Why Fantasy?

Here's a simple question for you, which I suspect does not have a simple answer: why is Fantasy the predominant genre of game-like virtual worlds?

It can't all be down to the influence of The Lord of the Rings, surely?

Richard

Comments

[Richie Shoemaker]

Because everyone has read Lord of the Rings, because everyone played Dungeons & Dragons in the 70s and 80s.... and because of both of those, all the various shards of fantasy share a common heritage. They all have orcs, elves and stunted guys with beards. You can go from EverQuest to WoW and all places inbetween, including most of the Asian MMOs, and you get pretty much the same world with the same rules. Sci-fi isn't quite as homogeneous or as identifiable.

[Mart Brauer]

Because fairy-tales have been a part of everybody since early childhood and it as if going back in time to TimeSpace, when/where everything was simple, safe and still miraculous.

Let's be honest - game-like virtual worlds are mostly simplified alternative versions of real-life and hence their popularity.

[Nick Punt]

Not a simple answer at all...

some ideas
A. All media companies are highly risk averse and gravitate toward formula, given the risk inherent in creative IP businesses.

B. Game developers typically focus on 'core' players, regardless of any business case for this. These are the players that bring the most expectations, have largely the same media exposure to draw from, etc. Game developers ARE these players, and they serve these players. These players can be influential as early adopters, and are a growing group in our culture. Attracting other, non-core players may just be a byproduct of good execution, marketing, and business environment.

... (continued - anti-spam filter prevents a long post apparently)

[Nick Punt]

C. Definitely Tolkien. Very identifiable! The depth of this work, as measured by the scholarship put into it, far exceeds what your average game or novel writer could come up with in a lifetime. That depth means the world and themes presented in the book feel familiar and carry weight, and that helped breed generations of Tolkien fans. For those who miss the thematic similarity to outside works (primarily Western), there's 50-70 years of time Tolkien fans have been making countless derivative works, and the availability of those works in modern culture mean those themes are nonetheless familiar. It's a sort of worldwide echo chamber of fantasy expectations.

D. There’s something special about the unexplained, the ambiguity of ‘magic’ (despite any formal structures of ‘mana’ that games apply) that is more attractive than an identically functioning, fully explained scientific counterpart. Maybe it’s a lower barrier to entry – you don’t have to be a super geek to know the particulars of how things work, just that they do. Maybe it’s inherent in our view of play, or of the world – the 'magic circle' may be called the 'magic circle' for a reason! Fantasy seems to me to inspire child-like wonder and curiosity because of this unknown component. Reality and science fiction may inspire wonder and curiosity, but perhaps not in exactly the same way.

To put these all together, maybe it goes something like – More people seek a low barrier to entry and/or a child-like wonder and curiosity. They rule out science fiction and reality, and move to fantasy. They see what is out there in fantasy, and see Tolkien derivatives. They seem familiar so they buy and play them. Companies see these purchasing habits, and keep the pipeline full. Repeat over multiple generations.

[dandellion Kimban]

Which virtual worlds we talk about? Sure fantasy dominates WoW but there is a lot of space based VW's too. Second life has its fantasy parts, but hardly we can say they are majority.
Fantasy gave start to pen and paper RPG's and that is an important fact to consider here. But, with time passing, percent of fantasy in VW's is falling.

I dislike Tolkien but i love Fantasy

I find Fantasy is better then sci fi, as it doesn't have to explain as much, it is simply magic

Which does make sci fi harder to design for, since plausible answers are needed

[JB ZImmerman]

Other potential reasons...

1) Fantasy worlds may offer fewer challenges for the infrastructure. High-tech (Scifi, or even our own level) worlds offer the potential use of technology to *increase* the access of the individual to the physical environment. Modern communications, ranged weapons, modern optics and sensors - these are all things which would be 'expected' in a high-tech virtual world and which dramatically increase the load on the underlying tech of the simulation. If your user can use modern telescopes and sensors, suddenly the volume of virtual space each clients needs access to and updates on grows dramatically. If combat is involved, ranged weapons mean much lower tolerances for lag and view distance limitations without breaking the illusion. WoW, for example, allows distance vision (telescopes) but they function by showing the user only the the terrain once past their 'normal' view distance, since the terrain data is local and uncoordinated.

2) Fantasy tends to offer itself to more abstracted and less complex modeling. While this isn't a rule, 'lower tech' items can be represented more easily using fewer vertices, or textures rather than polygons. Higher-tech items, in order to retain believability, can significantly increase the amount of detail required.

Neither are 'rules' but rather trends, I think.

[Flatboy]

- There is a built-in dual coding in the fantasy worlds that can be hard to design into sci-fi worlds. They can appeal to people regardless of age, gender or "hardcore-ness".

