There has been frequent musing lately on the value (or lack thereof) of IP licenses in the games industry. Copyright law (mostly the derivative works right) and trademark law will generally prevent designers from selling games (and others from selling other things) based on Star Trek, Scarlet O'Hara, and the LOTR (book or film) unless a licensing fee is paid. It operates the other way, too, of course -- see e.g. Tomb Raider.
Game-crit luminaries like Janet Murray (and most everyone else) predicted that Star Wars Galaxies would be a huge hit simply because of the Lucasfilm license -- and it has been a huge hit. But as Greg Costikyan and others have observed, games based on licenses often do well on the market but are just as often lousy games. Either the game design is formulaic and bland or the underlying promise of the licensed IP is not delivered. To some extent, the latter seems to be part of Tim Burke's gripe with SWG (shared by several others). The world certainly looks like Star Wars, but it doesn't play like Space Opera.
Of course, few worlds are ever as fully imagined as Middle Earth or George Lucas's Galaxy far far away. "Genres", e.g. fantasy, sci-fi, or history, arguably provide sufficiently evocative vocabularies that we're all familiar with and which don't require licenses. (Some genres arguably don't work for VWs, though -- see Richard's book at pp. 40-41 re Westerns.) All this makes me wonder how much value (outside of marketing value) any derivative IP license can really add to a VW. Any thoughts?
And two additional questions: 1) I would think VWs based on collaborative world-authorship (e.g. 2L, MOOs) probably would have much less to gain from licensing. Anyone disagree? 2) Did Tolkien create the fantasy genre?
Update: Tim Burke has an interesting post tangential to the last question.
"I would think VWs based on collaborative world-authorship (e.g. 2L, MOOs) probably would have much less to gain from licensing."
Licensing is usually as much about retaining control as it is about royalties. I don't think it would be possible to get a Lucas or Tolkien license for a user-generated world...it might have users lined up to play but the IP holders would balk [think Hobbit whorehouse or "Kill Jar-Jar" billboards]. Your question about the value of an IP license is related. There's no reason why a pre-made IP world--as a starting point--should inherently make a game worse, or better, but there will be restictions imposed to maintain a singular vision of that world, all the way from design to content and EULA. So you end up with the difference between a truly user-created world vs. a world where users fill in the gaps that the owners allow.
And I know better than to touch the Tolkien question.
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Dec 11, 2003 at 13:32
On the Tolkien question. Weis had it right, he's the father of the modern fantasy genre. What he did was allow for Fantasy to become mass market applicable. Tolkien's work brought fantasy to the every day people (even the Beatles wanted to do a LoTR movie) which made it a realistic genre that could generate enough revenue to support itself, meaning that publishing houses would actually publish the stuff (publishing houses tend to be a little wary about brand new 'genres'). So creator, no (fantasy had been around forever), father, I would say most definitely yes.
Using this definition though, would that mean UO or EQ could be considered the Father of MMOGs? They didn't create the genre, but they did make it mass market applicable, which made investores more willing to spend money which has been used for the continual growth of the industry.
Posted by: Ian 'anyuzer' Reid | Dec 11, 2003 at 17:55
Despite the rather over-the-top title, Tolkien: Author of the Century (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/061812764X/104-7550324-9604723?v=glance) does a nice job of covering the source material of LotR, plus the historic and linguistic context Tolkien wrote in.
Posted by: Cory Ondrejka | Dec 11, 2003 at 18:58
"I would think VWs based on collaborative world-authorship (e.g. 2L, MOOs) probably would have much less to gain from licensing."
I disagree - looking to something like Lego, some of the most popular sets involve licensed material. Especially for people who require a bit more direction to get their creative juices flowing.
As was pointed out, licenses are about control, mostly to protect the brand. Part of this control is maintaining hierarchy (Brand X is better than Generic Y). This is a key issue for VWs. I believe that player-generated VWs can successfully integrate branded content so long as it's not hard-coded to be inherently better than what a player can create (the There Nike Sneakers problem).
Posted by: Hunter | Dec 11, 2003 at 19:46
"As was pointed out, licenses are about control, mostly to protect the brand"
Coincidentally last night I was reading (for the umpteenth time) the SWG EULA and this caught my eye:
"8. As part of your Account, you can upload content to our servers in various forms, such as in the selections you make for the Game, in-game posts and chat, and in chat rooms and similar user-to-user areas (collectively, your "Content"). If we, or our licensors, can reasonably construe that your Content contains any material that infringes any of our respective or collective intellectual property interests (hereafter, such Content shall be referred to as "Derivative Content"), you hereby acknowledge and agree that any such Derivative Content is owned by our licensors or us..."
And further down that section:
"...You hereby appoint our licensors and us as your attorney-in-fact, which appointment is coupled with an interest and is irrevocable, to act on your behalf (either jointly or separately) and to execute, deliver, record and file such documents necessary to document, perfect, protect and enforce the rights granted to both our licensors and us under this Agreement."
Posted by: DivineShadow | Dec 11, 2003 at 19:59
I have a problem with just about any well-established fantasy or sci-fi oeuvre, movie, comic book or otherwise, made into any kind of game.
Star Wars was a -terrible- concept for a MMOG. Super-humanoids in a power struggle for the galaxy through their command of an all-reaching Force? Given how Verant Austin had to resolve that monster should be evidence right there that this was a bad idea.
Then again, Ultima was a really bad concept for a MMOG, too. But someone got it out the door, and it's still going.
Now, the Matrix Online... god help 'em.
Posted by: J. | Dec 11, 2003 at 23:15
Had that been the original idea behind Star Wars, I might actually agree with you, J. But your problem is the same problem most people have about excellent novels being made into movies, with a different spin.
There's really nothing wrong with taking a license and spinning it into the world. The key problem is that anything linear (books, movies, games, etc.) has a very "You are the Hero!" environment; something that has never successfully been translated into multiplayer persistence.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Dec 12, 2003 at 00:16
Licenses are used commercially for one reason only: marketing. While developers of virtual worlds continue to find it easier to get development money because they have a licence, we'll have licenses.
Personally, I think more people played SWG because it had Raph Koster as lead designer than played it because of its Star Wars theme. It hasn't attracted hordes of non-gamer fans to it.
As for its being disappointing, this was mainly because it was launched 18 months too early.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 12, 2003 at 10:53
On the Tolkien question, what seems unique about his work is that he created a virtual world long before he wrote his histories of it. If he had never written Hobbit or LoTR, we would still have this amazing legacy of peoples, languages, and lore that he built, apparently just for his own amusement. Perhaps if he'd had the internet, he never would have written anything about Middle Earth, he would have coded it.
As for the linearity of narrative and its ability to centralize attention on a character: single-player games can do this, because the ratio of AI to human intelligence in them is large. Add sufficient AI to multiplayer games, and each player can indeed be the hero of his own story. It's only a matter of time.
