About 16 years ago (at the now seemingly infant age of 13), I was introduced to the fantasy role-playing genre of PC games with Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (Ultima). Ultima was incredibly immersive not only because of its rendering engine (one of the first to feature techniques we take for granted now like texture mapping), but also the ways in which players interacted with their avatar and his/her gear. Eating and sleeping regularly were necessary, lest the player suffer decreased health and stamina. Torches would burn out and had to be replaced. Swords would fracture if not regularly repaired and become useless junk. Fish could be caught (and eaten) from underground rivers. The list goes on…

After awhile, managing the in game inventory became an arduous task that led me to realize three things:

1. I had (and still have, actually) a pretty severe case of OCD and simply couldn’t leave anything on the damn ground.
2. Ultima’s inventory system allowed for nesting containers (basically putting bags inside bags). This led me to stumble on a bug in the game that caused it to crash while attempting to nest containers greater than 8 levels deep. I know…I need help.
3. Some items had absolutely no useful purpose.

I’d like to stay on that last one for a bit because it begs an important question. Why deliberately design game objects (including their artwork, models, stats, and other assets) that don’t do anything? Ultima’s developers say they intended the game to be a “realistic and interactive dungeon simulation“, rather than a straightforward role-playing game. Of course, as we all know…realistic dungeons are full of useless crap.

Sarcasm aside, I do have issues with this reasoning. For one, the game is simulating a fantasy world, so the notion of it being a realistic simulation strikes me as odd. Some in game characters and creatures do have real world counterparts that are exaggerated to great effect (giant spiders give me the creeps), but ultimately the designer is crafting their own reality. That being said, I don’t see the problem with crafting a reality where every item (and I mean every item) is useful in some context.

In the case of Ultima, this is really a minor issue that doesn’t take much away from what is otherwise a classic RPG. I only mention it because of the lineage it shares with a ridiculous and growing trend that has crept into more recent games, vendor trash (VT). Simply put, VT is anything in game that, upon discovery, is immediately stuffed into a bag and sold for pennies to a willing merchant. It defies any logical explanation, and the sooner it dies a quick death, the better off all gamers will be. VT seriously bugs me because I consider each useless item a squandered opportunity to increase the endogenous (en·dog·e·nous) value (EV) of a game. I also consider EV to be the cornerstone of what makes games addictive and compelling…so…what the hell is it anyway?

In 2002, Greg Costikyan swiped the term ‘endogenous’ from the biology world and used it to describe the internal value that a game structure (including its rules, mechanics, and objects) can generate:

Suppose you’re walking down the street, and someone gives you a $100 in Monopoly money. This means nothing to you; Monopoly money has no meaning in the real world. The guy who gave you the bill is probably some kind of lunatic.

Yet when you’re playing Monopoly, Monopoly money has value; Monopoly is played until all players are bankrupt but one, who is the winner. In Monopoly, the gaily colored little bills that come with the game are the determinant of success or failure. Monopoly money has meaning endogenous to the game of Monopoly – meaning that is vitally important to its players, so much so that you have to watch your little sister like a hawk to make sure she doesn’t swipe bills from the bank when you aren’t looking.

In most RPGs, much of the EV is generated by the game inventory. The treasure. The drops. The loot. The schwag. Call it what you like, the pursuit of shinier and more powerful gear is one of the primary driving forces in any RPG. Traditionally, the quest for epic loot has started with slaying massive amounts of baddies. Players either kept what they received or sold it to non-player, or computer controlled, characters (NPCs). Trading with NPCs was also possible in some games. Ultima is one example.

With the rise of online gaming, items that players craft themselves have become a mainstay in most massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). Crafting can be an incredible source of EV because it creates new goals for players and enables them to have a more meaningful and direct impact on the game economy. I use the word ‘meaningful’ here to describe the satisfaction a player gets from taking raw material and creating something useful to other players in various contexts. All this is very dependent, of course, on the actual implementation.

Around 2000, I had my first experience with crafting while playing Everquest. It was pretty painful. Raw materials weren’t readily available and reagents were relatively expensive, which resulted in crafted items that were worth less than the materials used in making them. For newcomers, most attempts at making anything resulted in failure and a loss of all the materials involved. In the end, players who became proficient in a certain trade skill couldn’t create much that was unique or useful to the other players. The entire system was an incredible waste.

Four years later, even though a few of these problems persisted, I had a much different experience with World of Warcraft (WoW). WoW has two general types of professions, gathering and production. Each production profession is supported by a gathering profession. Blacksmithing is supported by mining, for example. Mining alone isn’t that glamorous: you see a mineral vein, you stroll up to it, and click. It either works or it doesn’t. If it fails, you can try again. If it works, a loot window appears just as if you had killed a creature. Despite this, mineral veins don’t stick around very long after they pop…players tend to snatch them up immediately. Anyone who’s ever been on a dungeon run and watched a miner make a sudden b-line for the nearest vein can attest to this.

The raw materials gathered in WoW create an incredible amount of EV because they are useful to production professions. Those professions, in turn, can actually churn out useful gear. As an example, take a look at this list of all the recipes (blueprints for items that can be crafted) that require Copper Bars. As of this writing, there are over 30 items that can be crafted using copper as one of the ingredients. Each one of these items is useful to different characters in different contexts (level 15-20 Hunters are quite fond of Crafted Heavy Shot, for example). Every time a useful recipe is added to this mix (assuming it doesn’t throw off the game balance), copper becomes more of a commodity and creates even more EV for the game as whole.

This system is far from perfect (I never saw many Warriors carrying Copper Axe’s), but it does illustrate the positive effect a crafting system can have on a MMORPG when implemented correctly. Blizzard’s success with the crafting system in WoW, however, makes it all the more insane that the game still has so much VT. Again, every item dropped in-game should be useful in some context: whether it be important for a quest, a reagent for a trade skill, or just something that allows the character’s aesthetic to be customized. Who says necklaces made from crisp Basilisk urethra aren’t sexy?

As a final example, EvE Online takes crafting to one extreme (some would say too extreme). Most (if not all) of the ships and various gear sold in EvE are created by the players themselves. The game simply sells the blueprints. Actually, the players can research and sell them as well. EvE also has various trade skills that players can train, like Salvaging. I can recall one instance when a close friend and I had an opportunity to clean up a trail of destroyed enemy ships a fellow corp member had left behind after a mission. While the prospect of collecting garbage wouldn’t exactly be appealing in most games, we salivated. There was several million worth of ISK (EvE’s in-game currency) to be made from that salvage, and we were all too happy to oblige. This is a perfect example of a game creating EV where there otherwise would be none…and it’s a trend that I hope continues in all games.