“The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
Grand Moff Tarkin, the Glare of Doom
(Picture shamelessly copied from the Wookieepedia article on Grand Moff Tarkin.)
Brian “Psychochild” Green thinks modern MMO design lacks adventure. I concur. I can’t help but think that this is largely due to the developer impulse to control the game experience, rather than let the reins loose a bit and let the players be the content. It’s wholly understandable, considering just how badly players can screw things up, but realistically, in a medium where audience choice is key to the experience (games), you must let players control the experience to some degree.
There’s no way around it if you’re actually making a game rather than a movie or Skinner box. Games are interaction, experimentation and play. We’ve lost that along with the adventure.
MMOs in particular need not spend time and effort trying to make groups of players go through a Pavlovian script, but rather, to leverage the inherent variability and instability that comes when you have people interacting as independent, yet interconnected, agents of change. That’s part of the promise of these Multiplayer games, after all.
So, Luke, you scrappy little Force user with little more than dreams and prophecy to drive you, stop wasting your time with batches of ten womp rats. Start flying a borrowed bit of middleware machinery, and craft a plan to demolish the triumphantly technological, carefully controlled Death Star that is modern MMO design. Some of the clumsy few may die on the way through the trenches (R.I.P. Vanguard), but all it takes is one perfect shot to show that the Empire isn’t invincible.
The freedom of sentients everywhere depend on the actions of a brave few!
Death Star Under Construction
(Picture shamelessly pulled from the Wookieepedia article on the Death Star.)
Disclosure: I am not in the SWTOR beta, and I don’t think it will be the Force I’m looking for.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
“Games are interaction”
You hit on exactly why it’s been hard for me to play SPRPGs lately. There is so much of an emphasis on linearity and cutscenes (not narrative, though) in most that I’ve tried to pick up that I quit early because I always feel that what I’m doing doesn’t matter. Even getting the XBL achievements is meaningless because they don’t really allow me to interact with the world or other players.
Aye, a great SRPG is often more like a movie where you have to grind to see the next scene. To be sure, there can be much fun to be had if the grinding is fun and the story is worth it, but all too often, it’s just so… static and so much static.
That’s a wee bit ironic, since of any game genre, single player RPGs have the greatest potential for letting player choice actually *mean* something in the game world. Devs don’t have to dull the system down to account for multiple players and their input, they can literally let the player change almost anything if they set it up right.
Of course, we’re definitely looking at this from a Western point of view. It seems to me that the Japanese RPG trend leans most heavily to *player interpretation* rather than player choice. It’s not all that satisfying to me, but perhaps they are doing exactly what they mean to. (Though I’d argue that they could do it more succinctly and adeptly with a movie.)
I think I’m leaning towards the opposite Tesh, I think we just need much more creative story and design. We tried to make players the content, and usually what happens is that all they do is beat each other up and grief each other. It’s to be expected, because combat is the only thing MMO’s seem to be able to simulate well.
I think the malaise is more due to a lot of developers not knowing how to tell a story for crap, or willing to take risks in being creative.
Well, I love a great story. I spend a lot of time thinking up interesting stories and settings. I read a lot of books. I’m all for better stories in gaming.
I just don’t think you can have a strong dev-crafted narrative in the MMO genre where you have to consider multiple players and their input, and nothing ever changes because dynamic content is expensive. Players either turn into spectators in a canned play (which Larisa and Elnia talk about in the WoW raiding game in their interesting post today), not caring about the story and just wanting to *get on with the game*, or they actually *do* throw the train off the tracks as you note.
You can do strong narrative in a single player game because it’s possible to use those reins more effectively *on the rest of the world* to reflect the player’s choice, but in an MMO, where everyone gets a collectible Onyxia head or gets the deathstroke on Arthas, storytelling is already a screwy beast. There’s not much that can be done to make it better simply because the format for storytelling is so warped.
It’s a structural problem with the medium, not a craftsmanship issue, in other words. I’m all for better craftsmanship, too… but structural deficits are just limitations of the medium, and ignoring them can mean wasted effort.
“There’s not much that can be done to make it better simply because the format for storytelling is so warped.”
