The MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) market is an interesting one. Unlike most other forms of media, MMOGs are a service rather than a consumable product.

A normal game has a very predictable life-cycle: development, launch, patching, possible expansions and finally product retirement. Most software follows the same pattern. You buy a game, or piece of software, you expect to get some use out of it, and ultimately expect to buy the next latest-and-greatest version of it in a few years.

In fact, it’s the life-cycle for almost everything on this planet that’s consumed… except for the service industry.

The service industry is the ‘golden egg’ of modern civilisation. It’s the defining trait that splits a secondary industry from a tertiary industry. It’s the difference between selling someone the materials to make a house, and being the person that maintains the house, keeping it shiny and new, and adding new features as they become available.

Now, the service industry isn’t new. It popped up sometime after the industrial revolution when someone realised that there’s an awful lot of money to be made in monthly retainers. Rather than giving a man fish, rent him a fishing pole at a reasonable price — there’s a lot more money to be made in the long run.

Not only is there more money to be made but loyalty is also instilled. If it comes to the stage where you finally have to upgrade your house, you’re almost certainly going to stick with the guys that have looked after your house for all those years. Heck, your house might have weird, proprietary additions — like a custom waste disposal, or a funky-shaped swimming pool –  that only these guys know how to maintain. They might not be cheap; but at least they get the job done… ish!

This brings me neatly onto Microsoft and Windows. Originally Windows was just another consumable software package. There were other competing operating systems, but in 1981 Microsoft secured a deal for its PC-DOS to be bundled with the new IBM PC. You know the rest of the story — the IBM PC shook the world, and Microsoft was along for the ride.

The sheer scale of the success of the IBM PC was unprecedented, and to capitalise on it, Windows was released in 1985 as a graphical addition to the already-predominant MS DOS. By 1990, Windows 3.1 was released, and Microsoft’s monopoly of the PC industry had begun. Windows 95 saw the release of Internet Explorer, and the beginning of a monopoly on the Internet browser market.

Scroll forward a few years to 2006 and Microsoft Windows is being used by 97% of all Internet users. That, if you weren’t quite sure yet, is a monopoly. That’s a 97% market share after 20 years of Windows releases. Every release confirmed its stranglehold on the industry. Every release tied its users further and further into the sweet embrace of Microsoft Windows. That’s the service industry — the soft, comfortable pair of shoes that you just can’t get rid of. It’s not a great pair, but damnit, they fit nicely and keep your feet kinda warm.

The problem is, monopolies are outlawed because they are ultimately very bad news for the consumer. A monopoly without suitable competition,can rest on its laurels and practically eliminate all technological progress. Occasionally a competitor  will emerge, bringing a new, exciting development to the table — the incumbent simply buys them out, or copies the functionality. Innovation all but dries up; there’s no risk from outside to spur the market tyrants onwards. Your subscribers aren’t going anywhere. They have no where to go.

Which brings me neatly onto World of Warcraft. Will it ever lose its crown? Can it ever lose its crown?

As of April 2008, WoW had a 62% market share. Not quite as immense as Windows’ 97%, but remmeber that Blizzard have only been on the MMOG scene for 4 years. All of the original MMORPG developers — SOE, Turbine, Mythic and NCSoft — have had years of experience and can still only scrape a tiny, few-percent share of the market from Blizzard.

At 12 million subscribers, Blizzard have obviously done something right. They would have to do something monumentously wrong to lose the grip they now have on the MMOG industry. Their subscriber base positively salivates for each and every content patch that they unveil. WoW is the most played, and probably the most universally-adored (or hated!) game in the world.

It’s this kind of blind-faith in Blizzard and their total monopoly that has me very worried indeed for the future of the Massively Multiplayer market. WoW was hardly an innovation over the existing MMOG titles; it did not bring anything new to the table, but what it did bring to the table it did well. It is polished, and well-cared for. It has a fantastic community of devout, zealous followers and fans.

I am worried, then, that with Blizzard’s next-gen MMO they will fail to innovate the market sufficiently. I’m worried that they’ll play it safe and bring out another game which is evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Surely they will look at Microsoft — a company that has learnt that revolutionary leaps in technology are notoriously hard to support — and take the boring route out.

Blizzard now have the resources — both money, and the developers — to create something that’s truly awesome. If they slam the brakes on and squeeze out the gaming equivalent of Windows ME I will be stupendously disappointed.

But being a WoW player myself, a woefully addicted and dedicated player, I’ll be hanging around until World of Warcraft XP is released anyway.

If you are interested in more MMORPG-related articles, you might like to read my ‘Life as a guild leader‘ blog.

I’ve talked about music before — musicals, really — but what I haven’t told you is that I, like most grown men, have dirty, dark secrets hidden away in my music collection.

Secreted away, in places that even a competent government agency would struggle to find, I have music by artists such as William Shatner, Meatloaf and even, though I hesitate to admit this, Dashboard Confessional (that folder is hidden and encrypted, for obvious reasons…)

If that wasn’t dank and disturbing enough, you could dig even deeper. Delving further, you would find another directory; a directory with just a single file in it. The file is ominously titled ‘Unimportant-Dont-Click-Me-Please.mp3′. If you’d found this file, and saw through my epic ruse, you’d be be greeted with this:

Yes, I love Beyonce’s ‘If I were a boy’. Don’t ask me why… I just do! I don’t really want to discuss it, so I’ll just move on to the actual point of this entry — I’ve re-written the lyric to ‘If I were a boy’. A cute little American songwriter, upon reading the re-worked lyric blurted out that: ‘You have talent, Seb!’

