Middle Earth as MMPORG
April 8, 2004 1:47 PM Subscribe
I'm not quite sure what the point of this post is, but it reminds me of one of my favourite childhood movies: Mazes and Monsters. Before there was Forrest Gump, before Castaway, Tom Hanks was Pardeux, the ninth level Holy Man.
posted by Nelson at 2:21 PM on April 8, 2004
posted by Nelson at 2:21 PM on April 8, 2004
Different purposes. Novels and movies are designed around telling a story. MMMORPIGS are designed to portion out the limited number of game assets over the longest possible period of time, as players pay by the month. Oh yeah, and there's text chat.
posted by Miles Long at 2:33 PM on April 8, 2004
posted by Miles Long at 2:33 PM on April 8, 2004
interesting - is that really what it's like? it must be soul destroying when these things close.
posted by andrew cooke at 2:33 PM on April 8, 2004
posted by andrew cooke at 2:33 PM on April 8, 2004
Excellent link -- I loved the article, though I'm split between, "Hell yes!" and "What do you expect given current game technology (and gameplayers)?!"
posted by rafter at 2:34 PM on April 8, 2004
posted by rafter at 2:34 PM on April 8, 2004
can you program the interface? (so that once you've killed a couple of butterflies you just add some code that kills all butterflies, say).
posted by andrew cooke at 2:34 PM on April 8, 2004
posted by andrew cooke at 2:34 PM on April 8, 2004
MMORPG are not adventure stories. Indeed, the "major quest" thing doesn't really happen because when you have 100,000 users, allowing just one to complete a Frodo-like quest would cause screams of anger among most of your customer base.
They are more like social clubs where you pretend to kill things.
Ah, how I long for the days of Grim Fandango.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:41 PM on April 8, 2004
They are more like social clubs where you pretend to kill things.
Ah, how I long for the days of Grim Fandango.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:41 PM on April 8, 2004
I think the satire is put to good use. It seems, to me at least, that the difference between fantasy gaming and let's call it 'fantasy storytelling' is the focus on realism.
The fantasy gaming described here offers a variety of choices but only one choice will let you progress. So even though a player knows that they can go to the mountains if they want tom they also know a warg is going to chomp them to little bits. So they spend hours hacking at tree rats. The game is still linear but all the excess pseudo-choices make it tedious.
In fantasy storytelling, all the crap gets edited out because the creator is only concerned with creating a world that does not contradict itself instead of a world in which every last tree rat must be killed before Ligoliz can buy himself a new pair of tights.
on preview, what Miles Long said too.
posted by sciurus at 2:42 PM on April 8, 2004
The fantasy gaming described here offers a variety of choices but only one choice will let you progress. So even though a player knows that they can go to the mountains if they want tom they also know a warg is going to chomp them to little bits. So they spend hours hacking at tree rats. The game is still linear but all the excess pseudo-choices make it tedious.
In fantasy storytelling, all the crap gets edited out because the creator is only concerned with creating a world that does not contradict itself instead of a world in which every last tree rat must be killed before Ligoliz can buy himself a new pair of tights.
on preview, what Miles Long said too.
posted by sciurus at 2:42 PM on April 8, 2004
The article makes an excellent point. Non-computerized role-playing games (remember those?) had game mechanics plus storytelling. The game mechanics are easy to convert into computer code, but not the storytelling.
Building a computer role-playing game with great storytelling is possible given today's technology. Given today's sorry state of affairs, I think any gaming company with resources could get a few game designers together with backgrounds in drama, literature, sociology, interactive fiction plus programming and release a truly innovative and enjoyable game. But for now it is more cost-effective to just build another Everquest clone.
posted by Triplanetary at 2:59 PM on April 8, 2004
Building a computer role-playing game with great storytelling is possible given today's technology. Given today's sorry state of affairs, I think any gaming company with resources could get a few game designers together with backgrounds in drama, literature, sociology, interactive fiction plus programming and release a truly innovative and enjoyable game. But for now it is more cost-effective to just build another Everquest clone.
posted by Triplanetary at 2:59 PM on April 8, 2004
The problem with storytelling in a video game is finding a source of original content. Take a singleplayer RPG, like Planescape: Torment or maybe Arcanum: you create a story with a main plot and a number of branching sidequests and so on, and you can create a compelling narrative for a couple dozen hours, give or take.
That's months of design and writing and so on.
Now try and generate many hours per month of original content that has to be suited to an arbitrary number of player participants, on-going, yea even unto the end of time.
