I was prowling the Escapist’s latest issue, and happened upon this little article:
One point that Mr. Zacny makes is that game themes have polarized to the dark, immature “M” rated stuff and happy shiny pretty world, with little in between. I exaggerate a bit, but there’s truth to it. I have to wonder: can gamers handle subtlety? Do they want subtlety?
Framed in MMO terms, currently everyone is a hero (or a scrub who is just training to be a hero). I touched on this back in Fewer Heroes, MMOre Adventurers. Where are the games that allow for small, modest, humble lives? I’d argue that the social framework of an MMO is the best place for such subtlety in games, since you’re dealing with a large variety of players. There will be those who just want to stake out a mining claim on the side of a mountain, or plant a small crop and build a house, or make a pub and cater to travelers. They can’t do that in real life, so they do it in a crazy, fantastic alternate world.
A Tale in the Desert and EVE apparently have some of this sort of “low key” activity going on. Notably, I think that they are possibly the biggest MMOs with functional, in-depth economies. Puzzle Pirates has a good economy, but isn’t quite the same sort of game.
More and more, I believe that a vibrant, healthy world with room for subtle lives and player creativity will need a strong economic model and a healthy crafting suite. Yes, there should be opportunities to be the Hero, but sometimes, it’s enough to just go to the digital equivalent of the Cheers pub; a place where everyone knows your name, and it’s OK to just relax and be some dude whittling a new trinket.
The “pub” atmosphere is what I loved about SW:G. I was a bounty hunter and had money flowing out of my ears, so I would regularly visit cantinas and get in fights because people would be paying 5-10, sometimes up to 50 credits for a dance from the entertainers, whereas I would stroll in and lay down 5-10k, heh heh.
I even met a dancer there who made use of my server-first large house schematics to build a brothel out in the wilderness and paid me 20% of her profits each week.
It wasn’t heroic, but it was fun, user generated content.
I suspect the subtle aspect is appealing to the more mature crowd. Old SWG was a great former example, with all the crafting, the building, the RPing, etc. LOTRO is probably the best modern example I can think of, despite being obviously geared to the adventuring side of things.
The teens and early 20′s crowd is all about the bling and e-peen waggling and subtle bores them; they need it in their face and obvious, no thinking about it.
Thinking about the more mature crowd, with aging gamer demographics and the widespread appeal of WoW, is there a sustainable niche for something more subtle? You’d probably not see WoW numbers, or maybe even WAR numbers, but are those who would play a modern iteration on the SW:G/UO design? Or, are there enough of them to make developing a game for that audience profitable?
…I also have to wonder about the bling corollary. Would subtle gamers be happy with less than bleeding edge graphics if the gameplay, social and technical aspects of the game were rock solid? I tend to think so, but I’m obviously a wee bit partial.
Compare the graphics and art style of WoW vs. LOTRO…
In my opinion, LOTRO far outshines WoW but WoW is all about the bling, which is in the stats as well as the size of one’s shoulderpads…
WoW is very attractive to the younger crowd whereas LOTRO is far FAR less reliant on gear, stats, and how deeply your shoulderpads penetrate the raid boss or how your John Holmes-esque shoulderpads attract all the night elf pole-dancers…
E-peen innuendo aside, that was a HUGE factor in a LOT of (younger) players mentalities playing the game. Without fail, the few times it ever arises in LOTRO, it’s always from someone of that age group, for whom any subtleties present are over his head and unnoticed.
At the same time, the characters in LOTRO fall facefirst into the Uncanny Valley. The landscaping is gorgeous, but the characters still look like marionettes. The “cartoony” design of WoW sidesteps that concern, just like Pixar’s human characters sidestep it. (Look at the row of captain portraits in Wall-E; the captains between the “real” person and the “cartoon” person are somewhat grotesque.)
Of course, WoW’s sidestep plants it firmly in a different minefield, but the shoulderpad obsession isn’t the only way to take that art style. “Cartoony” need not mean “stupidly obnoxious”… Nickelodeon notwithstanding.
Perhaps it’s better to call it “stylized”. I think it’s very possible to have stylized visuals that dodge the Uncanny Valley but still maintain a great sense of subtlety for those with the eye to appreciate. It’s even possible to have stylized visuals that reduce overhead costs for the devs, and make games playable on low and midrange computers.
As such, making things look “photorealistic” is all about noticing and correctly applying the true subtleties of life… but it’s possible to have subtle art and game mechanics without needing to look “real”. LOTRO does very well with environments, but the detail necessary to make humans (and to a slightly lesser degree elves and dwarves) look “true to life” is still beyond the tech.
Uncanny Valley? LOTRO? Are we playing the same game? They don’t look the least bit Uncanny Valley realistic to me. If anything they’re unnaturally clean and undefined, which suits me fine playing my elf but the other races could stand some definition and a little grubbiness.
Most MMORPGs have stylized graphics to avoid the Uncanny Valley and to give that game a unique look. The two exceptions would be Vanguard (which failed miserably at both Photo-realism and Uncanny Valley) and Age of Conan.
I think there’s room for a game like the one you describe. Someone… crap, my mind is like a sieve… but someone not too long ago (Saylah??) was asking for a MMO version of Harvest Moon and I do think that would fly, for a modest audience.
And I think even now there are people living subtle lives, but they don’t call attention to themselves so we don’t hear a lot about them. My lady plays EQ2 a *lot* but she never raids or anything like that. Instead she loves crafting and decorating the guild hall and running around harvesting items, some of which she sells to support her crafting habit.
She’s not a superstar on the server or anything like that, but she is very happy, and I know that she is not alone in playing the way she does, because a group of like minded players is always sharing screenshots of things they’ve made for their houses and so forth.
I’d say Darkfall might tap into this mindset, but between the actual title and the open PVP aspects, I’m worried it’ll bring in the ePeen brigade, at least initially. OTOH, UO had open PVP, but it also had player towns where folks who set up little shops and live a quiet life…