Comments on: Dance Emotes Are Awesome

By: Dance Emotes Are Awesome

Dance Emotes Are Awesome — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:58:02 +0000

[...] Dance emotes are important. It’s important not to limit yourself to just one /dance emote as well. The more the merrier, and the more hilarious, the better. This isn’t just important for in-game fun, but it’s tremendously important for out-of-game fun, not to mention it’s a wonderful marketing tool you can empower your players with. It’s the root of some of the best grassroots marketing I’ve ever seen related to massively multiplayer games. (more…) [...]

By: Rich Bryant

Rich Bryant — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:08:01 +0000

It’s a hazard, but one that can be bypassed by not letting them strip off or indeed, remove any equipped item while dancing.

Go just a little further and you can stop people from being seen in public if not decently dressed (i have readymade mechanisms for this).

Let’s just say, Faith will most certainly not be anything like SL, mostly because i loathe SL with a passion you can barely dream of.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:17:41 +0000

The only problem I foresee with tools like that is basically turning every game into Second Life… a game which, if I had kids, I would never let them play… they had to create a Teen Second Life to segregate kids from the stuff adults were creating because every method of restriction they came up with either failed outright or was circumventable.

What you say sounds great and I’m sure would be a blast to play with… but if you give players the ability to make their own dances, how long will it be before your game has virtual strip clubs? I mean, even in WoW, cartoony and friendly as it is… one night I walked in to the inn down in Booty Bay and there was a whole different kind of “Booty” going on. And that’s just with their canned dances…

By: Rich Bryant

Rich Bryant — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:29:01 +0000

@Jason

Let’s just say i don’t see anything wrong with pre-scripted animations, unlike Kohs. I see plenty wrong with him, starting with the ‘tache.

But the idea lacks scope. Suppose you allow players to prescript their own dances and share those via XML fragments. Suppose you create a graphical editor for those animations? And finally, suppose that players could choreograph large numbers of (willing) players by sharing their own generated scripts while still leaving room for a little freestyle showoff action?

Those were questions i asked myself several months ago.

By: External News

External News — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:23:55 +0000

[...] Dance Emotes Are Awesome [...]

By: JayP

JayP — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:08:27 +0000

Edit: should have said “what not to do” in regards to the above; adding an item that forces other toons to do things their user doesn’t want is generally frowned upon in MMO’s.

By: JayP

JayP — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:06:16 +0000

I’d have one thing to add to this discussion, and that is things like new /emotes, dances and other trivial effects in-game not only add alot to the enjoyment of downtime in a MMO players’ online time, they are also a great way to reward players without the slightest risk of a game-imbalance or an economy-breaking item-reward. One thing I always wished for in WoW was more social itemization, 2 years into the game and there is just nothing to be gained that makes my toon look better or adds some silly fun (I got the one item that forces other people to /dance when you play it, but that was around 18 months ago, and that lost its’ novelty value quickly).

I see someone did raise the spectre of social griefing, but I think as long as you limit an emote to something that a character can only do to it’s own appearance in-game, there is very little risk of that happening. See WoW’s “Piccolo of the Flaming Fire” for an example of what to do when adding flavor items to a game

Also, realize that once you start down the path of increasing /emotes or whatnot to your game, you will increase demand for more of same, and gamers who thanked you for adding them will eventually curse you if fail to add more, at a later date, in timely fashion, and suitable abundance.

Ok that’s more than “one thing”. Apologies.

By: Streamweaver

Streamweaver — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:00:41 +0000

I’d agree with this and extend the idea in general. To me I’d almost say that 10 little things are worth at least as much as the 1 big thing in a game. So the ability to emote, have character animations sync with chat text, dance, chain any combo of them in macros and all that jazz is worth as much to me as the really big items because I encounter the little things more often and more importantly they often carry me through when I’ve gotten bored of the one big thing.

By: Xrispat

Xrispat — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 07:42:42 +0000

Since the topic has ran to pure emotes…..

I’d like to see a game that gave out emotes as quest or accomplishment rewards. Not exclusively, but as a once in a while award. It would be fun to amuse guildies and friends during downtime by doing backflips or something and getting asked how you got it etc… Lots of games allow one to be unique with armor, looks, titles, pets, and shapechanging abilities. I think a game could use emotes as another way to make each character unique without bloating the economy or power curve.

By: noob

noob — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:22:49 +0000

I wouldn’t describe myself as a player who would put “best emotes” on the list of why I would choose one game over another, probably not even at the bottom of page 26, but that is just me. Occasionally, to fill in some down time, I’ll access the help menu and see which emotes are available and /poke, /laugh, /grovel at someone else who is standing around bored until the rest of the party shows up, the tank gets a rez, the wizard gets back from an extended afk, or whatnot.

I had never really thought of the dance emotes as a potential market share builder, but it makes sense. Seeing characters in out-of-game productions add an additional layer of enticement for a potential player, who could see the game and become intrigued, or might simply sign up to make other cool videos of their own.

Thinking along those lines, wouldn’t it make sense for developers to not only include a wide range of emotes, but also build in some kind of video capture utility to facilitate the production of these kinds of out-of-game productions?