What Motivates People to Play MMOs?

[Jerich]

What motivates people to play RPGS / MMOs? I list six here that I think are core reasons. What do you think? Do they cover the territory? What other reasons do you think there are? If you had to make your own 6 reasons, what would they be?

Note: This is part 2 of 5 of a post I wrote for this forum, that I am breaking up because of length. If you want to see the whole thing at once, go to http://www.jerich.wordpress.com. In this section, I am discussing why we play MMOs so as to find a way to rate micro-transaction systems.

Part I - Why we play RPGs and MMOs <----- This Post
Part 2 - The kinds of players who pay for microtransactions http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=532
Part 3 - Bad types of Micro-transactions and why they are bad
Part 4 - Moonlighitng - Characters become NPCS while offline.http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=482
Part 5 - Community Name Vetting.


A. What motivates people to play RPGs?
1. A sense of progress / reward
In real life, experience bars are not visible and move slowly. RPGs allow players to make progress at a much faster rate. Few things are most satisfying than annihilating a monster that was difficult a few levels ago.

RPGs are also really fun in that you are constantly getting positive feedback at different frequencies. Every few seconds, you score an awesome hit, take out some monsters, pick up cash or a vendor item. Every few minutes you pick up something that you want to identify. Every half hour or so, you level up, find a truly awesome item, complete a quest or sell a major haul of loot. Every few days, goal oriented players may retire a character or complete a difficult achievement (like finishing the game naked or as a tank caster).

2. The wonder of exploration
People love to explore. This can take multiple forms… finding hidden areas in a map, seeing new monsters, trying out new skill combinations, reading lore, talking to npcs, playing mini new mini games, etc. As players see more and more of the game, they might use the cheating console to explore things that couldn’t normally be reached (like go down to level 10 million), download mods, or even create a mod.

3. The satisfaction of solving a problem
RPGs also present us with a ton of open ended problems. How can I beat this boss, what is an the best skill combination to do X, what are the steps to solving this quest, what is the most efficient way to level, how can I juggle all my skills, etc. Some people might even run experiments to decipher the mathematical formula for hitting an enemy.


B. What motivates people to play MMOs?
People play MMOS for all the reasons they play RPGs, but there are also three additional factors: competition, cooperation and community.

4. Competition -
Lots of us are striving to be better than the average peon that plays the game. We want to have better loot, beat bigger boss fights, be a pvp machine, be able to play with more skill, be more respected, have more achievement points, know more lore than others, etc. Few things are more satisfying than having a newbie gawk at you and say your character is an utter badass. One of them is for someone you respect to bow down to you and admire your gaming prowess.

Interestingly enough, like all aspects of life including intelligence, only those reasonably close to you can even begin to understand how awesome you are. Thus, someone with 140 IQ can respect the thoughts of someone with 160 IQ, but someone with 120 IQ will write them off because they can’t keep up with them. In gaming terms this plays out like this.

Gamer A has 500 achievement points / PVP ranking etc

Gamer B has 1000 achievement points

Gamer C has 2000 achievement points

Gamer D has 3000 achievement points

Gamer A thinks Gamer B is pretty awesome but believes Gamer C is obsessive and calls Gamer D a complete no lifer. Gamer B peppers C with questions, as to how he did achievement X, but feels intimidated by Gamer D and thus ignores her. Gamer C respects gamer D and /bows to her each time he sees her. When he wants to get an achievement done that requires serious dedication and multiple people, he will ask her. Gamer D is flattered by all this, secretly wonders if A is right and that she has no life, but is mainly driven by an overwhelming desire to be the best. She is constantly strategizing as to how to improve her ranking. If she is a PVP player, everyone wants to be on her team, seeks her out first on a battle field, and pees themselves if they get stuck in a 1 on 1 situation. If she is a guild leader, hers is the guild that power gamers secretly dream of being in.

As you can see, we tend to only respect people that we understand or that we dream of becoming some day if we were at our best. We also usually only respect people who we believe can help us achieve our goals.

One last note about the respect which all power gamers crave… People tend to respect people who achieve their greatness through skill, hard work or even luck. We don’t respect people who cheat or buy their way to the top unless they do it in a way that is incredibly efficient or skillful. Gamer A would be ok if they could buy items for real money. Gamer B may even be tempted to. But Gamer C would be downright hostile to the idea because it cheapens his achievements. Interestingly, Gamer D might not care because she would still be better than the cheaters and it would show her that even people who cheat are not as awesome as her.

