“Video Games” run a theoretical spectrum from almost purely mechanical beasties like FoldIt to barely interactive… things, like Dear Esther, Trauma or one of those atrocious “Full Motion Video” games from days best forgotten. I’m not certain that you could ever have something purely mechanical with no context, and something purely narrative with no input wanders off into “Movie” territory. I’ve written before on some of what I think games are and what they perhaps should be, even specifically about narrative in games. There’s a blog devoted entirely to the notion, and many others that are quite eloquent about game design.
So… yeah, nothing really new to offer on that count, but I did want to highlight a post from Tobold today. He’s writing about skill requirements in WoW over thisaway.
I was going to comment there, but it got long and linky, so I brought it here. I think that putting level, group size and skill gates on content that completes the WoW narrative is asking for angst. I see two major avenues to relieve the stress:
1. Give raids several levels of difficulty for the same content, from an uncapped zergfest to solo.
2. Pull the narrative out of raids. (Alternatively, drop dev narrative, but that’s not going to happen.)
In any discussion of raiding and the dichotomy between the elites (self-defined, of course) and the unwashed hordes (the other guys, no matter their actual skill level), I think it’s also crucial to split the discussion of playing content from receiving rewards. (It’s also worth noting that I say “playing content”, not “watching content on YouTube”; they aren’t the same thing.)
I am all for special rewards for demonstrating skill. To me, that’s the essence of gaming, developing skills, learning game systems, and being rewarded for it with further tools to explore the game systems. The whole “play for a while, watch a cutscene, repeat ad nauseum” design we see in a Final Fantasy RPG uses narrative as a lure and reward for grinding through the game, which is far less satisfying to me than expanding the gameplay itself. I do love most Final Fantasies and many other RPGs, but that’s usually because there’s some good gaming under the hood. The story is only tangential to what I think of when I play these games.
…and yet, I do like the story and characters sometimes. I’m one of those that bought Advent Children and actually like it (yes, it’s cheesy, yes, it has problems, yes, I still like it). I don’t want to go back and play through Final Fantasy VII to see that story, but I’d probably happily go through a tour of the cutscenes and crucial story points. Yeah, I had fun with the chocobo racing and materia wrangling when I played the game, but I won’t do it again just for the story.
Maybe that makes me a terrible, no good, awful tourist or consumer or something, but hey, I did buy Advent Children, and I bought almost every Final Fantasy, so I’m a customer.
Point being, these “game” things we play tend to be a mishmash of interaction and passive fluff. If the fluff is going to be important to all of your players, they need to be able to get to it. I see no problem gating loot and even some game mechanics behind skill tests, because that’s what gaming pretty much is. I’m not a fan of gating fluff behind skill checks, especially if you’re trying to build up a narrative that you want players to care about.
RPGs tend to alleviate that by letting players overlevel content, RTS games allow cheat codes and so on… MMOs have no such release valve for raiding. Even the much-vaunted (or vilified) Looking For Raid doesn’t open the gates much, and what it does do tends to just mash together more people with different gameplay goals, always a stressful thing.
I’m not convinced that dev narrative needs to be the “fourth pillar” or dev focus for MMOs, but if it’s going to be important, it has to be accessible to as many players as possible.
Oh, and latebreaking but oh-so-relevant, Mass Effect 3 and multiplayer… apparently, the “best” ending demands multiplayer. Ick. Bad designer, no twinkie.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
Great post.
Related: did you play Myst?
Thanks!
I did play Myst… but I never finished it. It seemed like the sort of game I’d love, but in practice, it was too slow to get around and puzzles were too obscure sometimes. Ditto for The Seventh Guest, though the puzzles weren’t as bad in that one. I really wanted to like it, and I wanted to explore the Myst island and see the story, but I was always either trying to gather information to solve things and frustrated by slow travel, or annoyed at the more obscure puzzles. I do like solving puzzles (I love the Professor Layton games), but some of the Myst things were just… overwrought. I wonder if the “RealMyst” or whatever it was that allowed full movement like a FPS would flow better for me… I suspect so.
I actually went and read the Myst novels, and I found that I liked them quite a bit… more than the game actually. I want to go back and try Riven or Exile to see if they ironed out some of the obscure “read the dev’s mind” puzzles, but that’s kinda low on my priority list.
I struggled with it a bit too – the puzzles were hard, and they took a long time, but the world itself was enjoyable to explore and be in. There were times I wanted to throw in the towel, though.
Your part about gating made me think of Myst – I enjoyed the story more when I didn’t have to deal with the puzzles too much. I have fond memories of the game, even. But I think I got a cheat guide, or a solution guide, or something like that. I can guarantee that if I didn’t have such a thing I probably would have thought the game was rubbish.
I found the Myst games basically impossible to progress in past a certain point without a guide. When I played Myst Online (which is till running and free as far as I know), I didn’t even bother with most of the puzzles, I went directly to a guide so that I could explore it unfettered.
I enjoyed all of the early Final fantasy games (4-10 or so). I never finished XII. Oddly enough, I think I found it a bit too MMOish. It became quite grindy to make progress in past a certain point.
In any case, great post. Couldn’t agree more. If you want Joe Average gamer to care at all about your narratives, then Joe Average gamer needs to be able to play through them.
Yeebo, I’m trying to play FFXII now, and I got to a point where my team is at level 27, but the walkthroughs I found suggest I should be at level 42. (And I only turned to the walkthroughs after getting beat up repeatedly by the new area’s low-level critters, then wondering if I was just missing something obvious.) That’s a big jump, and honestly, I’m considering dropping the game just because of that grind. It’s fun in small sessions, and maybe I’ll get through it, but that is a big ol’ gating wall that destroys my inertia in the game.
Chrono Cross did pretty well with this, as the game had “star levels” rather than character levels. Your whole team would be boosted to the star level you had attained by beating story bosses. The game kept a pretty tight rein on difficulty and pacing that way, and you never had to go grind to progress. You could grind to get some crafted gear or a few bonus HP for a slight edge, but you never needed to. I love that philosophy.
(It’s also worth noting that I say “playing content”, not “watching content on YouTube”; they aren’t the same thing.)
I’m second guessing theres a notion that we really can keep this ‘playing content’, as long as we just dial it down, down, down to some players skill capacity.
I think this just ends in a denial, asserting ‘they really are playing the content’ when they are pretty much watching it all as if it were on youtube, but using the game client to do so.
And what’s wrong with that? Makes sense to me – the raid just plays out as if its conditions were met over X time by raid, even though the player (single or otherwise) does nothing (no rewards are given, it’s just a display). I’m sure it’d be amusing to watch and nicer to do so in the game client than on youtube. Personally I prefer the idea that the content is locked to those without the skill (though being locked to those without enough bums on seats bores me), but hey, WOW seems to have compromised itself on alot of stuff already so whats a bit more?
On the mass effect 3 (not that I’m buying it – I doubt my comp could run it!) the article seems to indicate multiplayer is not demanded for the best ending.
Though it’s interesting in terms of difficulty level, since while I imagine ME3 has difficulty levels that affect how hard combat is, the war readyness levels are fixed, so the difficulty of getting them (ie, the difficulty of avoiding multiplayer and still getting them) is fixed.
Sounded like cooperative multiplayer, though? Ie, still essentially beating a preset story.