How to Build an MMO Social Framework

In previous projects, I have been working on the design of MMO social features. To help myself organize my thoughts and viewpoints, I decided to write this article, hoping to share it with everyone.
My thinking may not be comprehensive or rigorous enough, so feel free to point out any opinions in the comments section for discussion.

Before establishing a framework, I want to discuss a question: what is the essence of social interaction?
I believe the essence of social interaction is demand; social interaction occurs when there is a demand between people.
Assuming a person has no demands at all, including basic needs like eating, drinking, and entertainment, then they do not need to engage in any social interaction. (Think about it, is this true?) || Does such a person really exist? ||

If we break down demands, I believe there are two types: emotional needs and interest needs.

Emotional Needs#

Emotional needs refer to the social interactions that arise from the need for some spiritual satisfaction, such as:

As a child, wanting to receive love from my mother, I would cry to attract attention.
I want to feel happy, so I play games/watch TV shows.
I want to gain recognition, so I upload videos or articles.
Because we need emotional release, this demand arises.

From the examples above, it is not difficult to see that some demands are immediate and require face-to-face interaction, while others can be communicated over long distances through various mediums (games, TV shows, articles), and feedback can even come much later. This is what we often refer to as real-time and asynchronous social interaction; this concept will be elaborated on later, but for now, just have a basic understanding.

Interest Needs#

Interest needs are relatively straightforward; they arise from the desire to achieve a certain goal or gain benefits from others. Here, benefits are not one-sided; mutual gains also count as benefits.

If I want to eat today, I need to buy groceries, which requires communicating with the seller to exchange for the goods, resulting in a brief social interaction with the seller.
I want to discuss financial knowledge, so I have an afternoon discussion with a friend who understands finance, and we engage in social interaction while exchanging knowledge.

In summary, I believe everyone now has a preliminary understanding of the essence of social interaction. The examples used here are quite straightforward; it is only necessary to have a basic concept of these two types of social demands, which will also be applied in our game design.

Based on the aforementioned real-life social examples, to achieve social interaction in games, we need to meet players' emotional and interest social needs.

Interest Needs#

Interest needs in games are relatively easy to define; benefits = rewards in the game. The design goal is to attract players by setting rewards, encouraging them to participate in social-related gameplay, and creating the possibility for ongoing social interaction.

The rewards here are designed to induce players to engage in social interaction, and since the act of socializing itself is somewhat subjective, caution is needed in the distribution of rewards; otherwise, it may have adverse effects and lead to player attrition. Here are a few common forms of rewards:

Development line rewards: These rewards directly affect the growth of the player's character. It is important to avoid designing resources that must be obtained through social interaction; instead, they should serve as auxiliary pathways for output.
Personalized rewards: These rewards are generally name cards, titles, or avatars, which are easy to implement and provide a good player experience. Personalization itself is an expression of players' emotional needs.
Practical rewards: These rewards may include experience boosts, item acquisition bonuses, etc. For example, teaming up can yield more content and make it easier than playing solo. It is not presented as a final item but as a continuous reward.
Currency rewards: Commonly seen friendship points, contributions, etc., fall into this category. However, currency is indirect; ultimately, it depends on the value of the items that can be exchanged. These rewards are common and can affect the social participation of corresponding gameplay based on the exchangeable items.

Rewards are merely a means to induce players to engage in social interaction; the real goal is to encourage players to establish lasting social relationships. Therefore, while designing rewards, attention must be paid to guiding social behavior.

In simulation games, watering others' farms or stealing vegetables can yield rewards, and this behavior will also be recorded to inform the other party.
Some holiday events require cooperative gameplay, where both parties need to communicate during the collaboration, and after the event ends, a dialog box for adding friends pops up.

Emotional Needs#

In game design, emotional needs are similar to human emotional needs in reality, and due to their uncertainty, careful consideration is needed regarding the emotions they can convey when designing related features. Here are some analyses of emotional needs in games:

