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Sep 29, 2004

Comments

1.

Sorry, I don't see a growing MMO divide, separating MMO players from everybody else. Just the opposite. Most game companies have realized that there are still millions of people that are gamers, but not yet MMO gamers, and try to reach them as customers.

One approach is to make MMOs more "casual player friendly". World of Warcraft is probably the most intuitive MMORPG ever released, and all other new games at least pay lip service to the concept. A more radical approach is the one of GuildWars, which speculates that "the MMO divide" is caused simply by monthly fees, and is doing away with them.

"certain predicates that are only satisfied in limited contexts of use" are common enough in everyday life to not be the cause of a divide. For example rules of behavior during a game of football are different than rules of behavior towards the very same people after the game, but people don't have problems with this change of framework.

If anything, you could accuse the MMO players of a *lack* of versatility when the context changes. For example the virtual item which is their property in the context of the game, stops being their property outside the game, but players simply ignore this change of context and trade the item on EBay anyway.

2.

I'm going to have to agree with Tobold. I actually see the opposite happening, at least among the people I'm frequently around. City of Heroes seems to be the great equalizer here. At least three people who I play with on a regular basis have never been in a MMOG before, and one of them is a guy who started playing just based on the off-handed talking up I did of the game over my cubicle wall.

Now, given, if you want to talk role-playing CoH is probably not the best example. It is, however, undoubtedly a massive game. The *game* part is, I believe, what makes it so attractive for folks. As Tobold stated, casual play is probably an important aspect for a game seeking a new audience. CoH very much fills that in.

Above and beyond those experiences, I saw a trailer for EQII in a movie theater earlier this year. It was in a packed theater and the movie in question was not geek-oriented. There were at least three people who actually went "yahoo!" when the trailer came up. Given the sub numbers EQ and FFXI are boasting, I think the divide is growing smaller. We're just doing a bad job of quantifying it. :)

3.

While I agree with both the previous comments, I think you are missing the point that Nathan is trying to make. (Then again, I could be too...) But here is what I get from what he has posted.

It's not about adoption of MMO's per se. It's not about what would get more people to play. It's really about how current MMO players view their worlds, real and virtual, compared to non-MMO players.

The assertion that there are no fictional objects can for example mean that a sword or any other object in an MMORPG is not fictitious, but is a real object, it's just that it's use is limited to the environment of the MMORPG. It is still an object as are... all things really, it just exists in state where it can only be used inside one environment, that of the MMORPG.

I think the title of the post is a little confusing. It doesn't sound like so much as a divide in thinking, but more of an expansion in perspective.

I don't wish to go too deep, as I tend to over think sometimes, but this makes me think. What if the 'virtual (fictional)' object that exists in this area is just one manifestation of the object, not the true object. Another manifestation is the object as it is being sold on ebay. Is this 'true object' time? The time invested in acquiring it? Perhaps I am thinking too deeply.

Just my thoughts,
Jay

4.

Think about this just in terms of games alone, and I think the question becomes a potent one. While there's a bit of a feel of ennui among dedicated gamers about all videogames and computer games at the moment, there's no doubt in my mind that non-MMOG games offer better entertainment, better craftsmanship and more satisfyingly complex, meaningful cultural experiences than MMOGs. More variety, too, for all the plague of sequels and unimaginative copycatting. I think more and more to gamers who don't play MMOGs, or who have tried one and given up quickly, the 'hardcore' MMOG audience appears a bit mysterious. Even MMOGers themselves are showing a lot of apologetic self-loathing as they struggle to understand why they play or what they're hoping for.

Fold into that the wider audience that sometimes plays a videogame or computer game but which hasn't or wouldn't play a MMOG for a variety of reasons, and you might begin to say with some justification that MMOGs are rapidly becoming a semi-closed subculture of gameplaying.

5.

