This is a bit of an old thread just now bumped up by Rigel, but that did make me read it and there are a lot of interesting points here. So just to comment on a few.
I hate when people on the forum ramble and most discussions that I actually find interesting, I just don't have the time to read. Now I'm doing the same here
so this is a really long post.
jfrizz51423 wrote:Hi everyone, so as you probably know, for the past few years, cantr has gone majorly downhill. The game in the past that used to seem pretty lively, now has so little players.
Tiamo wrote:I disagree with you on Cantr having failed. Actually the game has been, in its own way, a real success. Cantr has been running since, i think, 2002. Not many games can say they are running for 15 years straight!
I think I agree with both of you. I think the fact that it was just a hobby project created to play by me and a few friends, and then see if some other people on the internet might be interested, which then turned into a game with thousands of players, and then lasting 15 years, is quite a success. Not in the league of WoW or Minecraft, but still pretty exciting. That said, there is a consistent growth in players for the first 5 years and a consistent decline for the subsequent 10, and now I have to admit, to me it feels like it is dying. The game is more boring than it used to be, the forum is remarkably quiet, and on Discord there isn't an awful lot of activity either. So it's not a failure, but it's failing.
Creating new accountsjfrizz51423 wrote:I always felt that instead of the game devs trying to convince ME to play, I had to convince THEM that I wanted to play, which is just so wrong.
I think you have a point here and I consider this a serious weakness. There are actually a lot of discussions ongoing in Game Administration Board (GAB), Players Department (PD) and Programming Department (ProgD) about how this could be improved (fn. 2). For the PD, which is by far the most labour-intensive part of running the game, screening new player accounts is much less work than trying to find issues subsequently.
SekoETC wrote:But seriously, what harm can a person do in one day? ... A new account has two characters and will need to wait an extra day for each new character. It usually takes less than 24 hours to investigate an account, so even if someone was auto-accepted and created multiple accounts just because they can, the accounts would be spaced close together timing-wise and would stand out.
I do think Seko has a good point, though, that I will bring up for discussion in GAB. It is probably limited damage done in a short time and we could quickly intervene, remove inappropriate new accounts within 24 hours or so from being created.
The newbie world should help a lot here, too, as new accounts can immediately be used to explore the game interface etc. and get a feel for the game, albeit not yet with the real characters.
Maintaining game rulesThe biggest challenge in running Cantr is a difficulty that is there by design: the game stands or falls by players properly roleplaying. I have played games like WoW or Second Life and all the chatting there was players talking to each other. I hated that and never wanted to play like that in Cantr - but a lot of new players are used to this from other games they play. So I think it was essential to be quite quick in stopping this, telling players to use the forum for OOC chat, not the game interface. I still think that's crucially important.
jfrizz51423 wrote:Also, look, I get that OOC speaking is the most awful crime anyone can commit but people should not get banned or completely shunned from the game just because they don't quite get it like everyone else.
Sure, banned or shunned is a bit strong, but they should be told to stop. It would quickly grow to very common practice if one didn't, and then the game would, in my view, be ruined.
I think a bigger problem is that vigilant maintenance of the rules has also lead to killing off a lot of more aggressive gameplay, which has generated a more boring game in my view. More on this below. To be fair to the PD, though, it is incredibly difficult to delineate between cheating and interesting mobilization of large groups of characters. It is possible that some of the most exciting times in the game (e.g. the Naronian and Ladvician conflicts, if I'm not confusing names now) might have been partly due to serious CR breaches and that an improved and almost professionalised PD has made such major conflicts very difficult to play.
jfrizz51423 wrote:I've also seen people get banned from the game for doing things like hitting every person, picking up all the notes on the ground, etc. I get that that's trolling but it's A PART OF THE GAME.
I agree. Is this currently against the rules?
Game playA lot of people bring up the discussion of game versus simulation again. I don't think I find that a very interesting discussion. It's not a simulation, since there is plenty of unrealistic elements, and it is meant as a game, but the game I wanted to play is one where different societies grow and where you can play different roles within those societies. So it needed something akin to societies and I wanted to have those naturally develop. So it ends up being a bit like a simulation. But that was never the goal.
