birthdays and games

Today, my family celebrates a birthday.

Every year, each person is celebrated on their own day. On that day, the person is treated a little nicer by everyone. There might be gifts, a feast or a party. Visitors might gather from all around, including distant places. And there are likely to be stories shared about the celebrated person and birthdays past.

Birthdays could be excellent inspiration for game features, particularly in MMOs and other online multiplayer games. Each individual player has their own day, and on that day the player is given more than a congratulatory message.

In an item-centric game, perhaps the player can pull something from a grabbag or select from a variety of free items.

Or the player might be granted one day's access to a special play-scenario (the access could be saved for another day).

Or the player's stats might be boosted for a day. Experience points might be earned quicker, health/mana/etc refreshed quicker.

There are a thousand possibilities. The gist is that every player will have one day during which they will be appreciated as an individual and reminded that he or she is important. If you can get fellow players involved, great, but the feature should be able to stand on its own. No matter what schedules are like, no matter where everyone is in the game or what they have at their disposal, the celebrated player will experience a special and memorable day.

creative customization

While reading George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and Martin's many descriptions of elaborate armor sets and weapons, I had to wonder why fantasy RPGs still don't offer gear customization like that. Many games allow customization via selection, but how many offer creative customization?

Certainly, there are good reasons that games which focus on the winning or discovery of items don't favor player creativity. But there are plenty of RPGs in which gear takes a backseat to other thrills. Neverwinter Nights, for example, adhered to D&D's bland item system (Halberd +1, Halberd +2, etc), but was still a fun and bestselling game. Oblivion had plenty of items, but also seems to focus on other goals.

I think games like Spore and The Sims have shown how popular creative customization can be. The outfit editor in Spore's tribal stage offers ideas for RPG gear editors, as do the clothing and tattoo stores of Saints Row and its sequel. And as those games show, creativity needn't exclude achievement. You can offer players new options as they advance through challenges or earn wealth in the game.

Why not? Honestly, I'm surprised I haven't seen this in RPGs.

Come play

There's often a difference between an online friend and an offline friend. There doesn't have to be, but I bet most MMO gamers know what it's like to appreciate another player as groupmate but not want to give that person an email address.

Why not give players an option to be emailed group invitations by other players?

For example: I'm offline, but I've enabled this option. You and I grouped for the first time last night, and you enjoyed my company in the game. You're in the game now, you can see that I'm offline, but you're hoping I'll be able to group sometime before you log off. So you select an in-game option to email an invitation to me without need of knowing my email address. Just as "/tell [name] [message]" only requires that you know my character's name, this only requires the character name and my selection of "enable invitations by email".

The value of such a feature is simple. Sometimes, you may be doing something other than playing the MMO, but you're available and would log in if you had a group waiting for you when you did. You can be notified of friends logging in (only at the friends' discretion) without needing to fill your time with boring actions in the game. Such notifications would be more common if they didn't require sharing personal information.