And this connects back to the licensing issue: As Tolkien's work reveals, having a richly detailed world as a backdrop for the story makes a big difference in the immersive quality. Licensing an existing world, one that users know well, sets everyone's expectations about what's normal. And I think properly-structured user-content tools can work even in a licensed world. Don't let users create skins, but let them create quests. Let them moderate one another's content and you may get some amazing results. Look at NeverWinter Nights.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Dec 12, 2003 at 11:11
Greg>And two additional questions: 1) I would think VWs based on collaborative world-authorship (e.g. 2L, MOOs) probably would have much less to gain from licensing. Anyone disagree?
I think that there are some licenses that would seem to be good fits for user created worlds. You would want a license that provided strong context but not strong individual characters. Alien vs. Predator comes to mind right off the bat. This would give users various roles to fill, could allow construction and societies (with radically different rules based on whether you were living on an Alien, Predator or Human colony) and would also provide plenty of action and/or RPG oportunities. If you used Second Life for this, you could allow different construction and/or script calls depending upon race to allow for tech differences, &c &c.
There are probably other properties that fit this description. The pont is to not choose a license where everyone is pissed that they can't be the readily recognized hero. One of the very smart moves, imho, made by the City of Heroes folks was to not try to set the game in the Marvel or DC universe. Too much frustration ensues over not being able to play as Superman or Batman. Use single player games for that.
Richard> Licenses are used commercially for one reason only: marketing.
I think that there are exceptions where a license has actually helped the game, such as Lucas' Tie Fighter. License problems often have more to do with increased time pressure ("you must launch with the movie") , laziness on the part of the developer ("so, Batman will walk to the right and using a punch AND a jump kick, defeat an army of bugs and robots"), or lack of game understanding on the part of the licensor ("There are gun games and Judge Dredd uses a gun, so that should only cost $250k, right?") than anything inherently evil and wrong about marketing.
Ted>Add sufficient AI to multiplayer games, and each player can indeed be the hero of his own story. It's only a matter of time.
I don't think that turning multiplayer games back into single player games is a good direction. MMORPGs already have too much of a massively-parallel single player game experience as it is. Plus, chat, networked high scores, and posted best level performances combined with single player games currently provide that type of game and community.
Posted by: Cory Ondrejka | Dec 12, 2003 at 11:58
Richard-
"Licenses are used commercially for one reason only: marketing...Personally, I think more people played SWG because it had Raph Koster as lead designer than played it because of its Star Wars theme."
Some contradiction here maybe? But to back up your first statement, everyone I know who plays SW:G plays for one reason only--it's the SW universe. That was the single and sufficient reason they eagerly waited 2 years to play, and keep playing. I doubt a single one of them knows who Koster is (and that's the same reason Lucas is guaranteed a profit on the vastly disappointing second trilogy, which I doubt could be profitable without the preestablished world set by the first).
"Licenses are used commercially for one reason only: marketing."
And the reason it is an effective marketing tool is that the players are already familiar with the norms and nature of the world--which has to be restrictively maintained both to satisfy the license and the players. Licenses are great for games and certain styles of online community, but for a truly user-forged world like 2L, just not possbile. Which style will be more popular or profitable in the long run is certainly up for grabs at this point.
Cory--
"I don't think that turning multiplayer games back into single player games is a good direction."
I agree absolutely. People pay the monthly fees and bandwidth overhead in order to interact with other humans. It's easier and cheaper to play with/against the machine in single player. I think that the urge (on part of both developer and player) to always play the "hero" in an MMORPG is an artifact of single-player game thinking, in which NPCs have never been truly believable as human. People don't all want a parallel fantasy world where they dominate (especially not female players), but they do want to interact with other humans in novel ways, and without the restrictions of the offline world. Conventional literary wisdom is that Heroes necessarily lead isolated existences, and this is as true for games as it is for books.
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Dec 12, 2003 at 13:07
Edward Castronova said "As for the linearity of narrative and its ability to centralize attention on a character: single-player games can do this, because the ratio of AI to human intelligence in them is large. Add sufficient AI to multiplayer games, and each player can indeed be the hero of his own story. It's only a matter of time."
That's only a part of the equation, unfortunately. And given the exceptionally weak AI (mob or world) in most successful single-player games I suspect it's a rather minor factor in the equation. Content-to-human ratio is far more significant I think - especially content in terms of actors impacted by the player's actions. Addressing the difference in ratios of AIs to Humans in single-player vs MMOs might be more informative.
Being a hero is about more than winning a battle, it's about changing the world. Perhaps more accurately, it's about doing (or at least attempting to do) something that has a beneficial impact on the world's non-hero inhabitants. Being a hero is about doing something exceptional that stands you out from the crowd, a prerequisite of which is the existance of a crowd of non-heroes for you to stand out against!
Single-player games often have ratios of "ordinary" people (NPC's) to heroes (players) of hundreds to one. Current MMOGs invert that with players outnumbering NPC's by hundreds to one (if any). The result is players are given a world that's crowded with other hero-wannabes but with NO crowd of ordinary mortals for them to stand out from.
Posted by: Bryan Allman | Dec 12, 2003 at 19:47
"The result is players are given a world that's crowded with other hero-wannabes but with NO crowd of ordinary mortals for them to stand out from."
This is partially true. I agree we have an overcrowding of hero wannabes and no mere mortal to stand apart from, but that's only the tip of the iceberg - things get much worse after companies spice up their VW with some content... Current RPG and Sci-Fi VW are populated with hero-type (or arch-evil) NPCs and all the players are the mere mortals from which these heros and arch-villains stand apart from. We are all cast as "extras" while an AI takes the leading role and that, well, sucks.
Posted by: DivineShadow | Dec 12, 2003 at 20:05
"We are all cast as "extras" while an AI takes the leading role and that, well, sucks."
Heh, as does having the GM's come in once a year to do the same.
Posted by: Bryan Allman | Dec 12, 2003 at 20:45
Some interesting questions to consider as a game developer. Some thoughts, in no particular order:
Richard wrote, "Licenses are used commercially for one reason only: marketing."
I disagree. Marketing is a large part of it, but I think there's also a degree of "the work is already done" when you use a license. It takes time and effort to think of things like "what's the driving conflict for this game's story?" With the Star Wars license, the designers already had that question answerd in the form of, "there's a galactic civil war!" The issue of why licensed games are generally so low in quality is a complex issue. I think it's because a transfer of something from one medium to another takes a long time; consider how long Peter Jackson has been working on the LotR movies.
J. wrote, "Star Wars was a -terrible- concept for a MMOG."
So's heroic fantasy according to lots of people. We talk about the "Hero Problem" as it relates to online games. Speaking of which....
Edward Castronova wrote, "Add sufficient AI to multiplayer games, and each player can indeed be the hero of his own story."
ACK, NO!
Okay, sorry. ;) Add me to the group that thinks this is regressing us back to single-player games instead of advancing the state of the art in multiplayer games.
I mostly agree with Euphrosyne; I think we're better off focusing on games that don't require the world-altering hero to be present in the story. I think this is one reason why licenses aren't so good for virtual worlds and why larger games aren't hitting the "mass market": can you even name 100 heroes in LotR or SWG, let alone 2000 or so wannabe heroes that populate the typical "massive" game server? I certainly can't. These types of stories aren't built to handle thousands of hero-types in the game.
