What is an MMO

          An MMO refers to a massive multiplayer online video game. This term most commonly applies to MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft or Rift. They are these games with humongous worlds and an extremely high volume of players active. I’m not sure what the exact number has to be in order for a game to reach the “MMO” status, but it gets tossed around when referring to very popular online games. League of Legends is sometimes referred to as an MMO, and judging by how many people play it this seems accurate. However, this article isn’t meant to just define what an MMO is; it’s meant to explain why so many players get into them… and why some never leave.

          The first MMO I ever played was Runescape. Lots of people won’t consider it an MMORPG because it’s a web based browser game, but the game boasts a record of over 200 million accounts made. I started playing it in 2004 and didn’t quit until 2008. What kept me in? I think it was the fact that I had never played a game like this. You clicked on the mini map to move, combat was done by standing still and swinging your weapon every so many seconds, you could train up multiple skills, NPCs had interesting quests to give you, and you could fight other players or join up with them. I mostly did quests as they felt like their own point-and-click adventure games. You had to use items on each other to reach many solutions and you also had to travel a lot. The world had a ton of things you could do in it. And yet, at one point I quit. Why? Because my friends had stopped playing and the game changed. It felt lonely, yet addicting. I quit because even though I could still do more things, it meant nothing to play alone.

          I played other MMOs here and there over the course of ten years. I even made some friends through guilds. The games took up a lot of my time. It didn’t occur to me how much time until I noticed what my entire day consisted of. All of my free time went into progressing in these games. Now I wonder what else I could have been doing with that time.

          The downside of this genre is that it can become very addictive and hard to break out of. When you sink so much time and effort into something, it becomes harder to give it up. The reason players invest so much time into these kinds of games is because of what the games reward. The sense of progression, feeling powerful and useful, having shiny trinkets and giant weapons and armor to show off; it’s the closest thing to living out a fantasy. The worst part about it is when you want to obtain something in game that can’t be acquired alone. The games are meant to be social and cooperative, but something about setting a goal gives you tunnel vision and you just push everyone else away. Sometimes the goal is way too high and takes an absurd amount of time to acquire. In my case, it was completing a raid dungeon in World of Warcraft. I just wanted to see the end content and defeat the Lich King, the main antagonist of Wrath of the Lich King at the time. It never happened. The team I was with was not coordinated enough to make it halfway through the dungeon. It takes on average three to four hours to reach the end boss, too. Even with scheduled raids and planning we still couldn’t do it. And I was furious. I quit because I felt I had no more sense of progression. The content was still there and I couldn’t reach it because the rest of the team couldn’t make it. When a game reaches that point in which the player feels no sense of progression, you can bet they will quit until they can find some way to win.

          However, that doesn’t mean all MMOs are bad. The best one I’ve played so far was Guild Wars 2. It’s an experimental kind of RPG where players can pick whatever class they want without worrying about filling in some role. The world was beautiful, the characters lovable and memorable, and the best part: leveling didn’t feel like a grind. I was content taking my time reaching the cap because there was very little endgame. All the focus went into the rest of the game. Players were a lot more cooperative and social, too. That was possibly the strongest point of this game: encouraging cooperation rather than competition. I haven’t played it for three years now, but I don’t think I will forget it.

          Hopefully this explains the pros and cons of the MMO world. They are massive, have lots to offer, and can be a joy when playing in good company. Unfortunately, they can be addicting and take over your life. Once you find an online game that you like, ask your friends to join you. You might even make new ones in the process. But once everyone starts to leave, quit. If they lost interest, eventually you will, too.

Concept Art

          I have always wanted to improve my drawing abilities ever since I was a kid. I usually drew straight objects like swords. They were just the easiest thing for me to create. Sometimes I would even draw Pokemon. Anytime there was a drawing class offering in school, I would sign up for it. Despite my desire to be a good artist, I see fantastic images done by other people and I feel inept. How did they make something that grand!? It seemed to me that something like concept art would be out of the question if I have to be that skilled to make anything. Here’s the thing though: concept art isn’t about illustration… it’s about idea generation and making something unreal become reality.

          If you view the average concept artist’s portfolio, they have maybe 10-20 images of things they have created. They all look amazing, but not all of them are imaginative. They showcase excellent drawing and digital painting skills, but very few actually take a concept farther than a generic creature or some spiky armor or an undead ghoul that lacks life. I’m hardly convinced that they are real. So what makes the ones that stand out so good? I believe it is because concept art isn’t necessarily about creating an illustration, but rather being able to make concepts from several gathered ideas.

          After hearing a concept artist speak about his profession, one of the things he mentioned was that he did well over one hundred thumbnails for any idea. That seems absurdly high, but when you need to come up with an imaginative idea, creating tons of iterations in a short amount of time is essential to being a good concept artist.

          When I first learned concept art, I had to make at least ten thumbnails for a character. It started to get higher as the ideas became more complicated. Twenty thumbs, thirty thumbs, forty thumbs… it seemed daunting, but a thumbnail is simply a vague idea of what you want. Say you need to design a pet that incorporates one of the four elements of Alchemy. You decide to go with the element of Earth. That narrows it down, but what next? You pick out what kind of pet. Is it a pet dog? Cat? Bird? Let’s say it’s a pet bird. Now you get your references for various types of birds since you have narrowed down the concept to something more manageable. You start thumbnailing things like shape of the body, plumage, eye shape, beak shape, and so on. Thinking of those little details helps you solidify your idea into something you like.