Sense of existence and being noticed: Players desire recognition from others in the game, wanting their existence to be seen and valued. For example, various leaderboards can be set up, such as level leaderboards, strength leaderboards, achievement leaderboards, etc., to attract players' attention. Players at the top of the leaderboard receive more attention due to their outstanding performance in specific areas, satisfying their need for recognition. Special fashion displays, titles above their heads, etc., can also become focal points that attract others' attention, fulfilling players' need to be noticed. More detailed designs can be made for different genders and age groups; for example, male players can have achievements displayed for dungeon challenges, while female players can have designs for fashion value and outfit dyeing competitions to satisfy their need for recognition.
Personalization: Every player believes they possess unique traits and hopes to have space and means to showcase their individuality in the game, leaving a unique mark. Therefore, we can provide rich character customization features, allowing players to freely adjust facial features, hairstyles, body types, etc., to create unique character images. Alternatively, we can offer features that allow players to design their own name card content and layout, showcasing their game achievements, personal signatures, interests, etc., thus satisfying their need for self-expression.
Pursuit of flaunting and superiority: This reflects players' desire to showcase their superior status within a group, hoping to display their uniqueness through their resources, achievements, or abilities. Special titles, exclusive skins, or unique skill effects in the game can satisfy players' need to flaunt, providing them with psychological satisfaction.
Self-presentation: Players wish to showcase their knowledge, experience, and insights to earn respect from other players. Features like knowledge quizzes, mentorship systems, etc., can encourage players to demonstrate their knowledge, fulfilling this need while enriching the game's social culture.

In addition to positive emotional needs, players may also experience negative emotions in the game, such as anger, greed, jealousy, etc. These emotions need to be vented in appropriate ways, so games can design competitive gameplay to satisfy this need.

Revenge: Allowing players to engage in revenge actions against each other; players can attack specific players due to personal grievances or other reasons, allowing them to release their anger.
PVP: Designing various PVP modes, such as 1V1, team battles, etc. Players can engage in combat in PVP, releasing competitive desires and potentially arising emotions like jealousy and dissatisfaction.

There are many more emotional needs, such as larger GVGs. For this part of emotional needs, there is still much to explore. During design, Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory can be applied for brainstorming and identifying gaps, then selecting needs that align with the game's values, are feasible, and offer good cost-effectiveness.

Once players have corresponding social needs, what should they use to socialize? In real life, we use chat software to send text and voice messages to express emotions and connect, or participate in relevant activities (such as conventions, mixers, etc.) to meet many people. Therefore, in games, we need to create corresponding social tools.
Social tools are the foundation and means that support social behavior, providing specific pathways and methods for social activities, serving as a structure and carrier.
Social behavior refers to the various interactions and communication activities individuals or groups engage in within social contexts, utilizing social tools, which are in a relationship of use and being used.
Social content refers to the various information generated, transmitted, and shared during social behavior. The forms of social content are diverse, including text, images, audio, video, etc. For example, a social media post, a Weibo article, or the content of a video call. Social content relies on social tools for dissemination.

When mentioning social tools, one might immediately think of current instant messaging software like QQ or asynchronous communication via email, which are indeed effective social tools. However, we can think a bit deeper: when we use social tools, what forms of information do we communicate with?
Common forms include text, audio (voice or other sounds), images (emojis), video, etc. These content expression forms are what we use for socializing.
In addition, our bodies can also express corresponding emotions, leading to interactive actions (expressions, movements).
There are also interactive behaviors; the commonly heard "one-click three connections" (like + follow + collect) is an interactive behavior, which can also occur in group settings, but then it becomes cooperative or competitive.

Some expression methods are relatively difficult to implement. One type is subtle actions led by micro-expressions, which are high-investment, low-yield content due to model limitations. Another type involves sensory stimuli primarily based on smell and touch, which may lead to games like Sword Art Online in the future.

There are many aspects to explore regarding social expression methods:

Text: Enlarging can indicate surprise, adding red text can indicate emphasis, emoticons and alien text can provide additional emotional expression, or text can appear gradually, shake, etc.
Sound: A sharp sound indicates surprise or fright, while a low sound indicates fatigue, etc. Thanks to the development of AI voice changers, the gender behind male and female voices has become increasingly blurred, and we can even add character voice lines for players to send out via voice.
Interactive actions: Currently, the coverage of interactive actions in games can meet most expression scenarios. However, actions will gradually increase in meaning over time. For example, if I mention a certain basketball move, you might immediately think of a specific dance. Designers may not always keep up with this content, but if we can open up action segmentation and provide players with different stages of actions for self-creation, the combinations created by players will far exceed our expectations.
Images: Images can also be edited or re-edited to make them more impactful. Recently, I've noticed the expressions in Monster Hunter: World, which allow for custom text. Beyond the meaning of the expression itself, it can increase others' understanding, thus achieving broader coverage and impact.

Are there other forms of social expression? Based on the previous example of expressions in Monster Hunter: World, this already falls under UGC (User-Generated Content). I believe all UGC content has social attributes. UGC content can be images, text, audio, video, etc., but the original content of UGC can be diverse.

For example, in Final Fantasy XIV, players have used furniture to create a McDonald's, benefiting from the connection between the game and reality, and this image also has a certain level of dissemination and sociality.