This isn't to say the role of the hero should be ignored, however. I've been reading a lot of Joseph Campbell lately, and I can definitely see the value in this in a game. I just think the current examples, even my own M59, are not the ideal vehicles for this.
And now, regarding Tolkien!
Ian 'anyuzer' Reid wrote, "Tolkien's work brought fantasy to the every day people...."
I disagree. I certainly didn't get popularity points for reading LotR in middle school. D&D, LotR's cousin, never got widespread acceptance.
What Tolkien did do was give us the fully realized fantasy world. This is something that appeals to the imaginative types that were drawn to his book. It appeals to us because it's so detailed we can dig into it layer after layer and still not know it all. Ian's example of the Beatle's interest in Tolkien proves this point, I think; who can argue that the Beatles weren't incredibly creative and imaginative guys?
Very few people have followed in Tolkein's footsteps. Very few people have been able to provide us a fully realized world in which wonderful stories can be told. One of the more recent authors able to do this is Stephen R. Donaldson with his Thomas Convenant series (highly recommended reading). One of the few people outside of literature to be able to do so is George Lucas with his Star Wars universe. (Jury's still out if the newer trilogy can do this as well...) I think we can also award this distinction to Richard Garriot's wonderful Ultima series.
I think one of the reasons why creating online worlds is so damn hard is because we really have to do what Tolkien did: we have to create rich worlds where wonderful stories can be told. I think the best demonstration of this is Richard Bartle's insistence on virtual worlds being *places* instead of anything else. Since very few people have been able to successfully create these types of fully realized worlds, the odds are against us. Plus we have to worry about the added problems of technology, sociology, business, etc. It's almost as if we're instantly dooming ourselves to failure for the most part.
Or, maybe someone will create the virtual world that captures this feeling of a fully realized world and show us the true potential of these things. The main reason I keep on doing this is because I'd like to think I have a shot at doing just that.
My thoughts,
Posted by: Brian 'Psychochild' Green | Dec 13, 2003 at 05:08
J. wrote, "Star Wars was a -terrible- concept for a MMOG."
Brian Green replied "So's heroic fantasy according to lots of people." and later "These types of stories aren't built to handle thousands of hero-types in the game. This isn't to say the role of the hero should be ignored, however."
True, the small-party-taking-on-astronomical-odds-to-save-the-universe type story doesn't translate well into a game with thousands of hero-types competing for their moment of fame in a *very* small universe. But that doesn't necessarily mean the worlds behind those stories are inappropriate for supporting thousands of smaller stories of heroes saving their small portion of the world. If you throw out all possibility of individual herodom (aside from the shared memory space of you and your party members) from these games you end up with exactly what we already have - static cardboard-cutout stage-prop worlds which are impervious to player activity and which leave players frustrated with and alienated from the world they are trying to live in.
Perhaps we should take a moment to really think about the term "world" in this context? The worlds created by Tolkein and Lucas were full of both places AND peoples. In fact I'd argue that the PEOPLES were far more interesting and compelling than the places, interesting though those were as well. The heroic stories we loved from the books and movies took place in the context of all those masses of people to whom the outcome of the story *mattered*. Yet what we get in our MMOGs are places with few or no native peoples, just hordes of invading adventurers and an occasional humanoid vending machine. Who *cares* if the orctroopers overrun the world? They probably aren't any worse than the marauding adventurers anyway!
Posted by: Bryan Allman | Dec 13, 2003 at 22:32
Bryan Allman wrote, "If you throw out all possibility of individual herodom (aside from the shared memory space of you and your party members) from these games you end up with exactly what we already have - static cardboard-cutout stage-prop worlds which are impervious to player activity and which leave players frustrated with and alienated from the world they are trying to live in."
The problem is that in most of these stories the events of the heroes were world-altering. Frodo threw the ring in the cracks of Mount Doom and undid Sauron. Thomas Covenant defeated Lord Foul without destroying the Arch of Time. The Avatar did something really nifty (like retrieve the Codex), thus proving himself the true Avatar. Would these stories really be as heroic if Hobbit #572 threw Evil Artifact #1038 into Place of Power #23 every day of the week? These stories have less power without the world-changing event. Plus, heroes aren't really heroes unless the do these world-changing events. (Quick, name me one of citizens of Rohan that wasn't related to King Theodin or in his court. Did you have to look that up?)
So, you can't have heroic deeds repeating every day and nobody wants to be a nobody, so what's left? Trying a different type of story, I think.
My opinion,
Posted by: Brian 'Psychochild' Green | Dec 14, 2003 at 07:10
Brian 'Psychochild' Green>Marketing is a large part of it, but I think there's also a degree of "the work is already done" when you use a license. It takes time and effort to think of things like "what's the driving conflict for this game's story?"
But, but, but ... that's the most fun part!
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 14, 2003 at 09:41
Brian Green said "So, you can't have heroic deeds repeating every day and nobody wants to be a nobody, so what's left? Trying a different type of story, I think."
Ah, but that last part is my point exactly! I think maybe we are groping toward the same thing (trying a different type of story) and stumbling over differences in terminology?
I categorically disagree with the claim that "heroes aren't really heroes unless the[y] do these world-changing events". Granted that is what the great stories often (but not always!) portray. At least some of the protagonists of "The Seven Samurai"/"The Magnificent Seven" stories were indeed heroes even though their world as a whole wasn't affected by their actions, just a very small piece of it.
Personally my definition of a hero is an ordinary person who does extraordinary things for "good" (or for "evil" in the case of anti-heroes I guess). Whether that is the individual who singlehandledly holds off the orcish raiding party while 3 friends make their escape, or the small party of adventurers who mount up a defence of an otherwise helpless village a-la The Seven Samurai, or the Fellowship trekking halfway across the world with practically no friends anywhere to dump the ring in the volcano. They are all heroes and what makes them heroes is not that the world was saved but that they risked their lives for other than selfish gain. While the grand world-spanning scale makes for more dramatic reading, that doesn't mean that the smaller scale wouldn't be fun to play. It should certainly be easier to model in an MMOG!
The problem with current MMOG designs is that there is no result OTHER than selfish gain when the adventurer risks his life. The villagers don't care, and not even the smallest sliver of the world will be different because he was brave instead of selfish.
Perhaps a better term to describe the problem case of save-the-whole-world stories is "epic adventure" instead of "heroic adventure"? What we need in MMOGs are lots of save-little-slices-of-the-world stories. I think you CAN have have heroic deeds repeating every day and EVERY player can be a hero providing that the scale of the deeds is appropriately small and that there are non-heroes present in the world who actually benefit from those deeds.
Posted by: Bryan Allman | Dec 14, 2003 at 14:37
Re: the Brian/Bryan debate-
Bryan, I think as you pointed out, we need to take a closer look at the term "world", and what we want it to mean. I have nothing against heroic settings, but share Brian Green's skepticism that we can create a worthy MMO space that caters to the widespread single-player-style heroism.
You list some examples of heroism where the wide world was not affected; "small-scale" heroism. Unfortunately, the non-heroes in the Seven Samurai exapmle fall into the role of NPC rather than non-heroic player. You *could* have a game situation like Seven Samurai where each person was in fact a player, but if several powerful players were taking on evil outside forces, many less powerful players would choose to support and assist rather than cower on the sidelines. This is arguably due to what has become standard game mechanics (immortality, non-loss of property, etc.). We could create a world where people would be more likely to act in non-heroic manner, but it would have to be contrived--and it wouldn't be very enjoyable for most players.
