One of the observations about Star Wars: Galaxies that I've made pretty much since the game went live was that the license was more a problem than an asset. That observation applies to the convoluted financial arrangements underpinning the game, but more, it applies as a comment on design challenges.
What does a MMOG designer need to do to take proper advantage of a license? Is a license reason to clamp down on innovation, or an opportunity to innovate?
In a way, I'd say neither. Building a MMOG around a licensed property is not an argument in favor of pursuing more aggressive design innovations of the kind that players and developers usually talk about incessantly. The license is not an opportunity to try unusual configurations of PvP or permadeath, a skills-based system for character development, new modes for content delivery and world persistence. It is not an argument for deep or shallow virtual economies, for novel strategies of instancing. Neither is it a compelling claim in favor of a cookie-cutter DIKU Mud design or vanilla MMOG design conventions, however.
This is a place where conventional structural forms of ludological thinking go badly wrong, I think, where a more narratological interest in content, meaning, communicative capacity is necessary. If you think about designing a licensed property in conventionally structuralist terms, in terms of game mechanics, about humans as puzzle-solvers or psychologically predisposed to play, about the fact that games are half-real but not what the content of the unreal proportion is substantively composed of, you're going to go wrong in some respect.
Because when you lure players with the expectation that they will inhabit their favorite shared-world fictions, you'd better have an experience on tap that has some mimetic correspondence to their mental map of that fiction, that not only invokes but vastly strengthens their consumption of that beloved fiction. You're in Jenkins-land then, offering a bag of swag to some textual poachers. Any design mechanic which is dissonant with the content of that fiction, whether it's a tried-and-true vanilla MMOG device or a wild new innovation, is going to irritate and alienate at least some of the market you draw in with the license. If all you've got are some great (or banal) design ideas about a persistent-world game, I'd say avoid a license like the plague.
As I've said, I think SWG ran afoul of this problem. I don't think it particularly accounts for the commercial weakness of The Matrix Online, not exactly: in that case it may be more that the fan base for the license itself is weak. On the horizon, however, I think Lord of the Rings Online may be in serious danger on this score. Star Trek Online I don't think we know enough about as yet. In both of those cases, however, it's clear to me that the standard templates for MMOGs are not well-suited to the fictional properties.
LOTRO's developers have thought carefully enough to avoid putting wizards hurling fireballs or high elves as playable races in the game, but reading about the classes for the game still raises concrete questions about what the experience of play is going to look like, and whether it will feel anything like the fiction. If nothing else, a world that's highly populated by groups of adventurers scurrying about killing orcs feels wrong: the fictional landscape of Lord of the Rings feels relatively sparse in those terms. Bree is about the only place within that universe that looks like a conventional MMOG town. There are places off the edge of the map that might make convincing MMOG additions to the mythos (adventures among the Southrons, or off in the East): you can't get it wrong so readily if you work with areas that Tolkien barely sketched out in his fictions. Even there, though, both the legendary and mundane scale of adventure seem badly wrong with the mood of Tolkien's work. The players shouldn't be involved at the truly legendary scale of things, fighting Balrogs and such. And the mundane work of low-level players, killing rats or such, also seems wrong. Frodo and Company went from drinking at The Green Dragon to hiding from ringwraiths in one easy step, without having to level up fighting forty Shire-frogs in the interim.
One of the things that I think goes very underappreciated about World of Warcraft by other developers (who often want to attribute its success to nothing more than the amount of money invested in its development, or to the timing of its release, or to Blizzard's prior customer base) is the aesthetic consistency of the game, and the way that its aesthetic successfully invokes the prior cultural property on which it is based. Now this is an easier thing to pull off since that prior property was itself a series of computer games (whose fictions were ultimately derivative of generic Tolkienesque fantasy, anyway). But it shouldn't be underrated as an accomplishment. It's the content, stupid: not just the sheer raw amount of it, but the degree to which it all works together. That aspect of WoW can't be described in game-mechanical terms: you have to rummage through a hermeneutical, interpretative toolkit to talk about it successfully.
Any licensed MMOG has got spend more effort and money than it might otherwise on working with that same toolkit. None of our usual fetishes about virtual world design are going to provision much aid when the critical decisions get made that will make such a MMOG live up to or work discordantly against its source fiction.
You've pretty much said what needed to be said here.
It may be that some narratives (novels or movies) won't translate well into games, without serious modifications that would irritate the fans of the original and/or the owners of the original IP.
The same can be said of the reverse process, that some games won't translate well into compelling narratives.
Most narrative involve a hero (or small group of heros) doing some legendary one-time task in their world, that is not indicative of what that world normally has to offer (thus it's legendary).
A single player game might translate this better, since the player can be the hero, and the game itself will have a beginning, middle, end (just like a narrative). When designing a MMOG, with many players, and ongoing tasks, this will become much harder to map.