Wow, Tim--I'll give you craftsmanship and I'll give you entertainment, but I STRONGLY challenge the notion that non-MMOG games are giving more satisfyingly complex or meaningful cultural experiences. There are isolated examples of games that do, but the vast, vast majority of single-player games barely offer a cultural experience at all, much less a meaningful or complex one.

6.

"MMOGs are rapidly becoming a semi-closed subculture of gameplaying."

See: http://pw1.netcom.com/~sirbruce/Subscriptions.html

I'm not sure the numbers support this idea. Sure the rate that competition is heating up is faster than the actual growth rate of the market itself, but I think this is pretty typical in many modern-day leading edge technology markets. In fact, I would find it interesting to see the growth rate of MMOGs compared to the growth rate of 'all gamers'.

Frankly, I think if the MMOGs that say they are going to launch this year actually do, we'll all look back at 2004 and see tremendous growth for a single year.

-bruce

7.

Wow, Tim...

Are you allowed to say WoW any more Raph ;-)

8.

Slightly more seriously, I think it's easier to create satisfying, entertaining experiences in non-MMOs in which the designers message is transferred directly to the player as a story like way. However, the experiences in MMOs are rendered far more meaningful because they are an experience shared with other people.

I wouldn't have had the same rush of cheeky guilt if I'd kept my comment about Raph's post to myself, rather than sharing it with you.

The MMO designers craft is to create interesting opportunities for players to share experiences and create stories themselves rather than telling them a story directly. The question (debated by a lot of recent posts) is how do you convey a message using that craft, rather than just using it to create a place where people can play nicely without getting bored.

9.

I am somewhat surprised to learn that EQ has approximately 400 subscribers (footnote 7)

I have always believed the virtual == real correspondence. The selling of swords on ebay is a sign of a proper realization that there is no boundary in kind. Do not think this means that I am suggesting that dying in a virtual world is the same as dying in a real world! Even the termination of an account in a virtual world doesn't result in the cessation of a sentient life form. Termination of an account is more analogous to the destruction of a real world costume.

The one area I have often failed to convince people that virtual == real is the area which, IMHO, is most obvious. That of behaviour. Your virtual behaviour is real behaviour. You treat someone badly in the virtual world, you have treated them badly in the real world. Missing a virtual appointment is as bad as missing a real appointment. If people can recognize that virtual actions are real actions, most of the rest falls out, IMO. However, most griefers like to stick to the: "I'm a real nice person in real life!" theory, which to me is equivalent to: "I'm a real nice person in New York. It's just in Boston I act like a bastard, so don't judge me!"

- Brask Mumei

10.

Brask> The one area I have often failed to convince people that virtual == real is the area which, IMHO, is most obvious. That of behaviour. Your virtual behaviour is real behaviour.

Yes. Lately the term 'virtual reality' has lost all meaning for me. There's just reality and reality, the only difference being the origin of sensations.

As for an isolation of the MMOG subculture, there's a dance going on between players and devs about how much of the load the players can carry in terms of entertainment. We're (re-)learning that other people in general are not a good source of entertainment. AI is much better. People are an excellent source of validation and creativity, though. Single-player games give you comparatively rich interactions with AI, but the feelings you get are somewhat empty because there's no society there to validate them. In MMOGs, you get comparatively crudely-formed experiences, with weak, repetitive AI. But the achievements are strongly validated by all these people.

11.

Wait... why are we using semantics to think about VW's? Talking about 'fiction' and 'context' and 'reality' is a bit to conducive to slippery-slope arguments to be of any use, and I don't care how long his paper was. Good paper, just not really applicable in my view.

However, what he states about experience being contextual rather than inherently fictional/real implies something very powerful yet extremely subtle, and oftentimes completely ignored: that experience is mediated. Put in Ludlow's terms: the same context that gives 'fiction' its validity and reality also contrains it at any given time.

This is why "Your virtual behaviour is real behaviour" (B.M.) and why "the term 'virtual reality' has lost all meaning" (E.C.).

