Online Worlds Roundtable #3

Online Worlds Roundtable #3

 

Five developers open our latest panel discussion, on the intriguing topic of storytelling in persistent state worlds.

 

March 26, 2003 - The enormous throngs of users who visit Vault Network every single day bear ample testament to the tremendous and still growing popularity of the online world category. Over the course of the past several years, the persistent state genre has grown from a tiny, easily ignored niche to one that is impossible for any serious gamer to miss. The future looks bright as well. While the available historical evidence is still quite limited, we know that the launches of major titles have tended to expand the total audience rather than merely re-distributing it. As well, with literally dozens of notable projects currently in development, including a fair number that seem likely to enter commercial service by the end of this year, we'll see ideas from many creative developers reaching fruition and offering more types of gameplay than ever before.

In talking with players who frequent persistent state worlds, the story or storytelling element is one of great and widespread interest. To date, we have already seen a number of interesting approaches considered and adopted. At the same time, it's fair to say there is still a vast amount of room for further creativity, experimentation and progress. Indeed, it seems likely if not inevitable that some games will be differentiated by their ability to offer players the chance to feel they are part of a grand history as it is being written, or of a world wherein their actions can actually have an impact on both the environment and the future. Since this topic is known to be a focal point for many projects we're tracking, we felt it would be a terrific one for our third Online Worlds Roundtable.

 

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Topic
How important is storytelling in persistent state worlds, how does it differ from standalone games, and what are the keys to doing it effectively? What are the primary challenges to be overcome and the main pitfalls to be avoided? To what extent is it feasible to implement a story in which all the players can feel like they matter, or is providing a sandbox in which players can create their own small, personal and group stories the best that can be done?

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Rich Waters
Design Director, EverQuest Live and Expansions
Sony Online Entertainment

An interesting, ongoing story is an incredible tool for keeping players entertained, yet many current games haven't given this the focus it deserves. Future games will live or die based on the quality of their story and content as more games enter the market with well-balanced game mechanics, attractive graphics, and a high level of accessibility. A minimum feature set is likely to become fairly standard in online games, and the quality of a product will be most obvious in its presentation of an engaging story and game world.

Recently, the EverQuest team has taken stock of our product and looked for ways to innovate and energize the world for our players. When speaking to players, taking part in a dynamic or world-changing event is one of the most common topics that comes up. Even when the player isn't able to take a key role, participating in a story event leaves a great sense of connection with the game world.

Delivering an interesting, dynamic world is going to play a large role in our plans for this year. Much like people watch their favorite television series each week, we feel that giving players a deep world that is strongly tied to an ongoing storyline cultivates a desire to 'tune in next week' and see what's new. Even though it's impossible to allow every player to be the hero of the story, providing a world they can identify with and care about is intrinsic to entertaining them.

To get the most value out of your story in a massively multiplayer online game, it's important to allow many levels of participation. Provide different factions for players to identify with, much like sports fans focus on the victories and losses of their favorite teams. Even when players can't participate directly, they feel emotionally involved in the action. Try not to limit useful participation based on play time or player experience - give people the option of helping their cause in little ways, whether it's delivering supplies to an embattled army or patrolling an area to keep low-level goblin messengers from getting through. More powerful players may have additional options to take part in the story, but most people don't need to actually slay the opposing general themselves to feel a sense of satisfaction from helping out.

Gordon Walton
The Sims Online et al

First and foremost, designers should cater to the stories the players will tell about their own experiences. Are your game mechanics and environment allowing the players to have experiences that they can relate to others? What amazing things do they see and experience in their first 30 minutes, three hours and three days of gameplay? Does the natural sequence of events help them craft a story? Do you have similar experiences ready for mid-level and experienced players and groups of players?

In my opinion, this is the core of online storytelling - the stories the players tell about their own experiences.

Doing any overall story can be a bonus, but may or may not be meaningful or even enjoyable to the majority of players. You have to be careful about cramming your "too cool story" down the throats of your audience.

In my view, the players want to influence any overall storyline significantly, not simply be at the effect of it. Of course, emergent and diverging stories based on player actions are pretty hard to pull off currently. I look forward to seeing more experiments in this area.

 

 

Gaute Godager
Game Director, Anarchy Online
Funcom
The story of the story

I can safely say story has been one of the many controversial topics with regard to Anarchy Online, and that we have not always succeeded in meeting our own or the players' expectations of what a story should be.