- Fantasy has an easier time when it comes to unexplained phenomena. It is fine to leave things completely unexplained there wheras in most other genres it's not.

- The cultural resonance with fantasy worlds is so much more than with sci-fi worlds as we westerners all grew up with fantasy stories.

[Mark Sivak]

I think there are some other considerations about the use of fantasy as the setting for VWs. One that comes to mind right away is variety. While the same can be said of sci-fi, fantasy can give multiple species of avatars as well as classes. In a combat-centric game (like WoW) you can have casters, melee, and ranged combat. For any close to reality VW it would be hard to get anything but gun combat for the player to swallow. Sci-fi has beat this problem, in fact Star Wars did it very well. The force is basically magic and a light saber is a close combat weapon. However, fantasy is much more malleable in my opinion.

Also I think it comes down to player quests, it is easy in fantasy to say I need 10 rat livers for a potion go get them for me. While there are again ways to adapt this sort of quest to non-fantasy I would think it much easier for fantasy because developers have the fall back answer of magic. The magic circle of a fantasy game can always be mended by "magic". Why does that character get a skill to fly or raise the dead? Easy, magic.

As VWs mature fantasy will lose most of its market share because already I feel it is becoming stale and developers are looking for new world settings to express.

[Nick]

Perhaps sci-fi technology would not be as conducive to the non-combat grind? Fantasy worlds are generally low tech (if magical), so it is more realistic for fantasy characters to spend time harvesting resources and crafting items by hand than for sci-fi characters, who we would expect to just push a button on the replicator machine.

[Richard Bartle]

dandellion Kimban>Which virtual worlds we talk about? Sure fantasy dominates WoW but there is a lot of space based VW's too.

Not as many as there are Fantasy ones. Take a look at http://mmogdata.voig.com/, it has a nice pie chart that shows around 70% of the virtual worlds covered are Fantasy. It was a similar story in the textual days, except because of Stock MUD Syndrome we had even more Fantasy than SF.

Richard

[thoreau]

Because swords are cooler than lasers.

[Richard Bartle]

Nick Punt>All media companies are highly risk averse and gravitate toward formula, given the risk inherent in creative IP businesses.

In the 1980s, people wrote their own textual worlds for fun, and at first they didn't all go with Fantasy. Fewer than half did, in fact (see a list in my Indie MMO GDC talk). So you could be right, in that when there's risk involved businesses will go with the proven concept.

However, as I mentioned in my post above to dandellion Kimban, this state of affairs was not permanent. By the early 1990s, Fantasy ruled. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it's because the Fantasy worlds got more players.

>Game developers typically focus on 'core' players, regardless of any business case for this.
>...
>Game developers ARE these players, and they serve these players.

This is the argument that says designer design what they themselves want to play. It doesn't apply for the very top-end designers (who get their fun from designing, not from playing), but yes, it does apply to far too many of the people who actually get to design virtual worlds. Even if it didn't, there are likely to be so many other people on the team who are out-and-out players that the pressure to give them what they expect could be overwhelming.

>Definitely Tolkien. Very identifiable! The depth of this work, as measured by the scholarship put into it, far exceeds what your average game or novel writer could come up with in a lifetime.

But there are other vast, deep, self-consistent worlds of magic and mystique that could have been drawn on, not just Tolkien. The 1001 Nights is very well known, for example, and has more magic in it. Myths from Ancient Greece are also well-known, and are packed full with the kind of things that could make a wonderfully rich and exciting virtual world. Why, then, does Tolkien have such influence? And why is it still inspirational when Fantasy virtual worlds have fireballs and Tolkien's books don't?

Richard

[Angel XIII]

I will absolutely agree with the idea that it has to do with risk assessment but I will add to that myth familiarity.

First, extract the gold farming population. After this has been done I believe the population numbers favor residence of the western world.

Whether you are from Europe or the U.S. and Canada we all share a mythos history. We all have a connection to Arthur, Merlin, and the knights of the round table. Many fairytales are connected to that common mythos. The familiarity with this mythos: the myth of freedom from oppression and right to live for that which is just and true are closely connected to Arthurian myth.

It is true that the Arthur myth is derived from another and that precedent has even deeper more distant origins but the Arthur myth is closest in conceptual proximity. It is a fantasy comfort zone.

Sci-Fi represents future, beyond Arthur... though Arthur can be projected into it. the past, fictional or otherwise, is easier to connect to because we have a feeling of knowing it.

Sci-Fi is too real, it is too connected to the here and now. It is too complicated (or has the illusion of complication due to the high tech environment). It reminds us of “RL”. Who wants to live RL in a MMORPG? Escape into fantasy is much easier to achieve than escape into a emulation of RL. Fireballs are very not reality. Blasterfire is very much like RL gunfire.

