I recently finished “America’s Game“, a very informative book describing the history of the NFL. It’s an entertaining read that starts in the early 40s and winds down around Nipplegate.
From a game designer’s perspective, the interesting thing about the book was the discussion about the business decisions that the owners made that allowed the sport to ultimately surpass baseball in popularity. It discusses some of the common theories (including that football’s pacing lends itself better to television), but it keeps coming back to the simple premise that the owners’ unwavering belief that fair and competitive football games were the way to go. The Draft, the Salary Cap, and sharing TV revenue between all teams are the primary examples of where this philosophy has led.
By way of example, in the 40s, the Bears and the Giants won the 8-Team NFL virtually every year. The owner of the Eagles, who were perpetual doormats at the time, came up with the idea of the first sports draft to ensure that the doormat teams of the future would get an influx of good talent every year. The measure passed unanimously — the owners of the Giants and the Bears realized they would lose their lock on the championship game every year, but they also realized that the product that was the NFL would suffer unless games became fair.
It seems like common sense, of course, but can you imagine George Steinbrenner taking this stance? Baseball owners like Steinbrenner have fought aggressively against true reforms for the good of the sport, as have the players, who feel (probably correctly) that a salary cap would slow the ridiculous growth of superstar salaries. As for George, he likes it being a money game – because he has more of it, thanks to the lucrative New York market.
MMOs, believe it or not, face interesting and similar quandries all the time. It is my earnest belief that most people who play MMOs would be interested in PVP and PK combat if it felt fair. The problem is that making fair MMO PVP combat is hard. Almost every MMO with PVP has an ‘ambush’ style class, usually a rogue, that can annihilate most other character classes with little fear of reprisal if they can choose the opportunity of attack. Which is, I confess, great fun for the backstabber. Try to change this, though, and you’ll be accused of creating Carebearland.
Zerging is another not-very-fair tactic – i.e. winning simply on sheer numbers. Not very competitive, and not very entertaining for very long. One of the interesting things about WoW’s battlegrounds and Guild Wars’ instanced arenas is that they can, in theory, guaruntee a fair fight – at least in numbers. Whether these systems will resonate with the players even though they are off the main map remains to be seen.
And MMOs aren’t alone. Magic: the Gathering has had to invent closed-deck tournaments so new players could hope to have any chance to win against the guy with a suitcase full of Magic cards. But fairness is even a bigger issue in skill-based games, where one experienced player exercising very good skill with the sniper rifle can be seen as monumentally unfair to the newbie who can’t seem to spawn and grab the closest gun before an ominous voice says ‘Head Shot’.
Which is the tricky bit. Fairness is, fundamentally, a point of view question. Steinbrenner, for example, is playing by the rules building his Yankees, and if you ask any Yanks fan, they’ll tell you that all’s fair until baseball decides to change the rules.
But I do think that the next great PVP game is going to promise — and deliver– basic fairness in the fights. I think that there’s a lot of people waiting for it.
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