 

Based on these experiences, I therefore believe that the future of story is done best through focus on dialogue and participation. So, this is really nothing to do with story in AO - this is for the ideal future of MMOGs.

On a side note though, I am not certain if an ongoing story has been required in a successful MMOG. Setting is, because players need to understand who they are, but a story? Looking at the existing MMOGs and our "stories", I wouldn't think so.

My take is that a successful story in an MMOG can and should consist of these aspects:
1. History,
2. Setting,
3. Dialogue and interaction with players, and
4. Proactive actions from us, the people running the gameworld.

History and setting. MMOGs have so far been plagued with what I call "post-modern plastic greed fantasy settings". It's a place without wrong or right, without good or evil. All there is are shades of grey. Elves fight half-elves for tokens of greed in plastic pink trousers. Like a Burger Amusement Park, story-wise it is a bland place of undefined values and meanings. It becomes meaningful because the gameplay is great and the social life excellent -almost despite the stories.

It is no wonder that 90% of players only run the level treadmill. Nothing wrong with levels or collecting items - heck, I run the mill too - but there are too few meaningful alternatives. You can't honestly expect intelligent players to really care roleplay-wise when the nostalgic, mystical and transcending elves of Tolkien's Middle-earth shrink 30% in height and 90% in majesty while wearing neon green trousers. (Story in MMOGs can so far almost seem like Frodo and Gollum grouping and camping Elrond at his spawn point in Rivendell. Fun gameplay, but dreadful story.)

We can then see that setting matters. In Anarchy Online, we tried defining sides, forcing people to take a stand. We did this to make it easier for the players to better identify with the setting and backstory. Enough people in the industry told me "No you cant do that! You will piss players off - what if they feel they made the wrong choice?" Far from it! We have tried enhancing this by adding land control and extensive PvP elements - all based on sides. Even if players have characters on both sides, they act in-character!

Interaction. Should we, and can we have players interact with the story, change and mold it? "Yes" to should and "yes, please" to can. One of the biggest misunderstandings in storytelling interactivity in an MMOG is to put too much focus on story for the one lonely hero. Understand me right, everyone should have fun and feel like a hero! But having world-spanning, story-changing, impact? I don't think so. If everyone were a hero, no one would be a hero!

The focus must be on sociological, democratic and community interaction with the story. If many or all players are to be involved at once, it needs to be as a result of a structural interaction!

Let me give an example; in a fairy tale, the one hero slays the one dragon, winning the hand of the only princess. In the real world, one guy's action seldom shakes the world, unless his name is George Bush or Saddam Hussain. They are different because they are heads of two (or at least one) mighty nations with massive weapons of war - elected and, eh, not elected. They don't really have to fight it out hand to hand. We lend our own personal power to the leaders of our nations (or have it taken from us). Most people affect indirectly - it's not always heroic but at least it is solid interaction. This is where the world changing interactivity of the future MMOG should head. It is how we humans have to work in a community.

Dialogue and developer actions. We should allow groups, factions and organizations (and through them individuals) to affect the story through in-game systems - and to be able to react to their action with "story telling" tools. The challenges to this are A. ideology and B. technology.

Let me take ideology first. In a dialogue, you don't define the direction 100%. You let go creatively, as opposed to a monologue. This requires a bigger creative interest in the road than the goal. You don't know where it will end up - you write the story as you go along. (This is not the way we've done it in Anarchy Online!) Will it feel like nothing is real, like everyone is playing at a story in a sandbox story world? I don't think so. As long as we (devs) have a strong voice while speaking with the players, it can be dialogue with an interesting direction.

The final challenges are tools and technology. If you have a world with thousands of players online at any one time, it will be a problem to allow everyone to interact on the same level. Let's say they all decide to go to a rock concert - bang, 0 framerate. At least for the foreseeable future, this will continue to pose a challenge. There is a need for much better methods and tools, allowing us to tell the story to our players.

In an ideal game world, the story should be pushed on the players, not just passively, statically sitting on some NPC in a musky cellar. It should preferably be through dynamic, runtime, event-like changes of most of the world environment through faction standing, AI behavior, player access to areas, NPC dialogue, items, monster even character stats. Call them events and super-events ("god-like" interaction with the world).