This, I believe, is what separates the MMO from the 'other' games. Not to be too simplistic or anything, but... isn't a mediated form of experience what 'playing' in a virtual world entails? If you look at what's important--especially in, but not limitied to, an RP frame of mind--it is not the individual players themselves; rather, it's the relationships between them. This liminal space, albeit a virtual space (but who gives a hell because this is all conceptual rambling anyway, right? God bless liberal education. <3 ), is where experience itself resides. But the experience doesn't roam freely; it is mediated, either (or both) by the developer who doesn't want players taking advantage of a design flaw (cynically put, anyway; all I mean to refer to is the gameplay mechanics), or (and) the very means by which individuals in a VW communicate.

I mean, you could make the same argument for the single-player experience, that it too is mediated by game mechanics. But it is far more prominent and applicable in MMOG's. To speak of this idea of the mediate experience (i.e. implied from Ludlow's 'fiction-but-not-fiction-because-of-context') in single-player game refers to a relationship between the player and his/her ascertainment of the characters and events happening on the screen. The relationship itself is circular and self-referential; the user himself places the contraints on the liminal experience.

Sorry this is so long... at the core, I'm agreeing with the two above comments, but on the periphery I think that Ludlow's paper isn't all that, well, amazing.

12.

"We're (re-)learning that other people in general are not a good source of entertainment. AI is much better."

Nonsense, it depends absolutely on the type of entertainment. Single player games are usually fun because of the emphasis on story and immersive experience, to which AI and scripted characters are best suited, since they absolutely reflect the world they are programmed to be a part of.

On the other hand, if the emphasis is on interaction, particularly skill/ability-based interaction, then other people are immensely more entertaining than AI, due to their unpredictability and, as you mentioned, creativity.

13.

If the emphasis is on interaction...then other people are immensely more entertaining than AI

Exactly. The problems arise when the content in MMOs is fundamentally single player content. It might be fun to fight mobs with your friends, but when the rest of the time other people just get in the way, mean you have to queue for content or annoy you then the MM aspect of the game is being wasted. Instanced areas are a sticking plaster for this. The real solution is to design games where people interacting is the game rather than just a way to pass the time while you queue for single player content.

14.

I think the divide is more accurately described as single-player vs multi-player, rather than MMO vs Other Games. If reality is a consensus then a consensus is other people. Or something.

It's true that multi-player games that limit the means of interaction are probably hamstringing the effect and by the same token a game that gives greater focus to inter(real)personal communication amplifies it. But there are lots of examples of strightforward competitve games where 'reality' is redefined by the consensus of the players, over and above the hard programmed rules of the game. Camping, for example.

15.

The real solution is to design games where people interacting is the game rather than just a way to pass the time while you queue for single player content.

Yes! The main reason why I left FFXI was becuase it basically turned into a single-player RPG with a chat client installed. On top of that, the forced-grouping element of it was, well, alienating, and also as if it was an afterthought to the game itself.

16.

>It might be fun to fight mobs with your friends, but when the rest of the time other people just get in the way, mean you have to queue for content or annoy you then the MM aspect of the game is being wasted. Instanced areas are a sticking plaster for this. The real solution is to design games where people interacting is the game rather than just a way to pass the time while you queue for single player content.<

I think your point is very well made. As you note, instanced areas are a sop; it's the idea that needs work, not the implementation.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is that players are unable to make persistent changes to the world/environment. If you and I dig a hole, the hole is not persistent. Obviously there are lots of very valid reasons for that, but without the sense of being able to make a difference, the game becomes rather pointless. If all you and I can do together in the gameworld is 1) go kill things or 2) stand around chatting, at the end of the evening the sense of accomplishment is decidedly muted; this is made even worse by the usual treadmill, where the things we just killed respawn and we kill them again.

Horizons purported to have a solution to this problem in the ability of players to contribute towards actual world alteration. I think this was a step in the right direction, even though their implementation was *ahem* rather badly flawed, to put it nicely.