Another aspect of heroism than the extent of world-changing is: who is being assisted or affected. In your small-scale hero postulations, it would seem to be NPCs rather than other players, which brings us back to effectively playing single player games online. For someone to truly be a hero, someone has to be a de facto coward. NPCs and AI will do that job without complaint, but then we've defined our player's world as a small, closed one, removed from other players in important ways. By definition a hero has to be separated from his peers; this can happen in various ways, but a world full of heroes just can't exist.
For the past 10-15 years, we've been delighted at the potential that our desktop computers gave us for projecting ourselves into a (solitary) created world. As we were the only human in a given world, we necessarily took on the role of hero. We've accustomed ourselves to that fairly enjoyable paradigm, but there is no reason why we should assume it will translate well into MMO settings. We seen better and worse examples of designers grappling with that.
A thought: someone mentioned that books (like computer games) tend to place the reader in the hero role, but that's not true. Much of our greatest literature puts the reader in the role of loser (Lolita), revenger (Hamlet), passive observer (Moby Dick), and so on. It's not that the Hero is the only story to be told, it's just easy to tell with a single protagonist. Once we can set up a complex social system in a virtual world, the storytelling will take care of itself. But if we design worlds that are goal-oriented rather than place- and person-oriented, social complexity will be stunted and an overarching "story" will have to be developed and maintained by the designers.
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Dec 14, 2003 at 19:56
Bryan, I think we are arguing the same point, just disagreeing on some of the details.
Bryan Allman wrote, "At least some of the protagonists of "The Seven Samurai"/"The Magnificent Seven" stories were indeed heroes even though their world as a whole wasn't affected by their actions, just a very small piece of it."
Not true. (I'm gonna focus on Seven Samurai for now.) The "world" as expressed by the movie was affected (i.e., the village saved). Was this the whole world, or even the whole world suggested by the movie? No, but it did affect the majority of the world displayed in the movie. And, thus the samurai in question were heroes, to the people of that village. If the movie's "world" were all of Japan, then their story would be considerably diminished. I think it's a question of scope.
And, this goes back to what I commented on earlier. It's easier to feel like a hero when your one of seven people protecting a few dozen. It's harder to feel like a hero when you're one of a few thousand trying to protect any number of others.
My thoughts,
Posted by: Brian 'Psychochild' Green | Dec 14, 2003 at 22:10
Richard, I'm flattered, but I can tell you categorically that the majority of SWG players have no idea what my name is or who I am. We've done enough surveys to get a sense of where the players came from...
Star Wars is a great concept for an online world, as evidenced by the number of people who want to live in that universe. It's merely a DIFFICULT concept for an online world. Then again, take something like Pern--which has also been demonstrated to have great appeal, and has similar problems (everyone wants to be a Dragonrider...). Or World of Darkness. Or well, most any of the most popular settings in text muds. I think we can see a clear bias in selection of theme towards example sof worldbuilding that also happen to have what might be called "exceptionalist" themes... probably because everyone wants to pretend to be special and this types of worlds offer that wish fulfillment....
Posted by: Raph Koster | Dec 14, 2003 at 22:34
Following up Brian's comment:
Assuming that players want to be extraordinary world changers (hero), then to make that reality, a designer would have to make it so that the scope is limited to a smaller part of the virtual world. You're a hero in THIS village, but not THAT one.
It's like all the best highschool basketball players going off to college and finding they don't make the cut. Hometown hero, yes. Worldwide Savior.. no.
Maybe what's needed would be multiple communities within the virtual world, regarded as actual communities... So that a hero doesn't have to be the hero of the entire community, just the part he belongs to.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Dec 14, 2003 at 23:47
Euphrosyne said "Another aspect of heroism than the extent of world-changing is: who is being assisted or affected. In your small-scale hero postulations, it would seem to be NPCs rather than other players, which brings us back to effectively playing single player games online."
Yes, yes, and for gosh sakes NO! ;-)
This is the same non-sequitur argument made all over these threads about "not turning MMOGs back into single player games". The existence of NPC's in a game does NOT mean that it must be a single player experience. It probably does mean that the gameworld (and the hardware supporting it) must be larger than it currently is to support thousands of players AND thousands of NPCs, but that is a completely different issue and has nothing to do with the single-playerness of the game.
You've hit the nail on the head with the observation that "We could create a world where people [ie players] would be more likely to act in non-heroic manner, but it would have to be contrived--and it wouldn't be very enjoyable for most players." So deliberately rig it that way by eliminating everything BUT the non-heroic stuff? Let the players be heroes and provide NPCs to act as foils against which their heroism shines. Let the NPC's be the extras, the cowards, the peasants with (and without!) the pikes, the red-shirted trekkies on the away team, and all the other roles that really need doing to flesh out the world, but which just aren't fun to play.
Having NPC's in your gameworld does NOT automatically = single-player experience. Having other players with you on your adventure = multiplayer experience whether you have NPCs as well or not.
While I'm shooting at common myths of MMOG's let me point out that a massively multiplayer world does NOT necessarily require massively multiplayer interactions at all times, or even at ANY time. Given all the hassles and headaches of managing massive encounters, both on the player organizational side and on the devolper infrastructure/balance side, doesn't it make sense to spend some time finding MORE ways to support large numbers of small group activities rather than dismissing them as being too similar to single-player game styles to be worthy of MASSIVE MOGs?
Posted by: Bryan Allman | Dec 15, 2003 at 00:06
Raph Koster>We've done enough surveys to get a sense of where the players came from...
So where DID they come from?
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 15, 2003 at 03:08
Bryan Allman>They are all heroes and what makes them heroes is not that the world was saved but that they risked their lives for other than selfish gain.
This would mean that no characters in any of today's major virtual worlds can truly be considered heroes because none of them ever risk death. When they're "killed", they respawn pretty well immediately, basically intact.
Virtual worlds with permanent death for player characters attract few players, so they're not being made any more. Unfortunately, if everyone wants to be a hero but no-one is prepared to accept the conditions that make a hero heroic, it's hardly surprising that none of them feel like they're heroes. They're not heroes.
Furthermore, even if they did risk the permanent death of their characters, players aren't heroes in virtual worlds. To be a hero, you have to complete your hero's journey, which you do when you leave the virtual world. You play a virtual world to become a hero, but you're a hero in the real world, not the virtual one.
This is all in my book, but since only about 5 people have bought a copy I thought I'd say it again briefly here.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 15, 2003 at 03:28
Richard wrote, "Virtual worlds with permanent death for player characters attract few players, so they're not being made any more. Unfortunately, if everyone wants to be a hero but no-one is prepared to accept the conditions that make a hero heroic, it's hardly surprising that none of them feel like they're heroes. They're not heroes."
This is a good point. I don't quite agree with some of your points about game death not having the same impact, but I will agree with this. Without heroic risk, how can we expect heroic rewards?