5. Cooperation / Altruism
Not everyone is motivated by competition. In fact, many people are completely turned off by it. Most people, however, are motivated by cooperation. Clearing a dungeon with 5 other people or killing a dragon with 24 others, everyone working in unison, relying on each other and each having their own role is one of the pinnacle moments in an MMO experience. After taking down a powerful boss, or beating some obscure achievement I sometimes literally have to stop myself from getting up and walking around my house grinning wildly. Group play affirms something uniquely human in us and reminds us that we are not just heartless power gaming bastards.

This is the same reason that people will go to newbie zones and help them along. It is fun to be the good guy. It is also fun to play with friends and all find items that other people can use. Good cooperation energizes the soul and recharges people for another binge of power gaming.

6. Community
Nothing is better than a good community. This is the primary reason people have trouble quitting MMOs. To quote the theme from the TV show “Cheers”, it is good to be in a place where “everyone knows your name.” It is also nice to know people miss you when you don’t log in for a couple days. There are four real levels of community, macro, guild level, close friends and real life friends.

The most basic form of community is the macro / server / game level. It is fun to have an acquaintance or stranger pm you out of no where with an intelligent question. One time in WOW, someone made a character on my server to specifically ask me about my dps rotation because his guild master had told him to. I wasn’t the best, so this did not happen all the time, but I was tremendously honored someone would go through that bother just to talk to me. Another time I created an alliance character to ask the second highest rank achievement person on the server for help with an achievement. We had a blast communicating through emails and alternate characters as we worked together. Things like this stand out in my memory because it made me feel like part of a community that went beyond my guild or even server.

The next level of community is the guild level. Lots of people like to be in a guild where there is always someone to banter with or go on dungeons with. There is a balance here though. Too few people and there is no one to do things with. Too many people and our capacity to develop attachments deteriorates. Each person has their preference level.

Another deeper type of community is close gaming friends. I think most people who play MMOs seriously, develop 1-6 of these. They are the people that you pm the moment you log on. They are the people you whisper first when you do something really awesome. They are the people you complain to when something is bugging you. You may have even have met them in real life, led guilds with, and you now follow from game to game. They are the real reason you log on even if you only have time to chat for a few minutes.

The last type of community is made up of our real life friends who also play the game. Often they are casual players. Most of us have them. These are the people who were our real life friends before we started gaming. They are not power gamers, but fun to play with. They keep us honest and tell us if we are playing too much. They often refuse to pay for subscription based games out of principal, but might be tempted to play a game like Torchlight with you. Tons of Diablo style players fall into this category.

The negotiation between progress, rewards, exploration, problem solving, competition, community and community is what makes MMOs so fun to play.


C. One motivation that is not included in this framework.
One major motivation that has motivated most gamers at one time or another is escapism. We often play games to escape from some stress in the real world. I believe, however, that focusing on escapism as a motivation will eventually backfire. It causes people to burn out and often leaves them with hostility toward the game after they sate themselves with excess. Instead, a combination of the six motivations together creates a positive attachment to the game and limits the negative aspects of playing. Moonlighting, an idea that will be fleshed out below, actually tries to help people balance their real lives with the game play by rewarding people for taking time off.

Thanks,
Jerich

[Webbstre]

As always, amusing comics, and long posts.

I think the main answer is pretty simple though: Playing with friends + Loot + Spare Time = MMO time.

[Chameleon]

I'm in the "C" section.

I hate the Competition aspect of games and in most cases the online community is...well I wont say what I was going to say. lol

[Shagsbeard]

A more interesting follow-up, and one that would be helpful for developers of a MMORPG, is to look at the gamers who don't play MMORPGs and why. I personally played DAoC for years, devoting more time to it than any other single aspect of my life including work and sleep. I played in Hellgate, but prefered to solo it. I loved Jumpgate... amazing game.

I won't even look at EQ or WoW, and probably wont even look at the game runic puts out... here's why. A MMORPG has to have grand goals that it takes a community to perform... and I'm not talking about monsters that take 200 people to kill. There has to be purpose to play, or it doesn't interest me in the slightest. I'll play SP for fun... I won't play a MMORPG unless there's a purpose. DAoC had realm v. realm and even if you didn't participate, there were support roles that could be played. Jumpgate had factions competing to complete projects first, so they'd gain advantages over the other factions. Hellgate didn't do that for me... but I still consider it a fine game. It just played better solo. So if Torchlight's MMORPG is simply a sand box for kids to play in, like WoW or EQ, I'll probably not even give it more interest than reading a review or two.