A fictional past, with that feeling of familiarity, is easier to ad-lib on a RP stage. A fictional future is not so familiar. The future is ever changing while that past is relatively static, estimatable... again, familiar.

This supplements “the pitch” of a game project. trying to describe a fantasy realm is far more simple in comparison to describing a future realm.

[Fang Langford]

Judging by the preceding responses, A better question to find the answer here might be 'Why Tolkien?'

Fang

[onetrueping]

Because it's easier to believe that melee combat matters in a fantasy world than a scifi world.

[Tripp]

Great question, despite all the times it's been asked. That in itself shows that the answers aren't satisfying enough.

Here's my $0.02 on it- the two main reasons are 1) the romance of traditional fantasy and 2) the public's expectations.

By romance I mean the tradition of stories that are emotional, adventurous, imaginative, feature heroes and villians, are idealistic, and they usually have "happy" endings. (I don't mean love, hearts and flowers and the like...not that kind of romance.)

And I think that developers' risk aversion plays to the fact that the masses like what they know, or something close to it, anyway. It takes a lot to move people to something very new (the hype around Will Wright's forthcoming "Spore" will help that new idea work, I'm betting.)

But look at the evidence. As Richard Bartle said, the strong majority of people playing VW games are playing fantasy games. Attempts to do other genres have not (YET) succeeded well. I bet they will, though, once the public gets used to new ideas/genres. Many attempts have been made to bust open new territory, from vampire genre to superheroes to sci-fi to pirates to classical mythos. Whether you count dollars or player-hours, none stack up to the fantasy games. Richard "Lord British" Garriot's new "Tabula Rasa" is a big ($20 million) attempt to stake out new territory with some new ideas.

But here's another thought. WoW, the big gorilla of MMOs, is an exception, I'd argue. I say this because it's such a damned well-designed game. So it skews the data heavily in the fantasy direction, for this discussion's purposes. -Yes, it's a fantasy game, so doesn't that count? Well, I'd say the data sample isn't really solid until we get a non-fantasy game that is as well-designed as WoW.

[Brent Michael Krupp]

I think it really is mostly Tolkien via his influence on Dungeons&Dragons. The vast majority of these games use a system that is only thinly disguised D&D (levels, classes, hp, etc.). I think that really can explain most of it.

[Rob MacD]

It is a good question. I think it's less Tolkien than , as other commenters have said, Dungeons & Dragons - which may sound like splitting hairs, but really WoW and its ilk are much closer to D&D in its assumptions and genre elements (right down to green, pig-like orcs) than to Tolkien. (Also, the original makers of D&D, fearing lawsuits from the Tolkien estate, swore up and down they were more influenced by other sword & sorcery literature than Lord Of The Rings.)

Which begs the question, why was Fantasy (and a very specific D&D-esque kind of fantasy at that) the predominant genre of pen-and-paper roleplaying games?

I have a rather specific historical answer to that question, which has to do with American politics during Vietnam. I've been working up to it in a series of blog posts on tabletop RPG history but as a teaser let me say that (unlike the Napoleonic wargaming D&D grew out of) fantasy and Tolkien in particular had a unique ability to bridge the gap between college-age gamers on both sides of the hawk-dove divide in those years.

[TickledBlue]

If you look at the source material, sci-fi is more likely to have everyman or even anti-heroes (star wars excepted), while fantasy tends to have the humble commoner/farmboy who in reality is something special. They are placed in a sudden environment of danger where through trials and tribulations they become a hero, often having the unique key to defeating the huge evil in the land.

I think this is key, it speaks to the child in us, the desire to be special. Fantasy is more easily matched to this wish fulfillment. While it is possible to do this in sci-fi it is not the standard meme that it is in fantasy.

Personally I prefer sci-fi :)

[thoreau]

My earlier response was a bit glib and I apologize. I was rushing off to lunch and had visions of pasta in my head.

Orson Scott Card wrote in How To Write Speculative Fiction and Fantasy, "If the story is set in a universe that follows the same rules as ours, it's science fiction. If it's set in a universe that doesn't follow our rules, it's fantasy."

Later he adds, "If it's science fiction, and you signal this to the reader, then you have saved yourself enormous amounts of effort, because your reader will assume that all the known laws of nature apply, except where the story indicates an exception. With fantasy, however, anything is possible."

It seems, according to Card, that writing sci-Fi is more difficult because there are more rules to follow. However in fantasy, you can make the rules up as you go.

If games are a narrative tool, then making a game in the fantasy genre would easier than making a game in the sci-fi genre.