In summary, if we, as designers, can provide more forms of expression, it equates to giving players more social tools, making it easier to create variations and breaking away from rigid system designs. However, this will also increase development difficulty and players' understanding costs, so it still needs to be considered based on the project's actual situation. The most important thing is to meet the most basic communication needs (chat system).

The choice of social tools varies in different usage environments:

In high-operation games (like Honor of Kings): If designers can provide voice, quick menus, expressions, etc., it will enhance players' communication experience, as typing is an inefficient means of expression in such games.
For detailed expression of feelings (like comments on Onmyoji characters): Providing longer text for communication can also promote social interaction; the length of text that can be sent will also affect communication efficiency.

In-game social content can be divided into two parts: one is the system-provided social content for players, and the other is player-generated content.

The social content provided by the system can be divided into two types:

Various gameplay that requires more than one person to complete, commonly referred to as social gameplay. For example, the Valentine's Day quest in FF14 requires two people to team up.
Social elements like likes and shares that can be operated by a single player but promote interaction and emotional exchange between players. For example, in Overwatch, players can give teammates a thumbs up after a match.

Why do we need the system to design social content? Isn't social content generated during social behavior? Can't we just let players create social content?
The reasons for having the system provide social content rather than relying solely on player-generated content are as follows:

Guiding Social Interaction: Guided social interactions occur more frequently than completely open ones, such as friend requests popping up after a stranger gives a gift.
Improving Efficiency: Simplifying operational processes, such as one-click gift giving; the system can send friend requests or gifts to other players with a single button click. Reducing the steps involved in social interaction can increase the frequency of social interactions.
Creating Scenarios and Topics: Many people have certain barriers to breaking the ice in social situations, even in online communities. The system can provide social activities or scenarios to encourage user participation. Just like in real life, conventions gather users with similar interests together.
Meeting Different Players' Social Needs: Players with different personalities have varying social needs and preferences. The social content provided by the system can cater to different types of players. For introverted players, the system can offer relatively private social methods, such as privacy settings or home permissions limited to friends or designated individuals. For extroverted players, more public social opportunities can be provided, such as leaderboards and guild activities.

When designing social content, we need to pay attention to the following points:

Focus on Social Goals: Clearly identify which players are intended to socialize (e.g., friends, strangers, paying vs. non-paying players, etc.). Different targets have different focal points (e.g., sharing and cooperation among friends, flaunting and benefits among strangers). The focal points are not limited; choosing the appropriate focal point for social content will yield better results. After determining the target, clarify the participation scope (teammates, friends, guilds, or all online players, etc.).
Select Social Forms: There are generally two types of social gameplay (cooperation and competition). Any social form can be packaged as cooperation or competition to create a new social gameplay. In addition to interactions in gameplay, we also need to add social elements based on different gameplay, simplifying players' social operations and providing system- and gameplay-based social feedback. Based on this, there are several types:
- Fast-paced and short-duration: One-click friend requests or likes on the dungeon settlement screen. More convenient social methods need to be added.
- Slow-paced and long-duration: This type has fewer restrictions on adding social elements but needs to share the current status in a timely manner. For example, in simulation games, cooperative building can set prompts like "Current building construction is slow; invite friends to assist to speed up construction," or when gathering, if a rare herb is discovered, a prompt can pop up saying, "Discovered a rare herb; would you like to share it in the chat channel?"
- Adding at the start of gameplay: A representative example is the assistance in levels, where players can choose friends' characters to assist in battles, aiming to ensure that social goals can run through the entire gameplay. Additionally, at the end of gameplay, the influence of gameplay can be extended, such as popping up a quick way to gift to the other party or share with them.
Consider Social Costs: Social interaction inherently incurs social costs, which cannot be avoided. However, good design can alleviate these costs. The reasons for high social costs include:
- Some players naturally dislike socializing and primarily focus on single-player experiences.
- Difficulty in recruiting teams or long matchmaking times consume a lot of time.
- Designers force players to socialize, making it impossible to obtain unique development resources without socializing.
  For players who dislike social gameplay, we will set that aside for now; the remaining cost issues need to be addressed:
- Increase the conditions for recruitment filtering, add estimated matchmaking times, and reduce players' anxiety during waiting periods to lower social costs. For example, in the recent Zhu Xian World recruitment, finding a team took 1 hour, while the dungeon took only a few minutes, making me dislike dungeon runs.
- Control the frequency, number, and duration of social gameplay; prolonged socializing can lead to fatigue.
- For players who abandon cooperative or competitive gameplay midway, measures should be taken to address the negative impact on other players' experiences, such as using AI to take over.

