Part 1: Does traditional storytelling have a place in MMOs?

A game called The Elder Scrolls Online launched recently—you may have heard of it. While you may not have heard me make mention of it, I have been pretty critical of the game for some time. There are some things about it that, in my opinion, are simply broken, but you could say that about many games, MMOs in particular. So this week after much goading by friends I decided to give the game a fair shake—many people are enjoying it, after all.

So off on an Elder Scrolls adventure I went, willing to put a whole week of my gaming time on it in the name of research, hoping to be proven wrong. I tried to look past the things I disliked and to enjoy the experience for what it was, and play the game in the way it was intended.

While there are some things that I was too critical of, and other areas that I think are quite good, on the whole I had a terrible time.

When I said before I was willing to put a whole week of gaming time into it, I should have said I failed to put more than a couple of days into it. I am purposefully being as vague as possible about what it is I like and don't like about the game; this isn't a review and the specifics are unimportant.

What it boils down to is that I wasn't having any fun playing the game. I was having fun chatting and joking around on Skype, but the game itself did nothing for me. I'll make it clear at this point—it’s fine if you like the game, I'm not saying you shouldn't, I'm just making the point that it's not for me.

When push comes to shove, I think the phrase 'it isn't fun' is the most damning thing you can say about a game. While you could write thousands of words explaining in detail why you believed it (just be glad I didn't) the phrase cuts so violently to the core of the issue. It isn't fun.

Of course, fun isn't the only thing games can try to be – the developer CCP maintains that fun is only a very small part of a user's experience, so there's little benefit in trying to design for it. But then, they would say that, they make the utterly brilliant but not obviously 'fun' EVE Online.

So I've been thinking a lot this week about fun - what it is and why it's important in games, particualrly MMOs, and specifically EverQuest Next and Landmark.

The way I see it, MMO games are fighting a losing battle against player expectations. In single player games the story and setting can be tailored to the player in a way that cannot be replicated in an MMO (without resorting to instancing or phasing, and if you're doing that, why is it an MMO?) this means that like a good book you can immerse yourself in the experience and be swept along with the story. If you frequent RPG forums, you might think this was the sole purpose of games as a medium. MMOs will try, but for me it comes across like a David Cage game that would rather be a movie, it doesn't play to the strengths of the genre and ends up being a weak version of two things.

But what if we started with the notion that an MMO should not attempt to allow the player to immerse themselves through the story? What if instead, an MMO gave players the tools and motivations to create their own narrative not by playing a character, but through their own actions? There are many ways a game can be enjoyable, or 'fun' if you prefer, and creating a compelling narrative is just one option.

This is the obvious point to bring up the distinction between themepark and sandbox MMOs, but for me it holds true for most multiplayer experiences. Multiplayer can have great story, but without the tools to deliver it effectively and convincingly, it falls flat. Conversely, multiplayer has the ability to support emergent experiences that a heavily controlled single player title cannot. Even a game as deep and sprawling as Skyrim cannot compete with the possibility space of a game of Dota 2. So why do we insist on forcing a round peg into a square hole?

I imagine most people reading this are veteran MMO players, and I would be willing to bet that for the vast majority of you, your most memorable experiences in your favourite MMO were not plot points. I bet they were times that you overcame a challenge, achieved something you didn't think you could, or when you were just hanging out with your favourite guildies. Those are the stories you remember, even if you weren't playing a sandbox game.

This is a point I've made before, and I'm sure I will again. Most likely next week, when we will continue our discussion on fun, this time focussing on mechanics!

I could put some awful comment about having fun reading this here, but I won't.

LockSixTime

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