The MMO field today has become quite crowded. There are fantasy MMOs, Sci-Fi MMOs, superhero MMOs, teeny-bopper MMOs. There are MMOs from America, Korea, Iceland, and many other countries.
However, as pointed out in this New York Times article, they all tend to fall into two categories: the "Theme park" and the "sandbox."
"Theme park" MMOs are the standard format, and the industry-dominators like World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, and City of Heroes are firmly in this category. They have levels, quests, and, generally speaking, a significant amount of rigid structure. If you log into the game for the first time and find yourself standing face-to-face with an NPC with your first quest ready to go, you're in a Theme Park MMO. They are very good at delivering a very specific, reliable, repeatable entertainment experience to large numbers of people rapidly.
The problem is, at least for me, that they are essentially static and empty experiences. I can log into the city of Tir Na Nog in Dark Age of Camelot, and the buildings, the NPCs, the quests, and the monsters will still be exactly the same locations, doing the same things, and giving the same tasks as they were back in 2002 when I first enrolled. Quests, by their very nature, have to be static and repeatable. A quest represents a significant amount of investment by the corporation vreating the MMO in their employees' time to think up the quest, write the text, work it into the game, and balance it. For them to make their money back, they have to ensure that as many paying customers as possible can experience exactly the same quest. No matter how many times you save the Damsel from the ravening monster, you log on again the next day and the monster is back, threatening the Damsel.
The problem with this, is it precludes narrative. For there to be a story, there needs to be profluence. That is, things must happen. Things have to change. The situation at the beginning of the story and the situation at the end have to be different. Otherwise, you are simply indulging in a masturbatory number-crunching exercise. A bad dream from which you long to awaken.
The sandbox aggressively goes in the opposite direction. It does away with all narrative entirely. The "quests" and "missions" are mainly perfunctory schemes for obtaining extra revenue or other types of currency. The advantage of this is that you can allow things to change. Since there is no guarantee of a uniform experience, there is no requirement to keep tihngs static. The war between the Band of Brothers and all the smaller guilds in EVE Online has twists and turns that rival the doings in Shakespeare's historical tragedies.
This scheme, while allowing room for more flexible gameplay, also has its own limitations. Everything truly becomes a numbers game at that point. Changes to the virtual world have to be effected by thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. The impact of one player gets diluted out to nearly un-noticeable levels. In Pirates of the Burning Sea, it is true that everyone can contribute to the conquest of ports. But since everyone is contributing, one person's contribution feels negligible.
Both of these solutions, I feel, grow from one source: LucasArt's early experiments in an online massive virtual community, the Habitat. This was a groundbreaking exercise, conducted in the mid-to late-eighties, to explore the utility of virtual worlds as a mass-market entertainment medium. The marketing lessons learned from Habitat went on to shape the two main branches of MMO design today. All the main elements of MMOs that we take for granted today can be seen in the original Habitat.
However, there are several assumptions inherent in MMO design that were limited by the technology available at the time. We are reaching a point at which we can divest ourselves of those limitations and develop a new model of online experience that will be more satisfying.
The New Model: Storytelling MMOs
Perhaps, instead of a virtual theme park, where one is spoon-fed content and stuffed into long queues to experience thrill rides, an MMO experience can more closely resemble an exclusive vacation resort. No crowds, no lines, no waiting. Players can choose to experience certain content when they want it; or, the scenery and pure experience are so lovely, that not undertaking specific experiences can be just as satisfying. Content is created to be experienced in smaller doses, by smaller groups, or individually; but in doing so, the experience's impacti s heightened.
There is a place for the mega-massive MMOs such as Eve Online. Their main advantage is that you need a population of that scale to achieve a viable economy. But if you were willing to dispense with the economy in lieu of more robust storytelling elements, something quite remarkable could be achieved. You could aspire to the level of storytelling seen in single-player games, but in a collaborative environment.
