Turtles All The Way Down

I'm certainly not the first to observe how effective the game-within-a-game design concept is for MMOG design. Seemingly mundane character interactions can be made more engaging by including a skill and learning element, effectively a mini-game.

The Age of Conan, currently in beta, takes this to the next level by starting each character within a private instanced area that leads into a low-level single character gaming experience. At the conclusion of the single character content a player will have achieved a basic level of competency with their new character in a game which aims to make player skill an important component of the combat system. For archetype or even class-specific skills this may be an important training period for the player as well as providing character advancement opportunities in a safe non-PvP environment.

The FAQ for Age of Conan indicates that the instanced introduction period is meant to last only about an hour of play time. Beyond that the single character game continues but interactions with other players via chat is allowed. There is discussion of allowing this "forced" single player mode to be skipped over in some fashion but no details or even developer commitment is given at this time.

I hadn't considered taking the game-within-a-game concept this far but I like the idea. For games that lend themselves well to a secluded introductory experience this may be a great alternative to free-for-all introductory newbie zones. A rich single player experience can provide a good feel for the game mechanics during a trial account period without exposing a new player to early PvP conflicts that may be a turn-off. Specifically for games where skipping the introduction does not create a significant penalty, a player that desires to jump right into the real game can choose to do so immediately even while playing on a trial account.

Gameplay Demo Mini-Games

Something that I've suggested in the past to a friend who works in the game industry is releasing free mini-games to introduce gameplay concepts to new players. This can be a pre-release and demo-like capability providing a sandboxed training area completely disassociated from the game servers if that is convenient or a fully network aware experience that provides some server load beta testing in addition to content testing while keeping game mechanics consistent between the mini-game and ongoing beta activities.

The specific suggestion I've made in the past is to offer a simple web-based game to introduce the crafting mechanics during early beta and get broad exposure to an audience happy to provide feedback. This could be a web-based front end to the existing game servers, think of it as a simplified game client for specific aspects of the game, which can provide for more seamless integration of changes made in the beta servers.

One problem with this method is that the feedback from an open beta is typically quite varied and the signal-to-noise ratio can be very low as compared to a more targeted closed beta. Regardless, I think getting community feedback early in the beta testing process is important and may lead to a net reduction in playability issues during later beta phases. These late beta playability issues compound the stress that occurs as the game nears release and I've seen horrible sweeping changes made at this stage cause damage that can take years to undo. Getting this feedback earlier in the development process may allow for more time to think about the issue - perhaps allowing time for introspection to determine if it is really an issue at all - and hopefully better choices will follow.