The BBC posts a new story today reflecting on the potential of the new massively multiplayer online game (MMO), "Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning" (WAR) to usurp World of Warcraft (WOW) from its current domination of the PC-based MMO world. (MMOs for those who don't know are adequately described in the article as: "creating characters that carry out quests (go here, kill this, find that) that gradually turn a weakling into a hero.")
The articles cites the work of MMO Godfather, Richard Bartle, and offers that WAR is going to try to and engage the interest of gamers who are not so much into "go here, kill this." Bartle, for those who aren't familiar, designed the first MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) and from it the so-called "Bartle Quotient," (that links takes you to an online quiz where you can calculate yours). The article talks about how Bartle uses a deck of cards as a metaphor for player types:
Hearts are those that are all about socialising and grouping in guilds or on quests. Diamonds care about treasure and finding stuff in a game. Spades are all about digging deep into the lore and rules. Clubs are those that like hitting people with one.(Barnett is Paul Barnett, the game's creative director.)
"What WoW tends to be is a very heavy club game," he said. "It's become so big and dominant that all games go that way.
"But the other suits? That's pretty much where we have gone."
By concentrating on the club-type player WoW resembled a single-player game that many people just happen to play at the same time, said Mr Barnett.
We blogged about WOW's emphasis on "clubbing" earlier when we chronicled Eureka's exploration of World of Warcraft. And, my sister, an anthropologist and avid WOW player has shared similar frustrations with WOW.
The once-popular MMO Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), while still under the creative leadership of Raph Koster saw the importance of creation and exploration as player experiences. Raph created a world which did not necessarily include combat as part of gameplay. People could be entertainers, crafters (people who built things instead of killing them) or any other number of "social" skills that integrated into overall gameplay. When WOW began its ascent, SWG changed. Subsequently, Raph left SWG, and it changed into a game that attempted, it appeared, to emulate WOW, albeit unsuccessfully. Many players left ... And a number of them went to Second Life, which offered a virtual world entirely user-created and, as such, replete with social and creation opportunities. Indeed, there are still many Star Wars Galaxies refugees who have found new homes living out their dreams under what I call the Tapestry of the Lucasian-inspired Mythos, in Second Life.
In 2003 I interviewed Richard Bartle as part of my initial research into how games can serve to build bridges between cultures. In our conversation, I spoke candidly about how powerful and transformative my experience in Star Wars Galaxies was. Indeed, it was the friendships I developed playing SWG with people around the world that lay the foundation for what would become the Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project. Bartle left me with these words, which I reflect on often in contemplating the significance of virtual worlds and MMOs in our society:
"Your first experience in an virtual world can never be replicated. It's like being reborn. Everything is fresh and new."He went on to say that after that first experience, you will spend the rest of your gaming and virtual world time trying to recapture that initial powerful feeling through other MMOS and virtual worlds. I tend to think he's right.
Will WAR get it right?
2 comments:
Not to contradict the canonized, but my first multiplayer game was DragonMUD, which did mark me some, but my first MMO was EQ which I thought was fun and my first real *love* was SWG.
It's not all imprinting. It's also about how the game "fits" you. In EQ I was an officer in the oldest extant guild on EMarr, and my title was "Crafting Mistress." At the time crafting in EQ was rudimentary and arcane. So far as we know, I am the first person in MMO history to have been designated as a guild officer as a crafting mentor, in the early days of EQ.
But in SWG, I felt like I had found a game that fit my worldview. To me it was a "games master" experience.
Some games are, as you say, designed for what the tabletop players used to call "monty haul hack-and-slash" -- just kill things and accrue experience, loot, cash and glory.
Others appeal more to Bartles' Socializers and Explorers than his Killers and Achievers.
When D20s ruled the earth this was less dependent on rule-sets than the creativity of the games master. Now, "the medium is the message" -- the framework of the world is set up, and like the watchmaker God, the game designers sit back and watch a game unwind more or less according to the destiny they programmed for it.
This is even true in Second Life, where a sandbox philosophy appeals to explorers, achievers (who like to build, or win prizes for "best in plaid" at a party), and above all to socializers.
There are very few "killers" in SL -- some play in the overlay games that in-world builders have programmed, creakily, to run on roleplaying sims. But the most famous killer-types in SL are the griefers, who have created their own PvP/RvR game-within-a-game.
Where a game appeals primarily to Socializers, the role of killers is to disrupt the social contract, yes?
great blog. keep up the good work!
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