[Needlehawk]

Well, then again, there are those on the opposite side of the coin. I didn't look twice at DAOC after I learned that it was primarily a PvP game. However, WoW up to level 60 made me play for hours because I could log on, grab some friends and just have fun questing. It was the same in D2. You could jump into our guild's channel, find some people that wanted to play, grab a character at the appropriate level, and just have fun running through quests, even though you'd done them upteen times before. The fun was in being together.

[leoleez]

hahaha thats true, but you forgot casual players!

[bTomfoolery]

You know I already read the blog post and I commented on it briefly in the Moonlighting thread. Your views the various motivations for playing MMOGs are pretty much the same as mine, however I don't feel that Escapism is it's own Motivation as much as, it's the driving force of all of the other Motivations. I think that the other motivations you listed are, themselves, extensions of Escapism, or at least varying incarnations of it. I know a lot of people don't like to think of their playing games as Escapism, but it is, and that's not a bad thing, which is why I like to refer to it as Fantasy Fulfillment, since it lacks the negative connotations that many people preaching against fantasy seem to apply to the word 'escapism'. In the end, I think it's really that MMOs provide so many possible motivations to play, compared to the other genres. Compare the 6 points of motivation you've found in MMOs and compare it to Fighting Games, which, as much as I enjoy playing with friends, really only has the motivation of Competition and, in very few cases (mine) one can find the motivation of cooperation. I find that playing with friends invokes more of a cooperative spirit than a competitive one, but I really digress. My point is that, the thing that draws people to MMOs is really that there are so many things that draw people.

A more interesting follow-up, and one that would be helpful for developers of a MMORPG, is to look at the gamers who don't play MMORPGs and why. I personally played DAoC for years, devoting more time to it than any other single aspect of my life including work and sleep. I played in Hellgate, but prefered to solo it. I loved Jumpgate... amazing game.

I won't even look at EQ or WoW, and probably wont even look at the game runic puts out... here's why. A MMORPG has to have grand goals that it takes a community to perform... and I'm not talking about monsters that take 200 people to kill. There has to be purpose to play, or it doesn't interest me in the slightest. I'll play SP for fun... I won't play a MMORPG unless there's a purpose. DAoC had realm v. realm and even if you didn't participate, there were support roles that could be played. Jumpgate had factions competing to complete projects first, so they'd gain advantages over the other factions. Hellgate didn't do that for me... but I still consider it a fine game. It just played better solo. So if Torchlight's MMORPG is simply a sand box for kids to play in, like WoW or EQ, I'll probably not even give it more interest than reading a review or two.

I disagree with this. I don't have a multi-paragraph explanation as to why, but I just disagree with it on the grounds that, from my gaming experience, I don't believe that an MMO has to be this way. I certainly respect that Shagsbeard feels this way, and to him, it is true, I acknowledge that, but I don't think his statement really takes into consideration that people may have differing views on what makes a good videogame than him, and that everyone is equally right in believing their own opinions, because it's ok for people to have different tastes.

I for one, am not quite as interested in playing the MMO as the single player because my main draw to Torchlight is the PrEditor, but I do plan on purchasing [size=0](working on? : D)[/size] the MMO regardless of that fact. It may not be the best MMO out there, and honestly, I don't expect it to be (on second thought, given my current status as 'between MMOs' it may very well end up being the best to me) but I trust Runic to put out a quality product. Again, digression. As I was saying, I don't approve of the statement that ends up being equivalent to "MMOS MUST be this way because it's the way I like them to be.". I'd prefer to think that this community is willing to acknowledge that there are plenty of different gamers here with diverse tastes and views on what gaming is meant to be like. I have no problem with Shagsbeard stating his own views, I actually liked reading it, I just don't think he's correct in saying what an MMO is supposed to be like, without any room for anyone else to be correct, in his view. No offense meant, Shagsbeard.

edit: turns out I did have a multi paragraph explanation)

[Needlehawk]

I completely agree with Benjamin. One thing that you have to realize is that everyone has a different reason to play. In addition, I think it is important to realize that each of those categories means something different to different people. For example, to some people, "community" means large raiding guilds. To some, it means playing with a few good friends. To others, it means simply having enough players to have a viable economy while playing solo.

The challenge for developers is to satisfy enough people with different views about these categories that they have a viable product. I don't think it's really an easy task, and I think it gets harder all the time as expectations go up with each new game.

