Pumping Irony

I could have just saved the draft and continued the post after I finished my day, but these meandering style posts (and this will be one as well) can turn into a literal wall of text that become even more challenging for the reader (and author, to be honest) to be able to garner the actual message or point that is being buried in the tangential threads of text. So here we are, back at another hotel for the night, finishing up my thoughts on MMO malaise.

One of the articles I’ve had on the back burner for over a month is how insular we’ve become as MMOGers over the past 4+ years. I’ve made comments saying as much on several blogs over the past few weeks but again, as per the title, my motivation to actually write the full article was never strong enough. Now it’s a month later and I’ve had other things on my mind so the original message may not make it intact.

In a “real” multi-player game, everyone is there to play the game in the same way and accomplish the same goal. It doesn’t matter if it’s a shooter, a racer, a sports game or a card game. Everyone has come to that game to win for themselves or for their team, depending on the game type in question.

What MMOGs do is provide a server for 3K-5K (on average) players to do their own thing. We’re not there to play “with” each other, unless you use “with” in the broadest sense such as “I live in the USA with 304+ million other people.” My daily or even lifetime interactions however, are with a much smaller group. Family, friends, co-workers, etc. A meta-network of several small “guilds” so to speak. Everyone else in my neighborhood, in my city, in my state, in the entire US, is just “out there” in the periphery. There may occasionally be someone I’ll take notice of, perhaps even admire (like the old days of admiring someone’s raid gear, etc.) but for the most part other people are minor background movement so that I know I haven’t become Robert Neville. At worst, everyone else in my immediate vicinity is simply in my way and preventing me from getting where I want to go in a calm, timely fashion. Rather like the old mob camping and kill stealing of Ye Olde MMOGs, I suppose.

The point is, MMOGs simply provide a large staging area (server) for single-player (solo) and normal multi-player (group/raid) content. Not one single MMOG has been designed that engages every player on the server to play in the same way for the same reason. I doubt it’s even possible. What we do is play MMOGs either solo or with our small little cliques of virtual friends, be they guild-mates or not. Outside of that, all the other players we see could just as well be NPC’s. They’re just “out there” in the periphery.

That is probably one of those “DUH!” thoughts, but it’s also probably at the root of the whole “solo vs. group” arguments, and possible part of the “casual vs. hardcore” since MMOGs are the only game genre that is specifically designed to not have a single playstyle or goal. Deep in our subconscious we “know” that, but we seem to refuse to allow that knowledge to alter our belief systems and stubbornly cling to the “normal” belief that everyone else is there to play the same game in the same way for the same reasons that we do, and those fringe players who do anything different are playing it “wrong.”

So, now that I’ve established that MMOGs provide a (somewhat clunky) mechanism for many players to play in many simultaneous smaller groups, I am even more disinclined to get excited over upcoming MMOGs. Do I need to pay $15/month to feel “superior” that I’m a MMOG Player and not one of those commoner peon Normal Players? Pfft. I’m a gamer, first and foremost. Not strictly a MMOG gamer, not strictly an RPG, FPS, RTS, or any other sub-genre gamer. I crave new experiences, and these days MMOGs are not providing very many new experiences; they’re providing the same experiences I’ve already had for years just with different audiovisual assets. I’ve mentioned before how in Ye Olde RPGs back in the day, every one (even in the same series) had a new RPG system to learn and tinker with. MMOG developers aren’t doing that; they’re just taking the Old and Busted DIKU engine and trying to thinly veil it with shiny new small sub-systems. Old and Busted is fine and dandy and has its place, but where’s the New Hotness? Nowhere to be found. The only alternative most players come up with is “what about skill systems like UO used?” That’s it? TWO alternatives? It’s one or the other? Pathetic.

That being the case, what am I honestly looking forward to? What am I keeping tabs of almost daily and am aquiver with excited anticipation of? Here’s the list: Borderlands. Crackdown 2. Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Lost Planet 2. All of them offer vastly different experiences from each other. All of them offer both a solo and 4-player cooperative experience. Four players might be smaller than the 5 or 6 player maximum group (discounting raids) size in a MMOG but it still fits with the truth that players have become insular and only really desire to directly interact with a small group of trusted friends.

None of those games ask for my billing information and a monthly subscription either. At one point in time, maybe it was “cheaper” to buy a MMOG + subscription on the PC and stick with it. But too many of us, myself included, jump from MMO to MMO and often have multiple MMO subscriptions. For all of us polygamous gamers, it’s no longer cheaper. So I’d rather embrace diversity and enjoy different game styles and genres while still being able to have those cooperative (and competitive) experiences with my little group of gamer friends.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 10:50 am and is filed under MMO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.