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Eve Online has it. Erepublik revolves around it. Darkfall gives freeform PVP and leaves enforcement largely to the players, instead of implementing it in game. Or you include other forms of conflict, such as heists, pick-pocketing, assassinations, as suggested by this Massively Online article “You don’t need PvP to be Successsful, Honest”

Having the power to vote your own party members, such as the virtual democracies in Eve Online, sounds very enticing. Allowing players to take the law into their hand in a free-form games sound fun. Instead of “you cannot be a bad guy”, it becomes “you can be a bad guy until other players stop you”.

Yet, including social mechanics like these introduce changes to the game’s challenge.

The Hour is Later than You Think

This problem exists before MMOs come along, in the form of social conflicts and rules for table-top RPGs. Usually, the general advice is to give a bonus to skill checks for the player who narrate his actions well. For a social conflict or social skill check, it would be how well he role-play. But what if the player has a poor Charisma stat but is a good speaker? Which one has a higher weightage, on the spot role-playing or mechanic?

Is this a big deal? Say a character with obvious social flaws, perhaps a Charisma of just 3, and is trying to persuade a rival guild leader to an alliance. He speaks eloquently and flawlessly; he has a sound win-win proposal. He has just done something to impress the guild leader. If the GM let him succeeds, then he effectively has a Charisma of 18 or more.

What about a player with Charisma 18, but isn’t so imaginative? Should such people be confined to brutes and warrior rules because of a real life aspect? Isn’t role-playing about being someone else in imagination?

Most modern pen and paper RPGs have come up with ways to deal with social conflicts, making it a legal part of the game – Weapons of the Gods have conditions, Spirit of the New Century has Aspects and Tagging and Exalted has formal rules for social conflicts. Perhaps this could serve as a model for MMO games too?

Typical RPG Challenges and Social Challenges

First, a typical RPG’s challenge involves analytical skill, resources management and situational awareness. You plan a build, equip your gear and learn skills, most of the time that is the bulk of the challenge (analytical and resources management). When you take to the battlefield, you see if your build is effective. Situational awareness comes in for a few classes, such as the crowd control and debuff groups, who have to stay on their toes.

Second, social mechanics include another set of skills all together – emotional intelligence, communication and like it or not, deceit. Who can forget about how the biggest alliance in Eve Online went down because someone basically was an insider? Now in eSingapore on eRepublick, there is this drama going on about how the joint chief of staff, a certain individual named William Shafter, moved to eRussia with the bulk of the country’s weapons and money. Now the president and the former chief of staff are bickering back and forth.

When you move the game’s emphasis (chance of success) to the former (the typical RPG skill-set), social mechanics may become a moot point. It’s like someone who is a grandmaster at Chess and taking on 20 beginners in a Chess marathon. It’s no sweat to him. He has the best build, a good situational awareness, a mastery of the game mechanics. Even if there is a bounty on him, most players can’t take him down. He is protected by the system. Sure, he may have trouble joining parties or guilds, but does he need to?

Expand that to a guild – imagine you have a guild of kick-ass people. They run afoul of the current norms (remember the Funeral Massacre of World of Warcraft?). Say people want to punish them. Blizzard can’t do it – their Terms of Service does not have anything for ruining a social event. So the players have to take it into their own hand. But let’s the players are so good, have the best equipment, do well at the auction house, or maybe they buy gold (not saying they are, but just saying they have a complete mastery of the game). Who can do anything to them?

Social mechanics is a moot point then.

Let’s examine the second point, where social mechanics has a larger weightage.

You have shifted the emphasis on challenge to something softer, less deterministic and that is going to piss off some people. Take for example, Facebook’s RPGs where in PvP, one of the decisive factor is whether you have 501 clan members. In games where you elect people by voting, social capital comes into play, and that is a different skill set from most RPGs.

Some people like to win due to their skills. Careful planning of their resources, analysis of the mechanics and min-maxing to win. They may dislike social mechanics for it feels like “boot-licking” and “whoring for attention”. Some people find all this stressful and play games to precisely to avoid these. Some people, however, wants those feelings and social interaction throughout. It’s not a case of “this is better than that” but “apples and oranges”.

Consequences of Social Mechanics: Be careful for what you ask for

However, social mechanics does add an unpredictable dimension to the game, yet for most people, who are working and face office politics and social pressures in the real life, do they need more in their entertainment?

Second, in a social environment, the majority sets the rule. If people can get away with crime, which often pays if not for the law, you get lots of griefing. If you could rob a character of his item instead of farming of it, without any consquences, while most of the people are doing it, will you? The ToS says you could; the game mechanics encourage you to do it and society agrees that “hey, it’s just a game!”. Chris Crawford actually wrote in this book, The Art of Game Design, that computer games could also be “blowing raspberries” at social norms and the law, for they allow you to partake in acts frown upon in the real life. The success of GTA, IMHO, proves the point. Why would you want to be honourable, law-abiding and etc.?

Third, you have to put in the incentive to build trust, and that may be the only reason why people don’t steal from their friends (but it’s still okay to steal from others, right?) Darkfall now has this problem where crafters are afraid of trading outside their own guild in fear of being PKed the moment they talk to a stranger, and has try to fix it with a patch. Do you have this sort of game environment (some would say yes, some would say no, so keep this in mind when designing your game).

Defintely, a middle-ground could exist. Don’t make the social mechanics the end all and be all. It could be a perk for those who communicates well and likes social interaction. It shouldn’t infringe on players who wants no part of it. And the social mechanics should extend beyond killing or defeating the player to punish him.

For example, Dynamic Drive, a technical forum where people helps out each other with programming questions, has a Thanks feature where posters can thank other for helping. GameDev.net has a rating system. LOTRO has a hidden social mechanic too – if you are hugged (through the emote) by 100 different players, you get the title “The Beloved”. If you are saluted 100 times, you get to access the emote “sword salute” (the typical kissing the sword gesture before a battle or duel, like what Aragorn did in the Fellowship of the Ring Movie).

Indeed, if you want to include social mechanics into your games, I think that the reward should be social and off another nature all together, not loot, XP or money, but recognition, respect and significance, which is what drives people who are interested in social interaction.

To Socialise or Not To?

There’s no real right answer here; the answer is whether the mechanics are suited to the theme and design of your game. You will draw different types of players, encourage different behaviours, norms and culture through the mechanics you include in your game.

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