Raph Koster, the former lead designer of Ultima Online, was a guest on a livestream of “Find Your Next Game”, hosted by MeinMMO and GameStar. He also talked about the term “MMO”. He finds the acronym dreadful and explains what it actually entails.
What does MMO stand for? Originally, the word MMO was somewhat of an abbreviation for MMORPG, which stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.
However, over time, the term evolved. While battles with 300 or more players were the norm in Dark Age of Camelot, WoW established smaller player counts for relevant content like dungeons, raids, or PvP battlegrounds. It removed a bit of the “Massively” from MMORPG.
Nowadays, “MMO” is more of a label for games that are playable online and are constantly being developed, also referred to as games as a service.
Raph Koster, who is among the founding figures of MMORPGs as the lead designer of Ultima Online, finds the abbreviation even dreadful and explains why in the “Find Your Next Game” livestream. He also describes what constitutes MMOs and what fascinates him about online games.
Diving into another world, that’s what makes it special
What does Koster say? During a discussion about how difficult it is to make MMO fans happy, Koster explains why the term MMO already complicates things:
What actually makes a game an MMO? First of all, MMO is a terrible designation because all it tells you is: Massively Multiplayer Online…something. It’s really a dreadful abbreviation.
It all started with MMORPG, and then other terms came along, like MMORTS, MMOFPS, and so on. Before, we called them MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), but we also tended to say online world or virtual world.
Raph Koster in the livestream from MeinMMO and GameStar
What defines an MMO? While Koster acknowledges there is a technical definition of MMO, it doesn’t play a significant role for him. Instead, he wishes to immerse his imagination in a world that doesn’t exist:
The technical definition is: it must simulate space, it must provide a place to move, it must be able to represent the avatars, it must be persistent, those kinds of things.
I like to summarize it this way: Be where you can’t be. Be someone you can’t be. Along with other players. That’s the true idea of entering an online world.
Raph Koster in the livestream from MeinMMO and GameStar
In this context, he criticizes games that are categorized as MMOs but resemble a sport or competition instead. For him, there is too little exploration of the world and too much “going into a match” together.
He mentions Destiny 2:
What resembles a world in Destiny 2 the most is actually the lobby and the city areas. And you don’t spend much of your active playtime there. But that’s the part of the game that feels like an MMO.
Raph Koster in the livestream from MeinMMO and GameStar
For him, there is nothing against instances, after all, World of Warcraft even made these small group contents popular. But WoW has “the much bigger lobby, namely a large part of the game”.
For Koster, such an open world plays an important role.
Parallel worlds in which we can escape or become better people
What fascinates Koster about MMOs? In the following discussion, Koster talks about how MMOs are like a parallel world that players can escape into.
Especially in these times of Corona, but also protests and injustices, Koster even sees this as useful:
If we look at the real world and all the things happening right now, then it has a great value to be able to go to another place and try out different behaviors. Ways to be better to each other, ways to understand how important every person is.
And that is one reason why the social aspects play such an important role. It teaches you to recognize that all the different ways to explore a world are valid. That all other people have feelings and rights and are important.
Raph Koster in the livestream from MeinMMO and GameStar
Gordon Walton, who has previously worked on Mass Effect, SWTOR, and Crowfall and was also part of the livestream, agrees with Koster. He explains the differences between single-player and multiplayer games:
The difference between single- and multiplayer lies in how relevant it feels. That’s what makes multiplayer games special: My behavior and my efforts are recognized by others.
In a single-player game, the game tries to keep you relevant, as it wants you to keep playing. But you know that everything is just a construct.
But you can trick your brain into feeling that it’s not a construct because real people are involved. My friend Jonathan Baron says that the human heart feels no difference between a virtual world and reality. It’s the same for us and our hearts. We can’t separate that.
Gordon Walton in the livestream from MeinMMO and GameStar
Koster adds to this statement that online worlds have a nice aspect: It can be about how special you are yourself, but also how special the other players are. For him, that is a nicer definition of online worlds.
Aside from the definition of MMO, the two game developers also talked about the evolution of MMORPGs. Gordon Walton even posited the thesis that WoW killers have almost killed the MMO business.
