Free Realms Creative Director Laralyn McWilliams: Designing an MMO That’s as Fun to Play as it is Easy to Quit

By Steven Crews | July 9, 2009 | | Filed under: Features, Interviews | Tags: Free Realms, Free to Play, SOE

The MMO Gamer: Now, slightly off topic, back at GDC I had a very interesting conversation with Paul Barnett.

His stance on the MMO genre was that we’re moving away from the giant soul-sucking, five hundred hours of content AAA MMOs, into the more bite sized, casual focused, 30 minutes before you have to go the movies MMOs.

Working on a casual game yourself, and obviously being an MMO player across the board, where do you stand on that whole argument? Do you feel that the AAA segment is on the decline? Or do you think a balance is going to be struck between the two sides at some point?

Laralyn McWilliams: I sort of have two answers for that.

The first answer is that people are always looking for something new to do. While right now casual games are on the upswing, they’re going to hit a certain peak and stay at that peak, and the people are going to say, you know, “I want something deeper.”

So it’s all about, for SOE as a company, it’s all about providing a breadth of different games. A portfolio of different games that are interesting and significantly different for players to play.

I think that is also going to be true for the market as a whole.

Even as you see a whole bunch of casual games come out of market– and while there are several that are successful, Free Realms is sort of leading the parade of the high-quality, big marketing push games to come out like this– there’s going to be the corresponding swing three years from now in the development cycle of four years, where you start getting the long term projects that were started in development a year ago.

Because Free Realms was started four or five years ago, and just now came out. So, there’s going to be the next wave, right?

The next wave after Free Realms is probably going to be the action-based MMOs; The Agency, DCUO, where you’re really trying to bring more of a console feel and more of an action game feel to the MMO environment.

But there are lots of big open worlds, fantasy MMOs that are just starting now. And other companies that you’re starting to hear about as well as things like Knights of the Old Republic, right?

We’re going to come back into the story driven epic ones when they get out of their cycle. That’s my Part I.

But, Part II of the answer is that, from a player’s perspective, I think that there are times when you want both.

There are times when you want to play something that feels like it’s instantly fun, and there are times when you really do want to invest in it. I don’t think that the two are going to edge each other out in any way.

I think the key is that they’re going after different people entirely. Part of the design decisions behind Free Realms is that we’re looking at the kinds of games people play, who don’t play MMOs at all.

I’m not going to target the people who play World of Warcraft and EverQuest. I’m going to go after people who don’t come near those games.

When you look at the top selling games every week, on the PC for example, there’s a good chance that any given week, it’s going to be a third World of Warcraft, a third the Sims or Spore, and then a third are other games.

When I looked at that, I thought to myself, “Why on Earth would I go after players of World of Warcraft?”

Why wouldn’t I go after people who play one of those other two segments? They’re selling really well and there are a lot of people who play them that aren’t playing MMOs. Why aren’t they playing MMOs? What can I do to make this appeal to them?

I believe that a game that can let me have a persistent character and let me create a virtual home for myself is something that a lot of people would find really meaningful. We’re just not appealing to them right now, whether it’s because the games are centered around pointy-eared guys with sticks, or because all the women have gigantic boobs hanging out.

Perhaps it’s because the game is so complex; there are all these little numbers in little boxes and I need a calculator to figure out what pair of pants to put on.

There are a hundred reasons why “normal people…” [laughing] I have to put air quotes around “normal people,” there’s a reason why they don’t play MMOs.

What can we do to let them see how great these games are? That’s part of the design behind Free Realms, making something that appeals to the kind of people who would normally never play an MMO.

The MMO Gamer: I think we’re just about out of time. But, before we go, is there anything that you, personally, would like to discuss? Something that people such as myself don’t generally ask you?

Laralyn McWilliams: One of the challenges in making a game like this is overcoming the stereotypes that people have about what a game has to have in it.

I actually gave a panel talk about this at our last Fan Faire about how, from a design perspective, the process of developing Free Realms was at least partly about looking at the assumptions people make about games.

For example, I have to have a limited inventory, or I have to be one class, or I can’t play with my friend if he’s level 20 and I’m level 1.

