The document discusses the future of massively social online games (MSOGs). It notes that players want next-generation experiences beyond just new hardware. MSOGs are proposed as combining the social networks of online games with the massive scale of multiplayer online games. The document suggests MSOGs could help deepen ties between friends by designing the emotional spaces between players through game mechanics, player choices, and social activities. Cross-media experiences are also proposed by bridging games, social networks and other platforms.
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Massively Social Games: Next Generation Experiences
1. Massively
Social Games
Next Generation Experiences
MediaCatalyst
Thursday, March 5, 2009
2. Joe Lamantia
Strategist & Experience Architect
Active in User Experience & the Internet since 1996.
Speak and write on diverse topics inspired by work.
web: JoeLamantia.com
twitter: MoJoe
EuroIA 2008 Joe Lamantia 2
Thursday, March 5, 2009
3. Media Catalyst is a full service interactive agency
with ofices in Europe and North America
I
Amsterdam Malta New York Los Angeles
NY
Thursday, March 5, 2009
8. “Itʼs All a Game”
Games are real!
Games dominate the media horizon
Games address all ages audiences
Game mechanisms are standard experience elements
Games are ʻseriousʼ
Thursday, March 5, 2009
9. “Only Cartman
would have fun
in an amusement
park by himself.”
Matt Stone Trey Parker
Thursday, March 5, 2009
11. Digital = Social
Experiences are social
Social interactions are the source of experience value
New experience environments are primarily social
Networks are primary organizing structures
MediaCatalyst | 3
Thursday, March 5, 2009
12. Social
Social Network
MMOG
Multi-player On-line Game
Wii
Investment
Banking
Game
Thursday, March 5, 2009
17. Social Emotions Play
“...emotion comes from connecting friends,
the messages they pass, and the actions
they take.
Each of these are channels that carry and
amplify the emotions between people.”
Nicole Lazarro
Thursday, March 5, 2009
34. Individual
Experience
Game
Play
Social
Activities
Thursday, March 5, 2009
35. Collective Experiences
Community Experience
Game
• Identity
Play
Social
Activities
Community Experience
• History
Game
Play
Community Experience
Social
• Memory
Activities
Game
Play
Social
Activities
Community Experience
Game
Play
Community Experience
Social
Activities
Game
Play
Social
Activities
Thursday, March 5, 2009
36. Leader board
My Killzone (profile)
Tournaments
Thursday, March 5, 2009
37. Social
MSOG
Massively Social
Social Network On-line Game
MMOG
Multi-player On-line Game
Wii
Game
Thursday, March 5, 2009
38. Cross-media
“a media property, service,
story or experience distributed
across media platforms using a
variety of media forms.”
Gary Hayes
Thursday, March 5, 2009
39. Bridges
“...the story or service structure is
specifically authored to drive the audience
across media devices to continue the
journey.”
Gary Hayes
Thursday, March 5, 2009
40. Experiences
“an environment, much like a game, that
the participant/s ʻlivesʼ inside of, following
their own path and personalizing the
experience. ...co-creative collaborative
play”
Gary Hayes
Thursday, March 5, 2009
41. Experiences
Console On-line
Bridges KZ Game KZ.com
Extras
Pushed
ʻCross-medianessʼ
Thursday, March 5, 2009
What form will the next generation of interactive experiences take?
The exact nature of the future is always unknown. But now that everything is 'social', and games are a fully legitimate cultural phenomenon more profitable and more popular than Hollywood films, we can expect to see the emergence of experiences that combine aspects of games and social media in new ways.
One example of a hybrid experience that combines game elements and complex social interactions is the cross-media environment formed by the popular Killzone games and their companion site Killzone.com.
By design, the Killzone games and the Killzone.com site have co-evolved over time to interconnect on many levels. In the most recent version (planned for public release in early 2009), the game console and web site experiences work in concert to enhance gameplay with sophisticated social dynamics, and provide an active community destination that is 'synchronized' with events in the game in real time. The hybrid Killzone environment allows active game players and community members to move back and forth between game and web experiences, with simultaneous awareness of and connection to people and events in both settings.
Leading games researcher and designer Nicole Lazzaro calls these hybrid experiences 'Massively Social On-line Games'. In these types of interactive experiences, players build meaningful histories for individual characters and groups of all sizes through competitive and cooperative interactions that take place in the linked game and community contexts. Game mechanisms and social architecture elements are designed to encourage the accumulation of shared experiences, group identities, and collective histories. Over time, designers hope shared experiences will serve as the basis for a body of social memory.
This case study will follow the co-evolution of Killzone and Killzone.com, revisiting major business and design decisions in context, examining the changing nature of the community, and considering the lessons learned at each stage of the development of this early example of the next generation of massively social on-line game.
