Incorporating Traditional Narrative Form into MMORPGs

The three-act narrative, Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, and the movie script beats formula is a dramatic mapping of emotional highs and lows, pacing peaks and troughs, intellectual revelations, and situational climaxes. They are popular mappings that have proven to elicit a strong reaction from a reader or audience in passive media forms.

Through the course of the hero’s journey the hero to be learns about themselves, by relating to the hero through the course of their journey the audience in turn may also learn something about themselves. This is one of the great appeals of the hero’s journey. If you relate to the hero and find the revelations to be enlightening you might really like the story or movie, and if you can’t relate to the hero or disagree with the decisions or revelations made on his journey you might dislike the story or movie.

The ability for the audience to influence the narrative is a concept that is largely incompatible with the rigid laws of traditional storytelling, and something that video games have been struggling with since day one. When you have hundreds or thousands of players sharing and influencing the same space, the problem becomes incredibly complex and daunting.

There are video games in the single-player game space that have managed to deliver very compelling experiences and thought provoking stories in the traditional narrative forms.

When a MMORPG attempts to deliver content in a formulaic narrative fashion it tends to migrate towards linearity and anti-social systems and content inspired by the successes of the single-player narrative genres.

The MMOs that have embraced this path have become known to the MMO community as “Theme Park” mmos, or in the most egregious cases Massively Single-Player Games. The core of these games is a linear narrative content and character progression full of systems that segregate the game worlds community, in order to ensure that the integrity of the narrative and heroic power progression is not compromised. Even though there may be thousands of players online, your potential play partners are limited to those characters that are in the same level bracket or content zone, quest-line, book, episode, chapter, etc.

Furthermore, in “Theme Park” MMOs your actions have no impact on the game world or community as a whole. The content and systems have been designed to minimize or eliminate interference or influence by other players on your narrative experience. You are the sole driver of your experience, the world is a facade, and the game worlds society is little more than a chat client and auction house. There are plenty of “non-mmo” RPGs that deliver a personal narrative or heroic experience far better than the MMORPG pretenders.

The spaces in between the systems and the content is the space in which the personal stories are written. The more restrictive the systems, and the more linear the content, the less space there is for these stories to form, and the less distinct these stories become. In an attempt to make everyone the hero of the story, the illusion of the hero only persists so long as the player doesn’t come to the realization that everyone else is also the hero the same story. If everyone is the hero, then no one is.

Organic Narratives

An admirable goal for a virtual world or  MMORPG systems or content designer is to create an environment that allows the hero’s journey to occur naturally, and differently for each individual.

Great virtual worlds are a vehicles driven by their communities. Heroes aren’t heroic because a story told them they are, they are heroic because the community has decided they are. They are heroes because they have risen above the crowd.

Instead of allowing everyone to be great, allow proximity to greatness. Allow players to be a part of something greater than themselves.

Pride in the accomplishments of your guild, player city, faction, or whatever form of communal association exists in your virtual world is pride born of being a part of something greater than the individual. You can have pride in your town, your state, your country, or your company without being a mayor, governor, senator, or president.

In “The Republic”, Plato asserts that the body of a healthy society is comprised of three parts, or castes.

• Productive Which represents the abdomen. (Workers) — the laborers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, merchants, farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the “appetite” part of the soul.
• Protective Which represents the chest. (Warriors or Guardians) — those who are adventurous, strong and brave; in the armed forces. These correspond to the “spirit” part of the soul.
• Governing Which represents the head. (Rulers or Philosopher Kings) — those who are intelligent, rational, self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to make decisions for the community. These correspond to the “reason” part of the soul and are very few.

Not everyone has to be, or wants to be, The Hero. Some people just want to be a part of something heroic, or grand, or just feel needed and loved by their peers for their contributions to the greater whole.

A Heretical View on DIKUMUD style MMORPG trends

Early DIKU style MMORPGs are often considered to have been notoriously “unbalanced”, and developers and players of these games have been waging a crusade on inequality and unfairness since the dawn of the heavily D&D influenced DIKU model.

Class balance, solo-ability, scalable difficulty ratings, and systems that eliminate inequality or challenge, likewise eliminate truly heroic opportunity. In these games all that matters are factors such as the level you have attained, the encounters you have defeated, or the gear you have acquired. Due to the crusade for fairness and equality, often attaining these goals are simply a matter of time invested.

Draconian systems that enforce equality or fairness are bad designs that create a virtual world akin to the dystopian futures depicted in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, or Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. In fact, the Wikipedia entry for Dystopia could easily be describing the social and economic systems of one of the most popular MMORPGs currently on the market, and several of it’s copy-cat contenders.

A New Hope

Virtual Worlds and games that defy the diku and traditional narrative models have survived (ie: A Tale in the Desert) and in some cases have thrived (ie: EVE) despite the market saturation of DIKU style WoW clones.

We are currently witnessing a movement in the MMORPG market-space that champions a resurgence of non-DIKU style games. Games that throw off the conventions of levels, classes, and in some extremes even static content such as quests. Games like Darkfall, Mortal Online, Fallen Earth, and Xsyon that are emerging out of Europe and small development houses in the United States are emerging as a new hope to those seeking a more organic “sandbox” virtual world experience. These games offer worlds as stages, and systems as props, and allow organic stories and true conflicts and heroes to emerge. For those of us who enjoy emergent content, social dynamics, and the meta-game space this is a good sign of things to come.

In the competitive business of MMORPG development there is often a heavy emphasis on creating a “AAA” MMO that has all the features “expected” by the market audience with some extra “innovations” tossed in to make the product “stand out from the crowd”. I am not going to discuss any of those things in this topic. I am going to bring up some retention factors that make an MMO successful that can be influenced by the developers but are largely outside of the developers direct control.

