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Storytelling For MMO Games Discussed
Thanks to GameRifts for its interview with television and videogame scriptwriter Lee Sheldon regarding the state of writing/story in online gaming. Sheldon, who has most recently worked on Cyan's URU: Ages Beyond Myst, is asked "Do you see good, even epic story lines, becoming a core feature of MMORPGs in the future?", and responds: "Yes, and sooner rather than later... The big question of course is whether [developers will] continue to spend all their money on high quality art and programming and treat the writing as a hobby anyone can do. Without the same commitment to quality as in the other elements that make up an MMORPG the writing will continue to fail miserably."
One of the main reasons I keep going back to playing certain single-player RPG's like Fallout, Betrayal at Krondor, Planescape: the Torment and Baldur's Gate is the excellent storyline, worthy of any movie. Maybe if any MMORPG had a good storyline, I would check it out ...
With all that being said, I think that if the writing comes up in terms of quality, these games are poised to take off in popularity far greater than they currently enjoy.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
All of the MMO's lately have the same story..... 'we're cancelled before launch!' I hope one of them can break the mold sometime soon. I enjoy MMO's launchs, it's kinda like watching a car wreck.
I know a few MMOs claimed to want this. Shadowbane particularly comes to mind, they promised to hire actors to play roles and run regular events in a story arc you could control. I remember exactly 2 events actually happening.
In reality, this is fairly hard to do. You need tohire good professional writers, who follow eveyr possible branch of the story arc out for months. You need to have the content happen often enough to make it interesting for all. There's a lot of potential there, but its going to be expensive and difficult to tap.
A better solution may be to go for episodic games. Create a world, and sell the game cheaply (or over the net release) and have a series of self contained story plots. Release a new one every month or whatever for a low price (10 bucks?). Buying it in store gives 2 or 3 free episodes, web gives 1. Make it online, but not true MMO- maybe 100 people at a time to keep it reasonable. I think it would be a lot easier to do this than to create enough content to keep an MMO going.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Nothing impressive but they at one point made a attempt at it. The citys being invaded, suden death in. then fighting back the hordes....fun days.
Asheron's Call had a pretty broad story line the beginning of the game. Black spires appearing over the countryside, shadows terrorizing people (players). I was never involved with those parts of the story, I was still way way too low level to leave the towns, but I heard of players bringing down the spires and such. Mabye someone who is more of an AC vet can expand on this for us?
I've been playing FFXI pretty heavily since November. As you'd expect from a Final Fantasy game, the plot is a fairly large part of it.
However...
It isn't a "normal" Final Fantasy plot and comparing it with these is a good way of observing the limitations that going massively multiplayer puts on a game's "central" plot. The Final Fantasy series is pretty well known for its distinctive main characters. Love them or hate them, Celes, Cloud and Squall are pretty much part of the canon of classic gaming characters. By contrast, in FFXI, the player character is nothing more than the player's avatar in the game world. Sure, if you play the game's plot through to the conclusion, he's probably going to end up saving the world or something (I don't know for sure... I've not got there yet and people in-game are very good about not spoiling the story). However, the player character is far closer to what we're used to seeing in "Western" CRPGs, particularly those based around the AD&D rules; a blank-slate upon which the player can try to impose his own personality, so far as the rules of the game will allow. Of course, this is one respect in which MMORPG games go far beyond traditional CRPGs; while in, for example, Baldur's Gate, you might get three basic options for conversing with an NPC, one good, one neutral and one evil, communication between players in a MMORPG is almost completely unrestricted.
However, freedom of expression doesn't necessarily translate into a good plot. Square-Enix obviously put a lot of effort into making FFXI's plot as compelling as possible; there are a good few twists and your perceptions of some of the NPCs will shift dramatically over the course of a game. However, while a traditional Final Fantasy game will last around 40 hours, getting through the FFXI plot is likely to take closer to 40 days. Plot events are, by the very nature of the game, much more widely dispersed. For example, to do the plot mission required to gain rank 4, you'll need, at the very least, a party of characters of about level 35. To do the next mission, for rank 5, you'll need a party of approximately 10 levels higher. Moving from level 35 to level 45 will require several weeks for any player who can't stay in game every hour of every day. As a result, the plot sections seem few and far between and are never really going to form the bulk of the player's impressions of the game. There are lots of optional quests that expand the player's knowledge of the game-world, but they're not what I'd call "plot".
