Out of Cavern

I'm suffering a little from insomnia right now. Here's to hoping that it's just part of what I'm hoping is just a cold. After what feel like a month of day-to-day all-day meetings (sometimes 2 or 3 at a time), and my general dislike of Internet forums, I'm having trouble following the state of things after the announcement (and just the announcement) that Myst Online will be released as open source.  My initial thoughts on this are here.

The primary source of information right now is the Myst Online forums. And with everyone trying to get their take on what's happening out, they are taking a beating. I've actually given up on trying to make sense of anything. I came to terms a long time ago that I was seriously limited in my ability to participant in arguments on forums. Most of the problem I have with forums being my difficulty in sticking to "short format" discussion. I always feel as if the forum was a series of crowded rooms where everyone is expected to should one or two talking points and then wait some random interval before shouting again. My writing always feels too dense. And the conversation moves too fast (even for me) and in unpredictable ways.

I find the visual style of every forum I've ever been on doesn't help convey the message of those participating. It seems to encourage not reading anything completely. And when an item is considerably longer than those around it, I don't think it gets read at all. Forum conversations also feel so incredibly fragmented.

I've not really been following the conversation about the announced open source project for Myst Online. I want to, but I just can't. I've got cold (I hope that's all it is). I've had a month of all day meetings (sometimes 2 or 3 at a time). Right now, there just isn't enough real information.

I am concerned about how the release of source code for the client and the server will affect the community.

An event like this tends to favor those who will dive into the code and start doing something with it. But let us not make the mistake of confusing technical skills for the ability to lead. I've seen that happen too often over my career. Someone demonstrates an enhanced capability to perform a function, deal with a technology, execute some process. Before too long, that person finds themselves not doing that thing, but leading others. Sometimes with catastrophic results for the people, process or function.

Please don't take these to suggest that a strong technical person is incapable of leadership. That's not true (please let it not be true).

Another related concern is overall leadership and guidance of the community as the project gets going and starts determining its own direction.

While there are some serious issues that the community will decide need to be addressed, I'm afraid that we'll see the project solve a number of very specific use cases that really don't contribute back to a more general use cases of an MMO (not that I know what those are). I've seen this during every requirements gathering cycle in which I've been a participant. "Wouldn't it be great if, in this one instance . . . " But that one instance is a special case representing less than 1% of the total transactions. And optimizing for that use case makes another transaction that happens 20% of the time 100 times harder.

But this isn't a business system. It's use is not for tracking client transactions with a service delivery unit. It's a game engine. What if every episode of Heroes or Lost or Survivor was suddenly about the mechanics of how the show worked and not the story being presented? What is going to happen to the story?

I'm playing the game because I want to escape from normal, everyday things. I want to explore and discover and, in the end, believe that I've come closer to some kind of truth in the setting (and hope that the lies I'm being told are at least entertaining). I want the conflicts I find myself in as a player or a character, to serve some meaningful end in learning the truth, or hiding it from others. I don't want cookie cutter plots, repetitive storytelling or a grind, just to grind.

Maybe over my holiday vacation I'll find the time and motivation to mine the forums and other parts of the conversation to see what's going on. Or maybe I'll just wait until the code is released and see what happens.

Till then, I'm not too worried. It's not like anyone is ever going to read this, or understand it if they do.

[I had started on a post earlier, but between paragraphs I did a little surfing and found something that changes part of what I was writing about. I'm actually a little bothered that this post has taken me more than an hour to bang out. I'm not writing for a magazine here.]

Several years ago, Natalie introduced me to what was then a new game, Myst. A year or so later, the game became popular with some other people I knew and I played it again. A few years later, a massively multiplayer online game was announced based on the setting and backstory of the game (as revealed through the games and a couple of novels). This was called a number of things, but was released as Uru. The original live version, Uru Live, never got out of beta and was canceled. I missed joining the beta. But a version of the game was made available for the fan base to explore and stay together. We were rewarded a little over a year ago by an renewal of the game via GameTap. But that, too, canceled. Since then, I've tried a couple of other games, but haven't found anything that was as compelling as the original Myst games and all the things I expected to see in the Myst Online: Uru Live story. Too bad that even Myst Online didn't live up to my expectations for an online game.

Last week, Cyan announced that they were going to release Myst Online as an open source project. This would include the server, client and tools. I assume this also means that at least some of the content of the game will be released or at least available. This is the one thing that changed the direction of what I was thinking.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I needed something new to read. One of the books I picked up was Lawrence Lessig's Remix. Lessig's presentation of what he calls Read-Write versus Read-Only culture and a sharing economy versus a commercial economy started to get me thinking about MMO in general.