This isn't to say that you couldn't "get a few game designers together with backgrounds in drama, literature, sociology, interactive fiction plus programming and release a truly innovative and enjoyable game". It's just that it's a lot trickier to pull this off than maybe it sounds.
And there's the inescapable fact that to pull in a profit on something like that, you'd have to get a LOT of subscribers, and that means that the vast majority of your players will be twits who won't appreciate what you're doing.
posted by cortex at 3:27 PM on April 8, 2004
That's months of design and writing and so on.
Now try and generate many hours per month of original content that has to be suited to an arbitrary number of player participants, on-going, yea even unto the end of time.
This isn't to say that you couldn't "get a few game designers together with backgrounds in drama, literature, sociology, interactive fiction plus programming and release a truly innovative and enjoyable game". It's just that it's a lot trickier to pull this off than maybe it sounds.
And there's the inescapable fact that to pull in a profit on something like that, you'd have to get a LOT of subscribers, and that means that the vast majority of your players will be twits who won't appreciate what you're doing.
posted by cortex at 3:27 PM on April 8, 2004
Excellent points, cortex.
I think another way that a MMORPG could make this sort of story work would be to have a number of trained improviser who are steeped in the story and tech of the game to work not as designers, but as the equivilent of costumed characters in the game. If a game like UO or Everquest had creative people who were really more interested in the story than in distributing loot running this sort of thing they could make it a lot more interesting.
Of course, then you would need players who were interested in something a little more deep than, say, Progress Quest.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:07 PM on April 8, 2004
I think another way that a MMORPG could make this sort of story work would be to have a number of trained improviser who are steeped in the story and tech of the game to work not as designers, but as the equivilent of costumed characters in the game. If a game like UO or Everquest had creative people who were really more interested in the story than in distributing loot running this sort of thing they could make it a lot more interesting.
Of course, then you would need players who were interested in something a little more deep than, say, Progress Quest.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:07 PM on April 8, 2004
I think any gaming company with resources could get a few game designers together with backgrounds in drama, literature, sociology, interactive fiction plus programming and release a truly innovative and enjoyable game
You should take a look at the work they're doing with interactive storytelling over at Skotos. I'm not sure that it's 100% there, but they seem to be pretty much on the forefront of that realm of game development, these days.
posted by majcher at 4:19 PM on April 8, 2004
You should take a look at the work they're doing with interactive storytelling over at Skotos. I'm not sure that it's 100% there, but they seem to be pretty much on the forefront of that realm of game development, these days.
posted by majcher at 4:19 PM on April 8, 2004
This reminded me of my time playing Gemstone III a while ago
posted by BackwardsHatClub at 11:30 PM on April 8, 2004
posted by BackwardsHatClub at 11:30 PM on April 8, 2004
Ditto, BackwardsHatClub. I was wondering when he was going to start delivering messages or buy/sell crap.
Joey Michaels, that is precisely what a lot of MUDs do. Unfortunately, on the bigger ones, you have folks who constantly try to kill to character/beg for freebies, which gets very disruptive. It can still work out well, though it can be highly unpreditable how the players will respond.
posted by Sangre Azul at 9:04 AM on April 9, 2004
Joey Michaels, that is precisely what a lot of MUDs do. Unfortunately, on the bigger ones, you have folks who constantly try to kill to character/beg for freebies, which gets very disruptive. It can still work out well, though it can be highly unpreditable how the players will respond.
posted by Sangre Azul at 9:04 AM on April 9, 2004
I think any gaming company with resources could get a few game designers together with backgrounds in drama, literature, sociology, interactive fiction plus programming and release a truly innovative and enjoyable game
Which will make an enormous loss, and close an entire wing of said largest gaming company in the world.
*cough* ea.com *cough*
posted by inpHilltr8r at 11:07 AM on April 9, 2004
Which will make an enormous loss, and close an entire wing of said largest gaming company in the world.
*cough* ea.com *cough*
posted by inpHilltr8r at 11:07 AM on April 9, 2004
Does anyone have a suggestion for someone who'd like to dip a toe into the MMORPG world?
posted by dmt at 3:51 PM on April 9, 2004
posted by dmt at 3:51 PM on April 9, 2004
Final Fantasy XI is supposed to be pretty good. Plus the PS2 version only recently came out, so there's the back end of a wave of new players (IIRC, the PC version plays on the same servers).
posted by inpHilltr8r at 4:56 PM on April 9, 2004
posted by inpHilltr8r at 4:56 PM on April 9, 2004
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posted by brownpau at 1:49 PM on April 8, 2004