People love to get together and play games
Almost every culture has games.
Many games are only excuses to get people together: their value as experiences is social.
What about in the digital realm?
The value of these experiences is in the fun people have while playing them.
Sign me up for whatever this little guy is doing.
http://flickr.com/photos/lego_films/2532498129/
Greater revenue and attention share than cinema, TV, radio
Casual games, brain teasers, fashion, strategy, sports, action, etc…
Game interactions engage and satisfy in multiple contexts
Successful tools for education, insight, organization, action
Playing by yourself is not enough - people like to be social.
Southpark episode “Superfuntime” Eric Cartman inherits money and buys an amusement park, which he renames Cartman Land. He keeps for himself, refusing to allow anyone else into the park.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM9fXZbMlqU
Experiences - even for Cartman -
http://flickr.com/photos/eye2eye/50892860/
Digital includes identity, presence, history, interaction, group dynamics
Conversation, exchange, community, social memory, reputation
Social media, virtual worlds, MSO, life streams, microblogs, IM
Interactions and experiences shaped by linked & overlapping networks
Exchanges (information, services, goods, reputation) occur via marketplaces
Implications & Challenges
Brand, identity, reputation, etc. shaped by interactions in the social layer
Experience value determined by individuals
Experience value is influenced by networks
Communities define contexts and opportunities for social marketing
Each context is different: forums, social networks, virtual worlds, microblogs
Current generation of digital experiences addresses the “center” of the experience possibility space for combining social and game aspects.
With some exceptions...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mugley/2592160631/
Now that investment banking is dead, what kinds of experiences are next?
Someone must have ideas...
Nicole Lazarro
At XEODesign we hack the “what’s fun question from the player’s perspective by watching people’s faces as they play.
I have a degree from Stanford University, where I learned 3 things: Cognitive Psychology (how people think, learn, and remember), Documentary Filmmaking (how to get people to tell you their real stories), and I learned how to program a computer.
We’ve improved over 40MM PX for these clients since 1992 including Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover, three games in the Myst series, The Matrix Online, as well as usability testing for PlayFirst’s Diner Dash series.
What I am most known for here at conferences is XEODesign’s research on emotion and the fun of games.
We’ve identified over 30 emotions coming from the choices players make in games (i.e. not the art or AI)
The Fun Keys group these into 4 sets of emotions that link the emotions that players most like about games with the play styles that offer the choices gamers most enjoy.
It turns out that best selling games tend to offer 3 out of the 4 playstyles whereas their less successful imitators do not.
XEODesign’s model of the game mechs that create 30 player emotions
Next gen PX produces more of the 4 kinds of emotion by offering players 4 kinds of choice
Play styles that offer 4 kinds of choices players most enjoy
Focusing on only one kind of a fun produces a narrow response.
Opportunity for Mastery > Fiero
Hard Fun: Accomplishment and mastery, choice creates fiero
Spark Imagination > Curiosity
Easy Fun: Experimentation creativity imagination and goofing off, imagination creates curiosity
Ticket Relaxation < Values > Relaxation, smarter
Serious Fun: Change how feel, think, behave and to do real work, players value the ability to relax
Excuse to hang out w/friends Relationships> Amusement
People Fun: socialization and interaction with others, friendship builds social bonds
Fascinated by the viral nature of Facebook applications and the continued success of WOW I wanted to do a study of how each created engagement.
Two companies have designed in this world, both have made that choice and lead to different interactions
Both thrive and necessitate social interactions in this online space
In the end Social Media edges out Multiplayer Games by offering more choices that create emotion between people.
Social Media by it’s nature offers more People Fun.
However, Multiplayer Games, with their real time interaction and tight feedback loops may win the day once they figure out how to connect all a players friends and offer an open enough channel for players to create their own messages and games between players.
Neither Social Media nor Multiplayer Games does much to deepen ties between people once they are connected.
There is a world of possibilities for new interactions, especially if the emotions and the choices that create them are planned for and designed from the beginning of the project and not just tacked on at the end.
Social Media beats out this generation of Mulitplayer games by offering highly open systems for people to modify and add their own expression to.
Easy to discover shared interests and broadcast updates. Builds sense of proximity to outer circle. Build trust through photos and real life interaction.
Neither Social Media nor Multiplayer Games do much to deepen the ties between friends. People who are successful here have to get very creative with the technology.
What do these shifts toward social and game experience mean?
What is the next generation of interactive experiences?
How can we create these kinds of experiences?
XEODesign’s model of the game mechs that create 30 player emotions
Next gen PX produces more of the 4 kinds of emotion by offering players 4 kinds of choice
Play styles that offer 4 kinds of choices players most enjoy
Focusing on only one kind of a fun produces a narrow response.