You observe in one of your posts above that:

> The MMO designers craft is to create interesting opportunities for players to share experiences and create stories themselves rather than telling them a story directly.<

However, I would argue that the average MMO is no more interactive than a story in a book; there is no story "creation" since the story arc is preset and character actions cannot impact it. People can have experiences, individually or in a group, but in the end such experiences have no persistent effect on the world.

17.

Iamblichos> "without the sense of being able to make a difference, the game becomes rather pointless. ... People can have experiences, individually or in a group, but in the end such experiences have no persistent effect on the world."

What do you mean by "make a difference"?

The problem is that while short-range, short-term effects give more intensely tangible feedback than large-scale, long-term changes, letting individuals or small groups make short-range, short-term changes to the world is more griefable.

Players get the most sense of impact -- of making a difference -- when they can observe a direct correlation between their actions and the effects in the game world of those actions. Unfortunately, this also motivates bad behavior!

For a mass-market MMOG, I'd guess the cutoff point for what should be allowed to make a persistent change to a game world is probably 2000-5000 players over a week. That's probably close to the upper limit on coordinated player actions in a mass-market game. If that many people are doing it, they're probably doing it because it's what they enjoy, rather than because they're consciously coordinating behavior in order to abuse or exploit rules governing persistent effects.

The downside to this is that having to wait a week (or more) for 2000-5000 players to do something to kick off a persistent change can be asking for more patience than most players have. If a persistent change takes 2000 or more players a week or more to induce, how do you make the connection between your personal in-game behavior and that change? How do you get any sense of having personally made a difference?

I agree that world rules insuring visible and meaningful consequences for player actions are one key to blurring the distinction between the "real" and the "virtual." I just don't know how to implement such rules so as to get the positive effects (a sense of value to/in the world) without also accepting the negative effects (griefing).

The power to affect the world is the power to affect other people.

--Flatfingers

18.

>The problem is that while short-range, short-term effects give more intensely tangible feedback than large-scale, long-term changes, letting individuals or small groups make short-range, short-term changes to the world is more griefable.<

Unfortunately true, which is why I noted there were good reasons for this. Griefing would run amok in such a world.

There are games that I have played that made efforts in this direction, however. Some examples of events that I have seen make a real difference in terms of motivation for the player base:

1) The Defense of the Shard on one of the AC1 servers (I think Thistledown). A huge alliance of various allegiances defied the devs' plans and prevented others from destroying the "trigger item". Finally the devs had to log in as 00ber avatars to force the conclusion. This spawned a sense of community even in the non-participant servers that lasted for a long while.

2) Horizons' concept of rebuilding a destroyed world. The concept was an excellent one - the implementation was horrifically sporked, but if the process had been properly thought out and implemented it would have prompted the same sort of "shared event" mentality.

>I just don't know how to implement such rules so as to get the positive effects (a sense of value to/in the world) without also accepting the negative effects (griefing).<

I don't either :) If someone finds a way, I'll play their game until the end of time. It's a lot easier to point out the problem than to solve it. All I can do is point out examples where I feel the trend is in the right direction.

19.

"I just don't know how to implement such rules so as to get the positive effects (a sense of value to/in the world) without also accepting the negative effects (griefing)."

It's actually much easier than you might think, and I'm extremely surprised that so few designers have overlooked straightforward solutions to the problem of allowing interaction while controlling things like griefing.

20.

>I just don't know how to implement such rules so as to get the positive effects (a sense of value to/in the world) without also accepting the negative effects (griefing).<

You have to accept that both can and should happen. By imposing "good" and banning "evil" as the method of mediated experience, and putting this decree as a law of game mechanics, you have already mapped the destiny of the VW.

The trends so far seems to be either "theme park" (WoW) or "planes of existence" (SL). The middle ground is very murky.

21.

I find that some games are already effectively starting to converge the singleplayer experience of providing the standard storyline of taking the player from point A to point B with the true community and social nature of a MMO world. If anything, I'd say that the games of today and tomorrow games will be the results of breeding the standard, formerly deeper singleplayer experience with the successes of previous MMO games together.

