After blogging about Palia's design mechanics for growing community earlier this month, and Dr. Ruth Diaz's thoughts on them, I got a chance to join Dr. Diaz on an embedded journey into Palia. Watch our tour above! Though you won't hear me speaking due to a technical glitch, I'm interviewing Dr. Diaz as she explores the world, with our core focus being: What Palia features should open non-MMO virtual worlds learn and try to emulate?
To that question, Dr. Diaz points to the Flow Tree Grove ritual (at around 52 minutes in), where players on the same server meet to harvest these magic-infused trees.
"The Flow Tree Grove Ritual is the most impressive feature in many ways," she tells me. "It takes building a generous culture in the rest of the app, during the rest of the time people play, to make that a regular phenomena, work."
As she notes during the video, Palia players have come up with their own social principles around how to harvest these trees so that they may be shared: "[Palia development studio Singularity 6] have designed this game so cooperatively, that the community has built their own collective rule on how to enjoy something together with delayed gratification."
She even thinks the harvest ritual has become core to MMO's long-term success. "It's like a fruit of the whole Palia tree," as she puts it. "If this gets toxic their game is going under."
For myself, I was impressed by the cooking game (around 18 minutes in) where players are rewarded for working together to cook a single recipe within a certain time frame. That in itself encourages cooperation and community, and then at the end -- well, everyone knows the most fun and the best conversations at a house party happen in the kitchen.
More about that on her blog, such as how Palia's narrative informs the user community building: