Ways of designing social into virtual spaces
by Kyle Horner 
Jan 29th 2009 at 4:00PM
Filed under: Culture, MMO industry, News items
While the first two chunks of Raph's post are arguments for actionable design to encourage socialization, it's the last piece of the post where the fleshy part resides. While there are numerous good suggestions for designing better social opportunities, the ones that strike us as our most desirable for MMOs are gifting, mentors, looking for conversation tools and alternate advancement systems for social elements. Those four items are certainly something that more titles could use -- especially as more and more games integrate web tools similar to Facebook.
It's hard to say whether or not we'll actually see any of these taken to heart in many MMOs, but it's nice to wish for things -- and maybe if we pester developers hard enough they'll figure it out sooner rather than later.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Iokthemonkey said on 4:06AM 1-30-2009
I always liked SWG's social aspects, such as the Entertainers/Medics healing your wounds in Cantinas/Med Centres (and equally important that they would heal over time unaided, but this was faster) and the way they had that "Master Training" thing where you could teach players the skills you knew. You then earned "Mentor" points (or whatever they called them) which you needed to get to the top of your profession.
Of course it fell down if you couldn't find a pupil but it was an interesting way of introducing a social aspect.
That and the sandbox economy fuelled by other players (in pre-FUBAR SWG the only equipment of note came from trade skills.)
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