Some of the biggest problems is that "having an impact" can mean very different things for different players. For Player A, having an impact means being allowed to start a guild. For Player B, it means having a fire sword that no one else has. For Player C, it means being involved with the quest to kill the uber-dragon. And for Player D, it may mean being the thief that everyone despises.

For me, it was spending time in Shadowbane to establish and build a large city. That was just appealing to me. The city would not have been there without the work of myself and several friends, but that was our mark on the MMO landscape (well, until our walls were crushed and the city taken :) ).

There are additional considerations as well. Some want to be passively entertained (fighting NPCs), some want to actively be involved (managing player run events). There are some who want to be able to solo, and others who require teamplay for fulfillment. There are some who want to act out great roleplaying, and there are others who want to fight.

Earlier games were usually catered to one specific style, and if you weren't of that style, you were kind of out in left field somewhere not know what to do. That said, the numbers of developers of MMO games that grasp the importance of understanding and working towards all of these goals is clearly growing. By effectively being able to provide all of the possible answers to "What does leaving my mark on this world mean to me?", more and more MMOs are moving to the fully immersive and overall satisfying experience for any player, no matter what his previous intentions were coming into the game.

22.

I would argue that the average MMO is no more interactive than a story in a book

And I agree. Most MMOs are virtual theme parks, with lots of wipe clean rides for you to queue for with your friends, experience together and talk about afterwards.

There is no story "creation" since the story arc is preset and character actions cannot impact it

Arguably these developer created story arcs can be influenced by player actions, but in reality the influence that each player exerts is so minute the impact they make is imperceptible.

There is player story creation, but it's currently "Hey dude, I thought I was a goner until you turned up" (to paraphrase Damion Schubert). I'd like to see this kind of story become: "Wow, after years of struggling we finally stormed the gates of hell, killed Lucifer and installed ourselves as rulers of the underworld." The problem is how to make people feel they have forged their own path and really are rulers of the underworld without letting them make other players lives hell.

23.

"Wow, after years of struggling we finally stormed the gates of hell, killed Lucifer and installed ourselves as rulers of the underworld."

Even this is potentially just a gloried theme park ride, unless you becoming rulers of the underworld affects other people and provokes interaction.

24.

I think what I'm demonstrating by stumbling around talking to myself is that while we should
design games where people interacting is the game rather than just a way to pass the time while you queue for single player content it's much harder than it sounds! :-(

25.

Jim: >Arguably these developer created story arcs can be influenced by player actions, but in reality the influence that each player exerts is so minute the impact they make is imperceptible.<

I'm not sure I've ever seen a player action influence a story arc, unless our definitions of "influence" are different. Because the development cycle for a story arc update/world change is so long, by the time the player gets to see the trailer the movie has already been shot (to mix metaphors). I suppose a gifted griefer could get the world physics changed and thus change a story arc episode, but physics and storyline rarely intersect. :)

Where I have seen player actions make a difference is not by their actions in-game, but on message boards outside the MMO. Unfortunately, the trend seems to indicate that success is a factor of NOT allowing this sort of user input. Turbine was very attentive to its fan base with AC1 and AC2, posted regularly to the Vault and other sites, and consequently got cracked like a whip at regular intervals by large crowds of whining players. Both games flopped (albeit for different reasons). Artifact (Horizons) pretended to be attentive but wasn't, and recently filed for bankruptcy because its game flopped as well. Verant has always made it clear they'll do as they please with EQ, and they have the largest user base of US MMOs. Obviously there are other issues at work, but the trend seems clear enough.

>while we should design games where people interacting is the game rather than just a way to pass the time while you queue for single player content it's much harder than it sounds!<

I agree wholeheartedly.