To my mind, the first years of the game were still the best and few of you would remember those. I had a character who was a journalist and developed a newspaper, and, in the same town (this only later became against the rules), I had a police officer, and we had elections and a cabinet, etc. In another part of the game, I had a soldier fighting in a large war (part of the Ladvicitavoi army), eventually killed on a scouting mission. I also had sailors exploring the coast, etc. What was cool was that there were very different societies and political systems (democracies, empires, friendly villages, military orders) and many different roles to play there in.
This seems to have changed a lot. I am only observing a tiny, tiny part of the game world now, but everywhere I encounter friendly villages, a town leader who helps everybody get their food, the main excitement some romantic affair being played out. I never intended Cantr to be like that and find it really quite boring. So I kind of fully agree with:
Sopel_1 wrote:All this whole new world, with it's whacky laws dictated by the mechanics of the game, whole cities, even cultures, maps, history books, legends, all created by the actions of the actual players. It was fantastic, I wanted my character to be a part of one of those stories someday. One of my characters was part of the cultural clan, other by an accident colonized a desolated village, other was a part of a big colony that was escaping from english zone - one of the best memories of my life. ... Two years later, ... You get everything from the start. Every land has been discovered, every place seems to be visited, those who haven't simply don't have anything worthy of visiting. Every building is flooded with resources and there is no need for you to worry about anything - the food doesn't spoil, the clothes don't get ragged. ... In my experience often the characters are flat as cardboard - everyone is beautiful, everyone is lawful and good, everybody is fantastic at cooking, sewing, fighting and is straight up jacked.
I do wonder whether part of this has also to do with the age of the society. I do recall that when the English-language zone started to get much more boring, the Polish-language zone seemed to have much more exciting game play still going on. I don't know how that is nowadays.
witia1 wrote:Economy in game is.. Or rather there is no real ecconomy. That also affects character's society as trade would be huge factor in their interactions.
This is quite true and something I could never quite solve. Although Cantr has been strictly designed so that everything that is physical is in the game interface and everything that is social should be developed by players (fn. 1), this is one regret. If I were to re-create Cantr, I would apply the same philosophy, but I would definitely introduce money into the game interface. The barter trade in Cantr has always held back the game and social development to a huge extent and this was, I think, a mistake. It also ignored the fact that my original
Lego game only started when we introduced (Monopoly) money.
One of the former GAB members, Jur Schagen (you can search for his posts), I think had the best understanding of why there was a limited lifetime to Cantr - about 10 years ago when the decline started to set in. The problem is that resource deterioration / depletion is not present enough (and if you increase it, would lead to even more boring "repair" play), such that there is now just far too much and things are far too easy to create. There are no good motivations to develop much. The few characters I have are in towns with a handful of other characters, but loads of boats, buildings, vehicles, tools, etc. There is no challenge to survive, develop, collaborate, merge with bigger towns, etc. I'm side-tracking now, but I think the main point by Jur was that the way the technology is designed in Cantr, there has been a built-in life time limit in the game right from the start. In other words, the game design, unconsciously, created a game to last 5 years, not 15 (see also fn. 4). I can't say I have the full insight to judge this claim, but I think there is something to it. There certainly is something majorly wrong now with the huge abundance of space and goods in the game, removing scarcity and therefore reason for conflict and competition.
Tiamo wrote:Cantr is not about competition.
Ah, but that in my mind is a total misunderstanding of the game. The competition is not pre-defined by the game, so there are no scores in the game and scoreboards (fn. 3). But you create your own competitions. You set your goals for your character and once you fix those, it becomes a challenge to fulfil them - as long as there are some other characters who have similar, competing goals. So if you want to be leader of a large empire, there certainly is competition involved in acquiring that position! At least, that's what the game is about.
Now, competition here often involves cooperation and mobilizing others. So in that sense, maybe it's more about cooperation than competition. But that also depends a lot on just how you define your characters. It is true that the game has become all about friendly cooperative playing, which I commented on above.
jfrizz51423 wrote:Lastly, the reason this game has failed, and I feel like I will definitely receive the most backlash for this, is the slowness of this game.
computaertist wrote:There does seem to be something off about a game so hard to establish yourself in that most people can't before growing effectively apathetic.