So, future: dynamic dialogue. Past: pre-defined static story.

 

 

 

Ragnar Tornquist
Creative Director, Funcom
Game Director, untitled online world
There's no doubt in my mind that story is crucial. Why? Because sometimes everyone needs to be a hero - and this is something we're trying to accomplish with our next online world.

First off though, what is "the story" in an online world? Is the story changeable - an emergent story in a mutable world shaped by player actions and wishes, with a citizens' democracy rather than a host of individual heroes?

Or is it embedded - a story communicated through content, static and dynamic, tightly integrated with the setting, where the plot - the minute-to-minute mechanics of the story - is a series of quests, a cycle of purpose-reward scenarios, resulting in an advance of status?

Perhaps no single player can be the hero in an online world. To be anyone at all, to influence the world, to partake in any meaningful activity, maybe the player has to be just a tiny part of a greater whole. Following this train of thought, the emergent story is something that's shaped by the Big Boys - the gangs - who dominate through sheer force of will and plain bullying. Theirs is the power to influence, to blackmail, the players and the developers, and run the story by default.

That doesn't sound like fun to me. It doesn't sound very fair either. It definitely doesn't sound inclusive. And, to be honest, it's neither feasible nor something the players want.

It is, of course, quite arrogant of me to pretend to know what the players want. Different players do want different things, and different games have different agendas. So the goal must be to please as many players as possible, and (in my particular case) to let everyone be a hero.

This is where the embedded story is important, and this is something I'm particularly interested in, seeing as we're well into production on Funcom's Next Big Thing - a brand new online world featuring a refreshingly original setting - where every player can and will be a hero.

Being a hero in a story doesn't necessarily mean changing the story to fit one specific world view. It can be about fulfilling prophecies, going down well-trodden paths in the footsteps of other heroes, and accomplishing goals. It's about the group. It's about an internal dynamic rather than an external one - in other words, measuring your accomplishments against those of your peers rather than the entire population of the world.

In this scenario, a fully changeable world - a story run by the players - is neither interesting nor necessary. We're talking about a place where the players - new and old - know what they're getting, and why, and where there are no bullies ruining the show for everyone else.

Most effectively, story is the "because" to the "why am I doing this?"

Story is setting, reality, meaning, and purpose- four extremely important elements of any game, regardless of genre, single-player or multiplayer. And story is guidance, something that's particularly important in an online world where the luxury of choices can be too rich for most.

In the end, storytelling (as opposed to the stories themselves; the tool rather than the result) is about creating content; building a setting, and seeding it with a real sense of history, stories-as-quests, intriguing characters, and a real purpose for the players to discover and fulfil.

Instead of calling it storytelling, let's call it storyplaying. And it's all about being a hero, a hero to yourself.

 

Mark Zechiel
Designer, Codemasters
Dragon Empires

Most efforts to allow individual characters to impact a PSW storyline will be under-appreciated. The fact that there are literally thousands of other players in this universe means that even if the world is changing as a result of player action, the player's individual actions were but a minor contribution to the effort. It is a limitation we have to face with this genre.

The good news is that the actions of individual players can and do have influence in a PSW. Consider what happens whenever a player engages with others in local events, participates in the social environment, or embarks on scripted missions or quests. In each case, the player's choices and actions serve to create their own local stories. There is a big payoff to focus on these systems because they are very rewarding to the individual and small group. Many players will also find it appealing to be able to create these stories, unfettered by a linear pre-scripted design.

The fact that portions of a storyline may not be player-controlled does not diminish the importance of storytelling. Effective storytelling is done on many levels. In a PSW, the history, the environments, and major and minor story arcs presented to the players are all important factors in their perception of the universe. A poor storytelling effort will likely leave players feeling the world is hollow at best and perhaps even distracting. In my view, a combination of good storytelling and good gameplay is required to make a great PSW. We want players to be immersed as well as entertained.

As expected, we've found the opinions expressed by these five online developers to be both interesting and entertaining. Even better, we're in the fortunate position of having received more input - enough in total to warrant presenting it separately so as not to make this article so long as to be difficult to read. Accordingly, we thank the individuals whose thoughtful comments are presented above, and we invite them and you to return in the near future to see a lot more.

-- Richard Aihoshi - 'Jonric'