I think that some of the games of the past point in the right direction, though. As Will observed, making a difference means something different to each person, and this needs to be kept in mind. As I said above, I think Horizons had a good idea in requiring monuments, bridges, etc. to be rebuilt in order to unlock certain areas of the world and aspects of play. Another idea is to have allegiances above a certain membership be able (in game) to petition "the gods" for the right to build a town/castle/whatever in a chosen location. This would be highly motivational to a certain type of player - though it would make significant demands on the game world software as well.

26.

I'm not sure it makes sense to call AC1 a "flop:.

27.

Noted, and correct. It wasn't a flop. My apologies.

28.

Great thread. I just wanted to point out though, that I'm not really drawing on the semantics of natural language to support a thesis about MMORPGs, but rather am using my take on the apparent reality-creating property of MMORPGs in support of a thesis in the philosophy of natural language (my day job). So, if all that semantic stuff doesn't impress you, it isn't really supposed to.

One way to think about my largely unargued premise in all this is that good game makers (and good communities of gamers) are good context-expanders. They aren't really role-players as much as they are good at simply making it true they they are members of a good community, guild, etc.

This general idea should apply to all forms of fiction. What makes Anthony Hopkins a good actor? Not that he is good at prepresenting, for example, a psycho killer, but he is good in expanding the context in which 'he is a psycho killer' may be truly said of him (erm, but not expanding it too far). I actually had a friend ask him about this. His response: yes yes, of course.

29.

Jim Prubrick wrote:
>Exactly. The problems arise when the content in >MMOs is fundamentally single player content. It >might be fun to fight mobs with your friends, >but when the rest of the time other people just >get in the way, mean you have to queue for >content or annoy you then the MM aspect of the >game is being wasted. Instanced areas are a >sticking plaster for this. The real solution is >to design games where people interacting is the >game rather than just a way to pass the time >while you queue for single player content.

Look, there's no doubt that most of the big graphical games are at least 10 years behind the curve set by smaller virtual worlds (primarily text-based) in terms of enabling actual multiplayer gaming, as opposed to just simultaneous single-player gaming, but what is this talk of a problem? Why is this a problem? If the simultaneous single-player game is how most people want to play, what's the big deal? I don't understand the drive a lot of the mud-dev/terranova crowd has to force their play preferences on everyone else as somehow 'superior', especially when there is absolutely no evidence to support any kind of general preference for that kind of play.

You and I may prefer a more truly multiplayer experience (all of our games are focused on other players rather than monster bashing) but there's no reason to assume our preferences are representative. Perhaps it's enough for most people to have only minimal interaction with other people, particularly when so many people act like such jerks in virtual worlds.

--matt

30.

Why is this a problem? If the simultaneous single-player game is how most people want to play, what's the big deal?

OK, here goes: If MMOs continue to head in a simultaneous single player direction, allowing small parties of friends to consume single player content together without any grief or interruption from anyone else, then the game may as well not be an MMO. It may as well be Baldurs Gate II or Diablo or Gauntlet. The persistent virtual world becomes a persistent score board for groups to post their high scores on. The promises of alternate worlds and societies will be lost along with the subscriptions that currently allow dreamers to get funding to build them.

So, yes, I am being selfish in the sense that the simultaneous single-player is only a problem if you have a vested interest in virtual worlds where people interact to form new communities, societies, economies and cultures. Terra Nova has that vested interest and so it's a problem to us.

If we want to avoid a future in which MMOs become single player games with online score boards then we need to solve that problem and come up with compelling reasons for people to interact.

31.

Jim> If we want to avoid a future in which MMOs become single player games with online score boards then we need to solve that problem and come up with compelling reasons for people to interact.

Agreed. The AGC Microsoft/Sony keynote only reinforced that this won't be coming from an established player, though. Way easier to make money doing the parallel, single player approach.

Truly interesting digital worlds suffer from some of the same complaints that Berners-Lee got about the web and is getting about the semantic web. "I don't see what you'd use this for" and "All your examples so far are toylike and not that interesting" Scale is everything. Once they tip, the world is going to be a different place, but if everyone is working on the CoH, Guild Wars, &c model (CoH = great game, btw, and all evidence suggests that GW will be pretty fun as well. They just -- intentionally -- chose a very limited form of digital world.) then the tipping point is a lot further away.