Players' social needs may change at different stages of the game. The system can dynamically adjust social content based on players' progress and data. This part is a crucial aspect of the overall game social design and is the most flexible part we can adjust under our control. This content does not need to be overly flashy, but it must focus on player experience and have clear goals.

Player-Created Content#

This part of content is now referred to as UGC (User-Generated Content). Player-created content is a new avenue in today's era, and after 2010, UGC games combined with social games will become mainstream. UGC easily generates topics and, due to its creative nature, players can easily imitate each other. Many times, UGC can save a game's life, such as how common mods can rescue games.

UGC performs excellently in social aspects and is a direction that games should focus on in the future. However, UGC also has certain issues, such as:

UGC content is uncontrollable; designers cannot control how players use it, leading to increased management and review costs.
The overall number of UGC creators is not large, and high-quality UGC content requires a significant amount of time and effort to produce. If the incentive mechanisms are insufficient and there is a lack of feedback space, it can lead to creator attrition and ultimately abandonment of production.
There is a significant disparity in the quality of UGC creators; if the UGC content is level-based, unreasonable difficulty in the levels created may affect other players' normal gaming experiences.
UGC dissemination requires functional support, but the system's gameplay design may not initially consider UGC content.

How to Design UGC#

The UGC system can be very large (like Minecraft) or very small (like a comment system), depending on the specific design goals.
Any system and function can incorporate UGC, such as:

Equipment system: Allowing customization of equipment names while keeping total attributes unchanged, players can freely adjust attribute values.
Fashion system: Allowing high freedom in dyeing.
Skill system: Allowing editing of skill effects, enabling players to modify particle playback trajectories.
Friend system: Adding custom tags and custom cloud maps.
Story system: Allowing customization of game story branches and writing different plot developments.

There are many areas that can be created; here are just a few examples. When designing UGC, the following points need to be considered:

Lowering the threshold and increasing functional experience: The lower the threshold for player experience, the more UGC content will be generated, increasing the probability of producing quality content and making it easier to form topics. (A low threshold does not reduce the threshold for producing quality content.) When designing functions, it is essential to focus on player experience, considering how players will use this feature. For example, when placing furniture over a large area, features like copying, editing modules, and one-click application can be implemented, optimizing the functional experience.
Setting rewards to encourage UGC creation: This part of the rewards can also be considered from emotional and interest needs. Emotional needs can be addressed through platform displays, allowing creators to feel recognized and satisfied. Interest needs can be unique in-game items or titles, or even real-world currency. Emotional needs can be considered from the design's inception, focusing on sharing and showcasing from the creator's perspective.
Providing convenient dissemination methods: There needs to be a way for other players to notice UGC content, thereby increasing the likelihood of social interaction. For example, a basic one-click sharing feature can be integrated with mainstream social media platforms, or the game can increase exposure opportunities by adding display areas for UGC content in-game. Alternatively, a UGC content leaderboard can be set up, along with keyword search and tag management (like a creative workshop). It can also be linked with other systems; for instance, when relevant content is published, a message can be generated in the personal space, allowing other users to disseminate this information, thereby increasing the frequency of comments in the space.

In summary, the design of social content in games is crucial. System social content and player-created content each have their characteristics and considerations. As designers, we should fully consider various aspects and reasonably design social gameplay and UGC systems to enhance players' social experiences, promote the healthy development of the game's social ecosystem, and allow players to gain richer and more interesting social interactions in the game.

Once we have social tools and content to express social behavior, we need to consider who players need to socialize with.
If everyone is placed in a single pool, the resulting social interactions will be chaotic and disordered, leading not only to information overload but also weakening the depth and value of interactions between players. Just as in real-life social interactions, different groups form specific circles based on interests, professions, or regions. The game should be designed similarly, allowing relatively similar players to find social goals that meet their needs, thus increasing the possibilities for social interaction.

Social goals created by the system need to balance functionality and demand, forming social entry points.

Common social goals include friends, guilds, factions, nearby players, teams, etc., which can usually be seen in corresponding chat channels. When creating the system, more precise social goals can also be considered, such as the dormitories that can be joined at the beginning in "Harry Potter: Magic Awakened," which also serve as social goals.
Systems like trading posts and arenas are also social goals created by the system, connecting players with similar needs.
Mentor and romantic systems define more refined social goals based on needs.

The key to creating social goals through the system is to identify players' demand tendencies while attracting players to actively engage.

