:

■ Get rid of the victory condition. Without winners and losers, an online enter­tainment ceases to be a game per se and becomes a different kind of amusement. The player focuses on her own achievements rather than on defeating all the other players. In this case, the old cliche becomes apt: It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. Persistent worlds, which are addressed later in the chapter, work on that basis.

■ Discourage competition between experienced players and newcomers. You

can measure the progress of your players and see to it that only those who are fairly matched come into direct conflict. Tournament chess uses a ranking system to do just that. A highly ranked player who beats a newcomer gets little or no reward for it. Mafia Wars only permits players with similar levels of experience to fight each other.

■ Be sure that direct competition is consensual. If experienced players do get the

chance to compete directly with newcomers, you should give the newcomers the option to refuse to play. No one should be forced to take part in an unfair competition.