[Merci]

I think that the appeal of fantasy has an enormous amount to do with the metaphor of magic - and is not necessarily popular because *someone* doesn't have a realistic physics engine. Sci-fi depends, unlike real technology, on the reader/player having an understanding of why or how something new in the world works in order for its action/impact to be believable. And I say "new" because no one quibbles about the unlikelihood of Luke's X-wing entering the atmosphere at a safe angle given its design, because an X-wing is basically a car and we understand that cars move. But in a sci-fi VW, if you were to send players to get xorphic acid for their ray gun, then you better have modeled in a top-loading vial on the ray gun for this acid to go into or have some other suitable excuse. This is especially true in books, tbh, but I think that the same scrutiny applies to VWs.

Magic, on the other hand, is largely what ppl use to explain technology to themselves. I think that ppl in general actually understand magic in a way that they don't understand technology. Magic is about the end result, technology is about the process. And in a virtual world you often just want your players to accept the parameters you've laid down because, well, you need them to get past your fiction and get into the gameplay. Or get deeply into the fiction if there is no gameplay.

So if your players are focused on the process of the world and not on its end result, then they are less likely to be immersed, and less likely to stick around.

[john]

Geography: In a fantasy setting, you're free to create any size and shape landmasses you like and constrict movement in a myriad of ways. In a 'realistic' RPG, people expect to be moving around something that looks like earth in ways that they would expect to get around on earth. It's much harder to get people to believe they're in New York City or LA than it is to get them to believe they're in Yghdragawhatever.

[Tripp]

@John: True and not true about locations. Notice how reality-based the landscapes in fantasy MMOs are, mostly. You're right, if a city is supposed to be NYC, it will suck if it doesn't look a lot like players' conceptions of NYC. But if you make Orgrimmar, no one can say "that's so not Org" with much authority. But out in the countryside, designers usually seem to go to great lengths to make things have a ring of familiarity to them: rock formations show dirt here and none there implying erosion, vegetation grows up around bodies of water and in lowlands, etc.

Not being a professional MMO designer, I can only guess that while some sense of fantasy is desirable, too much would alientate many players.

True for any genre, I think. While some people would enjoy having a globular ooze creature as an avatar, most want something that they can relate to a bit, whether it's a wookie, a pirate, or an elf. Same for the terrain, I'm thinking; some mix of the exotic and the familiar.

[Nicholas Chambers]

I think the answer is actually quite simple: It’s the genre that requires the least input, in regards of creativity, in order to produce the max. output, in regards of players/monetary income.

I’m not saying that virtual worlds set in Fantasy are monotonous, but in the end of the day you don’t really have to invent much yourself. You’ve got almost 50 years of classic RPGs and 5 000 years of human history to get your material from. Simply put, if you need an innovative element in your game, the only thing you have to do is get yourself a book on mythology and pick out the parts you liked about it. Tolkien has done it a century ago; modern game designers are still doing it now.

The only other real alternative is Sci-Fi, which also has a good base of conventions behind it, e.g. plasma-rifles, energy shields and so forth, (which are due to their young age, nowhere as sophisticated as those of the fantasy genre). It does however lack the enormous fan-base and the world-continuity (i.e. if I’m a rich businessman living on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, why can’t I just get on a spaceship and fly to some other planet?) that is typical for the fantasy genre.

[John Rice]

Richard, I've noticed the same holds true in the science fiction/fantasy section of book stores as well. There seems to be more fantasy books than science fiction books. I read somewhere an editor of one of the big monthly science fiction/fantasy magazines complained about receiving so few submissions that were hard science fiction.

I guess if science fiction seems harder to write, and fantasy is more popular anyway, any game developer wishing to cash in the big bucks will go fantasy.

[Linn Søvig]

I've always liked to believe that it's because fantasy fiction is so organic. How the elves talk to the trees a.s.o. Even with space-science fiction there is a lot of focus on the connection and communication with the earth or elements or whatever. It's all so organic. Computers and technology have never really been organic or even beautiful (at least not in the eye of the regular beholder).
I only think it's a transitional phase, though. I don't think that fantasy will be dominant in 20 years time - I'm not sure what will be, but I think it's just a transitional period where we're learning to adjust to thinking of virtual worlds or computer games as organic entities. Just looking at how new media art is embracing technology with nature or other organic materials - very much symbolises the cultural change of looking at technology. It's not a dark, cold, sterile place - it's a warm, embracing and beautiful place.
Gorr - I feel like a complete idiot saying this - but I genuinely believe it to be true. Or have I completely lost my mind now?