There are other potential options for doing plot in a MMORPG. One is to adopt the Eve Online approach, and have the devs write a plot based around the events that occur between groups of players in the game. Of course, I understand that this has been known to backfire spectacularly, when a group object to how the devs have portrayed them. You can also try to let the players write the plot as they go along. However, this relies on having a large number of players willing to put time and effort into creating the story and willing to accept roles for themselves that aren't "savior of mankind, ruler of the universe" and who actually have the talent to write. I suspect that a very small proportion of the current MMORPG player-base truly fits this bill.
To sum up, a plot can add a lot to a MMORPG and can be an important factor in enhancing a player's enjoyment of the game. However, it's never going to be among the most central parts of the MMORPG experience, on the basis of current designs, and what I'd say to any current MMORPG developers is that it's far more important to get the play mechanics and the player-economy right before worrying about plot.
As long as we keep seeing users screaming "I l337! Looser! I am l337! You n00b!", i don't think there will be room for any type of immersion and storytelling.
Party member: "Shall we attack the castle now?"
You: "We shall rest here until darkness fall. We will attack after the darness has stroke."
Party member: "Yes sir."
Someone a mile away: "I l337! Looser! I am l337! You n00b!"
Yes, because everyone who plays Final Fantasy just raves about the character advancement paths, noone ever mentions the story. They ought to just cut that part out.
Sure, anyone can write a story. It takes talent to write a good story, especially good dialog. I don't know the qualifications of the guy interviewed, but if he has any prior professional writing experience I'd give him a far better chance that the average Schmoe.
As for the don't play for the story thing- umm, no. Other than in MMOs, noone plays to mindlessly choose from the spell of attack menus. They play to see the game world, to interact with it, to see the story unfold. We had RPGs without stories back in the 80s- they were called "Dungeon Crawls" and they aren't made anymore.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Just wanted to chime in about the story telling used in some of the MMORPG.
If you think about it, the story telling and expectancies in a universe are highly linked to this universe subject (heroic quest in med-fan, technological plot in sci-fi...). I'm simplifying, as you can have very different quests, but this is typically what the player is expecting.
Enters City of Heros. In this game the universe is based on the super heroes from comic books (but generic, no trade marks...). The way the story telling is intertweened with the universe is great: you get tips on the universe and the villains through contacts, those are "personnal" (for your character only), but you can ask for help from other heroes. And as in any comic books, your influence in the universe is actually both little and secretive (in most comics, no hero defeats an Archvillain definitly, it is just a passing victory. In the same way, your deeds are hardly known to the common person if you save the earth...).
This setup and universe is actually quite fitting to the MMO games. You have common parts (the streets, with rampant crimes as random encounters) and private parts (the missions), even some longer "story arcs" that can be completed as team only. It allows for both multiplayer, interaction and storytelling. The impact on the world can be seen as limited, but fits well in the setting.
The first MMO to really tempt me. And so far, no disapointment. I'm learning a bit more of the world every time i play and uncover some more plot. Best compromise between MMO and story i've seen so far.
"Do you see good, even epic story lines, becoming a core feature of MMORPGs in the future?"
This would be the same game that cancelled its MMORPG component after customers had already bought copies but the MMORPG component hadn't shipped yet?
Surely, to have a meaningful opinion on the subject, you should actually have been involved in the area you claim expertise on and actually stayed with it through to completion.
Next people like George W. Bush will think their failing to do their service in the National Guard qualifies them to make decisions as Commander-in-Chief.