32.

"The power to affect the world is the power to affect other people." ~Flatfingers

My own experiences and interviews w/other gamers supports this. Consider this statement from an online interview I did some time ago with one of my informants:

Sometimes I pause and think to myself why we do what we do online. After all, sometimes this starts to feel like another job even though it's just a game. … I think that it's because we are making so much progress. And in the end, if we can … maybe leave some kind of legacy... that perhaps years down the road there will be another generation of gamers. And maybe they will say, do you remember that pledge? Did you actually meet Princess Adeleide, or General Liadon?

Maybe when you get down to it, this is just another goal of life – to achieve immortality by being remembered in some way. In the end I think everyone has to ask themselves that basic question. Did I make an impact on someone's life? Positive or negative? Will I be remembered for it?" ~Liadon, 2002

For me, the question then becomes, how do you get the shared social history of the community of a given MMOG 'into' the persistent virtual world? Maybe ATITD's strategy is one viable way. Maybe another is to create in-game newspapers such as The Alphaville Gazette. Truth is, clans document their shared history in the form of websites with stories, forums, and screenshots (e.g. the website for our clan LegendsOfAden, which is by no means the most elaborate or sophisticated clan site out there). And game designers could do a lot more to promote this sort of thing (though my experience suggesting this at MUD-Dev hardly brought tears of hope to my eyes), integrate it more seamlessly into the gamespace itself, and even allow the virtual world to morph as a result of it. What I'm suggesting here is that, since an MMOGs is by definion not just a designed object but an emergent culture, it might be worth thinking through how a person could go about making this culture/social part of the game more virtually tangible, salient, and persistent. Our clan dominated the last server of LineageI for a good while, but all thats left of those days now is a handful of old members stayed there (rather than moving to L2 with the rest of us) and vaguely remember a few hilarious stories or serious seige spanks.

That said, I'd like to return to the initial post on Peter Ludlow's claim that "there really are no fictions per se, and that 'fictional' statements are merely statements that hold true in a limited class of environments... Sure, objects are contextualized by the social circumstance, but context, so it would seem, makes the objects no less real..."

The notion I use in my own research -- Jim Gee's concept of "Discourses" (no surprise, since he's my major professor) -- is quite similar. Basically, the idea is that human beings have varying identities in varying social/material contexts (=different Discourses, if you will). Each Discourse construes the world in some ways and not others, privileges certain semiotic systems over others, entails particular distribution of goods in specific ways, etc etc. Think 'corporate shark' discourse versus 'Lineage gamer' discourse and the idea should seem pretty obvious. It seems to me that Ludlow's idea here is pretty important. I means that different actions or objects have different consequences in different Discourses, and to dismiss one context as "mere fiction" versus another context as "real" shrouds a pretty important move. Because, to pick one as real and another as fiction is to assume the situated consequences of one "matter" while the situated consequences of another don't. I often hear people talk about "real life," contrasting it with "virtual" life, as though there is only one Discourse (social/material context, etc) rather than many -- as though what is consequential for one context is necessarily consequential for the other, and that the speaker's version of "real life" is the only/authentic one.

So... IMHO this brings us back to the issue of making gamers' communal life count. It's easy to gloss this into an issue of "player generated content" by glomming it in with a whole host of other issues that deserve their own separate discussion. But I'd rather avoid that, because it evokes the whole "98% of player generated content is crap" theory that's out there which, to me seems to run the same risk as the "real/fiction" discussions run. (i.e., Crap for whom? In what context?) Instead, I'd like to see ideas for how one might actually go about doing this, especially considering that oftentimes we want a game in which we are the hero of the story, the narrator, the big fish -- and that creating a game that feels as if it were an inhabited persistent social world (that was there before you & will continue after) could leave some gamers (ie. those not included in the 'narrative') feeling as inconsequential as one might in RL.

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