Systems of Play: Multiplayer Game Design Recap

Systems of Play, a free video game design workshop series sponsored by local developer Arkadium, completed the third class in a series of five at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan last Wednesday. The event, titled Multiplayer Game Design, drew a crowd of around 40 people and was an entertaining and informative evening.

Workshop speakers Eric Zimmerman and Naomi Clark focused last week's lesson on multiplayer game design, specifically online games. They said multiplayer activities have a long relationship with humanity, and began the class with a short history of people and social play.

"The truth is that games have always been multiplayer," Zimmerman said. "Single-player games like Solitaire are really an anomaly. For thousands of years, games have essentially been a form of social interaction."

Zimmerman cited examples such as Pong and Space Wars as early examples of multiplayer videogames, saying that after a long infatuation with sweeping, cinematic single-player experiences, developers are returning to the multiplayer format.

"Multiplayer games are not something new," Zimmerman said. "It's merely digital games returning to their roots as social play."

The workshop then broke into groups for the first activity, playing and modifying the game Wolves and Sheep. Similar to Rock, Paper, Scissors, Wolves and Sheep is a hand game requiring players to make an open palm for sheep or closed fist for wolves. The groups played and then modified the game's rule system to alter the experience.

After discussing issues that each party encountered during the project, Clark and Zimmerman lead the group into a lecture on the rules of playing a multiplayer game, and the types of players encountered in online worlds. Zimmerman said by playing a multiplayer game, one is signing a social contract to observe both the stated and implied rules of the game.

"When we enter into a multiplayer game, we all decide to play by the rules," Zimmerman said. "When we sit down to play chess, we're agreeing to speak the same language; we're gonna agree to take turns, and we're gonna agree that it's meaningful to win the game."

Those who decide to ignore the rules, Zimmerman said, usually ruin the game for the rest of the group. Most gamers know these kinds of players as griefers, cheaters, bullies or killers, and Zimmerman said their acts of game treason include hacks, tea bagging a dead opponent or bullying weaker players.

"Perhaps the most famous griefer right now is Ralph Pootawn," Clark said. "Usually people who play Second Life make their avatars really attractive. Ralph's owner made him about as unattractive as possible, and his time in the game is spent annoying other people having sex."

To complete the evening, Clark and Zimmerman left the class with a tip list filled with things to consider when designing and maintaining an online, multiplayer game. The lecturers urged attendees to avoid being too realistic, to be careful with player trading, to monitor economic statistics and to track unreal extreme behavior such as in-game hoarding.