I wrote a lengthy post, but I guess I can sum it up like this instead: First solve the problem of how to maintain a cohesive story when (n) listeners/participants can modify it at every turn and not all participants/listeners can see all changes. Then worry about the medium.
I don’t entirely agree with this myself, but the more I see things, the more it -seems- to me that we’re dealing with a couple of imaginary sliders locked in a zero sum: You can potentiate the story line at the expense of the world and what your players can do with it. Or you can potentiate the world in a sandbox manner at the expense of maintaning any sort of cohesive, overarching narrative that affects all participants.
I don’t think we have the technology to have it both ways yet. What’s the holy grail of all this, anyway? A perfect world system which reacts to player input and is complex enough to, from that player input, generate the conditions for an overarching story to emerge naturally and organically; player actions -are- the story. We’re not quite there yet.
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Julian, that’s a good way to frame it. I do think that we’re dealing with a zero-sum balance. Games find their own unique sweet spot on the sliders. And yes, the technology for a great dynamic world is probably a few years away at present. (But who is pushing in that direction to spur development of said tech?)
As such, I’m not calling for some sort of holy grail that maximizes both sliders. I don’t think it’s possible. I’m just saying that I’m sick of those that lean too far in the static direction, and that MMO design, of any genre, really should be leveraging the fantastic variability of playing online *with other people* in a persistent world. When the Next Great Hope is SWTOR, from all appearances a *more* controlled bit of game design that could easily be a single player game, I think that something has gone awry.
Of course, the fellow over at Mobhunter might have you believe that I’m calling solely for revolution. Not even close. As in my complaints with the business model, I’m calling for options. I think the genre has lost its way. Yet, I know that some like being on the present path. More power to ’em. It’s just not where I want to be, and I’m voting with my wallet.
SWTOR might be a fantastic, incredible game. If it’s not really making use of playing online with other people in a persistent world, and effectively plays like a single player game that I’ve got to be tethered to the internet to play, I’ll pass. Some will like it, sure. I call it a wasted opportunity.
Awesome article that sums everything up perfectly 🙂 Players are indeed the whole game… and thus why I play MMORPGs over any other sort of game.
I guess the problem is that humans are weak and like the paths of least resistance. It’s easy to “play” these games and take the easy routes that don’t force interaction and socialising in order to get to the top. The ironic thing is that this means missing out on whats the game great!
Forgive me for ask Tesh – as I’m sure you’ve said it/I’ve read it before – but my memory is terrible… you ever play EVE?
Gordon/Spitfire, EVE is one of those games that’s very high on my list, but it’ll never be one I actually *play* until it has a different non-subscription business model. Well, OK, I might play the demo someday, but I don’t want to get hooked (as I suspect I would) and then turn around and uninstall it.
So when you guys write about it, I live vicariously. 🙂
I agree. Have you heard of the games Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain (not yet released) or Dreamfall? I think there’s brand of games where the player’s freewill is being experimented with but is not yet popular. Basically, how do you create a world that is literally that without breaking the game?
MMO’s are often close to that, but they are mainly that in terms of spectacle and scale rather than true free-roaming games.
I hope one day it comes closer to the gaming WORLD that I imagine 🙂
I don’t see it as sliders. I think its much easier to be a better craftsman than to try and “leverage the fantastic variability of people online,” as Tesh puts it well. I don’t disagree at all with his own solutions, and it’s probably much better if it were possible to make that paradigm shift.
However it’s easier to look at the current medium and fix the errors in adaptation we get from trying to shoehorn narrative models from other media than to give players that kind of power. That’s why I focus on story, because it is visibly busted and I think can be fixed. I don’t think its a medium fault, I think it’s more not adapting to it correctly.
Tesh’s solution and arguments are more far reaching, but also much harder to implement, especially since the cost of experimentation is so high. It’s not a case of mutually exclusive approaches.
I think the holy grail is just to make a good game, and neither approach is really that wrong or exclusive. For me, it’s more fixing what can be fixed easily. For tesh its more creating a new model or experience that currently doesn’t exist, or isn’t done well or completely.