Players can also spontaneously create social goals, requiring the game to provide specific functions, such as group chats or communication devices like the one in Final Fantasy XIV. Players will naturally gather people with similar interests together.

Player-created social goals are more flexible, but the system needs to provide corresponding guidance, increasing searchability and display tags to make it easier for players to join such circles.

Is there still a need to develop such content for players in the game when external QQ groups, channels, forums, etc., are already well-established?
I believe it is still necessary to provide corresponding functions in the game. There is always a wall between the game and reality, creating inherent barriers in communication. In future development, designers can consider allowing messages sent in the game to also be received in external forums or groups, breaking down the barriers between in-game and out-of-game communication.

In summary, the establishment of social goals is to allow social targets to be precise; this should be the focus.
|| The larger the social goal, the richer the discussions, and the greater the sense of satisfaction gained (larger impact range); the smaller the social goal, the smaller the sense of satisfaction gained (smaller impact range), but the average number of gains per person will be higher. ||

Social scenarios are the events or states that trigger players' social behaviors, providing clear goals and topics for social interaction. Essentially, they are natural opportunities for interaction that occur within the game, leading to deeper discussions. The system's role is to create enough scenarios (topics) to avoid meaningless small talk and lay a solid foundation for social interaction.

Tendency: Scenarios need to be designed for specific player groups, and no single scenario can cover all players. For example, players who enjoy gambling and drawing cards will pay attention to random scenarios like draws or spins; players who enjoy achievements will focus on leaderboards, racing, achievement points, etc.
Timeliness: Scenarios are not eternal, and only certain players can participate. For example, the red envelope distribution during the Spring Festival or holiday celebrations.
Scope: Scenarios do not necessarily encompass the entire game; they may only involve a small part. For example, the competition for guild territories within the game (only some people participate).
Diversity: The same scenario can have multiple tags, producing varying values for each player.

Based on the characteristics of scenarios, we need to create more social scenarios and timely push suitable scenarios to appropriate social goals, enhancing the range of players accessing the scenarios.

In-game announcements of first kills in dungeons → World chat channel flooding with congratulations.
The troop channel receives a text prompt that xxx is online → Sending greetings in the troop channel.
Wandering around the home and seeing a super magnificent building → Taking a photo and sharing it in the game and external forums.

How to Spread Scenarios#

While scenarios have timeliness, dissemination does not, so dissemination can sometimes be non-real-time (like email notifications).
Common dissemination methods include system notifications or client prompts, such as when players trigger adventures or major events in "Jian Wang 3," messages will be sent in the world channel. The system can approach dissemination from the medium of transmission, such as text, images, or audio, and consider whether to use email or channel notifications for sending. The content can also have modifications in text color, size, and position, all of which can affect dissemination efficiency.
Players will also spontaneously spread scenarios, so it is necessary to provide convenient social tools, such as quick screenshot sharing, voice-to-text, emoticons, and expressions.

Consider the Receiver's State#

When disseminating, consider the receiver's state and add functional processing for different states:

Timeliness: For example, in team recruitment channels, a one-click join button.
Asynchronous: For example, email notifications about rare item auction times and locations; if the receiver cannot respond quickly, add quick reply functions.

With the above content, our social interaction has already begun. As social needs are continuously met, players will develop a dependency on social goals, and corresponding social goals will become fixed. We need to solidify the social relationships between players and social goals through the system.
This can be done in the following ways:

Establish activities that require specific goals, during which players cannot change goals, or higher rewards can be obtained for not changing. Alternatively, friendship levels can provide combat bonuses, with higher friendship levels yielding greater benefits.

Various relationship types can be specified, with common ones including romantic ties, best friends, brothers, fixed teams, etc. Players can also DIY their relationships. The establishment of relationships can also be divided into stages, such as romantic relationships progressing from infatuation → attachment → deep affection → everlasting love, etc.
There are many types of social relationships.

Social feedback can start from expressing individuality, conveying to players that their relationship with the social goal is unique compared to others. This can be through special titles, highlighting friends' names in color, or unique relationship tags, etc., spreading this social relationship to a broader audience.

Conclusion#

The general framework of the social cycle is as follows:

In summary, social design is a complex matter that requires consideration of various aspects. There are still many areas I need to continue thinking about. This is just a starting point, and while writing this article, I have drawn on the thoughts of predecessors, hoping to provide some help to everyone.
Some content has not been written in detail and still needs to be supplemented.

Reference Links#

Analysis of MMO Mobile Game Social Framework

This article is synchronized and updated by Mix Space to xLog.
The original link is https://blog.lolita.best/posts/GameDesign/building-an-mmo-social-framework