Financial Investment

Retail products, particularly those with a recurring subscription fee impose the pressures of a financial investment. Financial investment can be both a barrier to entry, and a retention factor. The concept of “getting your money’s worth” is a psychological coping tactic that separates justified purchases from “wastes of money”. If you plopped down $50 on an online game that comes with a free 30 days of subscription time then you probably want to get your money’s worth out of those 30 days. If you establish a month to month subscription you want to get your money’s worth out of each month that you pay for. If you pony up for a 6 or 12 month subscription you probably want to justify that investment. Different games often feature a variety of additional incentives for maintaining subscriptions that aid in this personal justification of spending. These incentives ranges from veterans rewards, player housing that can be lost with a subscription lapse, offline character progression, etc.

Social Reciprocity

The concept of the local hangout, the neighborhood bar, the community center, etc. is nothing new. These places become the preferred environments for particular social groups through their initial attraction and the presence of competing spaces and thrive through the power of social reciprocity. For a growing number of people, online virtual environments have evolved into physical location independent substitutes for the aforementioned traditional social hubs.

• Bob, Alice, Frank, Judy, and John all play the mmorpg Incredible Mega Hit Online.
• Bob plays IMHO because he enjoys the social aspects of playing with his longtime online gaming friends Alice and Frank.
• Alice plays IMHO because her real life friend Judy who moved several states away plays IMHO.
• Judy plays IMHO because her friend Alice and her husband John play IMHO.
• John plays IMHO because his wife Alice and his friend Frank play IMHO.

Due to their social interconnections Bob, Alice, Frank, Judy, and John often all play together and are members of the same Guild, which uses Ventrillo and Guild Forums to facilitate communication. As a result all 5 people consider each of the others a “friend”, and enjoy their regular gaming sessions together. Imagine these types of new and old social connections reciprocating between members of guilds of hundreds and across a player base of thousands or millions.

For the people who are brought regularly into an mmo’s social space by the bonds they have created with the people in that space, those bonds and the shared environment that game provides have always been, or become, more significant than the content or systems of the game itself. The likelihood of getting each of the members of this social group to pack-up and move to a new mmo is influenced by the likelihood of each other member moving, and the strength of the social bonds that bind those willing to move and those wanting to stay.

Despite these sometimes seemingly impenetrable social bonds to a virtual space, individual and mass migrations do still occur. The strength of the groups bonds beyond the fourth wall, via things like Ventrillo, IRC, and Guild Forums can even lubricate this virtual space migration. Therefore systems like integrated voice chat and guild webpage and forum hosting provided by the mmo service provider are more than just a convenience They are in fact retention tools that subtly nudge the social group into being more dependent on the specific services that the company provides.

Cultural Acceptance and Peer Pressure

This one can be a touchy subject but like it or not within individual social groups some things are just “cool” and some things are not. What those things are can vary greatly between different cultural or peer groups, and can pressure influential individuals into liking or participating in things that they otherwise would not. If a particular social group decides that IMHO is the only mmo worth playing, then people that are susceptible to impression from that group may perceive that as a fact upon which they base their preferences. If Hot Topic is cool and Hot Topic sells World of Warcraft shirts, then World of Warcraft is cool, and if the overweight socially inept uncool kid from The New Kid wears an EverQuest shirt, then EverQuest is uncool. To some, cultural perception carries a lot of weight.

In Conclusion

I don’t have a wrap-up or conclusion for this post yet, and have some ideas for spin-offs and follow-ups. I just want to get it out there. Can you think of any additional retention factors that live beyond the 4th wall? Can you elaborate or have something to say about the one’s I’ve mentioned? If so, discuss this topic in the comments thread!

The Concept of the Rare Spawn

The concept of the rare spawn is that there is a creature out there that is so elusive that seeing, capturing, or killing the creature is a rare, noteworthy, and rewarding occasion. In many cases these creatures are surrounded in folklore, myths, and legends born from the speculations surrounding their rarity or even doubt of their existence at all.

Spawn Hunters

Throughout history there are examples or rare spawns and the individuals that dedicate their lives to hunting them. The tales and accomplishments of these rare spawn hunters are passed down to us in literature. The Trials of Hercules, Captain Ahab’s obsession with catching Moby Dick, the Big One that got away; these are all tales that contain the concept of the rare spawn.

In modern times, hunters of mythical creatures like the Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster are called Cryptozoologists. They search for “cryptids”; creatures that are suggested to exist but lack scientific verification of their existence. There is another kind of hunter of rare and mythical beast. We know them as mobhunters, spawn-campers, completionists, lucky bastards, or people with way to much time on their hands. They are the players of games that are obsessed with encountering and defeating the rare spawns contained in their preferred virtual worlds.

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The cold and snow that blankets Massachusetts as I write this got me thinking about how games usually represent or convey cold. Being an interactive and primarily visual medium, games that include a cold aesthetic often include game mechanics to support the aesthetic by simulating properties and behaviors of cold environments, things, and the experience of being cold.

Conveying Cold through Audio Visuals

This is the most common method used by games to convey cold is to imply a cold environment. The visual elements will consist of a color palette, imagery, ecosystems, or motifs that are commonly associated with cold places and ecosystems. The most obvious visual methods being any combination of  a cool color palette of whites, blues, and grays; the presence of snow and ice;  characters shivering or dressed in warm clothing; or breath and heat source vapor trails. Chilling audio can enhance cold visuals, and is typically composed of minor key ambient melodies and sound effects associated with extreme cold, like arctic winds, sporadically cracking ice, and the crunching of snow underfoot.

Discovery Channel: Life or Death Game

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