[Dmitri Williams]

Isn't Tolkien basically the guy who crystalizes centuries of Western European mythos into something digestible, i.e. Arthur (arguably derivative from the Welsh Mabinogian), Beowulf, etc.? He does it around WWII and it sticks for a world ready for escapism, becoming the de facto mythic source.

And once the ball starts rolling, there's a pretty heavy force of path dependency at work, right?

BTW, I might turn this around and ask the guy who created the first MUD: why semi-Tolkienesque magic in *your* game? Why wasn't it based on Greek myth or Star Trek or Riverworld?

[Damion Schubert]

Note: I've done presentations on this exact topic in the past. Linkies:

http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=713
http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=857

Abbreviated version:

1) It's double-coded. It has both massive geek appeal as well as large mass market awareness - go to Michael's and look at how many cross-stitches there are of unicorns and dragons.
2) It's got a heroic arc. It is typical and acceptable for players to start killing rats or orcs, and end up going toe to toe with the gods. This is a much more impressive growth path than what many games have available.
3) It's inviting. Fantasy games have a good sense of 'home' - you typically start in a tranquil village, and while you may go to scary places, there's still a sense that the good places are worth living in and fighting for. Compare to post-apocalyptic worlds, where being in the worlds for very long play periods is downright depressing.
4) Solid team-based roles. Say what you will about tank-healer-mage, but those roles are archetypically fantasy, and offer a team-based game experience where everyone is a roughly equivalent contributor. Compare to, say, Stargate, where the MMO designers have struggled with how to create an 'Archaeologist' class, where the Archaeologist's role in the TV show is to decipher one set of rocks per mission and try not to get shot.
5) It's character-driven. Fantasy tends to be about characters, whereas sci-fi tends to be about ideas. This lends itself well to MMOs, which has need for a world rich with player heros.
6) It has resonance. Players understand what's going on in a fantasy world to a greater degree, because names tend to be more familiar and easier to relate to. Don't believe me? Most people I know who played Alpha Centauri felt a strong urge to go play Civilization again afterwards. You just relate better to 'the Wheel' than 'Nanotechnofische Armorium'.

I do think there are too many fantasy games. Still, I would dispute anyone who said it is because game developers are all lazy or stupid. The truth is, a TON of non-fantasy MMOs get started and/or into development, but the fantasy MMOs are the ones that actually get out the door and/or find any measure of success. Examples: Earth and Beyond, Auto Assault, Matrix, Motor City Online. And those are the ones that shipped.

[Damion Schubert]

But there are other vast, deep, self-consistent worlds of magic and mystique that could have been drawn on, not just Tolkien. The 1001 Nights is very well known, for example, and has more magic in it. Myths from Ancient Greece are also well-known, and are packed full with the kind of things that could make a wonderfully rich and exciting virtual world. Why, then, does Tolkien have such influence? And why is it still inspirational when Fantasy virtual worlds have fireballs and Tolkien's books don't?

The other thing about fantasy is that it is broad and inclusive. I remember when two different companies announced Viking-themed MMOs shortly after Everquest's initial success. I knew they would fail - their games would seem narrow to any EQ player, who could traipse up to EQ's viking-themed areas anytime they wanted to. Similarly, WoW has arabian-inspired zones, mayan-inspired zones, and even zones inspired by American Indian architecture and/or mythology.

[Ethan]

I think the real reason why fantasy works so well as a genre for MMOs has nothing to do with familiarity or heroic potantial. It's because of two reasons.

First, a fantasy background places equal emphasis on hand-to-hand combat, ranged combat, healing, and buffs and debuffs. The genre places an equal emphasis on swords, arrows and spells, allowing for easy development of balanced classes.

Second, everything your character does in a fantasy setting, from fighting to crafting to casting spells, is organically based on your character's skill. If you want to do something, you have to learn how to do it. This allows characters to start off as newbies in everything and progress in different classes at approximately equal speeds. After ten days of training at swordfighting, you're going to be about as powerful as a wizard after ten days of fireball-practicing.

This is sort of silly applied to a modern setting where getting shot three or four times should pretty much mean you're dead regardless of who does the shooting.

[count0]

Why Fantasy?

I like the answer Terry Pratchett said in his DiscWorld: HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN.

[Andy Havens]

The power of characters in fantasy settings are, for the most part, internal and singular; I am a hero because of what I am and what I do. Sci-fi (and many real, historical settings) often rely on technology that requires many external and societal-level inputs.

Of course a hero isn't a hero by himself; but he often has just one or two or a few significant others; Arthur has Merlin, Frodo has Gandalf, Beowulf has... a big sword. Much of the adventure and training in fantasy is self-involved or has to do with, again, individuals or small groups. You can't, though, pilot a spaceship without companies that make spaceship parts, train people in how to fly spaceships, provide "gas," etc. etc.

