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Lately I’ve been thinking about massive multiplayer online games. Players join them for the purpose of seeing new sights, explore new worlds and experiencing excitement in one form or another. For some it’s the excitement of a predetermined story; for others it is the excitement of being able to create their own stories by interacting with other players.
When developers give players access to tools or opportunities to create content rather than just experience it they open up a Pandora’s box of mixed results. That may be part of the reason why most developers do not go that route, and instead create a ready made experience that more or less fits everyone within its confines.
But what if a game integrated the idea of player created content into its storyline. What if players, being not simply run-of-the-mill individuals, were actually expected to change the world around them. What if they were expected to become important people – perhaps kings and queens or high administrators or celebrated inventors. What if swords swinging fighters could become famous not by making a series of blog posts or winning a tournament, but by altering the rules of the game and creating new variations that draw in more players than ever.
I wonder sometimes if there isn’t a way for games to be far more interactive than they are now. It seems like massive multiplayer online games are getting to a point where we as the players are simply being shuffled from pretty looking box to pretty looking box – each of these boxes being different cities, towns, dungeon areas… and instead allow us to break out of the metaphorical box. There is a disappointing simplicity in designs these days. Higher polygon counts and more sophisticated textures can make for more ornate boxes or “rooms” for our characters to stand in, but if the gameplay within those boxes is roughly the same as it has always been then MMO’s are not advancing. They are stagnating.
The solution would seem to be some sort of interaction innovation; some new way for players to interact with the game world, with each other, and with the overall idea of what the game is. I wonder if that innovation might be getting players more say over the story and the world they inhabit (virtually speaking) and fall in love with. Champions Online seems to be moving in the direction of having a single large server rather than a set of smaller servers. By having one large fictional world split up into channels, but channels that can be moved between freely, they may be able to present part of the overall solution. Having a single game world rather than fragmented versions spread out across different servers might allow for more focus on story driven by the players. Developers can create storylines and allow players to emotionally invest in the storylines through their actions and opinions. The result would be that the storyline can be more flexible, and the results of that storyline can genuinely change the world. For example if players don’t stop a giant marauding robotic Tyrannosaurus rex from destroying a section of downtown then they may have to deal with the consequences of the cleanup as well as knowing that the monstrous prehistoric creature is still around somewhere just waiting to strike again. In other words, creating multiple endings to advance might be too much if each server could have a completely different outcome. Each server with a different outcome would have to have assets created to reflect how the world looked and what storyline that world went off into. By creating several different possible scenarios, but only having to implement one of them, the creators can make each scenario or outcome more meaningful – with more long-term ramifications.
Whether or not developers are doing this, I have no idea. Listening to developers own words though seems to suggest that truly complex storylines and systems become very difficult to implement properly over the long-term. It’s certainly not difficult to conceive of such systems, it’s simply difficult to implement them and have them work as intended without breaking down into utter chaos or being so overly simplistic that they may as well have not been designed in the first place.
I keep feeling that somehow the players might be a key to this. Here you have a base of dedicated customers who have fallen in love with the story in the world that you have created inside your massive multiplayer online game. They want very much to interact with the world and often with one another. Given the proper tools and incentives they will do exactly that. But if we assume for the sake of argument that having one giant server is part of the solution to storytelling that has meaningful consequences, that still doesn’t answer basic question which is; “How do we change interaction between the player and the game so that it becomes more meaningful and creates new channels of content?”
For me this is not about the separate issues of what makes for good game design. Having an open world where characters can do nearly anything that they wish versus having a predetermined world where players merely have the choice of how they will interact with the world that essentially does not change – those type of choices are best left up to individual designers. Instead I’m wondering how an individual’s interaction with their own personal story can be enhanced. Getting players tools that allow them to create the kind of avatars that they want is one part of that. (Of course the more freedom any one player has to create a character, the more likely it is that the player will create something that does not quite fit into the world that has been created. Give players enough leeway in character creation, for example, and they will create a ridiculous looking character that obviously does not fit into the story of the game world at all. Designers have to find the balance between giving players a limited choice and creating only characters that fit into the designer’s vision, and allowing players more choice and risking their customers creating something that is unattractive, poorly designed or a poor fit with their virtual world.)
I don’t know what the answer is. I just feel that I have a good sense of what the questions are. How can we change player interaction with the game fundamentally so that we get new and exciting outcomes? Is the model that we have right now for most MMO’s satisfying the average player? Which also brings up the question “How much of this is the fault of the consumer refusing to play until new models can be designed?” How many times have players had the opportunity to speak with designers and asked about certain systems go find within the game that are more or less like every other system that ever come across except in the small details.
By the way, I consider myself guilty of this as well. I have been in chats with developers and asked questions that were meant to uncover new ideas, and I wonder if I could not have been more probing.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I can’t help feeling that there is something more innovative out there than what we have now. Somewhere there is a relatively simple idea or model that creates new ways that players can interact with with their own personal stories, and with the stories of the world around them. I feel that there is a model (or models) that incorporates relatively simple mechanics into the already established status quo of MMO game design, but will have an impact far greater than it might appear on the surface.
In tabletop role-playing games creating new content can be as simple as the Game Master creating a new NPC or object and describing it with his words. For massive multiplayer online games new content often means weeks if not months of work to create three-dimensional assets, sound effects and complex mathematical interactions. Somewhere in all of that interaction there has to be a way to alter how stories are told and how content is presented. Altered in a way that does not totally wipe away what MMO’s have already built up, but instead builds on that basic foundation.
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