What kind of an insane world would that be?!
actually he worked on more than just the Uru mmorpg, the listings are up on his site about it, Uru is just the one that Div decided to list on the interview intro :)
I tend to thing MM games are going to be the killer app for interactive storytelling. If you think about it, there are really only three ways to do interactive content for MM games:
1. Create a fixed set of non-interactive content. Everyone in the game world does the same quests, reads the same dialog, fights the same big bad guy for the same reason. Alternately, a few people get to participate interactively, while the vast majority simply watch (or show up for the epic battle).
2. Employ humans to create custom content for each player. Figure out a way to do this for under $20 per player per month.
3. Programmatically create custom content for each player.
There's actually already quite a bit of work going on in this area. The most interesting approach I'm familiar with is Padraig Cunningham's work with case-base systems. In a nutshell, Cunningham proposes borrowing plot recipes from the russian structuralists. One then plugs existing NPCs into the appropriate roles (wise old man, bearer of gifts, etc). The system scales by allowing one NPC to play multiple roles in multiple simultaneous stories, so long as the roles don't conflict.
So, not unlike real life, your view of an NPC (as a dastardly villain, unexpected benefactor, or innocent in distress) depends on what you're doing when you meet that person.
For more information on Cunningham's work, check out his publications. In particular, the paper entitled "A Multiplayer Case Based Story Engine."
Personally, I'm working on a system for generating plot-rich city histories (via personality and relationship modeling). My goal is to get to a point where one could plop down a new town, set some parameters, and "age" the town n years (and get sensible personal relationships, family trees, interesting local history, street layouts, etc).
Not sure what a reception this will get from Slashdot, but Dragon Empires, (http://www.dragonempires.com/) hired Piers Anthony (Xanth, etc) to do their story. He did the framework and foundation of the story.
Then other people keep fleshing it out more and more. It's actually the only MMORPG where I read all the backlog of fiction that goes along with it. This one is actually somewhat interesting, (even if it as well will have nothing to do with the gameplay.)
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
The only game company I know that takes pride in their writers and actually has full time positions for "Writers", "Senior Writers" and "Lead Writers" (taken from their jobs page / game credits) is BioWare (http://www.bioware.com).
Granted their games are not MMORPGs but story driven CRPGs - from what they say on their forums, they are very proud about that. Also they got the IDGA Writing Excellence Award this year for KotOR.
I tried to find other companies that have the luxury(?) of employing full time writers, but I failed...
So assuming you have a story, should the players become involved in it?
If so, you are only catering to the few hardcore players who are at the point where you can make that kind of difference. Everybody else is re-doing content they have already seen, discovered, and posted all about on their guild website a month or a year ago.
If not, you have a storyline like in Everquest. Why should I bother to read any of it when it no one can advance it?
I read that A Tale In the Desert had rules which the players could change. This is *like* a story, sort of, but more like politics.
I'm just not sure what a "story" would do for a MMORPG. Let me give an example. Please fix it, or offer a counter-example as to how a story would work.
Let's say there is a storyline where Orcs are in constant battle with the Elves in this wooded area. As a young elf, I go kill Orcs. "Storylines" like this abound. But I cannot change the world - and even if I could, it would already have been done. People have compared killing Orcs to social work, or street cleaning. Not exactly heroic, as a heroic effort would actually defeat the orcs once and for all and there wouldn't be anymore for the next generation of young elves to kill, ruining the game for them.
Perhaps instead we could have the orcs replaced later by, say, goblins? But again, no real progress is made: ultimately no real change occurs. If it did, it would ruin the game for the next generation.
Note: this is implemented (in a form) in Eq in the semi-infamous "Hollowshade Moore War" where various factions occupy a zone and you can defeat one to spawn more of another. It has technical problems (which involve GM intervention, which is very rare: unless you play on the US$40/month server "legends" in which case the GM will "reset" the war 24/7.)
We could have limited time quests, where say if 100 people do a quest then it ends and a new quest takes it's place. Again, it cuts out the later people for the benefit of the uber gamers now - and I'll bet you anything they will just redo the quest over and over to get to the new content and be the first to do so.
I would love to fix this problem and am interested in any ideas people may have.