In an industrial society, the role of the individual is subsumed by the goals of the masses. If you want to be a Level 10 Cosmoblotz, you need to have 5-9 years exeperience as a Level 9 Cosmoblotz (or equivalent), and be promoted/hired by a Level 11 Cosmoblotz. You can't just figger it out for yourself in the woods from a tome.

What's interesting, though... is how we're moving, in terms of some tech, into the realm of mash-ups, where the ability to create tools is less important than the ability to use them or merge them in some manner. Hacking is kind of a real-life analog (ahem) version of a thief/rogue. But the inherent activities -- typing -- of a hacker aren't really sexy from a game-play standpoint.

A sci-fi world in which you can take inherent pieces/parts of an available buffet of tools and combine them interestingly (nano anyone?) might provide a more palatable heroic experience. But until such time as a lone boy, lost in the city and bereft of family and clan, can begin to learn the Mysterious Ways without (minimum) a 2-year associates degree... Fantasy trumps sci-fi because I can kick ass on my own.

[William Huber]

I think it's something that Eddo Stern once suggested: the production of effects in a computerized environment feels and behaves more like magic that like technology. For some reason, simulating a sci-fi technology effect (such as a beam weapon, teleportation, etc) feels more like implementing "science" on top of an implementation of "magic" implemented technologically.

The mastery of a game-system resembles, structurally, the mastery of a closed, symbolically driven magic system that it does the emergent and open development of knowledge in a scientific episteme, as well.

The effect is to make the fantastic feel more native to computer-based world-building than the technological speculative is.

[Warren]

It's interesting to me that it seems to be a very Fantasy or Sci-Fi divide. Nobody even seems to be considering horror, or modern action, or Westerns (or whatever). I don't think it's impossible to design and implement games based in these genres. It is down to a lack of skill or imagination on the part of the designers? A lack of acceptance of non-SciFi/Fantasy themed MMOs from gamers? A desire from publishers in wanting to just see "WOW Beaters"? I don't know, but it's a bit disappointing.

I am very interested in how Pirates of the Burning Seas does, as that is trying to do something a bit different.

[jsnow]

I agree with Linn Søvig that a large part of the appeal of fantasy is the organic, natural environment. Perhaps people play fantasy MMORPGs in part to compensate for the interaction with the natural world that is lacking in modern society?

Here is an except (minus some context) from Tree and Leaf, an essay that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about fairy tales and fantasy and how they fit into modern society (it can be found in The Tolkien Reader):

"'The rawness and ugliness of modern European life'--that real life whose contact we should welcome--"is the sign of a biological inferiority, of an insufficient or false reaction to environment.' (here Tolkien is quoting an essay by Christopher Dawson regarding the general silliness of Victorian clothing) The maddest castle that ever came out of a giant's bag in a wild Gaelic story is not only much less ugly than a robot-factory, it is also (to use a very modern phrase) 'in a very real sense' a great deal more real. Why should we not escape from or condemn the 'grim Assyrian' absurdity of top-hats, or the Morlockian horror of factories? They are condemned even by the writers of that most escapist form of all literature, stories of Science fiction. These prophets often foretell (and many seem to yearn for) a world like one big glass-roofed railway station. But from them it is as a rule very hard to gather what men in such a world-town will do. They may abandon the 'full Victorian panoply' for loose garments (with zip-fasteners), but will use this freedom mainly, it would appear, in order to play with mechanical toys in the soon-cloying game of moving at high speed. To judge by some of these tales they will still be as lustful, vengeful, and greedy as ever; and the ideals of their idealists hardly reach farther than the splendid notion of building more towns of the same sort on other planets. It is indeed an age of 'improved means to deteriorated ends.' It is part of the essential malady of such days--producing the desire to escape, not indeed from life, but from our present time and self-made misery--that we are acutely conscious both of the ugliness of our works, and of their evil. So that to us evil and ugliness seem indissolubly allied. We find it difficult to conceive of evil and beauty together. The fear of the beautiful fay that ran through the elder ages almost eludes our grasp. Even more alarming: goodness is itself bereft of its proper beauty. In Faerie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose-- an inn, a hostel, for travelers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king--that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not--unless it was built before our time."