Perhaps the worlds we love to watch (LOTR, Star Wars, Star Trek) wouldn't actually be that much fun to live in, if we were just some "Joe Schmoe" out of range of the camera (or the pen). Those worlds weren't designed with that in mind.
On the other hand, fans love those worlds, and so the forces of conventional marketing are bound to try.
Posted by: blackrazor | Nov 30, 2005 at 11:31
I definitely agree with what you've said. I also think that explaining WSG is pretty simple: they made no apparent effort to make it feel "Star Wars-ish" and mostly just went off on whacky design tangents that Raph wanted to explore that didn't really fit into Star Wars at all.
So arrogant lead designer and crappy baseline design equal bad game, big expensive license or not.
Posted by: Brent Michael Krupp | Nov 30, 2005 at 11:41
Spot on on The Matrix Online. The game was positioned as a participatory narrative continuation of the movie trilogy, but there was widespread disappointment in the second and third movies. I figure that its failures are almost unrelated to its design.
SWG has the opposite problem: the potential fanbase is there, but the game is stuck in amber. The major geographic locations are largely unchanged since launch, and there is no sense of current events or history. The only narrative shift that I recall was the "Imperial Crackdown" that hung . There was also the "Cries of Alderaan" storyline, which as a story didn't scale well to thousands of iterations among different players, and the developers abandoned the approach when they decided not to spend manhours creating content that would have a limited shelf life. In this case, I never had the sense that anything was HAPPENING in the game -- certainly nothing that tracked with the established fiction.
Developer blogs for Star Trek Online are providing sketchy information at this time, but Perpetual seems to be aware of the fact that there's a Star Trek vacuum right now, and that their MMO may be the most visible and accessible Star Trek property in the world at launch. I'm sure they're watching SWG's current travails very closely.
Posted by: That Chip Guy | Nov 30, 2005 at 11:42
Argh, can't type. That was supposed to be SWG, not WSG.
(this comment system needs an edit function)
Posted by: Brent Michael Krupp | Nov 30, 2005 at 11:43
I'll also note that the "Camping the Nazgul Spawn" trackback above not only completely pwns this thread's title, but has a very funny bit about Gandalf buffing passing rangers.
Posted by: That Chip Guy | Nov 30, 2005 at 11:45
Yes, but he won outright with "Order 66"
Posted by: Endie | Nov 30, 2005 at 11:47
I'm really not trying to spam -- I just left an incomplete sentence above. The "Imperial Crackdown" event hung orbiting Star Destroyers in the sky and dramatically increased the presence of Imperial NPCs in key locations, at least suggesting narrative repercussions to the number of Rebel players running around wreaking havoc.
Posted by: That Chip Guy | Nov 30, 2005 at 11:48
Endie's bit about Gandalf buffing makes me think of some of my own thoughts back in 2004.
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Nov 30, 2005 at 12:08
"you have to rummage through a hermeneutical, interpretative toolkit to talk about it [prior cultural property] successfully."
***
Or, alternatively, you have to be indoctrinated in the toolkit before you begin to think that prior cultural property makes a difference.
Alternatively, you could claim that all such MMORPG (i. e., those that intend to "invoke prior cultural property"] are basically the same -- except, of course, that some of them are worse.
That is, any (well, any current) MMORPG is more fundamentally similar to any other MMORPG than it is to its prior cultural property.
The past then suffers in comparison with the immediacy of the present.
Posted by: dmyers | Nov 30, 2005 at 12:39
Re: SWG as a license force-fit into an old-style MMOG, the writing was on the wall as early as June 2003, with this news post at Penny Arcade:
I'm still waiting for a MMOG that does not require me to hit rats or some local equivalent with a n00b-sword. For me, running from dinner-plate-sized crabs is right out.
As for Lord of the Rings Online, personally -- and this is just me personally, laying aside all commercial aspirations -- what I'd love to see is a low-action/high-exploration recreation of Middle Earth. Sure you look for treasure amongst the orcs in the mouldy depths of Moria, fight trolls in the Ettenmoors, or even see what evil lurks in the steaming pits of Mordor (post-Sauron), but personally I'd rather spend more time bringing in the harvest in the Shire, rounding up horses in West Emnet, finding out what's going on in the trading ports of Anfalas and Belfalas, exploring the ruins near the Icebay of Forochel, seeing what lies beyond the Sea of Rhun, or dealing with traders on the Harad Road.
Low magic, relatively low action, low narrative. A world to explore instead of a treadmill to be run. It'll never happen, but I think for many people it'd actually be fun.
Posted by: Mike Sellers | Nov 30, 2005 at 13:28
Mike, your dream for Lord of the Rings Online - people already went down that road with SWG and look how that turned out. High narrative is the key with a license like LotR, SW etc.
Posted by: AJ | Nov 30, 2005 at 13:46
We can’t treat all licensed properties the same.