Richard also wrote, "Furthermore, even if they did risk the permanent death of their characters, players aren't heroes in virtual worlds. To be a hero, you have to complete your hero's journey, which you do when you leave the virtual world. You play a virtual world to become a hero, but you're a hero in the real world, not the virtual one."
I think you're confusing the character's journey with the player's journey here. The character can have a proper hero's journey without the player necessarily engaging in one, I think. But, could the player have one without the character experiencing one? Hmm....
Richard finally wrote, "This is all in my book, but since only about 5 people have bought a copy I thought I'd say it again briefly here."
Yay! I'm one of five special, enlightened people! Can I be president of the fan club? ;)
Take care,
Posted by: Brian 'Psychochild' Green | Dec 15, 2003 at 09:41
"So where DID they come from?"
The following stats were done via public polls, so I can repeat them:
20% new to MMOs, the rest had played at least one MMO before.
~45% self-described as primarily "MMO fans"
~55% self-described as primarily Star Wars fans
Posted by: Raph Koster | Dec 15, 2003 at 12:43
Brian 'Psychochild' Green>I don't quite agree with some of your points about game death not having the same impact
I don't think PD is a necessary condition for VW heroism, but it's certainly a sufficient one.
>I think you're confusing the character's journey with the player's journey here. The character can have a proper hero's journey without the player necessarily engaging in one, I think.
Well yes, that's possible, but it wouldn't make the player feel like a hero (well, not unless they were very gullible).
>Can I be president of the fan club?
Now THAT would involve real heroism!
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 15, 2003 at 12:50
Raph Koster>~45% self-described as primarily "MMO fans"
~55% self-described as primarily Star Wars fans
OK, so only 45% played because you were designing it, then. That's still pretty damned good, though!
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 15, 2003 at 12:52
That's interesting, Raph.
I realize that this is contrary to what I said Tim Burke said, but I wonder if, for some of the Star Wars fans, being a hero isn't really the main appeal of playing SWG. For instance, I'm a fan of books and movies based on sailing ships & pirates. But I'd still pay to spend a week on a tall ship, even if I didn't get to wear a pirate costume and pretend to be heroic. (Honestly, I might *not* pay if I had to wear a pirate costume and pretend to be heroic.)
So as the Trek/Pern/etc. derivative MUDs & MUSHes show, the impetus to participate can be about unconstratined exploration of the narrative space -- at least for a certain share of the market. So this comes back to VWs as places (or at least spatial representations), not games...
Oh, and Richard -- I found the third person who has bought your book! (His mother bought it, really.) Only two more to go! ;-)
http://grant.henninger.name/archives/002559.html#comments
Posted by: Greg Lastowka | Dec 15, 2003 at 13:02
Most of the discussion over the playability of heroism/non-heroism in MMO games is taking for granted the implicit design choices which push the player towards hero. The reason everyone wants to be a dragonrider in Pern, or everyone wants to be the most powerful/prestigious class in a given game, is being assumed as a fundamental human nature issue. Maybe, but maybe not.
Certainly that aspect of human nature exists, but current (and past) games are largely rigged to provide easy heroism. Some games set various barriers to entry, but if a player is given the choice between spending 500 hours on a character, and at the end of that time being either a 50th level carpenter who can make fantastic shelves, or a 50th level magic user, who can obliterate armies with a gesture, there's some pretty powerful investment/reward economics there.
One player might be thrilled to set up shop as a tailor in a "realistic" fantasty world setting, but current games (of the kill-the-monster variety) reward heroism more than contribution toward complex social structure. As offline life demonstrates, non-heroic existence can be tons of fun--but most games penalize the player, in terms of overall game economics, for being non-heroic. For the forseeable future, there will be a market for more shallow, advancement-oriented games--and likewise a market for the more "virtual social setting" games. But those aren't the only options, and I'd love to see more effort towards persistent worlds where heroism actually requires distinct time investment and sacrifice. This would allow true heroes. The alternate method of providing NPC foils for player heroics is certainly workable, just not appealing to me, for the same reason I wouldn't go to a LAN party where everyone was playing the same single-player game. Sure, there is still social interaction, but I can't ignore the fact that we're all in separate little cages (though we're free to move between them). When can we move away from playing with/against/for the computer, and start to really play with/against/for each other...and play *in* virtual reality rather than *with* virtual reality?
No quick answers, just trains of thought...
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Dec 15, 2003 at 15:30
The problem here is a fundamental disconnect between what people want to "be" and what they are willing to "do" to be that.
You can be a hero in any Online Game. I had to laugh at the example of "in an online game, there would be no one cowering in the sidelines, as they will all join in to support the lost cause". My experience has been that there is no shortage of people cowering or Kal Ort Porring at the first sign of danger.
You don't need permament death for heroism to arise. All you need is circumstances in which people are given a choice:
A) Do the cowardly thing, save myself, and let others suffer.
B) Do the heroic thing, risk myself, and save others.
That is the character-driving essense of heroism, IMHO. And, a quick glance at MMORPGs shows the vast majority of the population picking A.
I, with large cynicism on the human condition, went into Ultima Online expecting EVERYONE to pick A. I went into the Gommorah of UO and asked: "Show me one good man!" and I was shown hundreds. So, yes, there are the heros of the world.
Now, the problem is, these heros are a minority, yet everyone THINKS that they are a hero. Single player games encourage this - the use of Quick Save usually means that the choice of A or B is entirely whimsical: "Shall I be heroic or evil today?". And then people expect the same thing to map onto MMORPGs, and are surprised that just because the game has listed you as "honourable" doesn't mean you are treated as "honourable", as everyone knows that ranking is false. Indeed, I had some newbies run away from me once because the last "honourable" person they met had attacked them.
So really, this "Everyone wants to be a hero" thing is a chimera. Very few people want to be a hero, as judged by how few pick B. Everyone wants to consume content that flags them as a hero, of course.
- Brask Mumei
P.S. I bought SWG solely because Raph Koster was involved with its making.
Posted by: Brask Mumei | Dec 15, 2003 at 17:00
Bryan> "While I'm shooting at common myths of MMOG's let me point out that a massively multiplayer world does NOT necessarily require massively multiplayer interactions at all times, or even at ANY time. Given all the hassles and headaches of managing massive encounters, both on the player organizational side and on the devolper infrastructure/balance side, doesn't it make sense to spend some time finding MORE ways to support large numbers of small group activities rather than dismissing them as being too similar to single-player game styles to be worthy of MASSIVE MOGs?"
To quote Brian, "ACK, NO!"
I think its been well proven (by nearly every MMOPRG out there) that you can make a massively multiplayer world that doesn't really have any support for massively multiplayer gameplay, but I think by doing so you miss some wonderful opportunities.
Massively multiplayer activities are not limited to epic battles with hundreds of characters on both sides. Consider the sort of approach that has the ability to reach beyond what single-player or even team-player games can offer.
* Ten players band together to collect the resources required to build an outpost.
* Those players then establish a degree of security and other accomodations and conveniences that attract others to become members of the outpost.
* When the outpost gets its 50th citizen, it "levels" to a village, opening up additional construction and organizational options that will assist the players in providing even better security, accomodations and conveniences.