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a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
They're not made anymore?
I'm a game developer with degrees in both Computer Science and Spanish Literature. I know a bit about writing and have some practical experience working on my game Meridian 59.
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The biggest issue is that online games involve a level of participation you really don't find in many modern storytelling media. The closest you find are some interactive plays such as Tony and Tina's Wedding or some forms of oral storytelling, notably campfire stories or "egg timer" stories. And, while we have plenty of practice in evaluating traditional literature (I even have a degree in it!), there's less attention dedicated to more interactive forms. One of the more interesting treatments is Hamlet on the Holodeck
Personally, I think the different media are different enough that it becomes hard to really define online storytelling in traditional terms. Even the title of Lee Sheldon's new book includes the term "Character Development", which is often largely out of the hands of the developer in online virtual worlds; players will develop their own characters, and often not in the ways that would make the most interesting characters and stories. It's very difficult for traditional storytellers/writers to let the players take nearly complete control over the creative direction of the story.
Even in single-player games you run into problems, as one of the most important aspects of good storytelling is pacing, and the player's actions play a large part in the pacing of a game. Highly linear games tend to do good with pacing, but they tend to be restrictive. More open-ended games really focus on the interactivity of the game, but often at the expense of control over pacing. If the pacing isn't right, then that interesting character is going to be of less interest to the player.
That said, I don't think storytelling in online game is a lost cause. I think there will be interesting stories told, but I don't think they'll conform to the forms we've defined for traditional non-interactive media. I think we might see some cool new things, and I especially hope that some of them show up in my future projects.
My thoughts,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
I agree that other players are the ultimate keystone to whether an MMORPG has a satifying story to it or not. However, I think the concept of 'storytelling' in MMORPGs is a hangover from earlier days and on its way out. The idea that the game tells a story to the player is arse backwards - what is starting to happen and will increasingly happen is that the players tell the story to the game.
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Where the RPG is not online the story is mostly already set before the player starts. Where the RPG is online and many players are in the same game, the interactions between those players takes centre stage. The players 'live' the game rather than simply 'playing' it. That can either work very well or very badly - it can get spoilt very easily by a few annoying users. In a shared virtual world though, scripted sequences of events are more obviously brittle and less satisfying and are just plain too labour-intensive to sustain over time.
I think what we'll see is the development of more robust virtual world designs which can tolerate and incorporate player actions. Part of that is figuring out how to deal with the minority who deliberately spoil the experience for others and part of it is working out how to make game AI work to produce a logical and satisfying reaction to actual events in-world. The story will grow organically out of the AI. For this reason I think the future of MMORPGs belongs far more to code writers than script writers.
Interesting thread that deals with emerging content in virtual worlds:
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/06/m
First let me say that the parent post is informed, interesting and insightful. Mod points are very definitely due. I totally agree with the assessment of the different natures of traditional storytelling and the online version and there are interesting further points made which had not occurred to me.
I think that MMORPGs are at such an early stage of development that we are still groping forwards to find how best to design them in order to provide a rich and immersive experience. I think we are moving away from product and towards service (in the broad sense of providing entertainment.) The final state is presumably a 'virtual world' where nothing is scripted and everything is the emergent result of interactions within that world. Thus the elements of story such as backstory, characters and plot will develop organically in-game rather than being provided by scriptwriters. True, such a world has to be interesting and fun but I disagree with the idea that the solution is to buy in scriptwriters. The end state seems a long way off though and so we must ask ourselves the question: what is the next step?
I expect we will see MMORPGs move away from stories and towards experiences. What I mean by that is that I imagine virtual worlds will be something like Disneyland where there are automated NPCs but also people employed to work as an in-game agent to keep the immersive experience running smoothly. Something along the lines of the out-of-work actor in the Goofy suit. This seems to me the cheapest and most flexible way to bring richness into the game. The virtual world will be the 'glue' that holds a number of more traditional game formats together so that your character may for instance enter a race, fight in a tournament or put a team together to compete against other PCs and gain credits, reputation and experience. I imagine these games-within-the-game will for a while take centre stage and push out the storytelling aspect - much as the rides at Disneyworld take centre stage and Goofy just ties it all together. What is being sold is entertainment more than the story that goes with it. That a good story is entertaining is something of a incidental bonus. The majority of people are too lazy to roleplay seriously and these games will need to cater to the lowest common denominator.