Those that are more strictly stories (LOTR) pose more problems for realization as a MMOG than do those that have a history of many stories, a history of introducing new characters, and exist within a mature universe (Star Trek). These latter would allow for more personal story development that could build on but not conflict with cannon and with franchise holder interests. Star Wars has a similar structure to Star Trek in this regard with a number of books and games that center on characters other than the original protagonists. But while I can’t put my finger on why I feel this way, Star Wars seems to be a less “reusable” world than Star Trek.
If there is merit in these observations, then we should be able to look at the history of the licensed IP and find a relationship between success of the MMOG and the maturity of the world the IP described. A measure of that maturity might be how many different stories with different characters exist in the world before the MMOG is implemented. On a second dimension, the requirement for the MMOG to cleave to the story in the IP should have an impact on the success of the implementation. This might be a measure of the amount of creative control the IP holder wants to exert.
..........................................Implementation Difficulty
Loose Interpretation..Least Difficult.....Difficult
Strict Interpretation...Difficult...............Most Difficult
................................Mature World......Simple World
WoW could be considered a very loose interpretation of LoTR. SW:G is a more strict interpretation of (at least within the primary story line) a simpler world.
In a slightly different direction…
Timothy notes that WoW’s success may come in part from “the aesthetic consistency of the game, and the way that its aesthetic successfully invokes the prior cultural property on which it is based.” In practice, we have not met the challenge of creating unique heroic narratives for individual players, simultaneously coordinating them with other players’ experiences and not violating expectations about the prior cultural property. But to that end, franchises like Star Trek (or Star Wars, if differently approached) may offer some direction. Many story elements are reused. For example, in Star Trek, how often have crewmembers crawled through Jeffries tubes to repair overloaded power couplings? While dynamically building stories out of this kind of element is certainly not high art, a rich existing universe creates opportunities to create micro-arcs for individual players anchored in familiar situations. And I would note that I tie this to situations not to environmental cues – world elements like “look and feel” – which are certainly important but are not of themselves stories.
As an aside, who was Jeffries? Why are the tubes named after him? And why, after 400 years, haven’t they redesigned those power couplings? … OK, I know, I know, Matt Jeffries… give me a break :)
Posted by: Franek | Nov 30, 2005 at 13:49
Timothy wrote:
What does a MMOG designer need to do to take proper advantage of a license? Is a license reason to clamp down on innovation, or an opportunity to innovate?
In a way, I'd say neither. Building a MMOG around a licensed property is not an argument in favor of pursuing more aggressive design innovations of the kind that players and developers usually talk about incessantly.
I think you're asking the wrong question. WoW shows that innovation is not really a relevant concern to a LOT of MMO players, though it saddens me to say it.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Nov 30, 2005 at 14:00
Franek>>Those that are more strictly stories (LOTR) pose more problems for realization as a MMOG than do those that have a history of many stories, a history of introducing new characters, and exist within a mature universe (Star Trek). These latter would allow for more personal story development that could build on but not conflict with cannon and with franchise holder interests. Star Wars has a similar structure to Star Trek in this regard with a number of books and games that center on characters other than the original protagonists. But while I can’t put my finger on why I feel this way, Star Wars seems to be a less “reusable” world than Star Trek.
Star Trek has been an ongoing television property starting from about ten years before Star Wars hit the theaters, and has involved multiple long-running series set in different locations, at different times, with different casts. There's no single "Star Trek story" the way that there's a single "Star Wars story" (galactic civil war, rise and fall and restoration of Jedi) with a limited cast. (Star Wars also has less ancillary licensed material in books and comics.) That may be why you perceive Star Wars to be less "reusable."
A number of times, SWG players would ask that the "timeline" of the game be moved to post-Return of the Jedi, when it might be more plausible that the Jedi were more plentiful and the Empire's hold was collapsing after the Emperor's death (explaining the high public visibility of Rebels and Rebel-held territory). That could have opened things up a lot. Star Trek Online will be set about twenty years following the most recent movie, meaning that players won't be expecting to hear Picard say "bless you" every time their avatar sneezes.
Mihaly>>WoW shows that innovation is not really a relevant concern to a LOT of MMO players, though it saddens me to say it.
True, although as many players' first exposure to MMOs, WoW's success doesn't rule out the possibility that an innovative design well executed might have similar appeal.
Posted by: That Chip Guy | Nov 30, 2005 at 14:22
WoW is innovative just for how polished and coherent and fun and loaded with content (at least from 1-59) it is. There's much to be said for the sheer quality of the game compared to any other MMORPG ever.
Posted by: Brent Michael Krupp | Nov 30, 2005 at 14:48
Adding polish and lots of content is not innovative, at all. It is a good thing and WoW has been rewarded for it with huge player interest and burgeoning loyalty, but don't confuse goodness with innovation.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Nov 30, 2005 at 16:16
Matt said:
>I think you're asking the wrong question. WoW >shows that innovation is not really a relevant >concern to a LOT of MMO players, though it >saddens me to say it.
