Interesting. This session was led by Damion Schubert, lead combat designer for Bioware Austin. I'd thought he'd gone to Stray Bullet Games after Ubisoft shuttered Wolfpack Studios in Austin. Teach me to assume.

And he did a good presentation, focused, passionate and entertaining, and the best of the 3-4 times I've seen him speak.

Schubert's goal was to get us to think about what works, and curtail "bad" innovation (ant farming, etc.).

He made the analogy that World of Warcraft is Coke, and you're not going to go against Coke "unless you have Pepsi money." Good analogy.

The answer? "Smart innovation". Things like managed innovation/risk and subtle clear innovation rather than cloning, etc. (Some of this applies to BigHugeCorp.)

Ingredients:

• Tactical challenge to solve (which often gets reduced to "combat"; but should it?)
• Repeatability.
• Co-op -- he totally gets that "co-op is the future of gaming" (even over PvP). Yay!
• Scalable combat (that scales gracefully).
• Classes (not required, he argued, but useful) -- and they must be balanced.
• Players need appropriate choice (not too much; can be used in place of classes or class development, per se).
• Tactical transparency (Texas Hold 'em vs 5 card draw); especially in PvP.
• Levels and experience reward devotion, not skill (not all players have skill, and you're trying to keep subscribers, and if it's too hard to earn rewards, they'll bail).
• Big moments that are equivalent to levels (getting a mount in WoW level 40, getting last name at UO level 20.

"Your players are obsessed with fairness. They are obsessed with real and perceived fairness."

Schubert addressed the "grind" problem in MMORPGs. Not sure what his contention was. WoW gets this right with the pacing and rewards for quest -- but it makes for a non-grindy experience.

So why all the fantasy MMOs?

Resonance. Fantasy resonates.

Double-coding (Bugs Bunny, Animaniacs; I suspect Viva Pinata, given the episodes I've seen), where the writing is for kids and adults -- as opposed to paren-brain-melting Blues Clues. Fantasy, by nature, is double coded.

Heroic arc (City of Heroes; as an aside, from several of these sessions, CoH really breaks a lot of the rules).

Escapism. 'Nuff said.

Villainous arc that matches the heroic arc (start out with a giant rat, then culminates with a dragon).

Fantasy as a trope gives players roles they feel with which they can contribute.

Thoughts on a choosing a genre/trope? "Have a vision, and deliver on the vision."

He also discussed licensed vs original IP. Examples included Stargate (with its non-combatant archeologist challenge), the currently slumbering Highlander (with its "permadeath" challenge; though I have so thought through how I would make this a compeling MMO), and Star Trek (with it's diplomacy-combat-as-last-resort-core-principal challenge). Be interesting to see how these problems are solved.

Also, he touted the importance of not relying on players finding their own fun.

And while people focus on the success of WoW, Second Life, Eve Online, and Runescape are "worldy" games (rather than "gamey" games) that have done really well (and are succesful). Worlds tend to be more free, more real, and more immersive. Gamey games generally are more directed, etc.

Good to hear him articulate that people often confuse poor execution with thinking there's a problem with the idea itself.

Again good session from Damion. I think the dude's a serious asset to BioWare Austin.