Syncaine’s Great MMO Challenge

I know, I know. I’m a bit late to take up the gauntlet in Syncaine’s challenge regarding EVE Online having a solution to every problem anyone has with MMOs, being the best MMO. Syncaine is not specifically asking for critiques of EVE Online. Rather, he challenges: “Bring up an issue you have had with an MMO, and I’ll relate it to EVE and explain how EVE solves that issue.”

Rather than complain about EVE (which wouldn’t be fair, as I have limited exposure to it), I’ll list the top things I’d like to see in an MMO (all of which I happen to think EVE doesn’t deliver on):

• A real sense of narrative
• A real sense of immersion (although I admit I appreciate the semi-accurate simulation of what it’s like to be a tiny ship in vast space)
• A sense of community
• A sense of participation in the game world on the part of the player characters

No MMOs offer these to my satisfaction, and part of the problem may be the fact that the fourth at least seems to be somewhat ad odds with the first two. MMOs that offer narrative elements tend to offer the same narrative elements over and over to any group of players interested in exploring them. The cognitive disconnect, in WoW, of a single group of players repeatedly destroying an enemy until a certain item drops means that the cool background lore and narrative leading up to the kill are rendered meaningless from the perspective of world participation. You’ve defeated the biggest, baddest enemy of the universe, but you’ll go back and do it again tomorrow ’cause you want his breastplate, and for some reason it didn’t drop.

Immersion, the sense of living in the imagined world of the MMO, is both add odds with and compatible with narrative and player participation. On the one hand, nothing draws me into a world like a good, compelling story. But clicking through someone else’s story (always a danger in video games, MMO and otherwise) can certainly leave me feeling like an observer instead of a participant.

I’m not the first to long for an MMO in which emergent narrative, mostly created by interaction among the players and with the game world, would be the focus. No one’s come close to delivering something like this. Heavy roleplaying guilds have sometimes fascinating narratives, but usually the best parts of their interaction might just as well take place in text chat rooms.

Syncaine may argue that a game like EVE Online offers the perfect place for emergent narrative, true player participation, and a feeling of being in the world takes place. It almost seems like it should. It shares with Ultima Online some of the elements that could have allowed for terrific, epic worlds.

But then we have Syncaine’s follow-up post. When he discusses the “lack of short-term ‘fun,’” he reveals that some of the most exciting things ever to happen in MMOs took place in EVE, and I’ll be he’s right. It would be spectacular to participate in a PVP battle with hundreds of players on each side. Syncaine writes: “What draws me to EVE is that potential, that possibility of launching that Titan.”

Unfortunately, I don’t actually think that’s different than what keeps people playing WoW. Oh, the big events in EVE may indeed be bigger than killing Illidan, but only a small percentage of the playerbase got to experience that for a tiny percent of their game time.

So, richer though EVE’s narrative rewards may be, they come at a dearer price, and to a smaller percentage of players.

Oh, and that point about a sense of community? Well, any game with a loyal fanbase has it. I just didn’t find it in EVE because the game obviously doesn’t address my personal MMO needs. I therefore don’t have much in common with those who (legitimately) find it satisfying.  I’ll find a community when I find people who enjoy being immersed in their worlds, their characters. The long lists of statistics and lack of avatar don’t support my kind of immersion.

In the end, I actually think EVE is a great game for the right audience. But I also know, thanks to this little exercise, that I ain’t that audience!

Add comment November 14th, 2007

Out of leisure time, I turn to para-gaming

Alas, despite my passion for them, games continue to be a leisure-time-only activity for me. When my job keeps me tied to a desk for every hour of sunlight, the holidays approach, I contract food poisoning, and we decide to refinish a room in the week and a half before guests arrive, I find I have little time to play anything.

Coordinating leisure time with other people, a prerequisite for most games, can become downright impossible. I suppose that’s one reason why MMORPGs proudly advertise the ease of soloing. More importantly, it’s one reason why I, who ultimately prefer the creative fervor of collaborative storytelling with rules (that is, tabletop roleplaying games) spend so much more time playing computer games.

When I find myself so crunched for time that I can barely squeeze out a blog post a week, I nonetheless manage to fit in a bit of game-related activities. Here are my top four:

• Reading gaming blogs (much easier than writing posts) and other game-related media
• Poring over my ever-growing list of games I’d like to try
• IMing with friends about their game time (vicarious leisure > no leisure at all)
• Writing up quick descriptions of campaign settings I’d like to run

So what do gamers do when we don’t have time for real gaming? What para-gaming activities to do you enjoy?

Tobold once observed (and recently reiterated) that the true economic unit of MMORPGs is time. It seems it’s almost inherent to computer games (solo games, too) today that their worth is somewhat measured in how long they take to play. This doesn’t seem to be a characteristic of offline games (although replayability is a big issue).

Why is that?

Add comment November 14th, 2007