Persistent vs. Instantiated Spaces:

1

• Persistent vs. Instantiated Spaces
• The Great Online Game Debate

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Presenters

• Moderator
• Starr Long (Producer, NCsoft)
• Panelists
• Raph Koster (CCO Sony Online Entertainment)
• Anthony Castoro (Online Studio Director
  Electronic Arts)
• Mark Jacobs (President and CEO Mythic
  Entertainment)
• Jack Emmert (Creative Director Cryptic Studios)

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Persistent Spaces

• Definition
• Game state persists over time
• Game state is always moving forward in time
• Space is usually a public/shared space for all
  users
• Usually a sand box of game rules
• Examples
• MUDs
• Ultima Online
• Everquest
• Dark Age of Camelot
• Lineage

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Persistent Spaces

• Questions for Panel
• What are the benefits of persistent spaces?
• What are the drawbacks of persistent spaces?
• What is the biggest challenge associated with
  persistent spaces?
• Is there an advantage to keeping the game
  exclusively persistent?
• How do you address the lack of guidance in open
  persistent spaces?

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Instantiated Spaces

• Definition
• Game State is reset each time spaces are
  instantiated
• Spaces are usually private for single player or
  small player group
• Space can be shared
• Examples
• Ancestry outside MMP Diablo FPS
• Anarchy Online
• ToonTown
• Star Wars Galaxies
• Guild Wars
• City of Heroes
• Tabula Rasa
• World of Warcraft

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Instantiated Spaces

• Questions for Panel
• Are there valuable lessons to learn from the
  ancestral instantiation games like Diablo, Real
  Time Strategy, First person shooters, etc.?
• What are the benefits of instantiated spaces?
• What are the drawbacks of instantiated spaces?
• How do you incorporate instantiated spaces with
  persistent spaces?
• What is the biggest challenge associated with
  instantiated spaces?
• How do you generate enough instantiated content?
• Can randomly generated spaces solve the content
  creation problem without losing the guidance that
  instantiations provide?

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Instantiated Spaces

• Questions for Panel (cont.)
• Is there an advantage to having only instantiated
  spaces?
• If you are mixing persistent and instantiated
  spaces how do you determine the percentage of
  each?
• How scripted do you make the instantiated spaces?
• How random do you make the instantiated spaces?
• Can you do matchmaking?
• Can player property be instantiated?
• How do you do player vs. player in instantiated
  spaces?
• How well do multiple instantiations run on a
  server?