[eddy]

To me, Co-operation is what drives me crazy on an MMO... It is so good to accomplish nice features with nice people you met online or with RL friends. And one thing I was/am addicted to is the MMOARPG concept that was introduced by mythos... PLEASE HURRY UP! I cant wait to kill everything in sight with my friends also blasting everything in sight!!

P.S. Put the option for our character to smoke a cigar like the other one on mythos and ill pay whatever you want!

[bTomfoolery]

P.S. Put the option for our character to smoke a cigar like the other one on mythos and ill pay whatever you want!

Clearly, level will be represented in-game by the number of cigars your character is smoking. This is a new age of videogames, without HUDs.

[Jerich]

Webbstre
I tried to make this one shorter.=P I decided to break the original into 5 parts instead of just 4.

Shagsbeard
I think exploring the reasons why people don't play MMOs would be fascinating. This is a great idea for a future essay and one I plan to tackle some time. It is a much more difficult problem, however, since there are a lot more reasons people don't play MMOs than reasons they do. The difficulty, is that for a framework to be useful it has to be boiled down to about 5-6 general categories. Any more than this, and the human brain has a hard time using them to form comparisons. Sure... you could list 55 factors and then come up with some way of tabulating them with point score, but this usually does not produce results that anyone understands.

So would it be possible to do? Probably, but you would have to limit the question in some way. Would it be useful for developers? Only if the framework provided insight into attracting and retaining people who would not otherwise play the game.

In response to your second paragraph, it sounds like you prefer games that tie the progress motivation into the three social motivations. The example you listed was realm versus realm play, which over time has shown itself to be more popular than free for all pvp (although some may argue here). The reason realm vs realm play is so motivating to a large subset of the population is that it combines competition, cooperation and community in a preset fashion. Ideally, I think a game has to hit as broad a base of motivations as possible without spreading itself too thin. Like Needlehawk said, this is a tremendously difficult task.

Needlehawk
I have been interested in your posts on the forums and always read them closely. It seems like you are somewhere between a hardcore and casual player and are actually pretty good at maintaining a healthy balance. It seems like you are motivated primarily by community and cooperation. Does competition play a big role for you, or does it turn you off?

Leoleez
I think casual players and hardcore players are motivated by similar reasons. I just think that casual players don't eat through content as fast as the hardcore players, so never reach the end of exploration. Sometimes I wish I could play more as a casual player.=P It would be more healthy.

Benjamin
I always look forward to reading your responses in your threads. I can't wait to play your mods. Anyway, I think your description of Escapism is aimed better than mine. It is more like a meta-motivation that the other motivation tie into like you said and is not entirely negative. I think it was Pascal, who wrote in Peneses (sp?) that the primary reason a King is more happy than a peasant is because he has people paid to distract him from reality.=P In a sense, everything we do in life that is not directly targeted at our current deepest darkest real life fears, needs, and wants is escapism. I think I would go crazy without it.

- Jerich

P.S. I agree Eddy. My character should be able to light up whenever he/she wants!

[Needlehawk]

Hi Jerich!

I always look forward to reading your posts, too! As far as your questions, it depends on your definition of "casual" and "hardcore". I like to define them in terms of motivation, rather than amount of time playing. To me, a "casual" player plays for the experience. If it's fun, that's rewarding in and of itself. A "hardcore" player plays for the rewards. If there is a cool reward, the hardcore player wants it, no matter how unrewarding the experience is to get it. In other words, a really cool toy is enough of a sweet reward that the play experience can be fairly unrewarding and still worth be worth it for the hardcore player.

I consider myself to be mostly a "casual" player, because I don't want to play unless the play experience is fun. However, with a game I like, I play a lot of hours, so I'm definitely not "casual" in that sense.

As far as competition goes, it's a real turn off for me in online games. The reason that online games fascinated me in the first place was the "play with others against the computer" aspect. If I want to play a competitive game, there are plenty of examples to do that with real life friends - cards, sports, etc.

[SexAndDeath]

ONly hc mode will motivate me.
cu
Sdani

[enemantik]

P.S. Put the option for our character to smoke a cigar like the other one on mythos and ill pay whatever you want!

Gotta agree with that. Especially a female character. Just my very personal kink - and a hint for talented modders around. I already have a couple of skill scratches based upon smoking.

[ipodbud]

Really good post Jerich - well thought out and alot to digest! The comics are a nice touch too

*goes on to Jerich's blog to read the rest*