You had to be “There”: 5 Lessons Unlearned by the MMO Industry

photo credit: Ramona.Forcella

The game “There” (www.there.com) is closing. What is “There”? “There” was a virtual reality chat/adventure environment combined with elements of the massive multiplayer online role-playing game. Roughly 8 years ago I logged in during the summer months and interacted with people as far away as Australia, England’s and other parts of my own native United States. Some of those people remain my friends to this day.

The game was unique in its ability to imbue avatars with ay sense of life. In most games avatars stand like statues, occasionally looking around or making a small animated movement. But in “There” avatars had body language. A person would interact based on the movement of your hands as he spoke (via in world voice-chat). As they heard your voice your avatar would seem to be making your point with body language, and the other avatars around you would look directly at you, sometimes nodding – that is just a couple of examples of many. The designers put a great deal of thought into how to make virtual world avatars more realistic.

Realism aside for a moment, his hair had an almost cartoonish feel. Before World of Warcraft, “There” had a stylized look reminiscent of a cartoon or Japanese Anime.

But perhaps the most important thing about this now vanishing virtual world is that it changed how I looked at games and virtual world interaction. Whether I realized it or not I compared every game that came afterwards with “There” and to this day I have still not seen that kind of interaction available in any of the game that I’ve played; and many times I looked and wish that I could find.

The MMO industry would do well to take a look at what “There” was, and what it did right.

1. Social Interaction Is A Content Stream (and it’s Free!)

It sounds incredibly obvious, but game companies can’t seem to get it into their heads that people talking with each other – laughing, planning, interacting and getting to know each other – is a content stream. MMO’s are often described as content channels where the developer pushes graphics, sounds, animations and other assets to the user. But what about the user pushing their own content to other players. I’m not talking about the creation of objects – although There featured that as well – I’m talking about people gladly sharing ideas, conversations and various ways of connecting.

Some might argue that the freer the interaction between people, the more likely there might be difficulties. But generally the interaction in “There” near the kind of interactions you would see in real life. Yes, there were people that didn’t like each other. The game had an ignore feature that actually made another persons avatar invisible – except for a wireframe skeleton that you would see walking around. It was so effective that the person you had on ignore would actually see a random avatar in place of you so that they were less likely to try to bother you.

Social interaction doesn’t necessarily have to take place with a voice, but it certainly does help. I have no idea how open world of voice chat would be integrated into modern games without becoming a nightmare if bandwidth problems and other logistical nightmares. But still, the dream is there. But even without a voice in games can foster stronger interaction between players and make the social circles that people move in much tighter and more compelling; and this translates into people coming in more often, and being less likely to want to leave both in the short-term and long-term.

2. People Will Pay To Look Cool

“Microtransactions be damned” seems to be the motto of the modern MMO player as business models change, and the sand shifts right under their feet. But it should be noted that “There” did Microtransactions very well. Most of the items that you could purchase in game simply added to the fun, or were related to how you looked. People gladly paid money to buy new and interesting forms of clothing as their characters interacted.

I often use the example when talking about the game to people that haven’t played it of drink machines that were set up inside of virtual “Taverns” or “Bars” (for lack of a better term). The string that machines would dispense, for a modest price, bottles or mugs with various types of imaginary drinks inside. You could hold the strings in your hand, and with a simple keystroke your avatar would take a drink from an imaginary object with roughly 50 charges. Each time you brought the drink your lips something would happen to your avatar. Sometimes when drinking bubbly cola and animation of bubbles would come up from your head or perhaps your character would burp. There were so many distinct different interactions it is hard for me to remember all of them.

But the basic lesson is that Microtransactions don’t have to be about game changing, seemingly rule-breaking powers or equipment. They can be about relatively simple items such as make the game more fun. Or at least they can be when social interaction is a big part of the mix.

3. If You Give People The Tools, They Will Interact. If You Don’t, They Won’t.

People basically want to interact with other people. There are exceptions, but most people enjoy talking with or interacting with other players in the game if given half a chance. “There” gave people a lot of chances to interact in a hover board sporting events, parties and simple get-togethers in open areas. But more important than just the offense were the tools given to the players so that they could interact. Yes, there were things like dance moves, friends lists – but there was a lot more than this. The unique avatar system caused people to emotionally invest in their character in ways that doesn’t take place in most games these days. The designers understood that interacting could be a way of communicating, but it could also be a way of showing off, or flirting or just spending some time talking to someone.

All of these things are far more difficult in many ways with other MMO games. If giving players the tools to interact causes them to interact, and conversely not giving them those tools will cause them not to interact. People will try to overcome interactivity limits, but with only a certain amount of success. The more hoops that they have to jump through to interact with their fellow players, the less likely they are to do it in a meaningful way and on a regular basis.

4. Chat Can And Does Lead To Other Forms Of Play

In “There” chat constantly led to organizing get-togethers, interesting philosophical conversations, sporting challenges, exploring the world. I often complained in game that if they would just design an MMO to fit “around” the game that “There” would be full of players constantly talking about content and activities are and how they could attack these challenges.

As it was, people did interact a tremendous amount. People did create games and events to entertain each other. When they had the opportunity to design their own personal homes they would often show them off with great pride. All of the content that did exist in the game got used pretty well, but if there had been more I’m sure all of that would’ve been used just as well.

As it was, the game really didn’t change that much from beta. Areas that were supposed to be built up whenever finished. Activities or ideas that we thought might be fun never materialized. A few things were added, but not all of them for the better.

But the real unlearned lesson from “There” was that chat constantly led to activities of all kinds. Chat in and of itself was entertaining and fun, but inevitably someone would say “why don’t we do something?” And often we did.

5. Even Hardcore Players Enjoy Social Interaction

It’s hard to identify “hardcore” players in a social game environment. “There” was anything but hard-core. It was about having fun. But even players who played other games and took them very seriously enjoyed coming in to “There” to interact with their friends, and often wished that other games would build some of the same systems that “There” had.

I would hardly call myself a hard-core player, but I did play other MMO’s and often told people about “There” as a stopping off point after they finished a hard day of killing monsters, or fighting super criminals. Many players took me up on my offer to show them the virtual world, and agreed with me that having these kinds of interactions in the games that they loved would’ve added tremendously to the value of those games.

A Final Word

There” had some very beautifully designed areas. One of my favorites was The Boneyard. It was named by players. It was originally a desert that had giant animal bones so huge that people could do hover board tricks off of them. As you pull these tricks your skill level in a hover board would go up. In an area of the game that had an eternaly starry night sky, we would often try to wow each other with tricks, and ask each other for voice chat “How did you do that?”

In the end games or business. This is so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to say. But it reminds us that like life no matter how much the fantasy of eternal life or eternal youth exists in these games – even the games themselves must one day die. Every game has a lifespan. “There” lasted longer than some, and was far less successful than others. But I don’t measure its success purely by the amount of money it made. The amount of joy that it brought to people who might just wanna come together and talk with a group of friends was immeasurable. The amount of hard work it took to design be very interactive and enjoyable world was tremendous. I wish it paid off more for the original designers and the people that try to carry the game forward.

We will all move on to other worlds. Some of us will move on to the real world. Some of us will keep our heads firmly in the game – any game. I myself straddle both worlds, coming and going as I feel necessary to keep my imagination alive alongside my sense of practicality.

I could go on and see a great deal more about “There”, and perhaps at some point I will. But for right now I think I’m just going to go and log into the game and take a last look at while I still can.

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