Ekim's Gamer View: Casual Gaming
Ekim, 2003-08-15

Living a virtual life in the AFK world

Not only do we have lives, but we have friends, families, loved ones. They can't be taken for granted, and yet sometimes we need to put them aside for a few hours of gaming. Most regular games can be put on hold when our attention is needed, but not MMORPGs. There are moments when you just can't put an MMORPG aside at all. Not simply because you're hooked, but because the game forces you to keep your whole attention focused on it.

This subject has been explored countless times already, I know. But I don't want to make this a plea for or against "addiction". I rather want to talk about ways to make it easier for someone with a life and a family to be able to enjoy an MMORPG in the same way a single-player game can be enjoyed. I'm trying to constructively point out that even the most casual player-friendly MMORPG out there right now does not seem to take into account the tribulations of married life, or of having kids.

I don't have kids myself… yet. But the day will come, I promise you. When that day comes, I'll be a father, and like most fathers out there, I'm sure I'll need some means of escape from the burden of fatherhood once in a while. I have come across many parents that played MMORPGs in my online life. They all enjoyed the games tremendously, even though I think they were AFK more often than actively moving around in the world. Still, they juggle around with their free time, between their kids and games, and they were happy for the distraction. But, unfortunately, distractions of the outside world was the cause of many deaths in MMORPGs, and parents who play these games often suffer the most.

If only there was a pause button in real life too…

Through no fault of their own, parents are often called away from a game. It's normal, and it's certainly acceptable that they put the game aside to attend to other, more pressing needs. In a single-player game, this is trivial. Although interruptions kind of break the flow of the game, it can still be paused. For longer interruptions, most can be saved and restored later at leisure. MMORPGs do not have this kind of feature at all. And I think it's sorely missing.

People would argue that an online world lives on even if you are not there, and that pausing the game would not fit in with the concept of the genre. But couldn't it be possible to implement a self-pause feature of some kind that would only half-remove the character from the playing field, effectively assuring that the "paused" character would not be killed by roaming animals passing by? To stop exploits, the game could prevent any sort of actions to be performed by the person while he is on this pause mode. No one else would be affected, and everyone else in the game would continue on with their virtual lives.

Meanwhile, a father could attend to his son's needs, help his wife bring up her bags from the car, handle the neighbor that just sent his dog to poop on his lawn… Hey, it happens! Some of these people would love to be able to play MMORPGs, but avoid them because they are penalized for the trivial every day life interruptions that occur around them. Run back to the city for safety you say? What if you're in the middle of nowhere, 5 minutes out of any city around you, and the baby starts crying? There's no time to go back to the city before you go to the baby, you can't do that. The baby needs immediate attention, you need to let go of the game for a short while. And that short while could sometimes unpredictably become 10 minutes. By then the father's character could have been killed twice, and lots of frustration follows.

Real casual gaming

This may not affect many people out there. It doesn't affect me too much, but it might affect me in the future. And when I start thinking of my future, I would like to still be able to play MMORPGs even though these constraints start to affect me more. I like MMORPGs but if they stay as they are now, one day I'll just have to drop them. Although developers say that they are thinking of casual players, they sometimes don't think of the obvious.

Great strides were made with the most recent crop of MMORPGs to make them more casual player-friendly. But we are still a far cry off of being in the same league as single-player games which can literally be enjoyed at leisure, with or without outside distractions. Casual gaming is not really only about being able to advance faster through the ranks, although that is certainly appreciated I'm sure. Real casual-players need a way to safely park their characters anywhere, and at any time, without fearing to be killed in the wild while they attend other, more important matters. And no, logging in and out of the game repeatedly is not a viable solution….