Player Documentation, Lore, and Immersion: How we Interact with the World Changes Everything

Hello Everyone!

For this post, we're going to talk about something that, in my opinion, is not talked about often enough: Immersion.

Yes, that's right. Today I want to talk about getting lost in your game - or as NEVERDIE famously put it, "becoming your avatar".

I'm tackling this topic today because everywhere I look, immersion is constantly being discussed - from the dozens of posts about the things we want back in the game (as veterans) to the things we wish it could be, right down to the sounds mobs make, the day night cycles, sitting down and more.

It's no surprise that, as a primarily older base of players, the avatars on Entropia want a game that they can feel psychologically connected to. Us Entropians want a world we can get lost in.

Well, most of us do.

As much of a topic as immersion is, I also find that immersion is a highly divisive topic (but I'll explain that as we get into the post).

So, today I want to talk about immersion, it's importance, where it should be on the priority list of the developers, and of course, how immersion affects our economy and community as a whole.Fair warning: this is going to be a long one.

Okay. Let's dive right on in.

What Is Immersion?

Throughout this blog I'm going to consider immersion to be "The ability that a game has to make you feel as involved with the game as possible through depth of the game mechanics, detail of the environment, and variety of activities. I want to make this definition clear now, so that there no confusions later.

Entropia is known for being very psychologically enthralling - I think that most older players (and even many new players) can attest to the fact that Entropia keeps you coming back for more. Whether it's because you like to gamble or because you (like me) love the community and want to see it come out on top, Entropia seems to have something for everyone.

Immersion is depth. Immersion is complexity and a steady learning curve with plenty of offshoots. Immersion is getting lost on Calypso.

But is immersion important?

Immersion, Our Community and Our Economy

I think we can safely say with a certain level of universal acceptance that MindArk definitely takes their time when there is a problem to be fixed. Anyone who has played for more than a year or two has most likely known the horror of the support ticket that has sat open but unchanged for several months about a bug that occurred as a result of the latest Version Update.

For this reason, the mechanics of the game and the effect of those mechanics on the player base is a topic that is not only well discussed; it is also (and equally so) a topic that is well argued. On one side of the argument, we have the people who are playing just to get lost in the game; these people are the individuals who play Entropia to be immersed in it. On the other side, we have those playing to make money, and get their "swirls".

Of those two sides, it seems that the latter are more concerned with perfecting the existing game mechanics rather than focusing on adding new content, and there is nothing wrong with that perspective. I don't blame those people. In a game where your actions affect your real-world wallet, it is absolutely vital the existing game mechanics work beautifully - and with MindArk's history of untimely fixes, it's no wonder that so many of us cry "Correction before addition!".

Well then why is it that we continue to see latency in the squashing of bugs? The answer is more simple than you would think:

When deciding between "add content" and "squish bugs", only one option of the two drives the addition of new players to Entropia, and that option is "add content". By driving new players into the game, MindArk has the opportunity to increase its revenue. Therefore, it is safe to assume that MindArk takes a long time handling issues because their ability to do so is limited when so many resources are being put into the addition of content.

There is a reason for this, though - and that reason will, in the long run, help us all win.

We've known for quite some time now (and it has been analyzed here on this blog) that MindArk has been doing everything it can to turn a profit for the past few years, and this has meant streamlining their operational budget, expanding their business into new apps and territories and even exploring a premium pay plan. It is therefore no surprise that MindArk has their eye on one very specific prize: increasing the player base and holding new players in the game with the sole purpose of increasing its revenue. 

More players, without a doubt means more income for MindArk and more income for them means faster bug fixes for us. When you apply this logic to the argument of immersion it's pretty easy to see why MindArk focuses on adding content more heavily than squashing those bugs that us longer-term players are concerned about - they want to get in the black and they are trying to do that through the addition of content (and therefore by increasing immersion).

From a business perspective, the way MindArk is handling it right now makes sense. By focusing on immersion before focusing on perfection, MindArk is focusing on bringing in more revenue which means an opportunity to add devs. Adding devs means things will get done faster.

For us, this means that even those people who don't care about immersion should start to care about immersion. 

I hear all of your pleas and cries. I am among you individuals who want the bugs fixed and some old systems returned to the game. But I also understand that immersion plays an important role in customer retention, and customer retention means more bugs squished more quickly. So, I ask you, people on the "squish more bugs" side of the argument to consider the following:

Whether or not you personally want to be immersed in the game, we as a player base should strive to make Entropia as immersive of an experience as possible, because that is what keeps people here. The more people that are on our planet, the better MindArk's state of affairs is, and the faster things will get fixed. 


In other words, even if immersion isn't on your list of personally important things, player retention should be. It plays a role in helping make everything else possible - and at the end of the day, immersion means player retention.

The Role of the Community

Believe it or not, the community plays a huge part in keeping players immersed in the game, especially in Entropia.

I think it's relatively obvious based on the deterioration over the years that the current "Planet Partner" model as it is now does not lend itself well to a greater total lore in Entropia. As most of us know by now, the lore that was once  Calypso's has essentially fallen apart as the game has expanded. Things have changed in the game and the lore has simply not been able to keep up. The result is a very fragmented story line.

Similar situations are happening all across the player-maintained wiki's and how-to sites. We as a player base are trying to keep up with half-a-dozen development teams and record all of the new systems in the game and we, as players, simply can't keep up.

However, that doesn't mean that we should give up. 

If we as a community want to make Entropia great again, we need to do our share. If we want this game to succeed, we need to brush off the cobwebs that we have accumulated as older players and get back into documenting our game.

Allow me to get us started on that. 

As a person who leads by example, I am going out of my way to design a very detailed lore for the game that ties everything together. It will take every planet partner's history and wind them together in such a way that the Planet partners could change their individual storyboards entirely and it wouldn't change the overall lore.

In fact, I've already gotten myself in waist deep. As you can see by the cover photo of today's blog, I have been hard at work designing the new lore. It is now linked on the blog and is also linked right here. I will be working on this almost daily until it is complete. I am determined. I will not stop until it's done. 

The Entropia Revival Project is taking on the responsibility of writing us our lore. So my challenge to you, my readers, is this: Hop on to entropedia.info. Find a topic you know a lot about, and update one article. Just one.

If we all did that today, based on my average reader base per post, we would update 500 articles overnight.

Could you imagine how positive that would be for our community? Even if it's something simple like the decay of your favorite gun, or the top speed of your favorite vehicle, or the basics of crafting clothes - anything, honestly, is an improvement over what we have now.



It's our universe. Let's make something out of it.

Conclusion

Immersion is vital to our game. Even if it may not seem like it now, Developers focusing on immersion and content right now means more effective and frequent bug fixes for us later on down the line.

Us veterans need to first agree on that - then we need to take a breath, shake off the cobwebs of cynicism and dive into the game headlong. Our universe is different than it was before. It's not Project Entropia anymore. It's the Entropia Universe.. but we can make it just as magical as it was back then. All we have to do is shake the dust off, spawn some chairs, sit down and make something of what we have in front of us now.

This may be a wholly changed world for us. But it's our world. If we want it to thrive, and we want our returns up, we need to look at the greater picture, and recognize that our loot and our returns are dependent on the money that MindArk brings in, and the player base in part holds a certain level of control over that.

Let's exercise that control. Who's with me? 



-Faucon