Not to derail this further, but many people would say Implementation > Innovation any day. WoW simply set the bar for minimum standards; a solid fundamental game is a neccessity. Call it "EQ done right" if you will, but it's hard to consider innovation relevant if your underlying game foundation is shaky.
Posted by: xilren | Nov 30, 2005 at 16:18
I'm not disagreeing at all. Innovation is a chimera. Saying that WoW is not innovative is not a slam against it at all.
As you say, WoW has done so well because they implemented a solid, focused game experience and didn't deviate much from their core mission: Monster bashing.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Nov 30, 2005 at 16:27
I guess my point is that like Stalin saying "quantity has a quality all its own", incredibly high quality on almost every level, well beyond what any other MMORPG has done, is innovative in its own way. It's an innovation to release such a nice polished game instead of shovelling buggy garbage out the door like most MMORPG releases. That's my point. I realize I'm quibbling, maybe even distorting the word, but such extreme polish -- actually doing it, and not releasing crap -- is an innovation more companies should attempt.
Posted by: Brent Michael Krupp | Nov 30, 2005 at 17:40
Narrative-inspired MMOs might work if they got rid of the level system and replaced it with a skill system. Instead of a level system, you'd have a set of possible skills. Choosing a class determines your initial skillset, and people can train their skills. Throw in skill decay and skill caps. Overlay that with a reputation system, where NPC regard changes depending on what you do.
Loosely, I'd wager that would mitigate the "mighty hero flees from rat" scenario. You start everyone out as a basic hero, from which they diversify.
Granted, this is a radical shift from the current MMO set up, but it does re-emphasize the World aspect, which is a good chunk of what's missing from inpsired MMOs.
Posted by: Michael Chui | Nov 30, 2005 at 17:52
On a tangent, Star Trek Online had Neilsen survey MMO gamers, Star Trek enthusiasts, and generic gamers, and posted the results. 69% of MMO gamers were reportedly interested in the game, 59% of Star Trek fans. Interestingly enough, especially in light of SWG's revamp, the surveyed players expressed a decided lack of interest in ground combat: "Of course, this theory illustrates one of the challenges we face in making a Star Trek MMO: combat is a basic activity that is central to a fun MMO. Yet combat is on the periphery of most people's conception of Star Trek. This of course has been a challenge faced by all Star Trek games. Even with an MMO, a genre that is ultimately more about community than combat, we will always struggle to balance the needs of the interactive medium with the ethics of Star Trek."
Hey, maybe that wasn't a tangent!
Posted by: That Chip Guy | Nov 30, 2005 at 17:59
Timothy Burke> Building a MMOG around a licensed property is not an argument in favor of pursuing more aggressive design innovations of the kind that players and developers usually talk about incessantly.
Since I expressed the opposite view earlier, let me explore that further to see if there's anything there.
I think licensing a popular property for a MMOG does bring with it an opportunity for innovation in gameplay, and that exploiting that opportunity will increase the odds of achieving artistic and commercial success. Sure, you can succeed just by being the first to do the same thing as everybody else, only better... but what happens when everybody tries that?
An original (non-licensed) world can be mostly about the gameplay. Once the gameplay features are designed, world-y features get invented to justify them. In these cases, the gameplay is the world -- it's not a gateway to content; it is itself the content. Once you've created your gameplay, you've built your world; the rest is just set dressing.
A MMOG based on a license is necessarily more of a world-y product because it's the world-y features you're buying when you license a property. A license is usually from a book, TV show, or movie, all of which are passive entertainment forms. So what you get from such a license is mostly narrative: characters and settings, and stories that move the characters through the settings. Although WoW was developed from a series of computer games, it likewise used the characters and settings and stories from the Warcraft games, rather than the RTS gameplay control structures.
Characters and settings and stories are all world-y material. To make a game out of this material -- specifically, to make a MMOG -- requires you to imagine, design, and implement gameplay features through which people can explore and experience the world content. The gameplay is the interface that defines how players access and experience the world content.
Without the gameplay interface, you're just building a simulation or an interactive novel. That's great for those who want to "live in" some beloved license, but it doesn't support those who want to "play in" that world. If you're building a commercial MMOG, you have to have play-enabling features that are the verbs by which subjects (players) interact with objects (characters, settings, stories).
A MMOG based on a popular license already has much of the world predefined. What's left to devise are gameplay interfaces that support that world content, and which in turn are supported by the content they reference. In business it's "synergy"; in the military it's a "force multiplier"; but the goal is the same: make the whole more than just the sum of the parts. Gameplay that fits its world content (because it was designed from the ground up to do so) will produce a better product than one that is imposed for some other reason (such as novelty or speed). The licensed world elements will deliver their full value, and the gameplay will feel deeper and more satisfying because there's clearly a reason why it works the way it does.