I think I really disagree actually on this one, but it is one of the factors that makes the potential audience for Cantr more niche. Most games are much more fast-paced, but I think it is nice that there are alternatives, like Cantr, and are different.
To my mind there are a number of reasons why speed is an issue, but also why I disagree:
- Building something big takes indeed ages. But the point was never that individual characters would spent ages building, but that people cooperate. Once you cooperate, building isn't that long at all. So the focus should be on the social, cooperative, mobilization side, not individual building.
- The game is partly slow because there are now too few characters spread over too many locations. This means that there are few that will respond to anything you do and this is seriously hurting the game. This has of course two causes: a) we lost too many players and b) I enjoyed created new lands so much that in the end I went crazy and created far too much land. My plan was to make much of it largely inhabitable (many, violent animals, for example) but this has subsequently been tempered and now there is just too much land (fn. 4).
- The game is slow when you focus on construction instead of interaction - there are no speed limits on social interaction in the game.
In fact, for me the game is too fast paced
... Now that I have a job and play only to a very limited extent, I have a choice between two kinds of characters: a) boring ones who live in quiet communities and don't talk too much, or b) interesting ones who try to establish themselves in busier locations as politicians or merchants or journalists. But the latter takes an enormous amount of time, so I only do the former, and that makes it a pretty boring game. Making the game faster would make it worse.
Tiamo wrote:This is where Cantr excels, or should excel. The game actively promotes playing a role for each individual character and build up a personal background/personality for them. However, although many options are deliberately left open for your character to play, there is little to no support in terms of game mechanisms for expressing, fleshing out and sustaining a chosen role. By design, i must add. I think this is a serious misconception, hampering the buildup and consistency of (public) character personalities and, on another level, the buildup and perseverance of social structures (there are more reasons for this). Apart from this i think cooperation (thus creating social structures) is pretty much undiscovered territory in Cantr. Unfortunately, there is a world to gain in this respect.
This point I really do not understand, but sounds interesting. So I'm curious to hear what you mean, what a game would look like that does this differently.
A lot of online games create social structures. WoW has a formal implementation of player groups; EVE Online has corporations or teams with implemented systems (e.g. how leaders are elected, listed, etc.). I forget the terminology and systems they use, but it means the game interface allows you to "create a group", "elect a leader", etc. I have always strictly avoided in Cantr, as this completely undermines the idea that it should be a playground to experiment with different types of organisation, both friendly and aggressive, and one where society is formed by the players. Now how would you expect to see this?
I also think "pretty much undeiscovered territory" is really putting it much too strong - but I do agree that it is not common enough.
Marketingjfrizz51423 wrote:Another HUGE reason I believe that this game never really took off is the marketing. ... It's like you guys have always tried to keep this game some secret, like a part of some extremely secret society and don't want new players.
Although I agree with most of your comments, this one I found a bit annoying. Yes, Cantr marketing is a bit of a failure and yes, we should have created more of a hype around it. But you seem to suggest we didn't care or didn't try. This is actually a hugely difficult thing to do and most attempts have, in a way, failed. It's also something I personally focused on less - when I still played a more central role in running the game - because I was more interested in the programming and staff organisation side.
We have ongoing discussions in the Public Relations department (PR) about how to improve this, in particular how to make better use of social media. One thing that I think has hurt us, is that we have very strict rules about sharing in-game information, but within sharing those, it is very difficult to explain outsiders what makes Cantr cool and interesting. We are going to try to change that a bit in the near future, I think. So that relates to:
Genie wrote:One of the problems I had to face has been making people familiar with Cantr.
But basically, jfrizz, if you're still around, you should consider applying to PR and help with this! To my mind, the only thing that can really save Cantr is a massive increase in player numbers.
jfrizz51423 wrote:Also, make an app.
Yes, definitely agree, and working on it. But this is going to take time and we have a really serious shortage of active programmers at the moment. My idea is to start with a very simple app that is basically the equivalent of opening a browser and accessing the website, but at least it would be listed in app stores etc. We can then subsequently think of more app-style features.
10 years ago this was obviously not a concern ...
The makerjfrizz51423 wrote:Because the maker should realize that their game is failing and they should be passionate enough about it to be willing to save the game. The maker should love this game and love its players enough to realize that this game could be so much greater, if just executed properly.
