How Not To Make An MMO or Hobo Stew

by: Tony "RadarX" Jones

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I did a lot of camping as a kid, and one thing you learn to do when you camp, is cook. If you don't, you end up eating wood ants or other nasty things and let's be honest, you don't want to be Rambo. One of the most difficult cooking lessons I had, was hobo stew. Now it sounds really freaking simple, because it's freaking hobo stew, but you'd be suprised how easy it was to mess up. What does all this have to do with MMO’s? Nothing, so pay attention. I apply my learning experience with hobo stew when thinking about how not to make an MMO. Making a decent game, requires good ingredients and preparation or it's going to taste like poo.

Mistake number one with preparing hobo stew was not being able to agree on how it was cooked. Do you put your stuff in foil, or do you use a giant cooking pot. We argued for sometime calling each other names, and one person who suggested "foil in a cooking pot" got clean up duty. You've heard the term "Too many chefs spoil the soup" and it's completely true. If your development team can't agree on the direction your MMO is going, your players might feel there is no goal, or the game is too shallow. Too many fluffy features, with bells and whisltes, only wow your player for so long, before they are looking for meat. You can notice these fluff features, by the ubercore players pointing out how useless they are within days of their implemenation.

We finally decided to use the cooking pot to create our stew, so after getting some water cooking, it was time to add the ingredients. What do you put in hobo stew? Nobody can agree. Potates, onions, carrots seemed kosher so they were cut up and tossed in. The debate came with the tomatoes and radishes (a long debate went on about who even brought radishes). No one could decide who was right or wrong, so it all went in the stew. MMO developers spend countless hours deciding what kind of content is going into their creation. It's disheartening to read some of the ignorance on EQII Forums about how "the devs don't care." Want to build a crappy MMO? Add things like excess traveling, a confusing UI, and I'm going to say it....corpse runs. It worked for EQ, but that was a long time ago.

The hobo stew cooked until everything was done enough to eat and we all slopped some in our bowls. I took a bite, not quite sure what to expect. Granted I don't drink things Coyote will, but it was the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth. If evil had a taste, it would be akin to this stew. I immediately slung my bowl in the woods and ate Dorito's. A common mistake MMO developers make is to hold on to bad ideas. If the idea isn't working, and you know when that time comes, don't keep trying to fix it, throw the idea in the woods and leave it for the raccoons. Horizons comes to mind with this. Expansion? *boggle*

It was dark while we tried to eat our stew. Most of us threw it in the woods, so angry at it's bitter taste we wouldn't even dig a hole for a proper burial. The next morning we awoke to some very annoyed adults in the campsite near us. Apparently someone had thrown a bunch of cooked vegetables on the ground overnight. Not even the raccoons would eat this stew it was so bad, so we did the decent thing and cleaned it up. If you want to make a bad MMO, find a way to break things and don't own up to it. This really raises the confidence of your players and helps them to believe in your game. SOE Devs have taken credit for breaking things on a regular basis, and you have to repsect people who can admit that Templars didn’t have enough DPS.

As we finished cleaning up the stew, it occured to me to ask who's idea it was to make hobo stew anyway. Surely it must have been the most experienced cook among us who was...wait, who can cook? Apparently, none of us could, and no one would admit this. We could have done hot dogs, grilled cheese, and 1000 other simple things that we knew how to make, but someone had to get creative and so we had chips and cereal for dinner. In the MMO world, edgy isn't always the best way to go. We need innovation in games, to keep things from gettting stagnant, but sometimes you can cross the line repeatedly. You have to go with what you know, and what works. Tinker with established principles, and create new ones with extreme care.

So here it is. What is my idea of the most imperfect, evil MMO ever built? It’s called “Hobo Stew the MMO!” You won’t eat real hobo’s because that might add a coolness factor. You will travel too much, have things broken repeatedly, experience bad content ideas on a regular basis, and have a bunch of bells and whistles with no depth. Sound like fun? It has to be better than listening to me tell a story about cooking. Until next time, remember, there is only one “I” in cooking.