[Michael Scoggin]

I was actually working on this theory before I came across this question. Many studies have shown that we have a preprogrammed response to certain stimulus. Human beings have inherited biological fears to spiders and snakes and other natural threats. We are more likely to have an extreme phobia to snakes, than to automobiles. I am no expert, but I have been doing research to investigate whether there may be a way to appeal to this innate set of motivations. When exploring motivation I found that humans have more universal reaction to organic stimulus. Fantasy has a much more biological or natural feel than Sci-Fi. But this is just a result of the goals of the genres. A Fantasy universe is usually a story of creation and exploring what the world is capable of, while Sci-Fi is often a confrontational story of survival and the mere creation of the universe is often centered around destroying convention and taking the person out of a comfortable and natural environment. Fantasy tends to only challenge our sense of reality, and let us explore what is possible in the absence of traditional boundaries. Sci-Fi is a more direct challenge of our self and how we can overcome even more extreme boundaries. The fantasy mindset ranks a persons success by their fame, or infamy, due to accomplishment or social networking. It provides a place for the socializer and politician to sit and enjoy the game. This group of players form the backbone of a virtual world. The socializers and the killers are the players that keep paying even after reaching 'end game'. The more socializers you have, the more killers you have. The Sci-Fi setting is one for the loner. Your success is often dependent on not getting caught and keeping your identity hidden. There is no real area for the socializer. The explorer will bore after exploring and the achiever is not known across the land for his achievements. Without constantly expanding content to keep up with the explorers, there is no anchor for the game. Killers enjoy this environment, but without ample prey, they will get bored as well. While none of this is universally true about either genre, in general it describes the advantages of fantasy versus the challenges of Sci-Fi.

Oh, and to Mr. Bartle, I have appreciated your work tremendously.

[Richard Bartle]

Dmitri>BTW, I might turn this around and ask the guy who created the first MUD: why semi-Tolkienesque magic in *your* game? Why wasn't it based on Greek myth or Star Trek or Riverworld?

I didn't base MUD on Tolkien. There isn't an orc or an elf in there, and the dwarfs are dwarfs, not dwarves. I wanted a world that everyone knew and understood, that was open-ended, that had mystery and mystique, that was known and unknown, that gave a strong sense of place, that was consistent, that had its own identity. I considered a number of possibilities, but went with what best reflected what I wanted to say: it was fundamentally Northern English, anachronistic, and joyous. I used tropes that were straight out of the folk story tradition of my part of the world, because they gave me the symbols that I wanted to create with.

This wasn't a genre with which I was unfamiliar, either. I (and initially two of my friends) had previously designed a board game called Wizards and Heroes, which had gone through several iterations. It was pre-D&D, so when D&D came out I D&Dised it; it wasn't a success, and the next iteration I deD&Dised it (except I kept the priest class, which allowed for more balanced 3-player games). The original character of the game, which it retained, was at times evocative of Conan, 1001 Nights and Greek myth, and from it I gained a strong idea of the match between the personality of the game world and that of the designer. Thus, when it came to MUD, I sought something that felt right. An author seeks an authorial voice; a virtual world designer seeks an authorial world.

I do usually say that The Lord of the Rings was a big influence on MUD, not because of what it had in it but because of its world design: it showed what was possible. It's the scope of it that was inspiring, not the genre or the components. For those, I'd probably have to give more credit to the children's worlds of Enid Blyton and Rupert the Bear, which I fear won't mean a great deal to most readers of Terra Nova! My mother used to make up fairy stories for my brother and I when we were young, too, which really opened up a sense of wonder.

Hmm, gamer dad and fairytale-writing mother; I was doomed from the start...

Richard

[Wolfe]

If you switch Fantasy for Olympic Games, "Napoleonic warfare or Roman Empire you import all these things to the scope which must be developed or the context will suffer deadly consequences.

If you make a Fantasy game and feel like you lack time for Death Magic you can remove it without losing your context.

[Richard Bartle]

Damion Schubert>Note: I've done presentations on this exact topic in the past.

Darn, and you did what was going to be my follow-up question about what else would work, too!

>It has both massive geek appeal as well as large mass market awareness - go to Michael's and look at how many cross-stitches there are of unicorns and dragons.

Why does it have that appeal, though? And is someone who likes unicorns and dragons (mainly for their symbolism) really likely to feel engaged by a sword and sorcery world?

>It's inviting. Fantasy games have a good sense of 'home'

This is a good property to have, but it's not restricted to Fantasy. Setting a virtual world in Victorian London or Musketeers Paris would also give you it, for example. Even a generation starship setting would work. I agree, though, that it naturally inviting.

>Compare to post-apocalyptic worlds

Yes, I get so many emails from people creating these worlds... Basically, they'd be better off writing a novel (and for some of them, the exposition is novel-length!).

[Splitting to avoid triggering anti-spam software]

[Richard Bartle]

[Continuing]

>Solid team-based roles. Say what you will about tank-healer-mage, but those roles are archetypically fantasy

But are they? How many Fantasy novels feature parties that have this kind of identifiable role in them? They work for gameplay, but are they a Fantasy trope in the general sense? And again, there are plenty of other genres that have these team-based roles.

