This is the first of a series of posts, examining the challenges of MMO writing, how Blizzard has in my view failed at this task, and what I feel they need to do to get things back on track.
During 2009’s Game Developers Conference in Austin, Steve Danuser, yes - that Steve Danuser, gave a talk on writing for MMOs. In it, he said something that’s stuck with me ever since I became aware of it. I’m going to reference the Gamasutra article that summarized the talk for reference. Quoting it:
"Danuser argued that this issue is additionally complicated by the importance and draw of player stories, tales that arise from the community itself.
Writers should “get over themselves”, [Danuser] stated plainly. Instead of trying to saddle any single player with an epic destiny, the gameworld itself should provide a backdrop for collaborative heroism. Framing the narrative to promote teamwork, and creating narrative events that challenge the playerbase as a whole, allows for the epic tales writers crave."
He’s partially right here - but the area where I think he’s wrong and where he demonstrates that he’s wrong is that last bit there - the one about ‘epic tales [that] writers crave’. The craving certainly is understandable, but as I hope to argue, it is one arena where MMO writers likewise need to “get over themselves”.
So first, let’s look at this article by itself, which is entitled " GDC Austin: Writing for MMOs: You’re Doing it Wrong" - which is again accessible on Gamasutra.
The article identifies the following challenges in writing for MMOs versus other video games:
- “The genre is a bad fit for classic storytelling. The strength of the MMO genre is that it is a social medium, a communal experience with a shared narrative.”
- “No one wants to read in MMOs. Because players are more interested in acting than reading.”
- “The ongoing, living nature of the gameworld requires many stories to be kicked off and threaded together, but actively fights against the concept of resolution.”
- " Completing a tale in a raid ensures that only a small percentage of the playerbase will know the full backstory to the game."
- “The lack of a single protagonist is another challenge faced by MMO writers. “Everyone is special” is another way of saying no-one is, after all.”
- “Another MMO strength is that they can be played out of order, as the player becomes interested in certain elements of the game. That asynchronous play makes it challenging to tell a cohesive story.”
- "The memorable nature of player stories is a huge strength of the genre, but also possibly the games writer’s biggest challenge. "
If I am to summarize these - the challenges come forth primarily in the medium’s persistence, the player’s ability to choose what content they engage with and when, and the fact that there is no “one” protagonist.
Let’s start with the last two of these.
Autonomy in identity
When you first open up WoW, the game presents you with the two most important decisions you will make in the game.
- What is your class?
- What is your race?
The first of these questions is more tied in to your preferred game mechanics versus the second one - but the second one, being the more visual of the two options, matters significantly in terms of your identity. A Night Elf warrior is a different concept from an Orcish warrior.
This matters in an RPG, and especially in an MMORPG (where customization and the presentation of your identity is a major selling point) because of a thing called the Mimesis effect. In the study that uncovered it, researchers found that players, given a role, subconsciously changed their behaviors to match that role. Even if they didn’t know they were doing it, they in some form “role played”. Now, this effect was slightly stronger in cases where players chose that role versus scenarios where the role was assigned - but I want to highlight the second point, especially if we view assignment in terms of things like people picking their races for gameplay reasons. It also demonstrates that while we can exert our identity in selecting the role we wish to play, the role itself exerts itself back.
It’s at this point that I normally tie this finding with Scott Rigby’s work concerning the question of why we play video games in the first place. According to Rigby, we do so in order to satisfy the following psychological needs:
- Competence
- Relatedness
- Autonomy
Let’s focus on the last of these - because games are an interactive medium, and in that sense, the player is in their own right a writer.
The choices you made in how you addressed certain quests are a part of that creative experience. The way that you and four other strangers tackled your first dungeon is part of that creative experience. So is that awesome play you made in a battleground that you told your guildmates about. These experiences, which I will henceforth refer to as “emergent narrative” - often do not require a writer’s direct input. They simply require that the writer construct a compelling and immersive enough sandbox that you can have those experiences. Per the article, Danuser and his counterparts (in my view correctly) stated: “don’t try to fix that. In fact, good narrative designers should accept that reality and aim to create a living world in which great player stories can be told.”
From a heavier “role-playing” experience, this also should dictate ultimately the kind of person that your character is. Want to play a villain? The living world should give you avenues to effect that through your character and your actions. Want to play the hero? Same thing. But the other matter here is because there are various other players as well - the game world needs to give them their preferred experiences as well. Tying back to the desire to customize and express one’s identity - it must afford autonomy in presenting that identity - at least to the extent that the game mechanics will allow. (For example - if you want to be evil but you’re level 1, you have some growing to do before you can turn that evil on other players - who have a chance to stop your fun from impinging on theirs through their ability to play the game in comparison to your own.) In WoW particularly, it’s important to note as well that there are various competing interests, and the balance between them has to be fair, lest they impinge on autonomy.
This autonomy is an important thing to respect, and the example of Mass Effect 3 shows us just what happens when you don’t. As Rigby noted in his 2017 GDC Session entitled “The Freedom Fallacy” (accessible via Youtube) - this wasn’t a matter of just having a bad moment - it was seen as a betrayal because people put hundreds of hours into making choices that weren’t, in the end, respected.
So, to sum up so far:
The MMO’s promise and central challenge is that there is no “one” protagonist because the player selects from a competing roster of roles through which they choose the identity through which they wish to be understood. That identity affects their game experience through the mimesis effect - or the natural tendency to consciously or unconsciously role-play. That identity must be respected because autonomy is one of the three main psychological needs that explain why people play games.
We’ll stop there for today. I want to pause to capture any feedback or critiques so far.