After starting to read the Lessig, I checked out one of the guest bloggers at Boing Boing, Clay Shirky and was drawn to the title of his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. And there have been a couple of conversations some people at work.

I started to realize that some of my positions on MMO were changing and that I felt myself circling around an argument as to why MMO in general seem to suffer (or at least the issues I have with them). I should note that this post is currently into its 4^th day of being written, and I have not yet finished either Lessig's or Shirky's book, so I may not be into the meat of their respective argument. I have also not been following the overall conversation occurring at the Myst Online forums, any other forums or any of the blogs from the Myst community about this topic. I am expecting that some of what I am writing has already been said by others. And I'm expecting that other have and will say it better.

Lessig's statements about RO-professionally produced culture and how it compares to RW-culture produced by amateur participants in the market are what made the Shirky catch my attention (to the point where I ran out the night I first saw it and got it from the library).

This is the point where I realize that everything I was originally going to post is changed by Myst transitioning into an open source project.

Without getting into quoting, this changes everything.

Under the model of MMO that I would recognize, the game setting and environment are under the control and direction of a single commercial entity. What happens when that entity bails out and releases the server, client and tools to the amateurs who were attracted to the setting for one feature or another?

At least one other person has divided gaming communities into three categories. I'll call these three categories Story, System and Social.

Socials are the easiest group to define. They participate in an MMO because of other people participating. For them, the ‘game" is really just a 3D chatroom with occasionally interesting diversions from their chat. These groups tend to follow each other around, and are pretty much in the same groups with the same relationships in every setting they participate. I've seen this group complain about people trying to do IC things away from officially organized IC events.

System people are in the game to do something that is provided by the system. Level grinding, PvP combat, farming and harvesting of resources and crafting are the things these participants spend their time doing. I'd say that the phrase "Play the game, not the story" is their motto.

Both the above groups tend to "stalk to story," either looking for the distraction, or because stalking the story creates a target rich environment for combat. Player driven parties are also fodder for the same reasons.

The last group is the one I strive to participate in. This group tries to follow the story, not as a stalker looking for distraction, but as an active participant hoping to discover the secrets of the story, setting or something else, but from within the setting of the story.

I would love a setting that allows me to position myself as an minor character in a book, occasionally having the opportunity to interact with the story in a way that justifies its existence. I'm playing because I'm trying to escape. And I don't want to passively participate.

The fear I have is that with Myst going open source, there are already groups within the community that have said that the only content that was important were new Ages. Story is not, currently, all that important.

I'm still waiting to see how this game is not going to devolve to Second Life.

This isn't to say there is anything wrong with Second Life. I was looking for an escape with a story.

At this point, I'm waiting for the cold war that I get the feeling more or less permeates the Myst community to turn into an all out shooting war between groups with different takes on what Open Source Myst Online (OSMO, per Chogon) will be when it is finally released.

I have a feeling that I am going to write more on this, but right now I feel the need to catch up on what others are saying.

Good night & Good Luck

I have previously written a little about the closing of Myst Online: Uru Live. And as the post the night of April 9 shows, it actually did happen. Since the announcement was made that GameTap was canceling the game, there has been a lot of chatter about what killed this instance of Uru and their thoughts for what would have kept the game alive and what a renewed Uru should look like. I finally am making the time to write about what I am thinking. I don't mind being as far behind the curve in getting my ideas out there. Mostly this is due to the bit where I don't think anyone is going to read this and that I get the advantage of having read some other really smart people's thoughts. And for the most part, the people I read know somewhat more about the working of things Uru.

What killed Uru?

I do not know if anyone, including those that ultimately made the decision, will every know what really killed Uru. I am certain it was not any one thing. The game market, as far as I am aware of it, is rough. Corporate environments are rough on projects. Getting things paid for and approved can be tough. I am speaking from experience here. I have worked for months on really interesting projects, only to have them canceled at the last moment. I have worked for months on end on really cool projects and been left with nothing to show for it, because canceling the project was the right thing to do. I have made the deciion that a project that I thought was incredibly cool should be canceled. I have worked with others to cut the parts of a project that I thought made it special out of the project in order to save the project, schedule or budget. I can only imagine what it must be like in the game industry doing the exact same thing. The video game market has a lot of players in it. There are more outlets for gaming--online, casual and mmo--than any one person can ever be aware. And the expectations that players bring to games are incredibly high and in someways impossible to meet. Mostly because one groups expectations are mutally exclusive with another groups expectations. No wonder we had difficulty attracting players to a game that had no combat, no economy and little-to-no in-game community organizations. Games and game sites are more like social networking sites than gaming sites anymore. But then, seriously strong communities have grown up around games. I would be somewhat dishonest if I didn't list a few of the things that I thought didn't help the game. The change from starting at the Cleft to starting at Relto did seem a little strange. That seemed to cater more to the exisiting players that had been through everything already than it did to new players who really didn't know anything about what had already happened.
The shift from round the clock delivery to four-to-seven day episodes really made it hard for anyone to get anything going outside of the main storyline. Too many people who only wanted content left the game for the four-to-six weeks of downtime between episodes. I found that trying to do anything player centered during the in-betweens was near impossible. People just didn't want ot care or show interest. Start of an episode, and most people just wanted the content, please get out of my way. Episodes really changed the character of the game. It turned most of the live events into press conferences and made everything feel artificially compressed.