> Any design mechanic which is dissonant with the content of that fiction, whether it's a tried-and-true vanilla MMOG device or a wild new innovation, is going to irritate and alienate at least some of the market you draw in with the license.
I agree, and that is in fact my point: You can't just bolt any old (or new) gameplay system onto your world content -- whether licensed or not -- and expect it to work for that content. A different-just-to-be different system is not likely to work any better than a plain-vanilla-to-save-development-time system, and neither is likely to work as effectively as a system that has been consciously designed to best facilitate the entertaining exploration of your content.
If you ought to come up with content-exploration systems that are tailored to your world, then you might as well do so creatively and constructively. And I believe that's especially true if you're developing to a license. Each license is unique, and will, I think, be best served by creating a gameplay interface that is designed to support and be supported by the specific content of the licensed property.
That's what I mean when I wish for designers to be "innovative" when building a MMOG around a popular license.
Of course there are all the biz realities that can compromise that vision. No amount of unique vision guarantees a hit game. And as noted in previous comments in this thread, your best chance of commercial success comes from picking a specific feature that's fun to experience and implementing it cleanly.
I leave those issues for a separate thread. :-)
--Bart
Posted by: Bart Stewart | Nov 30, 2005 at 20:21
One liability of licenses that we are skirting around the edges of is the morality that a license property may advocate.
I’ve suggested that a mature source-world might contribute resonate narrative episodes to players’ personal story arcs. Michael followed that up with the suggestion that combining flexible skill acquisition and loss with narrative might obviate some grind and limit immersion-breaking episodes. Indeed, the SW:G New Game Experience has a quest-driven skill point system that actually hints at a mechanism for accomplishing that, though in fairness, they have gone the opposite direction when it come to skill type flexibility. But once you tie skill acquisition to participation in the narrative do you start bringing in more of the ethics of the source material than you might want?
When That Chip Guy quotes Daron of the Star Trek development team one word pops out… “we will always struggle to balance the needs of the interactive medium with the ethics of Star Trek”. There has always been an active atheistic theme under the surface of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. How much of that must show through in the game when the ethic of the underlying property is important to the narrative structure of the resulting MMOG? Would a Narina based MMOG need to incorporate Christian symbolism to resonate with the original narrative?
In the current crop of games it has not been a problem. The for-profit owners of the source IP are as interested in avoiding controversy as are most developers. But if the IP holder did require a strict interpretation of the ethic of the original work that might make implementation of the resulting MMOG much more difficult in a variety of ways.
Posted by: Franek | Nov 30, 2005 at 20:36
Bart, I agree with you that certain kinds of innovations are called for when you're trying to design a licensed MMOG. It's just that those aren't the kinds of game-mechanical, ludological innovations that often get discussed in development conversations.
LOTRO, for example, could probably use (have used, since they're past the point where radical ideas can come into play) some really different, innovative ways to think about populations and game environments for the reason I suggest above. Tolkien's world feels physically huge but also sparsely inhabited, in many ways--none of the story of Lord of the Rings takes place in the kind of entrepot-for-adventure that most MMOG towns or population centers become.
Or, as some suggest here, it might be exactly the game to go for narrative richness coupled with extremely slow character development. The idea of shouting "ding" on a regular basis in LOTRO feels just profoundly wrong--but if you don't have the treadmill, what will you have to motivate players instead? It's got to be content of some kind.
So, yes, innovations are certainly called for in matching licenses to design--but they need to be innovations intended to realize the source fiction in the design, rather than exotic new ways to handle crafting or great new methods for handling group combat mechanics. (LOTRO seems to be thinking about a combat mechanic similar to what EQII has for coordinating specials among characters: a fine, interesting idea, but one that doesn't really have anything to do with the fictional source beyond a generic "Oh, yeah, the Fellowship coordinated their battles really well!")
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Nov 30, 2005 at 23:40
As I have advocated elsewhere, I think one key success factor for a licensed-IP MMORPG is to maintain high fidelity (which follows “...innovation intended to realize the source fiction in the design”. For example, some people may be thrill to play a MMO version of Star Trek Armada or Star Fleet Battles (single- or group-based ship-to-ship combat) while other would rather focus more on the relishing the life of an officer on a Klingon battlecruiser.
In the LOTRO example, Osgoliath could be the andventure-town. The rebuilding of Osgoliath could satisfy the crafting and trading crownd. Forays into the eastern lands could satisfy the combat crowd, while forays into the west could satisfy the explorer and virtual expatriate crowd. Population density can be solved with instances, etc. Thus, the innovation is in the design of the gameplay and activities that maintain high fidelity to the source material.
