The Social MMO
Social networks have quickly become a web staple. To such an extent that with each new one you start asking yourself whether it has any use at all. While Google, Facebook et al are vying to gain control of the data (or in some cases define who actually owns social data), games seem blissfully ignorant of the new hype.
Well, that was until Microsoft dipped its toe into the water. Xbox Live at one point gained the friend of friends ability, making it possible for you to view a friend’s friend list, potentially allowing you to play with other safe persons even if your friend is away. A rather novel exploit of this feature still surprised me a bit.
Xbox Live’s friend list is notoriously limited to a certain amount of persons you can register as a friend. Which is kind of annoying if you have different communities per game and playing them all actively. You are going to run out of available slots pretty quickly. As a means to circumvent that community-wise, specific game-accounts were created. Basically an Xbox Live Silver host account is set-up and everybody within the community registers that account instead of individual friends. Because of the friend of a friend feature that means that by adding one friend you gain access to the entire community of that one game. Sure the same limit still applies to the host account, but now to the community as a whole rather than individual friend lists. It’s also an easy way to keep track of a clan without sacrificing your ‘normal’ friends.
Though it is more or less an exploit at the moment, it is easy to see how this idea could be extended, allowing you to compress your social network even within a hard limit. At the same time it highlights how social networks can add to the online game experience.
Just about everyone who has played games online knows of the annoying players that can wreck games (and if you do not, there is a good chance you are one of them). Sure, there are ways of getting rid of them by banning, reporting them, etc. But the most ideal situation is that you wouldn’t encounter them at all. Penny Arcade’s humoristic theory sets an excellent point that social networks can potentially circumvent. Anonymity can bring out the worst in people and by playing with friends of friends the anonymity is broken down.
This is the same aspect LinkedIn works with. By scanning the contacts of who you know, you can easily reach business contacts that you thought were completely anonymous to you. For games it would work the other way around. The closer you are to someone the greater the social pressure on the player would be to keep its cool. After all, you and the connected player both share a friend and damaging the relationship with one, could damage that with the other as well.
Of course, that is the negative view of it, the positive view is that because you are a friend of a friend, the chances you behave similar to the shared friend is far greater than connecting with a random player. Simply put, players receive an individual social status that is only relevant within its intended range. Taking Xbox Live as an example again; someone with a feedback of 1 star can be an excellent player to you personally, but a small disaster to anyone else. The 1 star feedback is not relevant because it applies to the whole and is based upon a rather shaky median. (Who actually provides feedback, and if so only positive or negative? It’s a niche providing a niche-rating.)
A social network in contrast will be more likely to connect you to players with the same preferences. If a person within your social network would be getting negative feedback, it would potentially be far more relevant to you as a player.
Of course, it runs completely wild when you apply this idea to an MMO.
Imagine a social MMO in which the only people you see and can play with online are all part of your social network to an n degree. Assuming there would be no fault with the earlier provided Xbox Live example, you would be playing in a world with a greater chance of people adhering to your own play style. And by adding new friends directly you would decrease your degree of separation with even more people.
Of course when put to the extremes the idea is nuts: you would be working towards the normal amount of players an open MMO would provide. But at the same time, it hints at an optimisation. I could imagine it being used to reduce server loads (though the practical application might be hopelessly complex negating the effect). I could also imagine this being a way to prevent spam from gold-farmers and bots, which would need a ‘friend’ to get into an internal social MMO bubble.
At the same time that also hints at its greatest weakness: the lone wolf. A person without any friends would be in a completely empty world and would need to find an external source to gain access. That idea is quite chilling even though it is already applied in everyday life. On the other hand it would be a boon for already existing communities, say a forum, which could basically play with its own group not having to fear disruptions from outside.
It would severely compromise the massive aspect of an MMO. But at the same time it feels like a way forward for online games in general. After all, less is more, n’est-ce pas?