Those are the kinds of assumptions that people have because games have been doing it that way forever and that’s the way it has to be. I don’t believe in innovation for innovation’s sake, because if something works, then absolutely you should keep doing it. There’s no reason to change it if it works.

But I think it would be beneficial to look at the things that we assume have to be done a certain way and ask ourselves if they really have to be done that way. That has led to some interesting things about Free Realms in the development process.

While we were making a great game that we really loved, it wasn’t about making any one kind of game.

We’ve gotten feedback from some pretty vocal people about specific things. For example, we’ve gotten some feedback from people who say the one thing missing from Free Realms is some compelling reason to play.

I should start the tutorial and there should be something really compelling in the first three minutes that gives me the reason why I exist in the world, and what my goal is.

The MMO Gamer: The hook.

Laralyn McWilliams: I totally understand the need for a hook; our hook is the gameplay. It’s interesting, because I understand their point of view.

The main storyline is going in right now and it’s really compelling. There are a lot of great quests, you can get great items, you meet interesting characters, and there’s all this intrigue. It’s awesome. It’s also optional, and it’s off the beaten path.

The reason for that is because Free Realms is all about doing what you want to do, when you want to do it. If, the minute I get in this game, a character comes up to me and says, “Hey, the robgoblins have stolen my kid and you have to get him back for me,” you’re now telling me what to do.

I will feel guilty if there is this pressure of war or anything on the world. I now feel guilty if I just want to go race. I don’t want to save the world, I want to cook.

Free Realms is all about doing what you want to do. For the players who like to be in a big story and enjoy feeling like they’re playing a part in an on-going, world-building event, we definitely have that… We’re rolling out this great story over time that’s actually going to change our world.

But, for players who don’t want to do that, for players who just want to race and just want to cook and just want to do fun things and don’t want to feel any obligation to do anything, they don’t have to.

It’s difficult for us and now for some players to comprehend a game that’s not telling me what to do. I’m not going to tell you how to play my game. You’re going to tell yourself how you want to play this game. It changes the playing field for us, but it changes it for the player too.

We’re getting a lot of casual players coming to Free Realms who say, “This is great! I’m going to cook, I’m going to race.” And then you’re getting a lot of traditional players who come to the game and say, “I don’t know what to do because you’re not telling me what to do at all.”

So, we started to make some changes during beta to put in more direction for the players and we’re continually working on that.

But it’s really funny because the casual players coming, saying “Ohh, I’m going to go do some stuff.” They really don’t care because they’re going to find stuff to do and they’re going to do it. That’s the sort of thing that’s really interesting to me: when you start breaking those expectations of what people expect in a game, sometimes it makes it hard for people to understand the game and get into it.

It just takes some getting used to for people to start to get the zen of what this experience is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be a grand story-telling experience, it’s supposed to be about wanting to race. Or wanting to cook. That’s what I would say.

I don’t get an opportunity to talk about that very often, because usually in interviews and demos, we’re really focused on the specific elements of the game and not really on the bigger picture.

It’s really fascinating from a design perspective to have made a game, where for one of the first times I know about, designers are really not trying to tell you how to play their game. The Sims is very similar, as well.

The Sims’ central theme is not telling you how to play this game. You’re going to make some people and they’re going to do some stuff and you’re going to figure out if you like that stuff or not. Then you’re going to put them in the pool and drown them, or you’re going to get them married and they’re going to have some kids together. It’s all about what you want to do.

It was really interesting to me to see some astute players and reviewers nail it when they said, “This is a sandbox MMO.” I said, “You’re absolutely right, it is.”

And not a lot of people picked up on that, because they went into it looking for a linear story-telling experience, or they went into it looking for racing, or they went into it looking for something. They weren’t back far enough to look at the whole thing and say, “You know what? This is a sandbox.” Because that’s what it is.

So, that’s what I would say to that question.

The MMO Gamer: Alright, thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it, and we hope we can do it again some time.

Laralyn McWilliams: Any time.

Free Realms, as the name would suggest, is free-to-play, and you can give it a shot right now over at the game’s official website: http://www.freerealms.com