Imagine a virtual world with hundreds, if not thousands, of virtual miles of terrain. Now imagine said world with a limit of, say, a few dozen characters per shard. Now imagine that each shard is completely different, geographically. Now imagine you travel to the edge of this virtual map, just to find more terrain rolling away before you. A truly dynamically generated virtual world. It is possible to produce algorithms that dynamically generate interesting, credible, and beautiful virtual environments in near real-time, and save all the different, dynamic worlds in separate shards. But this is only the beginning.
Along with dynamically-generated terrain, there would be dynamically-generated towns, creatures, NPCs, and quests. A true world-building engine, that players can choose to interact with or not, as they see fit.
Let's pick a genre, just to have something more concrete to work with. For example, let's say we create an MMO based on the settlement of the western United States. Players start out in Saint Louis, Missouri, on the far eastern side of the map. When the server launches, the only things set in stone are the gross details; where the boundaries of the continent are, where the major landforms will be (mountains , large rivers, et cetera); and where players start. From there, players push out into the wilderness to settle and explore the continent. Each server would contain a population of perhaps dozens to a few hundred players, and many thousands of NPCs. Between servers, however, many things would not necessarily be the same: location of smaller towns, forests, streams and smaller rivers, Indian villages, ore veins, wild animal migratory routes, and the like.
Players can set off alone into the winderness as miners, trappers, or prospectors. Or they can recruit a band of NPC settlers in St. Louis and lead their group out into the wilderness to settle a new town.
This would would be growing and changing before the player's eyes. As loggers and miners (both players and NPCs) extract resources from the landscape, the landscape changes to reflect it. As areas become safer and more "civilized," more NPC homesteads and towns appear. As local economies become more complex, more oppotunity for conflict appears, thus leading to new opportunities for dynamically-generated and NPC-sponsored "quests" appear. If a player-run town becomes properous enough, NPC organizations will (dynamically, no referee input required) become interested in them. It would be quite satisfying for your town to have a telegraph, pony express station, and Wells Fargo bank branch opening. Then, when the railroads come to town, you will know you have arrived!
This is more than simply a hybrid between the Sandbox and the Theme-Park MMO. This is a new concept in online entertainment, and, while it may not appeal to those who wish to be spoon-fed their entertainment, it is, in my honest opinion, a viable concept with a ready-made fanbase.
Perchance to Dream (of an MMO)
Happy New Year
Here we sit on the threshhold of 2008. I have witnessed the dawning of plenty of new years (perhaps too many), but every time I do so, I promise to myself that I will do things a little different, a little better in the new year. Some times, I actually succeed. However, no resolution is any good without some structure. So, as with any good navel-gazing exercise, I now officially kick off my introspective spectacle of new year's resolutions.
On Writing:
- I will write at least six days per week, for at least one hour each day that I write.
- I will seek to achieve at least ten solid hours of writing per week
- I will attend at least two credible writers' workshops.
- I will begin submitting my work in earnest to publishers (of various types).
- I will develop a marketing plan for my writing career.
Regarding The House:
Regarding myself:
- I will exercise at least three times a week, at least one hour per session, in a vigorous manner.
- I will lose enough weight to put me at less than 180 pounds by the end of the year.
- I will sort through and rid myself of all old, out-of-date, and unfashionable clothes.
- I will try to find meaning and fulfillment in my daytime job without going completely insane, breaking any computers, or injuring any people.
- I will go to church more often.
- I will try not to feel so guilty about the things I enjoy.
- I will try not to injure or kill myself on the motorcycle, snowboard, golf course, or other recreational activity.
- I will go on at least one long-distance motorcycle ride with others.
- I will go on at least one overnight camping trip
- I will practice at golf and play at least four full 18-hole rounds of golf (or eight 9-hole rounds).
- I will not allow myself to be dragged down by the negative people in the world
- I will allow myself to be lifted up by the positive people in my life.
- I will draw up a list of principles and resolve to live by them.
- I will prioritize these resolutions in order of importance and identify conflicting priorities.
- I will invent a time machine that will give me 40 hours in each day, thus possibly allowing me to actually complete all these resolutions.
- I will not lose sleep or feel anxiety over keeping or not keeping my resolutions.
- I will, however, keep my resolutions.
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