Contrasting User-Driven Play With Developer Vision

GameSetWatch is running an opinion piece (sparked by a lecture at NYU by Deus Ex developer Warren Spector) about the difference between game experiences that are specifically planned by the game's creators and experiences that are either constructed by players or arise unexpectedly. Quoting: "One thing Spector said during the NYU discussion was that he feels multiplayer games are 'lazy.' This is the designer in him talking, of course — his theory that in letting players build stories via Left 4 Dead-style happy accidents in open worlds, the designer doesn't have to tackle complex challenges like making choices meaningful, or making characters believable. Spector wants to take on those challenges, and he doesn't like the idea that user-driven play, from his standpoint, effectively allows game design to bypass them. It's actually an idea I relate to a lot as a writer — I was raised in an era of authoritative media, when individual voices drove culture, opinion and information. The internet's changed everything, of course; the authoritative voice has evolved into a conversation between writer and audience, and the writer now leads the community discussion rather than acting as a single determiner, a unilateral judge."

Comments

Who is asking for it?

[plover]

Who wants to be always led about by the nose through every adventure? We did that before.

Rigid story lines have all the staying power of cut scenes. They're fun once or twice, but then they get in the way of game play, and it doesn't take long for the average player to <esc> their way past them.

Multiplayer is about "players". Let them play with each other. A wizened NPC that tells you "You must not enter the Dungeon of Doom until you have brought me the Ring of Gold" is fine in single player mode, but a group of friends doesn't want to grind, they want to play together.

Different challenges.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I understand that there's a certain challenge and art that's lost -- that of the narrative. This is still possible, but more difficult, and often users can completely throw off your plans. It has to be a much faster-paced, more dynamic story -- the kind you live as a GM, not the kind you write as an author.

But now you have the completely different problem, just as challenging, of balancing gameplay mechanics, storyline, politics, and everything else that makes up a community.

Ultimately, it's likely to be more frustrating for you, but more fun for the gamers -- which is really the point.

One example, a well-known story from Eve Online: The developers created a long event, with a fair amount of plot and depth. The first part of it involved getting a bunch of small ships to attack some huge battlecruiser, that they had no business fighting -- but get enough small players together, and they'd have a shot. Great way for newbies to have some fun.

Problem is, some fairly powerful pirates -- possibly a guild or two -- got wind of this, killed the target ship, then set up an ambush and massacred all the newbies.

The bad: That whole plotline, and all the work that had gone into it, had to be scrapped.

The good: This story has become legend. It actually makes me want to play Eve, knowing my actions, as a player, could have that much impact on the game.

Another, probably more well-known example: The Sleeper, in Everquest. This was a creature that is several times more powerful than gods in that game -- in fact, if I'm not mistaken, several thousand times more powerful than any one god. It can only be awoken once per server, and once awake, you only get one attempt to kill it, or it can never be attempted again on that server.

This creature was simply not intended to be killed.

However, instead of actually making it invincible, the developers just gave it insanely high vitality, and the ability to pretty much one-hit anything, and sometimes several things at once. This is cool -- using actual game mechanics, rather than top-down "make it so" directives, to enforce the idea that this thing is hardcore.

Well, some players killed it. It took about 300 players or so, but they did it.

And again, this is exactly what the developers did not want. In fact, the first attempt, they simply deleted the creature when it got to around 30%. Players were outraged enough that, once they were sure that killing it wouldn't cause a bug, they reset the event and allowed the players to try again. This time, they won.

The point isn't that you shouldn't bother to create well-written, finely-crafted events. In fact, without a rich world around him, and without his own nicely scripted event, The Sleeper would just be another dragon. Yawn.

The point is that players will do things that are completely unexpected. They'll do things that surprise you, frustrate you, and go directly against what you intended.

And you will never understand this medium until you understand that this is the best thing that can happen. Games are great because this can happen.

Re:Rise of the idiots

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Do you seriously think that professional journalism is anything more than idiots with training in sensationalism? When New Scientist will have articles on zero point energy and 20/20 will run segments on engines that run on water or even free energy machines? Or that the bulk media runs the moon landing conspiracy theories?

Nothing has changed. Idiots will be idiots and like attracts like. Anyone smart will know not to listen.