I’m not too sure about that, but if you even laugh once, I’ll consider it time well spent. As the lyric is, er, geeky, I’ve hyperlinked some of the more esoteric terms, so you an understand it fully!

Press play and try to sing along… it fits… just about!

If I were a geek — sung by Beyonce Knowles, written by Tony Gad & BC Jean

If I were a geek even just for a day
I’d roll out of bed in the evening
And throw on a black t-shirt
And go ‘round  Sheldon’s with dice

And chase after elves
I’d roll dice as much as I wanted
And I’d never get a girlfriend but it
Doesn’t matter ‘cause neither does he

If I were a geek
I think I could understand
How it feels to love myself
I swear I’d be a better nerd

I’d listen to my GM
‘Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause a hacker got your password
And everything you had got destroyed

If I were a geek
I would turn on my iPhone
Tell everyone it’s awesome
‘ Cause I can watch porn when I’m alone

I’d swing my sword first
And read the rules as I go
‘Cause really, no one questions
A geek with a sword, and lightning bolts, lightning bolt!

If I were a geek
I think I could understand
How it feels to love myself
I swear I’d be a better nerd

I’d listen to my GM
‘Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause a hacker got your password
And everything you had got destroyed

It’s never too late for you to go back
Say it’s just a mistake
You should take it right back
If you thought Hilton hotter than Leia
You thought wrong

But you’re just a geek
You don’t understand
(And put the Gaiman book down, oh)
How it feels to love a girl
Someday you wish you went out more

You don’t listen to her
You don’t care how it hurts
Until you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause you took the chinaman for granted
And everything you had got destroyed
But you’re just a geek

***

I am currently in talks with a talented singer to perform the song with my new lyric… I will of course post it, when she does so!

Apologies for the long-winded title; it’s actually quite hard to find a subject that gets right to the point. This isn’t about triggering a particular emotion in gamers — not directly, at least. It’s also not about how ‘emotional’ gaming can be — we already know that playing games can be an intense experience that can warrant a massive gamut of emotions.

This entry’s about your avatar — your character, the model that represents you — and the emotions that it can, or as the case may be, cannot display.

Emotions have long played a vital role in communication and human interaction. We smile and raise our shoulders a little when we’re happy; we frown and slump when we’re sad — these emotional keys are a form of communication in their own right: body language!

Beyond subtle muscle shifts we also have emotive reactions that we’re less aware of: we blush when we’re embarrassed or caught lying; we raise our voice in anger or petulance. Most importantly though are the muscles groups on our face: the flaring or contraction of our lips and eyes, the furrowing or raising of the brow — each of these actions, or reactions, are ‘programmed in’ genetically and almost impossible to alter. It’s these same minute movements that we’re (often unconsciously) reading in the face of whoever we’re talking to. It’s these tiny twitches in someone else’s face or body language that can trigger our own involuntary responses: that momentary curl of the lip might be all the indication you need to run away quickly.

This ‘hunt for emotion’ as we communicate with other people is so ingrained that online communication has always felt a little… distant. Internet veterans are cautious, aware that without body language their words can easily be misconstrued. Newbies often blunder, forgetting that no one can see the ironic smile on their face. There’s a reason emoticons , *asterisks*, CAPSLOCK and _underscores_ exist: to convey emotion! It’s clunky and slow compared to body language or facial expressions but it’s the best that we have.

Why, twenty years after the first text-based world, are we still communicating with such basic tools? Some early games like LegendMUD had ways to inflect mood into your conversation through expansion of the verb sets (’say alts’) but since then… nothing. In graphical virtual worlds a couple of games have tried to incorporate moods (notably Star Wars: Galaxies and EverQuest2) but still they were still primarily low-tech text-only executions, toggles: /angry, /sad, /afraid, or parsing exclamations and queries.

Why are we still running around in virtual worlds with emotionless, gormless avatars? In single-player games it’s almost the state of the art, the bleeding edge! ‘More realistic than ever before!’ the developers cry. What makes the games more realistic? Interaction with the game world: physics and realistic NPCs, or in the case of virtual worlds, other player avatars. You only need to look at the success of LittleBigPlanet — a very simple platformer with oodles of delicious detail and bucket loads of charm and a very diverse emotion system.

For a market segment that generates almost all of its appeal (and revenue) from the immersive quality of virtual worlds it’s amazing that there isn’t yet a virtual world that has the power to model emotions through various facial expressions and body poses. You could even go one step further from the toggle system and parse complex emotions like sadness, apprehension and lust out of chat. Then there’s the character state itself: in battle your avatar would grimace upon being hit; a healer would smile upon saving a party member.

Are we simply being held back by World of Warcraft’s ancient graphics engine? Surely it’s time for realistic, immersive emotions in virtual worlds.

Further Reading

• Some work into avatar puppeteering in Second Life which, unlike WoW, actually has some built-in facial expressions
• Bob Moore’s presentation from the Austin GDC 2008 has a more-scientific, sociological look at it under the header ‘Challenges in Avatar-Mediated Interaction’