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I am absolutely thrilled to say that, over the last few weeks, I’ve actually found not just moments but hours of time for gaming. I haven’t found the time to play much of anythign during a solid half year of heavy involvement in two demanding musical productions at the local community theater, and I’ve missed it, missed gaming of all sorts.
In the brief time since the curtain fell on our last performance of The Full Monty, I’ve managed to clock in quite a few hours of LotRO and at least four or five sessions of Arkham Horror, and already my brain has started ticking with observations about how the games work.
One form of play I did not give up during my sojourn on the stage was playtime with my now three-year-old daughter. Play with her is pretty much continuous, as she constantly insists we all assume roles in an extended narrative. This pretend play, which I hope she will continue to enjoy even as she adds dice and game mechanics as a resolution tactic (and she already does have her own dice and dice bag, though at present they’re merely toys to her), is obviously common among children. I remember hoping to “play magic” with my friends on the playground in elementary school, though sports gradually lured most of them away.
All of this is by way of saying: I finally have time to write about the many things that have been percolating in my head.
But I’ll get to that a little later . . . I’ve got games to play!
July 17th, 2008
The One Ring. Luke Skywalker’s inherited lightsaber. The Aegis. Indiana Jones’s bull whip. The skin of the Nemean Lion.
Of such stuff are legends made. The so-called legendary objects that litter the lairs of MMO monsters and the vaults of MMO PCs, on the other hand, are for the most part nothing more than incremental improvements over lower-tiered weapons, armor, and other equipment we can cram into our character’s slots. There’s very little magic about these magical items.
The way almost all MMOs (and most CRPGs) work, there’s really very little choice. Equipment is a big (and ideally fun) part of roleplaying games. But, as realized in design built around timesinks, graduated progression, and balance, most equipment is, plain and simple, completely uninteresting.
To me, fantasy magic items and exciting science-fiction gizmos should let my character do things she’s never been able to do. Oh, I know we’ll never get away from good old-fashioned +1 longswords (which may be better simply by virtue of superior craftsmanship), but shouldn’t the really exciting, storied items give us completely new powers? Where are the rocket boots that let me fly and the gemstone that, when I clutch it in my hand, lets me dissolve into a shadow and slip under a door?
On occasion, when playing MMOs, I’ve been sucked into the pursuit of equipment that improves a certain statistic my character might have. For many, pursuing improved bonuses to a certain set of statistics represents a significant portion of the game.
How insanely boring! But it reveals what is, to me, the great truth and great failure of MMOs. They are not about stories, not about character, not even about the worlds they portray. They are about (very) gradually increasing your character’s power for the sake of increasing your character’s power.
Though that may be what draws some players to tabletop RPGs as well, such games manage to avoid the tedium of mind-numbingly dull equipment, largely thanks to the fact that a given game has fewer players, a world that can be permitted to change, and at least a pretense of narrative.
This shortcoming in MMOs helps explain why I’ve never bothered to have an item enchanted in WoW. While I value equipment statistics insofar as they let me know if a new sword is better than the one I have, I take no pleasure in squeezing out another small bonus to some statistic that is used to calculate yet another statistic that will help me end fights in 97.5% of the time I’d otherwise be able to finish them.
The real downside for me is that, once I’ve taken a character to the maximum level and played with all the abilities that come with a given class, I have very little reason to continue playing that character. There’s no carrot dangling in front of me. I can’t be bothered to invest dozens or hundreds of hours in the pursuit of improved shoulder armor, however cool it may look.
What can be done? As far as I can tell, almost nothing outside of radically different game design would help. Oh, I know there are a few exceptions. The Scepter of the Shifting Sands, for instance, is damn cool even though it doesn’t give a character any game advantages. But such things are so very few and far between (of necessity) that most players will never experience them.
To truly address the problem, a completely new approach to MMOs is necessary. In coming posts, I’ll not only gripe about things I don’t like but also propose things that I would like to see and also happen to believe are practical (hence the post’s subtitle). I welcome any thoughts, shared experience, or complete disagreement.
November 19th, 2007
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!
November 14th, 2007
I had hoped to bang out a few posts about all the games I got to play while on my two-week sojourn in rural Vermont, but the work that I had to take with me on that vacation has only just begun to let up since my return. Aggravating!
Since I have a moment, though, I’ll just put up a quick list of the game-related topics I intend to post about in the coming days:
- Introducing new, not-very-geeky players to Settlers of Catan
- Heroes Kingdom, a nifty game store in St. Albans, VT
- Zombies!!!—a tile-based board game a friend bought that we got to play with some very non-geeky friends
- Not playing computer games (especially MMORPGs) at all for two weeks, and what this means for my video game future
- Games for toddlers, especially my two-year-old daughter
- The Illuminati card game
- The Catan card game
- The Buffy the Vampire Slayer roleplaying game
- The funky dice I picked up
- Thoughts about how technology affects games other than video games
- My wife and best gaming partner; my wife as my best gaming partner
As you can see, I have a lot to talk about! I’ll add links to this list as I create the posts. Watch for them over the next five or six days—as well as posts on all the other gaming topics that came up while I was gone (like D&D 4th edition, Bioshock, Splinter Cell, Ethan Haas was Right and Alpha Omega, GURPS Supers, and more).
August 23rd, 2007