* 50 players work together to construct a wall around the village along with a gate to control access.
* Some of the players learn skills to aid in the villages defense. Some learn skills to help build and maintain the village. Some pick up trade skills. Many pursue wealth and pay taxes so that the city can hire guards or other skilled NPC workers. Others build farms so that food can be gathered to feed the NPCs.
* Soon, 100 players celebrate "leveling" to a town. They vote for a mayor. They raise funding for a statue to increase the cultural appeal of their new town. Many start families and begin raising "heirs" who will be trained to take their place one day.
* 120 players defend their town against a dragon's attack. Parts of the town wall are destroyed along with several community buildings. A few characters are killed and morned by the community as well as by the surviving heirs. The town members pool their resources and send out a request for a dragonslayer to hunt down and kill the dragon.
* 200 players celebrate their new city. They form a city watch. They elect an ambassador to assist in diplomatic meetings with a nearby city in order to sort out some resource disputes.
And so on...
This is the kind of gameplay that no single-player or even team-player RPG can match. It is truly multi-player in a way that the others cannot be. If you only want to offer single-player goals or team-player experiences, why not build your nomal RPG? But I believe an MMORPG that really understands what MMORPGs can accomplish will offer single-player and team-player experiences within the context of multi-player goals and experiences. So...
* 7 players go on a quest for the Tears of Atlantis and upon finding them, return them to the player-city where the priest blesses them and installs them in the city temple. As a result, all the farmers in the city experience increased crop growth.
* 3 players sneak into a rival city and steal the Crucible of Gird. Returning it to their own temple means their smiths can forge a stronger steel.
And while I may not want to be guard#3 in such a context, I think I'd really enjoy being captain of the city watch, a farmer managing his farm-hands, a scupltor, a merchant, an adventurer, or any number of other characters, not just the mayor or the dragonslayer or the ruler of the largest empire. I can be a hero within my community even in the less "epic" roles.
--Phin
Posted by: Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz | Dec 15, 2003 at 17:49
Greg Lastowka>Oh, and Richard -- I found the third person who has bought your book! (His mother bought it, really.) Only two more to go! ;-)
I think I may have underestimated its sales: there are 10 second-hand copies for sale on Amazon, so I guess that means 15 people must have bought a copy.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 16, 2003 at 03:21
Brask Mumei wrote, 'So really, this "Everyone wants to be a hero' thing is a chimera. Very few people want to be a hero, as judged by how few pick B. Everyone wants to consume content that flags them as a hero, of course."
People want to be a hero. Or, they want to be called a hero. They just don't want to do heroic deeds to earn it. But, I think that "doing heroic things" is not necessarily what we really mean when we talk about "hero". I think we mean "People want to be the center of attention". In single-player games, the player is the center of attention, the focus of the story, the "hero". If you add in 10 more players, suddenly you find out someone has to play second banana. Someone has to play the role of "Sir Went-along-on-the-mission."
Richard wrote, "I think I may have underestimated its sales: there are 10 second-hand copies for sale on Amazon, so I guess that means 15 people must have bought a copy."
Going tangentally off-topic....
In all seriousness, if your book isn't selling well it's a real shame. The book should be on every online developer's bookshelf and should be a constant reference. I've been developing professionally for over 5 years, over a decade if you include my text MUD development experience. I learned a lot of things from your book, and it gave me a lot of great fodder for thought.
Of course, I think this is another symptom of what we're talking about here. I there there's a lot of developers that don't have the experience that think "monthly subscriptions + popular license = JACKPOT!" Unfortunately, they don't realize the limitation of the license, especially when it comes to what's needed in a virtual world. So, we have issues like the Jedi in SWG. (Sorry, Raph. I know it was a no-win situation, but you gotta take your beating.) You have a complete conflict with what the world says and what people want. It's just a hard situation to be in, but shows that we have a lot of learning to do about these things.
On the bright side, less people reading your book means more job security for me. :P In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king! ;)
Posted by: Brian 'Psychochild' Green | Dec 16, 2003 at 05:54
Brian> "People want to be a hero. Or, they want to be called a hero. They just don't want to do heroic deeds to earn it. But, I think that 'doing heroic things' is not necessarily what we really mean when we talk about 'hero'. I think we mean 'People want to be the center of attention'. In single-player games, the player is the center of attention, the focus of the story, the 'hero'. If you add in 10 more players, suddenly you find out someone has to play second banana. Someone has to play the role of 'Sir Went-along-on-the-mission.'"
Personally, I think that most well-adjusted adults are pretty content to play second or even fifth banana. While everyone likes to be a hero, most don't expect or demand to be. I've been a MUD-dev participant for a number of years now; much longer than I've survived any MMORPG. During all that time, I've never been top banana nor felt particularly heroic. Mostly, I just want to interact with others, participate in discussions, contribute something useful from time to time, and hopefully garner a little bit of respect. And this is exactly the same sort of experience I hope to find in an MMORPG. Perhaps I'm some sort of exception, but I don't think I am. I agree with Brask. The "Everyone wants to be a hero" thing is a chimera.
--Phin
Posted by: Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz | Dec 16, 2003 at 09:11
Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz>I agree with Brask. The "Everyone wants to be a hero" thing is a chimera.
There is the added complication that what everyone actually wants and what everyone thinks they want aren't necessarily the same.
Designers have to tread a very fine line. That's why they're paid so, er, well, er, OK, so that argument kinda breaks down...
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 16, 2003 at 12:09
Phin said:
"Personally, I think that most well-adjusted adults...just want to interact with others, participate in discussions, contribute something useful from time to time, and hopefully garner a little bit of respect. And this is exactly the same sort of experience I hope to find in an MMORPG...The "Everyone wants to be a hero" thing is a chimera."
Yes, yes, and yes. The assumption that everyone wants to be a hero is misguided, and its implementation is impossible. I'll grant that the current crop of MMORPG players have a demographically elevated urge to play the hero (ie the center of game focus)--but these are the same players weaned on single-player game logic.
The much larger potential demographic--all the hundreds of millions who don't currently participate in virtual worlds--are obviously not interested in the old paradigm ("playing with the computer"). But many of them might be quite happy to "interact with others, participate in discussions, contribute something useful from time to time", etc, if given the chance. [And, to be honest, this could be considered "low-impact" gaming...all those billions of man-hours spent each year passively watching television...people want to be entertained without the stress of constant battle, calculating odds, and need the flexibility to leave the game at a moment's notice without breaking a responsibility]
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Dec 16, 2003 at 12:47
To point, referencing Richard's book (I bought it; I read it; I even check the BB every now and then!), the virtual world experience can sometimes be a rite of passage into adulthood. Having gone through a series of events where the player is forced to be the second banana, he might become well-adjusted.
I think it's a point that everyone seems to be discussing players as static. Both Richard's (and Jessica Mulligan's) books characterize players as on a journey; their wants are dynamic.
Players don't JUST want one thing or another thing; they want one thing when they start playing, another when they're been playing for a millenium.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Dec 16, 2003 at 18:58
Just to orientate myself in respect of this thread:
I have bought Richard’s book – and I’ve met Greg so I’m either 1st, 2nd or now 4th on his list.
