As I mentioned on my other blog over the weekend, though I've often mentioned "busily burning out from Champions Online," one would hope that a game does not truly evoke burnout. Alas, I'm there now, and with that comes a return of my motivation to perform development.

I think perhaps my brain needed a vacation. I had ground it so much into my previous project that I was no longer creating a game. I was creating an artificial intelligence experiment. A successful artificial intelligent experiment in that, yes, I now had a working hive of little bugs that were able to be self-sustaining against this virtual backdrop, but not really something that would entice a player to participate.

The winter months are once again upon us, and so I have been able to wear a coat with increasing frequency. With that coat comes pockets, and with those pockets I've once again taken to carrying about my notebook with me and jotting down ideas to burn time.

I've definitely a few interesting things rattling about in my head. The thing is, I think I get MMOs better than most professional developers. They tend to want to emulate World of Warcraft these days, since it was ludicrously successful, but they don't really understand why. They think it was because it was so casually focused, but the truth in that WoW is not a casual game - it only puts up this initial facade and uses it to funnel the casual masses into becoming hardcore players.

WoW's developers understand (or else lucked out) in realizing that any game you play for as long as an MMORPG is a transformative experience. Players are capable of learning, the process of playing a game is a learning process, and everybody becomes an experienced player in time. Thus, if your game is 100% casual play experience, the player will quickly get bored once they're so experienced that they no longer need to be babied. "The game begins once you hit the end game" was always their real mantra - everything before that was just the education. (Their only mistake is not facilitating a quick enough transition for players who have already reached that level.)

It is with this kind of understanding I approach my projects. I can't keep it simple, I want to make it start out simple but become more complex as the player is ready for it. I want to make a game that adjusts dynamically to the players' needs, the same idea behind Fl0w, but leverage this against a backdrop of online gameplay.