Well, hold up, what’s really the problem here? That there aren’t enough games which offer a choice against the mainstream? Or that these games exist, but are not as popular, big and well-maintained as they should/could/must be?
If it’s the former, the games are out there. Now. Today. If it’s the latter… hoo boy.
rkuang, thanks for stopping by! I looked into Indigo Prophecy a while back, and have heard of Dreamfall. IP at least did some interesting things, but from what I understand, it funneled down onto rails in the last third or so and wound up a weaker *game* for it, even as the narrative strengthened. Not having played it, I’m not sure of that, but that’s the sense I get from what reading I’ve done.
Dblade, I guess we’ll see what SWTOR manages, eh? 🙂 Bioware usually does well with story.
Julian, my “main” MMO is Puzzle Pirates, and I have alts in DDO and Wizard 101. I see interesting things in A Tale in the Desert and even Darkfall. Gatheryn and STO look interesting. EVE is brilliant, if a bit demented. Even UO is rattling around in pockets of the web. We certainly do have options out there. I just see the main thrust of MMO development embracing “more of the same”, and find it unappealing and uninspiring.
That’s just the way of business, though, perhaps. Big money chases the “sure thing”, only to fall flat on its face when players succumb to ennui and go back to WoW. At least the little guys have been able to carve out niches here and there. I am most curious how SWTOR manages to use the middleware Hero engine. If that can show well, it might open the doors for more smaller companies to use it as a development solution, rather than trying to write everything in-house.
Tesh, the “main thrust of MMO development” exists (or should exist) as it is. I think we, speaking purely as players, should stop focusing so much on what the industry is doing as an industry and look more or less exclusively at what the games are doing as games. We don’t play the industry -well, some of us do, but we shouldn’t- we play games.
One of the main reasons I support indie development, despite my occasional acidic critiques here and there, is that I see it as a great tool for the players to focus back on the games themselves. We’ve lost track of this. I’m old enough to remember when it didn’t use to be like this.
So what if the game you play doesn’t have 10 hojillion players? If you like the game you like it with 10 people around you, a hojillion, or by yourself. So what if they’re not updating with great content every other month? Play another game, or go outside (le gasp).
We look at “the industry” for guidance and axioms and truths and tendencies, in a good way, but what we fail to see is behind the glitzy veneer of that industry; a bunch of guys, more or less just like us, way too busy filling holes and patching cracks, running all over the place. Much too busy for guidance or a ‘plan’. The game industry is constantly reactive, but the worst thing is that it’s reactive towards itself.
I’ll stop now.
“I am most curious how SWTOR manages to use the middleware Hero engine.”
So am I, because we’re also considering Hero. We’ll see. The tools do look very good.
Perhaps that’s where we’re getting lines crossed. I’m *not* just looking at this purely as a player. I don’t care whether or not my chosen horse in the race is popular. If anything, as a confirmed soloist, I’m happier if it’s still a niche product.
No, I’m looking at this just as much, if not more, through the eyes of a guy working in the game industry. I see a lot of problems with MMOs that have and will continue to limit their commercial viability as well as creative potential. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll be working on one at some point, and I want to be able to clearly articulate why “me, too” design just isn’t healthy.
I also have clear business interests in game development, and really want to get a bead on what is beyond the flavor of the month in game design. That’s why I look often to Nintendo’s “blue ocean” strategy, finding ways to carve out new, profitable niches, rather than jockey for elbow room with bigger companies that inevitably can eat my lunch and use me as a toothpick.
That my tastes *as a gamer* run more to the blue oceans as well has confused the issue, perhaps.
“I see a lot of problems with MMOs that have and will continue to limit their commercial viability as well as creative potential.”
More than agreed. However, we’re preaching to the choir here.
Devs could certainly learn a few things. Players -definitely- need education. But if we’re going to change things, the people we need to inform first are the investors.
I don’t think we’re lacking ideas. I don’t think we ever did. What we’re lacking are teams able to execute those ideas properly, and more importantly, funding that doesn’t run away as soon as you utter the words “we’re gonna do it a little differently”.
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