I got SWG 90% because people I know asked me to come and play and 10% coz it was Raph game.
I do not want to be a hero.
Ren
www.renreynolds.com
Posted by: ren | Dec 17, 2003 at 05:12
Ren> I do not want to be a hero.
That's good -- actually, I heard Tina Turner thinks they're unnecessary.
I've modified the post title since the comments have talked about heroism and, in typical TN fashion, have proved more interesting than anything in the post.
Posted by: Greg Lastowka | Dec 17, 2003 at 11:30
Sorry I'm getting to this conversation so late, been a busy week of finals.
I just wanted to point to a blog entry of mine from a few days ago discussing the passage about western VRs in Designing Virtual Worlds.
The short of it is that I think westerns work just fine as VRs, as long as you don't assume a need for computer controlled characters or exp. Think PvP and items boosting stats (a world designed for the killer, indeed.)
Posted by: Grant | Dec 17, 2003 at 22:09
Grant>The short of it is that I think westerns work just fine as VRs, as long as you don't assume a need for computer controlled characters or exp.
So Joe Newbie's character can't enter a shop, buy a loaded six-gun, and empty it into the back of a character that someone else has been playing for five years because: no-one has been playing a character for 5 years.
I don't think it's beyond the wit of designers to create virtual worlds set in the Old West. It would be silly of me to do so, given there's at least one out there already (Fort Bloodshed, http://www.bloodshed.org/ - that's all I know about it though).
I didn't think that pointing out that the fact a handgun is an equaliser can make the design of a wild west game harder is all that contentious, though.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 18, 2003 at 04:29
It looks like the very definition of hero/heroic is the root of most of the disagreements here. It's going to be impossible to come to any consensus about the suitability of hero roles in MMOGs when our definitions of what exactly a hero *is* cover the spectrum from "only someone who risks his life to change the entire world", to "anyone who acts selflessly". But there are still lots of interesting ideas to explore and a couple of blind spots to illuminate so here goes.
I said "They are all heroes and what makes them heroes is not that the world was saved but that they risked their lives for other than selfish gain."
Richard responded "This would mean that no characters in any of today's major virtual worlds can truly be considered heroes because none of them ever risk death."
That's one way of twisting my argument if you really want to miss my point. Although you undermined your own argument later by saying "I don't think PD is a necessary condition for VW heroism, but it's certainly a sufficient one." So can we at least agree that risk of permanent death is just one of multiple possible conditions under which heroism is possible? My point isn't that the possibility of death makes a hero, it's that selfless risk defines a hero. Granted, there are gradations of risk and risking permanent death is far more heroic than risking a reset to bind point with or without loss of time/exp/equipment or whatnot, but that's because, at least as I see it, heroism is gradual scale, not a binary state that excludes all but the most extreme cases. Note that there are also gradations of selflessness as well as the reality of a multitude of shifting motivations for everything we do, so don't even bother pulling out straw horses based on extreme cases of those factors! ;)
As for the necessity of a hero's journey, that's another precondition of your definiton of hero which I don't accept. It's fine for an academic analysis of a successful literary formula which may be labelled a "Heroic/Epic Story" (pls excuse if I use the wrong terminolgy - I'm not particularly well versed in the field of literary critisism). But it's overly restrictive for defining the meaning of heroism in the real world, and, I would think, in virtual worlds as experienced by real people.
---
Euphrosyne said "The alternate method of providing NPC foils for player heroics is certainly workable, just not appealing to me, for the same reason I wouldn't go to a LAN party where everyone was playing the same single-player game. Sure, there is still social interaction, but I can't ignore the fact that we're all in separate little cages"
What part of *sharing* an adventure online in a common world (that has lots of NPCs) with a group of friends equates to a bunch of people playing separate single-player games? Why does the argument against NPCs always seem to resort to flogging this straw horse? In fact, from the current crop of MMOGs I'd dare say that the games which are most similar to the experience of "a LAN party where everyone was playing the same single-player game" are AC and AC2, coincidentally the games with the *fewest* number of NPCs! Note that I'm NOT using that example to argue anything profound about needing NPCs to make a multiplayer game, I'm simply pointing out the lack of a cause-and-effect relationship between the presence/absence of NPCs and the single/multi-playerness of a gaming experience.
So, given that the presence of NPCs does not inherently make a game less multiplayer, why not use NPC's as another tool in the worldbuilder toolbox for fleshing out the world and for filling in for the world roles that just aren't fun to play?
---
I suggested that "a massively multiplayer world does NOT necessarily require massively multiplayer interactions at all times, or even at ANY time. ... [maybe we should] spend some time finding MORE ways to support large numbers of small group activities". To which Phinehas replies "I think its been well proven (by nearly every MMOPRG out there) that you can make a massively multiplayer world that doesn't really have any support for massively multiplayer gameplay, but I think by doing so you miss some wonderful opportunities." Once again, countering something I said with an argument against something I didn't say! Nowhere did I suggest the world shouldn't support massive player interactions, only that to be a massive world does not REQUIRE massive player interactions.
---
As for the "everyone wants to be a hero" thing being a chimera, naturally. There is probably NOTHING that everyone wants, not even more sex or even just more life. (... hmmm, maybe more love? but I digress) On the other hand, I think the whole I wanna be a hero thing stems from at least a significant number of players wanting SOMETHING more from their gaming experience (and time/effort) than just intangible "dings" and virtual goods or even shared memories with friends. Certainly the builders, and maybe some of the achievers I'd guess, have a desire for something a little more tangible. Players want to make their mark in the gameworld in which they spend so much of their real-world lives. Allowing them to be a hero, if only to a small subset of "the world", is one potentially infinitely repeatable way of satisfying that desire.
Posted by: Bryan Allman | Dec 19, 2003 at 01:07
Bryan Allman>It looks like the very definition of hero/heroic is the root of most of the disagreements here.
It certainly doesn't help matters. Whenever a bunch of people in a single context start using a word a particular way, it can acquire a specialised meaning it doesn't ordinarily have. Players of virtual worlds will say that their character has been "killed", for example, to mean it has been removed from the action for a while. I suspect the word "hero" is becoming debased like this, too.
>you undermined your own argument later by saying "I don't think PD is a necessary condition for VW heroism, but it's certainly a sufficient one."
I wasn't undermining my own point, I was undermining what I thought was your point. You said "what makes them heroes is not that the world was saved but that they risked their lives for other than selfish gain". I responded to the effect that this implied they risked their lives, which doesn't happen in major commercial virtual worlds right now. In other words, if your statement were correct then this would be a consequence. If you don't believe it is the consequence, your statement is incorrect.
My own position is that although PD gives you the opportunities for heroism (ie. it's sufficient), there are other ways to get it too (ie. it's not necessary). It seems from your latest posting that this is your position, too. OK, so we can agree on that, then.
>My point isn't that the possibility of death makes a hero, it's that selfless risk defines a hero.
Yes, but there are some caveats. The loss has to be real, the chance of loss has to be high (but not 100%), there must not be an easier way to achieve the same ends, and the proto-hero needs to know all of this.