So here it was suddenly made personal
Ok, I have to admit, and admitted above, that the level of passion has dissipated. 15 years is a long time!
I was very actively involved only for a third of that time. To me there are a number of reasons I could not keep up that level of passion - but I should add that several staff members over time have invested huge amounts of effort with great passion!
- The game never quite moved in the direction I wanted to, which makes it difficult to stay passionate. Except for the first while - where people later claim all excitement was due to serious CR breaches - there is too little politics, war, empire, trade, competition, and too much gathering, farming, romance, cooperation, and now I understand erotic episodes. That was never the game I intended to play - these elements were only there to make the trade, war, politics, etc. be about something ... It's very nice that different players get different things out of the game, but in the end a too small proportion play the former.
- Whatever we tried, we could never get the marketing right (and we tried!). In fact, regardless of marketing effort, the player base just grew for 5 years and then declined for 10. This is not very encouraging.
- I had promised early on to keep the game free, and want to stick to my promise, but this has meant serious limitations in what you can do to promote or improve the game. If we could have invested in marketing or hired temporary programmers for specific features, that would have improved the game - instead we relied entirely on volunteers.
- Some ideas I have about the game design now could not be implemented in the existing game design, so that makes it less interesting. In particular, I want free roaming instead of towns and roads, and in my dreams I would like a visual, not a text-based version of the game. Not being able to implement your main ideas about the game and instead having to focus on maintaining the game as it is, is not very motivating (fn. 5). The basic framework of Cantr II became too constrained. I had ideas how I wanted to develop the game, but that was not possible without completely rewriting the game. I started doing that in 2008-09, but that never progressed far enough to take seriously.
- The most important thing is just that I do not have the amount of time I used to have. In the first years, I spent about 20 hours a week running Cantr, i.e. a halftime job. Now I have a fulltime job that takes all my time and energy and even absorbs most of my creativity. I'm trying to change my work-life balance a little lately, but I will never have the kind of time available again that I used to have, so I am a little powerless - observing all the problems you outline but not able to fix any of them.
Moonflame wrote:Maybe Jos doesn't want to spend all their time on this game, maybe the idea was to always use volunteers for staff and not charge the players. If you want a marketed game, maybe this is just not what you want it to be.
Well, "want" is the wrong word, it's more "promised". I've regretted that promise many times
... I would prefer to charge a little every month instead of nothing, so that with enough players, that really generates some income that can be used for marketing or paying designers or programmers. I do think it is a bit sad how few players actually donate on a regular basis. There are enough now to pay the server costs and some very minimal Google AdWords marketing, but that's it.
witia1 wrote:No, it's not failure. Nothing is ment to last forever and even when there will be day for Jos to pull a plug it won't mean a project failed.
As I said at the beginning, I agree on this. I think it's failing now, but it's not a failure overall. What is a slight problem, though, is that there seems never to be a good moment to "pull the plug". There would always be some volunteers who would recently have invested loads of time and effort to keep the game going, so it would be unfair to them, and it would always have some players that are really invested in their characters, and there is no really good objective reason why they should be stopped. So I'm not sure there is a "pull the plug" moment
... At the same time, I feel the game has now become too quiet, the forum too quiet, the game world too stagnated, to make it still an interesting game to work on.
Sorry for rambling!!
Footnotes:
- Not too long before developing Cantr I had learned about the philosopher Searle's distinction between epistemic objectivity and ontological objectivity, which became an important influence on the game design: money objectively exists, but only because we intersubjectively agree that it does, it's not ontologically objective, and therefore the game interface should not create it but players should.
- All these departments made sense when we had about 70 or so volunteers. Now it looks a bit funny, talking to the same people in the different departments ...
- Although I have contemplated giving scores where players evaluate each other's roleplaying quality and this leads to leaderboards.
- There is a suggestion in this thread about creating some kind of natural disasters. I actually wonder whether that is indeed a good idea. To almost wipe out continents, make them temporarily uninhabitable, etc., to reduce the amount of land in the game and increase game play. The problem is that it will also hurt many characters that are well developed and those players might well get disillusioned and leave the game.
- See also roadmap, and a thread on Cantr III that I now cannot find.