          Now that you’ve gone through many thumbnails of each part of this concept, you start making a few rough sketches. These are just to test out linework and don’t need any shading or detail. Roughs are kind of like more elaborate thumbnails in which they combine all those little vague ideas into a single entity. When you have your roughs, you convert them into silhouettes to see how they read. This narrows it down to one with a likeable, distinct shape and now you’ve got your concept. You lay in those colors and maybe some shading. You don’t have to make it incredibly detailed just yet as you will be getting feedback from your peers. Once you show it to them, they might make some suggestions such as changing proportions or trying a different color scheme. You might want to try a range of color schemes where you keep the same pose, but only change the colors. There’s also some room for implementing any new thumbnails into the concept, but don’t stray too far from the guidelines. It still has to be a pet that corresponds to one of the four elements of Alchemy. If you feel that Earth doesn’t quite work with your design, you can reimagine it as Wind. It might look very different than before.

          Finally the concept is all figured out. You went with an Air design and it looks so much better now. If the concept gets approved, all that’s left is to illustrate it with all the nice details that make it an astounding piece to display in your portfolio. That’s how the concept artist works: they are given a concept idea with limitations to that concept, they thumbnail ideas and make several iterations, they receive feedback and improve based on that, and they make it presentable to the world. It took numerous ideas and drawings, but it was all necessary to get that one perfect piece.

          I know it can be daunting seeing that it requires lots of drawings and when compared to professionals you might see your work as inferior, but with practice you can improve your abilities. Don’t focus so much on what you can’t do yet; focus more on what you can do now and you will see a marked significance in skill level change in the future.

What is Conveyance

            Conveyance is the idea of showing or explaining a concept through visual clues and situational agency. At least, that’s how I define it. You can also think of it as subtle instructions. Any kind of guidance given to you the player that doesn’t rely on a very obvious and blatant “go do this now” text or arrow is conveyance. It’s important for games to do this so the player doesn’t feel lost in a world with little to no direction. Good conveyance lets the player know the mechanics of the game without forcing them to rely on the manual too much and does so in a way that the player can easily figure out. Bad conveyance holds your hand for the most trivial of tasks such as jumping. Even for players who have never played a video game in their entire lives can figure out what does what with a little experimenting. The only things that really need direct instructions are complicated commands.

            I’m going to use Spyro the Dragon as an example. Our titular hero Spyro is a dragon. Naturally as a quadruped, he can move around forward and steer in whatever direction he needs to go. The controller has buttons that read as arrows, so naturally one would start by pressing those first. Some games rely on the analog left stick for more accurate movement. This may not read as well for movement, but the player can figure that out in time. As for starting the game, Spyro is in a safe location. He cannot begin his adventure until he starts moving. It’s up to the player to initiate those commands via button presses. There are no tutorials at this point in the game.

            What else can dragons do? Breathe fire, of course. Checking the other side of the controller you can see four buttons with shapes on them. The player should be curious enough to see what they do. They try the X button first and Spyro leaps into the air. That’s jumping figured out. Try hitting the square button and Spyro charges forward. The player might even tap or hold these buttons to see what else they do. Holding square makes Spyro charge indefinitely. The player hits the circle button and he spews a cone of flame. There’s your fire breath attack. Those basic abilities were easy to figure out for me because the game came with a manual. But most games, especially digital, have no manuals. They can still have conveyance without relying on text and pictures.

            Megaman X probably has one of the best forms of conveyance I’ve seen. The first level introduces the idea of movement, taking damage, and jumping. In one part, Megaman X falls into a pit. He can jump, but he doesn’t jump high enough. Naturally, the player will want to find a way out in order to continue the game. Moving against the wall and jumping at it causes him to slide a little ways down it. Repeated jumping lets him wall jump. This becomes a central mechanic later on in the game and it’s essential to progressing through stages. Had that one moment not been implemented, players might not have figured out that wall jumping is a thing that can be done in the game.

            Bad conveyance can make a game annoying and possibly stale. When you get a tutorial box that pops up the moment you start, you know something went wrong. “Hey! Did you know you can move by pressing up to go forward, back to step backwards, left to strafe left, and right to strafe right?” Not only that, your view is obscured and the game is paused. You haven’t even gotten to see the world yet! Let the player explore around a bit and give them a reason to not be afraid. Nothing should be implemented that can kill the player at the very start of the game. You can introduce hostile AI a bit later when they know they have a means of fighting against it.

            This kind of conveyance might actually be a problem in children’s games. Sure, it makes sense to be very direct and show big flashy arrows pointing to where players need to go. But if you make this big open world to explore and you have all these detour signs posted, virtually more than half of the level is untouched let alone forgotten. Something like a hint box may be useful such as “Find the red rabbit.” Highlighting the text might help it a little to show emphasis. However, there is no need to point to the objective. Let the player go looking for it. It’s up to the designers to place the objective in a place the player can easily locate.

            Conveyance can also be done through level design. This goes back to the Megaman X example I mentioned. The player had a sense of agency and a big obstacle. Through experimenting with what they knew they were able to find a way over the obstacle and progress. A level design can do the same thing. Maybe there is a split path in a forest stage. One path leads to the main objective and the other leads to nothing. Implementing a subtle hint can lead the player on the right path. A guidance marker is only necessary when the objective is extremely far away like in Skyrim. Lots of quests take place all over the world and it’s easy to get sidetracked.

            One of the only exceptions to bad conveyance would be to explain a complicated mechanic. Maybe you’re playing a game with an intricate interface with tons of information. A tutorial helps a lot when explaining what everything means and why you need to see it. Even then, you should not stop the gameplay unless it’s to keep the player safe for a moment. Having too many of these paused tutorials will mess up the flow of gameplay and make it annoying to keep playing. You might have a younger and inexperienced audience in mind when making these tutorials, but please do not let it impede the veteran players who understand common mechanics in games and just want to get started already.