What's more, this doesn't make someone a hero, it just means they've acted heroically, ie. in the way that a true hero would have acted. You only get to be a hero when you've completed your hero's journey; heroic acts are steps along the way.
>As for the necessity of a hero's journey, that's another precondition of your definiton of hero which I don't accept.
You focus on the steps people take on the road to becoming a hero. To become a hero, a person has to change; if they didn't change, they would be a hero already. The individual must evolve as a person. One heroic act may make everyone else call you a "hero" because you acted like a hero would act, but unless you understand why you did it, you didn't change as a result of it, and it didn't make you a hero.
>But it's overly restrictive for defining the meaning of heroism in the real world
Perhaps the real world's shifting definition of "hero" is to blame here. Where once it was used metaphorically to mean someone who did the kind of things a hero would do, nowadays people seem to use it to mean "one who is valiant". In this context, you're right, there are lots of such "heroes". Being such a "hero" doesn't help you become a better person, though, unless it's a step along the way to becoming a hero in the sense of Campbell's monomyth (ie, the "hero's journey").
I guess I didn't make this clear in my book.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Dec 19, 2003 at 05:17
Bryan> "I suggested that "a massively multiplayer world does NOT necessarily require massively multiplayer interactions at all times, or even at ANY time. ... [maybe we should] spend some time finding MORE ways to support large numbers of small group activities". To which Phinehas replies "I think its been well proven (by nearly every MMOPRG out there) that you can make a massively multiplayer world that doesn't really have any support for massively multiplayer gameplay, but I think by doing so you miss some wonderful opportunities." Once again, countering something I said with an argument against something I didn't say! Nowhere did I suggest the world shouldn't support massive player interactions, only that to be a massive world does not REQUIRE massive player interactions."
Well, to be a massive world might not REQUIRE any player interaction whatsoever, but I'd say that creating such a world misses some wonderful gameplay opportunities. I realize that you haven't said otherwise, but I'm just pointing out how I'd reply to someone who did say such a thing. I hope this helps you understand my following response to what you DID say:
To be a massive world might not REQUIRE massive player interactions, but I maintain that creating such a world would miss out on all sorts of opportunities for interesting gameplay that simply cannot be offered in single-player or team-player games. I'm in no way against the large numbers of small group activities you are proposing, but if those activities are not placed firmly in the context of true massive multi-play you've missed a golden opportunity IMHO.
To sum up:
You said it was a myth that massively multiplayer worlds require massive interactions..even at ANY time. My response is that, although they might not require them, not having them is a Bad Idea. And furthermore, massive interactions do not have to be limited to "massive encounters" with all of their associated "hassles and headaches."
Hopefully, that clarifies my position. I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not I'm disagreeing with yours.
--Phin
Posted by: Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz | Dec 19, 2003 at 12:39
Ted>Add sufficient AI to multiplayer games, and each player can indeed be the hero of his own story. It's only a matter of time.
I also don't think this will solve the problem.
Maybe because I don't think the problem is that each player wants to be THE hero. I think players want to be PART of something epic. I'd love the chance to play a role similar to any number of secondary LotR characters - Theoden, Treebeard, Wormtongue, Ghan-buri-ghan(did I spell that right? the rock-man in RotK), Sauron's emmissary/second.
The problem is not about being unable to be the hero - as has been mentioned, there are single-player games for that.
The problem, IMO, is not being able to be part of something epic, not being able to matter, not having any _drama_ or import to your actions, your _dialogue_, your demise.
Having recently reread RotK as well as re-watched LotR:TTT, two of the scenes that most readily come to mind (WRT to drama) are:
-When Theoden buries his son. 'No parent should have to bury their child.' *sniff So powerful, dramatic, meaningful.
-Theoden, trapped under his horse, dying. Eowyn confronting the Ringwraith. Merry(damn, or was it Pippin?) bringing the Rider down.
Neither of these is one of the "I am THE hero" moments, but both have secondary characters doing things that matter, or if they don't impact the story directly, they are, at least, dramatic and important to the characters themselves and the viewers. (Though not necessarily to the actors/players.)
The problem is, you can either create drama or consume drama. The player doesn't feel the things that the character does(mostly) and they don't feel the same thing the watcher does...and there's no way to get that feeling of Drama when you are one of the players in a film without a director, without a writer, without someone to edit the footage, without an audience.
Noone wants to watch a bad epic, much less act in one.
At least that's my opinion. We don't need more saviors, we need more drama.
Posted by: DuckiLama | Dec 22, 2003 at 17:09
March 2004: Slashdot kicks around the question and Stratics does an article -- links here.
http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/03/15/0552218.shtml?tid=127&tid=186&tid=206&tid=209.
Posted by: gregolas | Mar 15, 2004 at 14:51
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Posted by: Dino | Dec 04, 2005 at 04:23
The assumption that everyone wants to be a hero is misguided, and its implementation is impossible.
Maybe not all, but *enough* of the players want to be an iconic hero in licensed properties that the second part is true.
Look at the battles and ultimate submission to hordes of player Jedi in SWG. Look at the marketing surveys on the STO site that say 72%% of respondents would want to Captain a ship of other characters, or run a ship on their own, while only 28% would like some other player in command (one a side note, it will be *very* interesting to see military hierarchy implemented to run a ship of 100s of characters). I’m sure in the DC or Marvel games arguments will ensue in the vein of “why can’t I be in the Avengers/JLA?” etc., etc.
Perhaps in the games that set up totally different expectations (say A Tale in the Desert), but for licensed games, I think the percentage of players that want that iconic hero experience they've been reading about/watching for years create a *huge* development problem, and I don’t know if MMOGs will ever support that experience in the way that players expect it.
As for Tolkien “creating” Fantasy, I’d say Fritz Leiber has had as much influence over what we think of as Fantasy as Tolkien, and more virtual fantasy worlds resemble Lankhmar than anything else.
Posted by: Virtualbri | Dec 05, 2005 at 00:56
The assumption that everyone wants to be a hero is misguided, and its implementation is impossible.
Maybe not all, but *enough* of the players want to be an iconic hero in licensed properties that the second part is true.
Look at the battles and ultimate submission to hordes of player Jedi in SWG. Look at the marketing surveys on the STO site that say 72%% of respondents would want to Captain a ship of other characters, or run a ship on their own, while only 28% would like some other player in command (one a side note, it will be *very* interesting to see military hierarchy implemented to run a ship of 100s of characters). I’m sure in the DC or Marvel games arguments will ensue in the vein of “why can’t I be in the Avengers/JLA?” etc., etc.
Perhaps in the games that set up totally different expectations (say A Tale in the Desert), but for licensed games, I think the percentage of players that want that iconic hero experience they've been reading about/watching for years create a *huge* development problem, and I don’t know if MMOGs will ever support that experience in the way that players expect it.
As for Tolkien “creating” Fantasy, I’d say Fritz Leiber has had as much influence over what we think of as Fantasy as Tolkien, and more virtual fantasy worlds resemble Lankhmar than anything else.
Posted by: Virtualbri | Dec 05, 2005 at 00:56
Hmm, don't know how that happened. Sorry.
Posted by: Virtualbri | Dec 05, 2005 at 00:57