Too often business decisions are made just to leach off the IP-value, but not necessary enhance the IP-value. For example, it is to be seen whether the new Dungeon Siege movie will enhance the IP-value of the franchise or damage it instead. The Electra movie sure damaged the cult-status of the comic book character in the pursuit of a quick buck. But at least the movie industry has a viable option of remakes :)
Now anyone want to tackle D&D Online as a licensed-IP MMORPG? Or the upcoming version of Neverwinternight as a quasi-MMORPG?
Frank
Posted by: magicback (Frank) | Dec 01, 2005 at 00:25
The main difficulty those who pull licenses from works like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have is really the nature of the narrative work.
My first reaction when reading through the classes was "Hey, look! Four ways to be Aragorn."
You can't do the rebuilding of Osgoliath in LOTRO for one simple reason: they're not rebuilding Osgoliath in LOTR. They're adventuring across distant and fantastic lands to stop the Dark Lord Sauron via the gambit of the One Ring. That's an insulated epic; it's not open to the public.
Same goes for Star Wars. It would have been much better to time SWG as AFTER Episode 6, while Luke was trying rebuild the Jedi Order, the New Republic fought off the Empire's last valiant attacks via Isard and Thrawn as they establish themselves as the power of the galaxy. The adventure of Luke, Leia, and Han is an insulated epic; it's not open to the public.
MMOs are necessarily open to the public. The epic thread is in the custody of the players, because otherwise they won't play.
Why does WoW work, instead? Because Warcraft was not a character-centered epic. It was a history, through which you paged through, immersing yourself in particularly key battles and controlling key players.
And more importantly, World of Warcraft takes place AFTER Warcraft 3. The Matrix Online takes place AFTER Matrix Revolutions. That's where it's open-ended.
In LOTRO, we're going to be able to wave "Hi!" to Frodo as he rushes past, Sam and Gollum in tow as they cross the Marshes. You know what's going to happen. How world-y is that, when the future's set in stone?
Posted by: Michael Chui | Dec 01, 2005 at 04:27
>>Why does WoW work, instead? Because Warcraft was not a character-centered epic. It was a history, through which you paged through, immersing yourself in particularly key battles and controlling key players. And more importantly, World of Warcraft takes place AFTER Warcraft 3. The Matrix Online takes place AFTER Matrix Revolutions. That's where it's open-ended.<<
It won't end though. It can't really end and that's the problem with trying to fit an overarching narrative into an MMO. By nature, an MMO is open-ended - it will be developed and and added to but won't end. The premise of WoW is that it's Warcraft 4 - the alliance vs the horde again. But this is a war that won't have a conclusion. Unlike it's predecessors, it won't finish with one side or the other winning and it is, much like SWG, stuck in time.
The only difference is that it doesn't matter because we don't know what's going to happen in the future - unlike the case with either LOTR or SW. Even if you set SWG in a post Episode 6 world, there's plenty of "Expanded Universe" material out there that people will be wondering when, for example, the Yuuzhan Vong will invade.
This isn't an issue if you design an MMO that "evolves" over time - i.e. follows a timeline. In the case of a licensed property, this would be largely unaffected by the players - Sauron will always be defeated and the Death Star will always be destroyed. In the case of MxO or WoW, developer intervention or player driven events could shape the timeline or the geo-political landscape could change (the Forsaken could leave the Horde and become part of the Alliance for example). Obviously the implication of this is that the game would never be the same for every new subscriber.
But as far as the central stories of the characters in the LOTR/SW source material, an MMO can't be about following that story but the whole point is that there's far more going on than just in that story. For example, in the original Dark Forces, Kyle Katarn - the player character - is the one who stole the plans for the first Death Star. It's a narrative which ties in to the first film but doesn't impact it in anyway.
Similarly, with a licensed MMO - there can be plenty of narratives that take place for each player character that can give them the sense of taking part in an epic tale and be part of a larger universe as long as they don't impact on the story narrative of the orignal license.
Think I better go and follow that point that I had!
Posted by: The Stalker | Dec 01, 2005 at 06:13
>>I'm still waiting for a MMOG that does not require me to hit rats or some local equivalent with a n00b-sword. For me, running from dinner-plate-sized crabs is right out.<<
This will only happen when the idea of an RPG moves away from an XP advancement based model. I gather that DDO doesn't award you any XP for mobs that are killed and only for quests that are completed.
Of course, those quests may still be of the "Kill 10 rats" type. A game like "Deus Ex" which, while ostensibly an FPS, has enough RPG elements in it that you can get through the game without killing a single bad guy, simply because skill advancement is achieved through completing quests and item rewards.
Posted by: The Stalker | Dec 01, 2005 at 06:22
I really agree with Michael: this is another of the already-made mistakes of the LOTRO team. Set the game just after the fall of Sauron, and you solve a lot of narrative headaches. You can still meet the Fellowship (except for Boromir): they're all in the world, if it's six months to a year out. There's still plenty of adventure to be had: you could even get quests from agents of King Aragorn to go into various dark lands and places to clear out evil. You could still have a few uber-baddies: contra the movie, nobody sees what happens to the Mouth of Sauron, for example; Shelob is still alive if wounded (actually if you read your Silmarillon carefully, so is Ungoliant, far in the south of the world); and who knows what there is at the bottom of Moria? Gandalf suggests there's some nasty stuff down there still.