What I would like to see in a revived Uru

To be honest, I do not expect to see Uru revived any time soon. I hope that Cyan Worlds does a fairly detailed postmortem of the project and take a really deep look and measure what they accomplished with what they wanted to do with the game before making any decisions. I am hoping that if anything continues into the future, the there are NOT player-run servers. UntilUru was great, it really got me into the setting. But in hindsight, there was a lot of fracturing of the community with the number of shards and way that some groups seemed to have difficulty reintegrating into the community as a whole after the single server stage started.
I would like to say that the community was strong enough, but I discovered during D'mala (the phase of the game that ended UntilUru and start MOUL) that there were real issues between some groups and these things were not completely resolved. I would like to see them take whatever actions need to be taken to resolve the technical issues and deploy a client and server that really are platforms for playing on modern hardware. Part of me would also like them to kind of leave all the old content behind. Either redesign the city from the ground up or realize that reopening the city twice is one time too many.

Starting the game

I agree with those that hold that an MMO needs to start multiplayer as quickly as possible. And they need to spend some time getting the player ready and the character integrated into the setting. To that end, I think a revived Uru needs to start at the character's home on the surface. There should be a fairly automated cinematic where the player sees the DRC site and then an e-mail pops up confirming their travel arrangements to New Mexico, to travel to the Cleft. The rest of the opening should be either on a plane or a bus, or both, and present the user the oppourtunity to review their notes or a journal or scrapbook they containing background information. Maybe this should include the inital notes on how to find their KI and Relto books. I hadn't thought that through yet, but others have. There may be an automated NPC on the bus also going to the Cleft that the new character can ask questions of. Then the bus get's to where the action starts and we get into multiplayer mode at a public cleft.

Getting things organized

MOUL starte with everyone kind of trying to pick up where Prologue and UU had left off. Prologue was strong on a specific story, which appeared to be DRC v Yeesha/Phil. I wasn't there, so I don't really know. UntilUru had no story, other than where people tried to maintain it. As you can see, very different experiences. Add in the players who maintained some very non-canon fanfiction, setting up offices in the city, taking over locations that were either used for speicific things in the canon or were inaccessible once things got going, and you can start to see how that caused issues. We need guilds from day one. Some solid way of organizing Explorers when they first get exploring. And at the start, it might be best if Cyan-run characters were the leaders of each of the guilds, at least till the commuinty gets used to the idea. There also needs to be something of another side of the story. The history of the modern setting is the DRC wanting to be safe, no age or area open before it is ready, and Yeesha or the Bahro or a DRC rougue or even Explorers wanting to open things faster and causing things to happen. Make the players decide and make there be consequences to these decisions. It's an MMO, why does every character need to experience every single thing that happens? Just let the story progress naturally. And yes, there need to be story. Uru doesn't have combat, or an economy, or grinding levels. So the story needs to be as strong as the content. To elaborate on this, when I was trying MxO, it was strange. I know a little about where the story has gone from people at work who play. Yet, during the 2 weeks I was playing, it seemed I was stuck back in the begining. The game was never evolved so that people starting out for the first time got an idea as to where the story was RIGHT NOW. Cyan shouldn't make the same mistake. Once things get going, the Cleft needs to reflect how things are moving forward. I like the idea others have put forward of getting rid of the neighborhoods. They didn't really seem to serve a purpose. Mind of made things a little harder organizationally. Too many people in some hoods. Too many hoods with only one person (I was one of these). And having the hoods all be copies of the same exact place caused some issues. Forced us to talk about instancing too much when we should have been in character. Let group have places for themselves, but spread them out. Use the guilds. Do something meaningful with hoods and city districts.

It's an MMO, right?