>Compare to, say, Stargate, where the MMO designers have struggled with how to create an 'Archaeologist' class, where the Archaeologist's role in the TV show is to decipher one set of rocks per mission and try not to get shot.

Typical NPC...

>It's character-driven.

Yes, this is important. As with your story arc point, a lot of this is related to personal development, which I feel in my Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is why people play virtual worlds in the first place.

>The truth is, a TON of non-fantasy MMOs get started and/or into development, but the fantasy MMOs are the ones that actually get out the door and/or find any measure of success.

So it could be that the supply is there, but the demand isn't?

Richard

[Hellinar]

All the online game worlds are fantasy worlds. Explicitly labeling your world as “Fantasy” just makes it easier to design.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has a pretty good sailing and cannon simulation at its core. Even so, they had to resort to a fantasy “open sea” which lets you zip across the Caribbean in minutes. Some aspects of reality just don’t make for a good game space. Every major game world implements that ultimate human fantasy, cheap and easy resurrection.

Lots of thoughtful comment here. I particularly liked Andy’s analysis of the personal reliance element in fantasy as opposed to tech.

[Hellinar]

Using the word ‘fantasy’ seems to be triggering the Typepad spam filter. I wonder what that says about this word’s role in our modern world.

[bloo]

Of course, it's Tolkein. That is the power of popular culture, accelerated through an increasingly connected world.

You could also ask, why are some of the most successful motion picture characters 50 and 75 years old? Superman, Batman: 1930s. Spiderman, X-Men, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Iron Man: 1960s.

Why Dracula?
Why Sherlock Holmes?
Why Flash Gordon?

[Damion Schubert]

Why [do unicorns and dragon cross-stitch sets] have that appeal, though? And is someone who likes unicorns and dragons (mainly for their symbolism) really likely to feel engaged by a sword and sorcery world?

I think that, for that particular audience, it's because those things have a sense of Wonder to them. But that's a good question. My more salient point is that there are a lot of people who dismiss Fantasy as being solely owned by geeks in their parents basements. Looking at a list of the 15 top grossing films of all time, you'll find: 3 LotR films, 4 Harry Potter films and Shrek 2. Fantasy DOMINATES the all-time box office. It's got a broader reach than anyone gives it credit for.

[Damion Schubert]

So it could be that the supply is there, but the demand isn't?

I don't -necessarily- think that's the case. I think it's more accurate to say that most alternative genres fail because the dev teams can't figure out how to build them, or try too hard to make a 'fantasy-like' game in their new genre. As examples, both Auto Assault and Earth and Beyond created designs that were described by players as 'Everquest in Space/in Cars'. I think this ended up pissing off people who were the true expected hardcore market for a space MMO or a demolition derby MMO.

[Almeric's Blog >> Fantasy - The Only Frontier?]

... The suspension of disbelief inherent in a Fantasy genre where we're told "magic exists" makes it all so much easier. ...

[Alec Shade]

Of course, and that makes fantasy games easier to design and present to the wide audience. I mean -- hey, it's fantasy, how do you know how a creature looks like? Since it's not real, the developers can do whatever they want with it, don't they.

Sci-fi genre could be a good replacement, I guess, but they still have to stick with realism to some point. And, for a fact, the media is full of sci-fi nowadays, people simply want to be knight and fight the badass dragon who kidnapped the cute princess. :)

[larryr]

Another true but sad reason is that the "common" memes of Fa+tasy( elves, dragons, etc) are due to the age of their sourced material- fair use. And that most Science Fiction, and most modern fiction is still "owned" by its creators and thus the ability to "utilize" the material in an MMO game is limited to those who rightfully license the material.

The iconography of "Middle Earths" go back for centuries, the iconongraphy of most science fiction, less than 100 years.

Science Fiction also by it's rules of definition - science as a base for fictional story telling- is "harder" to create in terms of "a consistant world and world rules" that playworlds so required to be fixed in the limited scope of most MMOs or any game for that matter.

[Saylah]

Posting as a complete lay-person the presence of gaming greats - I read a bit so know the names...

Fantasy works for me on all levels, be it games, books or movies. As much as I've loved Tolkien, I can't attribute the desire to him, as I didn't read the books until very late in life. As many have mentioned, the fantasy story arc tends to be a more personal journey which happens in an organic way - what I can call forth from within or learn as a character. The magic is an extension of self, as the sword can be, in a way that guns and lasers can't.

As an adult I prefer fantasy and commonly joke, I get enough reality in my daily life. I don't need it in my sources of diversion. I'd be willing to try a sci-fi MMO if there was strong RP value and internal character growth. If not it's all pew-pew and I'm must not interested.