So with that one, simple choice, you create a world where persistent things can happen, that has a living narrative AND allow people to catch up with their favorite characters. Every single major character alive at the end of LOTRO (which is almost all of them) is hanging around six months after the conclusion of the novels, and some of them are very definitely available for adventures--you could go out cleaning orcs out their nests with Pippin and Merry, for example; Gandalf could tip you off to some serious trouble brewing up by Deadman's Dike; Gimli could take you into the depths of Helm's Deep; you could quest for the Entwives at the behest of Treebeard; you could do something for the King of the Eagles or help Radagast clean out Dol Guldur. Etc.
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Dec 01, 2005 at 09:05
Hmm, I had assumed that LOTRO would be set immediately after the distruction of the ring as that was the logical choice. But guess I shouldn't be too quick to assume.
My old PnP Middle Earth game group, like many, took place AFTERWARDS. We were more interested in the world of Middle Earth rather than the LOTR event. We were the demographic group that spent heavily on all things related to Tolkien's world of Middle Earth.
The choice to set the game during the event had to do with the capitalization of the event IP value. It's a short-sighted decision that still gives them the option to move the game setting to post-LOTR after the expected teething period.
That's the only reason I can think of that would make at least some sense :)
Frank
Posted by: magicback (Frank) | Dec 01, 2005 at 09:53
It's just possible that the conditions of their license require them to set it within the frame of the books themselves. It's obvious that they've had to negotiate a very careful line in terms of relationship to the visuals and scripting of the Peter Jackson films, to which they most definitely do not have any rights; it may be that they were also required to stay strictly within the frame of the books so as to avoid generating new IP that would conflict with any claims the estate may choose to make about post-LOTR work. There's already been one notorious case of a fantasy writer trying to tell the story of the dwarven attempt to retake Moria after the end of LOTR: the estate may either be waiting for the right moment to commission its own sequels or it may simply want to block any thought of sequels.
But if the choice was open to them within the terms of their license, it's a very foolish and short-sighted strategy to set the MMOG within the narrative of LOTR and not immediately after the conclusion of the books.
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Dec 01, 2005 at 11:12
I played Asheron's Call, also by Turbine, and that featured monthly content updates with the occasional "world events" run by special admin accounts. Perhaps their hook for LOTRO is to lead players through the defeat of Sauron - that happens in the background while the playerbase is given missions and quests that are of a supportive nature. Certainly there were battles taking place all over that weren't directly covered in the books. ;)
Posted by: Karl | Dec 01, 2005 at 11:32
I agree, Frank: the MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing) campaign I ran was set in the Fourth Age: it gave us liberty to change the states of things as a result of our activities; and it let us focus on the world, instead of certain individuals.
It is strange that PnP rpgs can be (run properly) a lot more transparent and immersive than MMORPG versions, since in the latter you don't *need* to look at your character sheet or the combat log...
Posted by: Endie | Dec 01, 2005 at 11:32
The Stalker wrote:
This isn't an issue if you design an MMO that "evolves" over time - i.e. follows a timeline. In the case of a licensed property, this would be largely unaffected by the players - Sauron will always be defeated and the Death Star will always be destroyed. In the case of MxO or WoW, developer intervention or player driven events could shape the timeline or the geo-political landscape could change (the Forsaken could leave the Horde and become part of the Alliance for example). Obviously the implication of this is that the game would never be the same for every new subscriber.
The larger world reacting to player-driven events is a common thing in a lot of MMOs, but not in the big ones for a simple reason: In the sharded model, what players drive at on different shards may be completely different. Reconciling that would be really hard to do well on any scale but small ones. For instance, one might imagine the forces of "Fire" struggling against the forces of "Cold" on an MMO. On individual servers, Fire or Cold might have the upper hand, leading to greater fire damage or cold damage or whatever, but this is a trivial example of what you're talking about.
Contrast the Fire vs. Cold example to an example that I think is more what you're thinking of. A foreign race makes contact with your people. They are friendly, and how they proceed is entirely up to how the players react to the race. Do they start attacking them? Then it's war. Do they engage in discourse, seeking to trade with them? Do some of them choose to recruit the foreigners as allies to battle their own enemies? If a war starts, does city X get permanently wiped off the map due to a bungled player defence of the city and subsequent razing of it by the foreigners. Is there opportunity for players to recruit NPC villagers to their side, based on the motivations of the individual villages, and so on.
