Tenfold Hate

Like every other red-blooded western male in my age demographic, I was completely enamored with the original Star Wars trilogy. I had the toys. The Atari 2600 games. The bedsheets. The garbage cans. Visually and thematically, Lucas’ films were light years ahead of their time, coupling cutting edge special effects with a unique blend of sci-fi and fantasy.

I recognize these films’ importance in their time and place, but outside of cheap nostalgic value, the Star Wars mythos holds little for me in the here and now. Don’t get me wrong, they are still entertaining movies. I’m just saying there’s no lasting depth or complexity–nothing that speaks to me individually as a grown-up. Campy dialogue from the mouths of great actors (Cushing, Guinness, etc.), visuals that have done an extraordinary job of weathering the last 30 years, and wookies. Very little to criticize there.  

But the Star Wars films fall flat because there’s very little left once you hack through all the tauntaun fur with your lightsaber. Take the first couple Planet of the Apes movies, Donner’s Superman, or Blade Runner. They offered me something as a prepubescent kid who needed fantasy, adventure, and that intangible “cool” factor. But they still offer me something upon revisiting them as an adult.

Once the smoke clears and the villains are defeated, these movies pose questions like, “What does it mean to be human?” and “What are the lines between right and wrong (or between human, animal, or machine)?”

I always liken the Star Wars thing to comic books through the early sixties: visual masterpieces with largely forgettable, poorly scripted stories. Stan Lee may have created Daredevil and the X-Men, but Frank Miller and Chris Claremont made you give a crap about them.

Out of high school, I learned that Lucas was heavily influenced by the films of Akira Kurosawa and the writing of mythologist Joseph Campbell. If you explore either of their works (which I really encourage, Star Wars fan or not), you’ll discover colorful worlds of ideas, characterization, and mythology that make Return of the Jedi look like Birth of A Nation.

I’ve been playing EA games since Bard’s Tale on my Apple ][e and Bioware was responsible for the last single player game I gave a shit about (Neverwinter Nights) so I’m sure they have something exciting down the pipeline. But I’m no more worked up that it’s potentially KOTOR than if you told me a Krull or Willow MMORPG was in the works.

* Please note I didn’t even touch on the Star Wars “prequels” which only serve to drive my point home by stripping the Star Wars mythos of the “nostalgia factor” and leaving us with three mediocre, shoddily written sci-fi films.

IF YOU’RE BORED, CHECK OUT SOME
OF THE FLICKS MENTIONED IN THIS POST
Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner
Richard Donner’s Superman
Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes

OR, IF YOU’RE FEELING REALLY MOTIVATED,
HERE’S SOME SUGGESTED READING
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont (graphic novel)

Tobold has a great post today about the “Groundhog Day” feel of MMORPGs. Engaging in the same repititious tasks day in–day out. You know the drill: saving the princess, slaying the dragon, ridding the forest of bandits, only to have them respawn five minutes later. How epic are epic dungeon crawls if they never happened once the instance resets? How epic is an epic item if a few hundred people on your server are running around with one? And when will the day come when our avatar’s actions in a virtual space actually matter?

It’s the lack of persistent worlds in the MMO space that will ultimately sour me to the genre if things don’t advance over the next few years. The problem is, the resources to create a truly dazzling persistent world are probably only available to the big guys like Blizzard, Sony, and EA at this moment in time. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy and frequently engage in their brand of fun, but its a fun that’s long since exceeded its expiration date.

But the gap between technological and creative possibility gets smaller every day. So for argument’s sake, let’s dismiss the technological/resource issues of creating truly persistent worlds in MMOs (based on the fact that such resources, if not available and affordable to devs now, will be in the immediate future). Now, what other hurdles are we left with?

We’ve seen pseudo-persistent worlds in heavily instanced games like Guild Wars and Age of Conan but at the cost of a massive, living, breathing world. That just won’t do. But how do developers keep games persistent and fun? If some rival players decide to torch your town in a persistent world, do you have to spend the next week rebuilding your village? Well sure, if you want a place to live. So developers have to figure out how to make what feels like work or a grind under the current MMO paradigm feel like fun. Like ENTERTAINMENT.

If a band of late night adventurers drive the goblin hordes out of the gold mine, what are we gonna do when we log in the next day? A persistent world would truly be driven, shaped, and molded by player-created content. Not some dude with a yellow icon floating above his head. Things would matter. The problem is, that has both good and bad connotations.

Logging in for an hour every night when you just wanna relax wouldn’t necessarily equal an hour of guaranteed, unadulterated fun–or could it? You may have to chop down wood for the village that got burnt down. That’s no fun. I don’t wanna do that after I’ve just spent my whole day getting paid to work in RL. And this is the challenge to developers–making persistent worlds persistent without making it feel like work when things go “bad.”

Chopping down the trees to rebuild your town might piss off the dryads who dwell in the woods. Maybe you’d have to negotiate with them. Or fight them. Perhaps you’ll recruit other players to sack the town of the opposing side who just made your life miserable by burning down your village. Maybe you’ll defect and join the opposing side in a world where factions and alliances are not written in stone. A world of possibility.

But when will we see these kinds of game worlds, and will the development team ballsy enough to do it be rewarded, or punished for demolishing the amusement park?