Static worlds kill role-playing. I’m not talking about spewing Middle English in group chat or the slew of other silly stereotypes many a modern gamer equates dismissively with RP. Ideally in an RPG, you can do anything within the realm of possibility (and in MMORPGs, within the constraints of game physics): incorporate elements of your environment into a brawl, dig a ditch or sack a city, plant rose bushes or hack down a forest, become a noble cavalier heralded by the peasants or a murderous cutpurse hunted by the town guard.
Donkey Kong was never considered an RPG. Your avatar in Q*Bert or Crystal Castles never evolved or left any real footprint on the game world outside of advancing from level to level until you got bored or ran out of quarters. You followed a scripted course of play to save said princess or clear said board of adversaries. Sound familiar?
In an RPG, your character not only advances in level, but you “write” his or her story alongside your fellow players. You create a character, not a cog. You are adopting a role for the two or three hours you spend in game, not simply racking up dancing cherries or in the case of MMOs—blue or purple items. Did all the level 60 magic-users in your pen-and-paper campaigns parade around in the same robes? Nope. Because everyone was not pushed and prodded down a near-identical path.
Single player games have given us glimpses of the types of worlds we can leave a stamp on. It’s just a matter of time before our video cards and processors allow for this on a massive multiplayer scale. I for one would forsake multiple continents and vast oceans for a smaller game world if it indeed felt like a world, not the façade of a movie set. But will game studios be up for the challenge, or should we brace ourselves for another decade of hovering yellow question marks and grinding repeatable content?
Funcom production director Jorgen Tharaldsen was interviewed at QJ.NET this week where he chatted about the much-anticipated MMORPG Age of Conan. One of the elements of AoC that has caused quite a stir is that the gameplay will be single player before introducing you to the “massive multiplayer” side of Hyboria at level twenty.
Personally, I’d prefer to have access to other players from the get go. For me, it makes the world that much more alive and massive. However, there may be something to letting players test out their training wheels and become comfortable in their pixelated skins before unleashing them on the general populace. According to Tharaldsen:
“We have changed a bit on the concept of the single-player aspect through our beta, as many MMO gamers gave us feedback that they wanted access to other players sooner. So now you will play alone all the way to the first city, but there you can meet other players for the first time and do ‘limited’ multiplayer group gameplay with them.”
Tharaldsen goes on to say that AoC players have the ability to solo to max level. Though I prefer the social, teambuilding aspects of grouping, the ability to flexibly enjoy a game according to your personal play style is not even a subject open for much debate at this point in time. Sometimes we simply don’t have the time to group.
There’s no reason players should not have the ability to PvP or dungeon crawl with a party for hours on end if they want to–and also be able to hop on casually in between real life responsibilities and still have some sense of accomplishment. After all, MMORPGs are about options, right? So why should this exclude the possibility of solo–or even single player content? As long as reward is relative to risk and investment, and there is a convincing transition from the single player to the multiplayer “chapter” of the game I don’t see too much harm in Funcom’s approach.
The benefits of grouping in a game so focused on player-built cities and siege PvP are pretty apparent. Plenty of games offer good, clean, soloable PvE, but I think it will be the group-oriented aspects of AoC, if they are executed successfully, that separate this title from the pack. Some argue that games that are too solo friendly breed a sort of anti-community that tend to be unacccustomed to group dynamics and lack social etiquette when they’re finally spit out at max level looking towards the raiding and/or PvP aspects of endgame–both of which are very socially focused, group-reliant activities.
Heck, Funcom is even introducing a mercenary option in PvP so guilds can “hire” other players to help them square off against their adversaries. Providing an outlet for the greedy, the antisocial, and those just in it for the blood and money is a great twist to incorporate into gameplay–actually adding to immersion if pulled off correctly.
But a mature gamer is a mature gamer, whether they’re playing Whac-A-Mole or Civilization, a Gameboy or Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Generally, the depth a game offers dictates the type of gamer it attracts, each with their own preferences, biases, and playstyles. In-game culture in effect is created by the players behind the keyboards, not molded by the play style of the game.
Players’ maturity levels, communication skills, and ability to cooperate with others are shaped before the first mouse click; they are not spawned when they boot up their comp, whether the game they’re fiddling with is single player or multiplayer.
Game designers are creative folk. They are our Dungeon Masters of the technological age, weaving vast exciting worlds for us to game in, socialize in, and explore. Pen-and-paper role-playing games are very grassroots by today’s standards. A group of friends, a bag of potato chips, and a handful of dice around the kitchen table. I don’t know about you, but when my friends and I played Dungeons and Dragons, there was no talk of the bottom line or spikes in subscription rates.
MMORPGs brought a hobby spawned in the basements of the marginalized, the imaginative, and the misunderstood to our desktops. A passion that in our gawky youth provided respite from schoolyard scuffles or the dates we weren’t going on. Put simply, a creative escape from the typical monotony of being a kid.
Though perhaps not as crucial a lifeline as they once were, RPGs still have that magic ability to give us shelter from the storm, providing some adventure and socialization between those chunks of our lives spent sitting in a cubicle, or changing the kitty litter, or paying the gas and electric bills, or counting the weeks to our next vacation. In short, MMORPGs provide an entertaining, interactive distraction from the sometimes monotonous tasks of being all grown up at the dawn of the twenty-first century. But even with jobs, mortgages, and significant others, we’re still some of the most passionate hobbyists you’ll find.
As we’ve grown and evolved, so have the games. Just as we’re accountable to our bosses, or kids, or pets, or spouses, the game designers–our modern day game masters–are beholden to a third party that wasn’t present around the kitchen tables of our youths. The companies with the cash flow to produce the games. Folks who don’t deal in gamers’ passions, but spreadsheets and flowcharts and the dreaded bottom line. Aw geez, looks like the prom king who slammed your head into a locker eighteen years ago just got the keys to the basement. Hide the twenty-sided dice.
Accessibility and polish are not bad things, depending on how one defines them. However, as the MMORPG industry continues to grow, it seems like the gap widens between our vocabulary and that of the bigger game production studios. Countless seminal blues musicians remained penniless while their songs were repackaged and polished by safe, soulless teen idols. On one hand, what MMORPGs are going through now are normal growing pains (and markedly less severe than those of the real world), but that doesn’t make ‘em fair or any prettier.
Certainly as seasoned, passionate gamers we can learn to change with the times without selling our souls or becoming crusty old relics sitting in our rockers talking about “when we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow for corpse retrievals.” Any successful entertainment endeavor must master that delicate balancing act between creative integrity and dollars-and-cents, even if we’re not talking “high art” here. But at the same time, what might the works of a Van Gogh or Emily Dickinson be like if someone had been standing over their shoulders barking about the ‘bottom line?’ Pretty uninspired.