These types of things are all done (with difficulty, granted) in MMOs (indeed, the example I describe above was done in one of ours - Achaea - in which everything was driven by how players reacted. We didn't pre-plan anything in order to leave the story as open to player-driven action as possible) that are in one world, but imagine trying to manage this on a multi-shard model. Suddenly in one shard half the land's been enslaved by some foreign army, in another shard life goes on as normal, albeit enriched by trade with the foreigners, in another a couple player cities have joined forces with the NPC dwarves to battle back against the invaders, etc etc. You now have -vastly- different situations on the individual shards. Some areas might not exist on some shards, but do exist on others, etc etc. Very tough to pull off.
--matt
Posted by: Matt Mihaly | Dec 01, 2005 at 12:05
Are you sure about the interaction between players and the "fellowship" in LOTRO?
The last I check, about 6 months ago(would check now but blocked), they said that would not be happening. Instead areas would be as after the fellowship had left the area. There would be no interaction with them or events dealing with them.
Posted by: will dieterich | Dec 01, 2005 at 12:56
Using an existing, popular license implies constraints on design. Some of which can be particularly onerous.
Isn't that basically all this is saying? I'm not trying to be a pest here. I just think you could be a lot more succinct.
I think that a lot of the most interesting repercussions of using a popoular licenses occur at a different level. Yes, I think that the constraints of the SW licenses impaired the development of SW. But more interesting to me is the constraint of splitting your development team's identity when you work on a licensed title. Having worked with licensed games myself, I think there is a big push/pull dynamic whenever you get into a licensing situation that tends to stifle interesting design.
Because the licensor often cares far more about the future of their license than the future of the licensee there is an inherent conflict of interest. And because the license itself is such a hot commodity in the market of games, the developer is forced to put innovation second to keeping the licensor happy.
Going further: when you are dealing with licensed property your focus shifts (or should shift, if you want to make a buck) from creating an interesting game to creating an experience that invokes in players that which they like about the license. You go for "oh, cool, he's in the movie" instead of "wow, that minigame was cool, I want to play again." A license gets purchased because of its marketing identity first and its gameplay potential second. So the people who have obtained the licenses and are now paying you to make a game around it typically don't care about your cool gameplay ideas.
License constraints make it hard to implement good gameplay while maintaining the integrity of the license. But the licensor/licensee dynamic and the general marketing purpose of licenses shifts resources from gameplay to dwelling upon the licenses and elements that will instill warm-fuzzy moments of recognition from the fanbase. This, more than anything is what dominates the design of a licensed title.
And it's interesting to me that SWG failed, at least on some levels, because it tried to buck this trend. LA let them run along and make a virtual world where a simplistic, Star Warsy action-fest with world-like features would have sold a lot better.
As a gamer, I hate licenses. As a games programmer, I can't deny their power on the market.
Posted by: The MadHatter | Dec 01, 2005 at 15:17
From the FAQ at the LOTRO official site:
"Gameplay Questions
Can I play as a member of the Fellowship?
You will not be able to play as a member of the Fellowship. You will, however, meet the Fellowship and many other important characters from the books, and participate at times in important events that take place in parallel to the main events of The Lord of the Rings. The goal for LOTRO is to allow each player to create and grow their own Tolkien hero within an authentic Middle-earth mythology and environment, and to task them with their own heroic quest.
Does LOTRO follow the story of the Fellowship?
While you will not travel with the Fellowship in their quest to destroy the One Ring, your character will follow his/her own heroic path within the same time and place and in some places, will actually participate in events that aid the Fellowship on their journey.
Posted by: Timothy Burke | Dec 01, 2005 at 19:46
STO should have an easy time developing Star Trek themes if they think outside the MMO model a bit. Social aspects and ship control are a HUGE part of the universe.
Design a system that requires cooperation operating a Starship. Make each job interesting (not everyone can be the captain) and allow for quests that involve the entire crew.
They HAVE to make the space travel good, or the game will flop. SWG suffered heavily for the lack of space travel (among other things).
I have high hopes for the game, IF they can get past the conventional MMO model. That is a HUGE if, though.
Posted by: Mike "Salvator" Sherman | Dec 01, 2005 at 20:01
"I have high hopes for the game, IF they can get past the conventional MMO model. That is a HUGE if, though."
I'd have to agree. The "class" system doesn't really make sense in relation to how human beings actually work, but it's remarkably widespread in current day MMOG's because of Dungeons and Dragons. Similarly the D&D model of hacking on something for half an hour to kill it bears little resemblance to reality and just felt dead wrong in SWG. Can you imagine having to shoot somebody with a phaser 20 times in order to kill them?
Posted by: lewy | Dec 02, 2005 at 21:13
I haven't been up to anything recently. I agree, Frank: the MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing) campaign I ran was set in the Fourth Age: it gave us liberty to change the states of things as a result of our activities; and it let us focus on the world, instead of certain individuals.
I don't care.
Posted by: Fisher | May 20, 2006 at 10:51