What makes an online game a "casual MMOG"

What way to better signal that you are going to be the NEXT BIG THING than to say you are creating a "casual MMOG."

Everyone from big media, to venture capital, to former supply-chain logistics project managers seem to be trying to get into the world of Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG) to ride the revenue wave of World of Warcraft and the PR wave of Second Life. But everyone also wants to be new, to be different. And what better way to say you are a newer, shinier version of an MMOG company than to say you are building a CASUAL MMO.

If 2007 is going to be the year that the term "casual MMO" descends like locusts on the US blogosphere then I think it's worth trying to at least define what the hell a casual MMO is. For instance I've heard three people in the last week mention that they were playing an Asian online game called Silkroad Online, and two of them described it as a "casual MMO." Hmm... allow me to rebut with a review of Silkroad from one of the forums:

abbaking wrote :

ommggg... what i can freaking say is that this is a great grind-fest and also the stupid quests are sooo freaking longgggggg that is all i can say

A game that is all grind, with incredibly long quests doesn't sound very casual.. now does it?

That is not to say the Silkroad cannot be successful. While data is hard to come by (especially since MMOGChart.com seems to have died) I happened by Xfire today and noticed that Silkroad came in #7 for minutes played today. So SOMEONE is playing it in the west.

But, a super-long grind fest is not casual. What is casual? Well, here are some parameters to watch for:

1. Technical barrier to entry is low - either in-browser, or a quick download
2. Free to play, with item-based sales, advertising or subscription upgrades
3. A genre, lore, or approach that is easily understandable to the target audience
4. Gameplay that allows for easy grouping and social connections, ideally asynchronously (everyone should not have to try to gather together at 11pm for a raid)
5. Attention peaks that are never too high - you can only be half-paying attention so you can hear your boss calling you

And while these all may be relative components of the equation, last night at dinner with Mark Terrano I think he hit the nail on the head as the most important trait. It's all about commitment.

You see, casual gaming is a little like casual sex. The thing that makes it casual is the lack of commitment. While you generally think of MMORPG games in terms of hours, you think of casual games in terms of minutes. A player might forgo sleeping and eating for Diner Dash, but they only had to commit to two minutes of playing at a time.

And this is actually where I think the entire term "casual MMO" might do more damage than good. I know many social gamers who don't even try MMOs simply because they view them as too addicting and time consuming. And how does a person like that react to something like this:

Again, I'm not saying this game is not going to be good, or popular. Hardcore MMOs that are free to play, such as the one's that Mgame, Gpotato, Joybox, and K2 have been releasing, are sure to attract a following of folks sick of being locked into a monthly fee. And Scions of Fate, which is the renamed version of Yulgang that will be launching in the US market in the next month, is ranked as one of the top five MMOs in China (above World of Warcraft).

What I'm fairly sure of is that the combination of words used in the Scions of Fate image above do NOT add up to a positive impression for a core gamer. It will take more than free to play, and coining a term like "casual MMORPG" to get mainstream America to play these games.

Comments

[Trystwych]

I wrote a long post about appealing to the casual MMO player a long time ago, when I was frustrated by the lack of releases. Although that problem has clearly been solved, I still think some of those thoughts have not been adopted.

http://eq2vault.ign.com/View.php?view=columns.Detail&category_select_id=9&id=282

[Nabeel]

I've also gotten a couple emails noting that Toontown Online was aimed at a more mainstream market - and they detailed some of their lessons in the book Massively Multiplayer Game Development.

read this short piece from Mike Goslin, Joe Shochet and Jesse Schell
http://hardcodedgames.com/mmpgamedev/2006/11/principles-of-casual-mmo-game-design_25.html

While ToonTown meets some of the standards to reach a casual audience, the retail/subscription nature of the game is certainly a major hurdle.

[Chris Bennett]

Nabeel, I think that is a good set of parameters and I have a few more to add.

-Casual means casual. You should be able to have a satisfying game play experience in 10-15 minutes. Casual gaming is all about filling interstitial time. "Kids just went to bed and Desperate Housewives doesn't start until 9? Let's play a quick game!"
-Casual games can be played while you are talking on the phone or watching TV or IMing. So they support multi-tasking. But the really good ones also support intense and focused sessions. "Can I call you back? I gotta finish this *one* level!" Designing for multi-layered play styles is pretty important.

I think one of the real changes going on here is the social expectation. It used to be that the online community was the point of playing an online game (i.e. Everquest). But now we see games and sites where the online community is there, but it's not absolutely necessary for playing the game. The casual audience is branching out from strictly playing a game alone, to playing but also having your net friends around to chat with or to help each other out.

And that's why we we see "Massively Single-Player Games" where you are competing in your own space, but have a connection to the wider community through high scores, static avatar, medals/tokens and sometimes chat. Massively SP games may be a gateway drug to MMOs, or they may develop into their own important genre.

[Nabeel Hyatt]

Chris, good point about the intensity level of a game being an important condition. Mark Terrano (who I referenced in this post) did some great work defining genres of games (rts vs fps, etc) only by their amount of audio versus visual versus kinetic input.

But I'm not so certain about "massively single player games" being a community just yet. Adding chat to a single player game (or games) is a natural way to add a new feature to a pre-existing business, but I'm not sure it fundamentally changes that business to create a new genre.

Admittedly, I haven't been looking as closely at the space. And I could see why a company like yours (PlayFirst) would want to add chat/high scores/avatars/etc. It allows you to simply add on features without having to mess with the game design and business model -- but I wonder if it has really crossed the threshold to be being a real community.

[Chris Bennett]

I think other companies defined the massively single-player space long before PlayFirst ever did. Especially Pogo who has seen some real success building their community. And we're seeing this concept as well with offline games that are ported to XBLA and mobile phones and adding support for leaderboards and other community features.

But to your point, I see massively single-player as being in a similar place that games like casual MMOs like Second Life and Habbo Hotel were 2-3 years ago, before they really hit the tipping point. So perhaps I'm looking a little too far ahead here from a business perspective.