Opportunity for Mastery > Fiero
Hard Fun: Accomplishment and mastery, choice creates fiero
Spark Imagination > Curiosity
Easy Fun: Experimentation creativity imagination and goofing off, imagination creates curiosity
Ticket Relaxation < Values > Relaxation, smarter
Serious Fun: Change how feel, think, behave and to do real work, players value the ability to relax
Excuse to hang out w/friends Relationships> Amusement
People Fun: socialization and interaction with others, friendship builds social bonds
Game experience supported by well defined architecture made up of structural elements
mechanics =
choices = interaction possibilities w/in game’s narrative & emotional space.
emotions = desired / intended user experience element
experience =
Emotions about choices made in the game. Several game features and mechanics enhance a player’s sense of Fiero and progress in the game.
Hard Fun is the perfect balance of player skill with game difficulty. If the game is too easy the player quits because they are bored. If the game is too hard players quit because they are too frustrated.
To get Fiero, the player must succeed just when they are on the verge of quitting. When they achieve at that point they experience a huge phase shift in the body from feeling very bad to feeling very good. This enhances the feelings of elation.
Fiero is Italian word for “Personal triumph over adversity.” We don’t have a word in English for it, or an emoticon. \\o/
What about for social emotions?
The 4 Fun Keys is a PX model for how games create the emotions people most like.
Today we’ll focus on the People Fun quadrant.
This is review for some of you. For those of you who are new to the concept I will condense the past 5 years into 7 mins
Game designers cannot design the emotions that players feel directly. Instead they design the mechanics that offer players choices (in the center of the diagram). It is in the making of these choices that players feel the emotions coming from gameplay. It is this new way of creating emotion that separates games from other media. What is most important here is designing the center to create emotion in at least 3 of the 4 quadrants.
Turns out that by watching people play there are over 30 emotions that come from the choices that players make in games. Designers who understand the relationship between their game mechanics and these emotions can craft these emotions as early as the concept stage rather than waiting for the end of design or even production where changes are harder to make.
At XEODesign we can track how players really react to the game in context.
We looked at what create emotion in players and mapped that to what they liked the most about games. There are seven emotions in the face and more in the body. We look at these emotions and match them to game mechanics to hack the “what’s fun?” problem from the player’s perspective. Watching emotions as people play we find that emotions are fluid and braided over time, one emotion blending into the next.
We’ve taken this emotional response analysis and developed player experience models or PX to map out the relationship between player and choice.
These models can be used to diagnose problems in the player experience and connect strong emotions with the game design and not leave them up to chance as we have here.
There isn’t a language for many of these emotions or how to create them. Where required I will use the language we use at XEO to describe how players react to their favorite parts of games.
Mapping this model back to Killzone as an experience
Repeated cycles of game play and social activity create a community experience for each individual player / community member
The cumulative and overlapping experiences of each individual sustain collective experiences: memory, history, identity.
These elements of the site experience support individual and collective identity, history, memory.
The combined Killzone experience supports the creation of both hard fun and people fun.
It is about the journey across devices and through forms and is most seen in branded entertainment, advertising, games and quest based forms such as Alternate Reality Games where there are a range of dependencies between the media and fragments there-of.
http://www.personalizemedia.com/cross-media-what-audiences-want/
The truest form of cross-media where the story or service structure is specifically authored to drive the audience across media devices to continue the journey. The content placed on the other platform is critical to staying in touch with the experience and the narrative bridges tease you towards investigating or moving to another media form/platform. Obvious examples include a TV show that ends suddenly and gives you a URL to explore more. It may be a SMS that teases and points you towards a live concert in a city square which then leads you to a TV show, then to a podcast then to subscription emails. The trigger, or bridge, is the critical component of this in motivating the cross-media action.
A very strong example of this is the 30 second Mitsubishi Superbowl 2004 TV ad which showed objects being thrown out of a truck in front of two trailing race cars. It paused on a cliff-hanging moment (as two cars were thrown out) and invited the audience to go to seewhathappens.com. Millions did.
http://www.personalizemedia.com/cross-media-what-audiences-want/
An aggregation of the first three levels this is also where the content is distributed across many platforms in a non-linear way and is producer ‘hands-off’- in that they have created an environment, much like a game, that the participant/s ‘lives’ inside of, following their own path and personalizing the experience. A cross-media 4.0 property is co-creative collaborative play with the audience across many devices, which evolves and grows a life of its own. Although likely to be heavily authored the cross-media triggers and invitations are part of the experience in terms of the audience creating their own bridges. The best examples of this are Alternate Reality Games and it incorporates elements of the first three levels but is likely to be dynamic in that producers will have to be constantly bridge building in response to where audiences are travelling.
http://www.personalizemedia.com/cross-media-what-audiences-want/