ohai… What’s An “MMO” Anyway (And What Makes City of Eternals One)?

We say ohai makes “handcrafted MMOs for everyone”, which we talked about in yesterday’s MMO development philosophy post, but just in case you’re not as geeky as us, here’s a quick explanation of what MMO means, and a very brief history of the genre:

Way back in olden times (like, the 1980s!), when the Internet was mostly just a thing for college campuses, some programmers started creating games that depicted whole fantasy worlds with text and primitive graphics, and used the network to let many people (say, a few hundred) connect into that world at the same time, and play around in it together as alter egos, called “avatars”. As the Internet grew, these worlds got larger, and by the 1990s, many got large enough for thousands of avatars to be online at the same time. That’s about when people started calling these games MMORPGs, for “Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games“, which is quite a mouthful to say. In recent years, networking power has improved enough for millions of people to play these games, and as they became more popular, the acronym was often shortened to MMO, for “Massively Multiplayer Online [World]“. That way, the term could describe anything from casual virtual worlds on the web, to big budget online roleplaying games with 3D graphics. (Also, we think people just got tired of saying “MMORPG” over and over again.) So everything from Habbo, Gaia, and RuneScape on the web, to Aion, Second Life, and World of Warcraft in 3D, can accurately be called an MMO.

But what makes City of Eternals, our first game, an MMO? Well, the City itself is a mini-world, with numerous neighborhoods and districts to explore, and mysteries to uncover. Every player has an avatar they control, and each avatar has character stats, resources, and equipment they can invest in over time. Above all, to us, MMOs are immersive environments that foster synchronous, real time interaction — something we’re striving for in CoE.

Our goal, as we discussed in a previous post, is to make an MMO enjoyable for both hardcore gamers and people who only just discovered online games via a social network like Facebook. And because City of Eternals is a modern day vampire MMO (the first of its kind, we’re fairly sure), we also want it to be an MMO to the many fans of the genre in all its many variations, be that Buffy, Twilight, Anne Rice novels, True Blood, and more.

So whatever kind of player you are… ohai, welcome to our massively multiplayer online [vampire] world!

ohai… I’m taking MMOs to the next level!

Welcome to our new site. I’m Don Neufeld, chief technical ohai. Before cofounding this company, I helped ship several top MMORPGs, including EverQuest II, PlanetSide, and Star Wars Galaxies. At ohai, however, we’re making a very different kind of game. Basically, we’re making frictionless, lightweight, MMOs that create joy and connection between people in their everyday lives.

But what’s that mean?

Look at the gaming landscape: Very few companies can develop new massively multiplayer online games nowadays, because they cost so much money. A typical MMO has a production schedule that is budgeted for three years, but often ends up taking five. Most of these games are also built as walled gardens, with very little interaction between the game world and where people normally live and socialize online.  That isn’t to say they aren’t fun, but they aren’t built to appeal to a broader audience.

That’s one reason we’re building MMOs to live on the web. That speeds up the development time, a lot.  And rather than assume we know what players want, we iterate immediately based on what they’re actually doing in the game. (Another advantage of deploying on the web.)

Being on the web and within social networks also means our games can reach out to players in interesting ways. We want to make it so that you don’t have to be logged into our games, to know what’s happening in them. These aren’t walled gardens. Characters from our game will send you instant messages, even Tweets. We want to tell an unfolding story in real time, with and for our players.  (More on this in future posts!)

Gamers used to playing MMORPGs with high-end graphics may read this and wonder, So what’s in this for me? To be sure, we’re not going to compete on 3D graphics — we build games that run efficiently in Flash.  But we don’t think 3D graphics is where MMO innovation needs to be.  Instead, we’re trying to provide more compelling social, multiplayer play and take that to the next level. Think short play sessions and episodic fun, games played in bite-sized chunks, not whole novel lengths. But, there’s still enough complexity here that you can easily immerse yourself for hours in our rich worlds.

Essentially, the kind of gaming that people are already enjoying on Facebook, but we’re taking it to the next level.   Translation: an MMO you can play at the office during your lunch break or from the school library between classes. Of course, we’re free to play, and we’ll be monetizing through microtransactions.  We believe in providing a service that is so engaging and compelling that people will want to pay for parts of it.

So there’s the general idea. In future posts, I’ll talk about the code behind our games: the server architecture and the game coding my team has been working on, to make our MMOs a unique and innovative experience. Until then, get some hands-on experience with our gaming philosophy, by giving our first MMO a try: Play our flash game City of Eternals now.

so what is ohai anyways? (besides an MMO maker for everyone)?

Meet Jack Batty, above, mascot for our little company. We dubbed ourselves ohai because we love that whimsical greeting among Internet folks. When you play our MMOs, chances are Mr. Batty is the first character to send you an “ohai” hello, and we hope he says it to gamers, LOLcat fans, and everyone in between. After all, we plan to make MMOs for everyone: Hardcore WoW fans looking for lighter fare, and also your aunt who just became a Mafia enforcer on Facebook.

Jack’s a scruffy sort, which is fine with us, because that fits into our design philosophy of game development, and software development in general: Earnest and hopeful, yet somehow disheveled in the way that real life is. Think of Batty flying around a junkyard full of odds and ends, stuff that’s been discarded, and what’s sprouted up out of nowhere — things you could turn into treasures, with enough ingenuity. What is beautiful about life is that it’s often imperfect, but the messy can be perfect all on its own.

You’ll see that thinking in our website design, too, following the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi. As our graphic designer Randy puts it, wabi-sabi “emphasizes the deeper, found beauty of imperfection caused by the action of time and use on an object.” Same goes for the ohai logo. “[I]t’s actually a block print I did to wabi-sabi-fy a hand-drawn version of Futura typeface.”

As it happens, we want the wabi-sabi approach in our actual massively multiplayer online games, too. Take this photo from a Napa Valley junkyard, shot by Susan, our chief ohai, on a recent trip to wine country. “I was really struck by the beauty of how in the midst of the discarded junk, in the cracks between rigid structure, organic life flourished, ” she told the team. “It made me think of what we do as social software developers — we build mechanistic, programmatic structures, that we hope allows organic life to thrive — relationships, human connections, insights. As game developers, we are trying to build worlds and environments that evoke emotions and facilitate connections.”

So now you have the basic idea on the very broadest level — the bat’s eye view, so to speak. What’s that mean for specific MMOs we’re working on now? Stay tuned on this space, and be sure to look around. (Especially if you think you’d like to work with us.) Until then, say it with us: ohai!