Starting the game should be public. I covered that already. And more of the game need to subtly keep the players playing together.
When I first thought about the multiplayer capabilities of Myst, I thought how interesting it would be to have areas that could only be solved and fully understood working in teams. Honestly, I'm not sure any game gets this right. Forcing multiplayer comes off as artificial and too often you have experienced players either taking advantage of new people or pushing them through, and making them miss the point of the encounter. All in the name of getting through things quickly. There needs to be a strong encouragement to explore together. While a lot of things should be available to the solo player, there should be some things that solve differently with multiple players. I can't think of examples for this. The garden ages were easiest with 7 or 8 people. Ahnonay could only have been solved with at least two people working together. There needs to be some way of getting people to work together that way without it feeling fake. At the same time, everyone should be able to experience everything in the game. There should be some consequences for the deciions a player makes for a character. If I choose to do this, then I am unable to also do that. The only thing we had like that in MOUL were that one could only join one neighborhood and posses one guild t-shirt. With the exceptions of the guild pubs, everyone had access to everything. That turns the whole thing into puzzle collecting. And it doesn't give people a reason to even worry about characters. If I follow Yeesha, then getting access to some DRC things should be difficult if not impossible. If I follow the DRC, then maybe I shouldn't reap all the rewards of Yeesha.
If I'm not there one week, maybe I shouldn't be able to do something at all, cause it was only available one week in May. I'm going to stop here. It's getting late, and I'm starting to lose my train of thought. I will write more on this later.

Tonight, at 00:01, is the shutdown of Myst Online: Uru Live. 

My goal for the next few hours is to spend time in the game with the rest of the community that have stuck it out till now.  It is hard to avoid the cliché from the Myst games.  Within the games, and the community, everyone wants to say that "the end has not yet been written." 

With the game shutting down, for the second time, with the second publisher, it is hard to see how MOUL will ever be anything more than a curious oddity in the history of online games.

For the last five weeks, there have been a number of forum posts, blog posts and articles by members of the Myst community and the gaming industry, that have talked about the end of Myst.  There have been passing remarks on yet another game being canceled or closing.  There have people wishing for, demanding and begging for a restart of UntilUru.  There have been wild, impossible plans for continuing the game without GameTap and even without Cyan.  Like I said: impossible.

There have been discussion about how the game could have been run.  How the very essence of the game was changed by Ubi's insistence that at least part of the game (the Prime ages) be available as a standalone game.  There were arguments and debates about how the Cleft, the hoods, even the city and ages should have been organized, instanced and delivered.  The value of Yeesha, the DRC, various community organizations, role playing & playing Uru in character (cavern) and playing Myst out of character (cavern) all have been debated. 

The community has talked about what happens next.  What we can do. Where we will go after the sound of the last link fades in our ears and the stark reality that it was merely just another game, and now it is over.

And through most of this, I have been somewhat quiet.  Unless, of course, one was listening on CyanChat.

What is left of the community has started gathering together in the places we hold dear.  The last in cavern meetings are being organized and everyone is saying their good-byes. 

Not really good-bye.

This community has been together in one form or another since shortly after the release of the first Myst game in 1993.  Here we are, fifteen years later, gathering together both in and out of the game, celebrating what we all hope is not really the end.

Had a pleasant surprise tonight while I was looking at the statistics for sysmango.com.

About once a month, I take some time and go through the logs produced by the web server. I used to post the findings once a month, but I have not done that recently. There are sometimes interesting things buried in web logs.

This month, the interesting thing was a number of inbound links from an article at apple.com. The article is part of Apple's support for GameTape and Cyan releasing a version of Myst Online: Uru Live for Macs. On page 3 of the article, there is a quick introduction of In Cavern v Out of Cavern perspectives in Myst. Guess what site they picked as an example of In Cavern?

One of the statistics packages I run reports only 18 links from apple.com. Another reports only 9. I was only able to find 5 in the raw log, but that only represented 23 March to 24 March. Still it was interesting. Only greeninkforall.com has provided me with more inbound hits.

And here I thought nobody was even bothering to read that content.

I do have to wonder when they made the decision to use Sysmango.com's IC feed as their example. I haven't posted anything since 08 February.

Looking at the statistics from Google Analytics, I have had zero real traffic over the last couple of weeks. Just getting a casual mention on big website does not automatically mean your site is going to get killed by all the hits. Mostly because there have not been any.

I actually woke Natalie up to show her the page.

I am just really surprised. There are a lot of Myst websites. There are about thirty-two other Explorers registered via Uru Blogs as having In Cavern blogs or content. Honestly, there are other sites that are more active and better focused than what I have posted In Cavern, with authors that are a lot more involved in the happenings in the Cavern and the community.

Is it enough to just say that I am amazed?