Now, I know this has been copied all over the place, and will probably become the new Dunbar’s Number meme, but I’m coming to it late and this is my own take on it in games.

Dr. Daniel Levitin a cognitive psychologist, neurologist, music producer and no doubt all round good sport, has collated a lot of the current research on music therapy and effects of music on neural development in his book, Your Brain on Music. Amidst other things he proposes democratically that what’s most important is not perhaps an innate talent, but a disciplined and regimented practice routine. … ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours per day, or twenty hours per week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery. (courtesy of Tertiary Education)

There you have it. Maybe regardless of domain, if you want to “master” something it takes a dedication lasting no less than 10,000 hours. That’s sort of comforting. Inasmuch as it lets me know if I am truly serious about accomplishing something, I ought to spend more time on it. It gives me a limit, but no guarantee.

But turn to games and the old usability chestnut: How long should a level or zone take to master? How long should someone — particularly with consoles — be given to complete and “win” the game. I know I never got far into God of War, mostly because I gave up looking for cheats (yes, for that ridiculous first crates puzzle). Should I have got in-game assistance? Should there have been a number of turns the game monitors I’ve tried this challenge and then offers me a break, for a lesser reward, or a harder penalty later? Otherwise the game becomes a coaster for me.

And similarly, how about MMORPG’s? How long should designers give users to reach the cap? There’s lots of evidence for how people pace themselves, but sometimes I sense it gets lost. For example, we hear more about racers in the Burning Crusade reaching level 70 within 28 hours and some wag finishing all of DDO in the same time, but dismiss the lone whiner who may still be stuck at the start (on some crates…). Reaching a level cap is not a mastery, but it does respond to the same desire. And maybe the same built-in bio-cognitive need. Dedicating time, often alone, to reach a limit for self-reward and public acclaim may be a real human drive. But likewise when the challenge does not meet the realistic effort required, then most people who can’t succeed turn to other things to help their advancement. In MMO’s, the obvious ones are RMT, cheats, hacks, powerlevelling services. In music or athletics, it might just be a better coach. Or drugs.

David Seah on Levitin has a nice break down, and so a critique, on how mastery could be reasonably seen. The point, as every game designer knows, is to offer a carrot and an encouragement (ding!) through ones’ advancement. It’s not about 10,000 hours or bust — it’s about maybe 100 hours and a pat on the back. at 1 hour … you know some basics at 10 hours … you have a pretty good grasp of the basics at 100 hours … you are fairly expert at 1000 hours … you are an experienced expert at 10000 hours … you are a master

If you know your limit — in this case, the almost mythical 10k of investment — you can offer a realizable training program for people. And that circuit of gradual achievement and self-esteem reinforcement is maybe vital for someone to continue.

While 10,000 hours over 10 years is a daunting proposition, consider this:

1000 hours is pretty doable. That’s a little less than a year of full-time work. 100 hours is even more achievable…you could do that over a few months on the side, or just slam through it in a very intense couple of weeks. Even spending 10 hours practicing something is going to make you significantly better at it. If you spent 10 hours practicing one song, or learning how to juggle, or learning how to bowl strikes…you’re going to learn something. One hour? That’s worthwhile too. You could spend an hour writing your signature over and over again to make it cooler. I’ve done that at least a couple of times in my life.

I bet understanding and planning the least and mean time for a user to finish your game (or a part of it) is actually in the back of every designer’s mind. After all, it’s how we got “levels” and intro tutorials in the first place. And it affects how they introduce new content as well. I remember, for instance, very clearly in the first few months of SWG a poll on the forums asking how much time people spent playing. It came out near the same week as official survey results on the number and types of classes people were picking. Why that was important is that SOE was trying to see how to shoehorn in the Jedi class. Once they could show users where they were spending their time already, they might have a better sense of how long the class might take to unlock and then master. And then [...]

More insights:Cuppycake of FoH is the Community Manager. She certainly will be used to the forum game hailing from that happy land.

So actually reading more clearly the FAQ this time, I think I begin to understand. It’s an API they are going to offer, borrowing heavily from LUA. It will feature paid hosting services, which I caught. It will have some IDE or basic editor to help users. It will probably also feature a small template library to start, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t try to offer more free or paid object libraries down the road.

Raph is a big fan of BlitzBasic, and I think this is his inspiration. The appeal is to offer people the ability to create online games as easily as creating blogs, which most toolkits, other than the eponymous Torque, can’t do easily. And certainly not do well. Ergo, the money is in a games version of Blogger. It’s not a bad idea. But it won’t be Neverwinter Nights or SL for the kids who are still hoping for an easier way to build their own MMO. It will be probably much closer to the world of creating mods in WoW.

I’d be surprised if no one else hasn’t mentioned this yet, but Facebook, the aftershock of MySpace, is supporting several games (e.g. Scrabulous, JedivsSith) all of which are there to improve the community and help retention. Usual stuff. Warbook is the first I’ve seen that tries for a sort of old-school email tactics like game that kind of acts like a very minimalist MMO.

It basically is a PvP version of Kingdom of Loathing (without the humour or stories or pictures), where players pick a class of Hero and each hour they improve in gold and can buy new land or soldiers to grow their kingdoms. They also can progress by attacking other players, which is really the whole point. It’s a straight out PvP game that so far does not seem very balanced. Players can increase in level, but AFAIK they can only do so by attacking others or successfully repelling attacks. There’s no honour in just being good at making gold. And while all you have to do to make gold is wait an hour and hope no one attacks in the meanwhile, you can make trading packs with other players as well send gold and troops friends. And they also allow to create alliances (think guilds) which is basically just a group in Facebook world.

Having been attacked by some people 10 or more levels higher than me, there’s not a lot of balance so far. Also, there is no game board. There’s only a search function whereby you have to find players in a range of level or land or gold that you want to target. You can employ spells to spy on them to learn their stats and present inventories before you attack. There’s not much of a profile otherwise, and really it’s a game that feels still in Beta. Certainly, its database is not robust, so be prepared to wait several seconds for any updates.

However, crap infrastructure aside, there seems to be a fair amount of attention and it’s worth noting as another webby game example. Certainly it’s a good example of what you can do to capture a lot of players quickly. Although, I’m only guessing there’s a few thousand just because of Facebook memberships and the poor availability. It’s very minimalist but also very mainstream.