I guess we will gradually move towards a fully immersive experience with in-world consequences and history, but at the moment it will be far easier to bolt in tried-and-tested subgames with a weaker RPG component around it. In the end serious roleplayers are a niche market compared to 'lazier' casual gamers and game design will follow the money. It'll be interesting to watch but I think the franchising we see for instance in Star Wars will develop into an integrated online experience sold as a single package. That's much more the service model and allows developers more control over their games, upgrades to those games and the predictability of their revenue streams. It also means weak offerings are supported by stronger ones and the variety afforded by the package moves it closer to having universal player appeal.
My 2c in return.
How do you write a story for 1000 protagonists?
Also, if we can interact and change the world, then we can affect (e.g. ruin) other people's experiences. If we can't, then it's just a blob of text.
Last, the people who ruin stories aren't just the almost-apocryphal "l33ts"; it's the silly people who won't go along with the story as presented, and instead want their own. It sounds good in theory, but in practice a bunch of people making up their own stories further divides and diminishes the game world.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Didn't check out all the links, but I know that Diablo and Champions of Norrath do have a storyline. There's also the minor fact that Diablo is an action/adventure, not an RPG.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The problem is that the audience isn't willing to pay for it. Doing a quick lookup, the standard 3-day "park hopper" ticket for Disneyland is $124 if purchased in advance. That's only a bit under what you'd pay for a full year of Meridian 59! Yet, you see numerous complaints from people on sites like Slashdot complaining about having to spend $15/month on subscriptions. Honestly, the audience that are interested in virtual worlds isn't ready to pay the price for a focused experience like you get at a theme park like Disney.
To be fair the development and running costs aren't exactly equivalent either. I very much doubt any real-world theme park (let alone Disneyworld) could be built and maintained by a "single-digit number of developers". The land must be bought, the physical theme park installed and kept in good condition, the place has to be cleaned and there are most probably significant hidden costs in things like insurance policies. A direct comparison on entrance fee/subscription fee is likely to be misleading.
If you can figure out the cost of providing Disneyworld, the numbers may be more useful. Even then, I am cautious of the approach. My thinking is that theme parks provide an alternative entertainment format to the more traditional storytelling approach and may be better suited to the interactive/collaborative experience of MMO games. Although it is interesting to take that further into a comparison of costs, I think you have to be cautious if you do so. The customer expects an online 'theme park' to cost less than its real-world equivalent and I have to say I don't think that expectation is unreasonable. So far as I am aware, the costs of providing the experience are lower online than in the real world. It then becomes a question of what a fair price is based on the costs involved. The real-world equivalent is of limited value when answering that question.
Taking up on your point on customer expectations, I think there is a subtle(ish) but important distinction here. My take on the customer mindset is that Disneyworld patrons pay for a relatively short and intense burst of entertainment wrapped in a glitzy package - 'fast food fun'. On the other hand, the RPG component of MMO games seems more about developing an alter-ego into which players can escape and in which the entertainment is sustained over a period of time. I don't see them as being directly equivalent. What I do think though, is that the 'bang for buck' which justifies Disneyworld-level prices is more likely to come from a collection of MMO games based on tried-and-tested game formats for which an RPG can provide the context (the packaging).
While I'd like to see complex, convincing, 'real' MMORPGs, I don't expect them to arrive in the near future. In the meantime virtual worlds are going to need to provide customers with other reasons to stump up their mothly subscriptions. I think they are going to have to provide players with experiences before they provide them with stories.
While I find the plot elements very weak in Mythic's game (the machanics are fun tho, especially player vs player raids), the idea of separating the two player types, and imposing a ban on those breaking charachter on a roleplaying server, shouldn't be hard for any other implementation.
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