Farmville Killed Gaming, Virtual Worlds, And Your Dog

Vetarnias :
I agree with the basic definition, namely, that a virtual world is “a non-real place that exists independent of my imagination”; however, I am not certain why Star Trek Online would qualify, but not Half Life 2. And I suspect it’s not because HL2 is a single-player game; in which case, every game that isn’t an MMO would be excluded.

Better examples of single player virtual worlds may be Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. This is because they attempt to create a relatively seamless experience of compellingly immersive environments.

However, they lack this fundamental sense of “virtual world” because of one important thing: they’re completely at the mercy of a single player. You can enter cheat codes to muck them up. When you turn the game off, the virtual world ceases to exist. An MMORPG’s virtual world is that much more compelling because it keeps going whether you’re there or not and is adequately distanced from your won computer as to feel outside of your influence.

I remember reading a webcomic about that (on Penny Arcade, I think), where a jaded old player takes another enthusiastic old player on a tour to see the villain they’d killed long ago, perpetually respawned, still dispensing quests to newbies.

This one point alone is a good sign in just how poorly virtual worlds have progressed on the mainstream. It’s not like it would be hard to develop a dynamic content system that repopulates itself. Tabula Rasa had bases that NPCs would invade and take over (a pity they ignored this unique feature and decided to try to turn their game into WoW with a procession of quests). Even DAoC or WAR’s exchange of bases in player PvP could be looked as performing most of the work involved in this. EverQuest 2 has a desert city (buried beneath far too much expansions) in which players could change who owns it based on the dominant faction. It’s not an impossible mechanic, it just hasn’t been given the primary focus a virtual world deserves.

schild :
I can’t edit my post Apologies for typos.

I’m surprised to hear this from a fellow who runs a forum in which surgically removed my edit button and then gave me shit whenever I complained about it.

Geldon, you do have this uncanny ability for spurring me into one of those walls of text for which I have become infamous.

Very well, I’m prepared to drop the contention that a single-player game world can be a “virtual world”, as it ceases to exist the moment you stop playing. However, this being done, we must also consider why Mr. Koster wrote “worlds ranging from a detailed simulation as in Half-Life 2, or even a local Renaissance Faire, do not provide that sense” (of still existing while you’re not there). Half-Life 2, that’s understandable, but a Renaissance Faire? Perhaps the reason Mr. Koster mentioned it is because Renaissance Faires (based on what I’ve seen of them) are really just excuses for hawking overpriced crafts, with otherwise little attempts at replicating a Renaissance atmosphere; but while they go on, it hardly matters whether you attend or not.

But would, say, live-action role-playing qualify? I did a bit of that in my day, and the better ones I’ve seen had extensive world background that went beyond what players would need: an intricate political system with numerous details of court hierarchy, and so on, even though the action would invariably be located in a backwater far from any seat of power. The very best ones would occasionally grab some trivia from their lengthy background and make it a matter of just below life-or-death. But I don’t think you could ever get the impression that the world exists permanently, or even that it goes on without you (unless you simply miss a LARP event); yet I would without hesitation call such a world a “virtual world”.

If all it takes for a virtual world is a shared reality, why couldn’t it be extended to everything from a D&D tabletop setting to, yes, even a board game? It probably wouldn’t work for Monopoly, as you don’t really have much beyond the street names that point (in the American edition) in the direction of Atlantic City, but what about Boddy Mansion as a virtual world? Can’t you just picture Colonel Mustard seated upright in a red-velvet armchair, twisting the tip of his mustache as he delivers a rambling reminiscence of his time in India?

Also, why should World of Warcraft be a virtual world while any single-player game played in multiplayer would not? Overall, with the exception of the economy (which even then is just rubbish in WoW’s case), there is no difference between getting five of your friends to run through a dungeon in any single-player game that offers this option and doing the same in WoW. In which case, WoW’s world fails as a virtual world, not because it does not carry on while you don’t play, but because nothing the players do can budge it.

There was a rather infamous episode in WoW’s history where the Something Awful members on one server kidnapped one of the opposite faction’s flight masters by kiting him and tried to ransom him off. Typical Goonery, but reports from the event stated that it threw the game in a state of chaos that both sides ended up enjoying. Blizzard’s reaction? Killed off the flight master so it could respawn. It screamed of “It’s our show, and script deviations won’t be permitted. Now move along.” Authority is restored. Life goes on. In the World of Warcraft, nothing will or must change. That’s not a virtual world; it’s every bit the “theme park” used by WoW’s detractors. And it’s uncharitable to games that actually seek to be a virtual world to use WoW as a point of comparison.

That’s why I think the ability of players to change certain aspects of the world more or less permanently ought to be paramount in the consideration of what constitutes a virtual world. The best LARPs I attended, to return to that, were precisely those that at least maintained an illusion that what players did could affect the story line, as opposed to those which sought to railroad players down a path written out in advance (I’ve even seen cases of player retaliation against that, actively seeking to wreck the story as a result). Sure, set guidelines, write out what is and isn’t allowed, and keep an eye on things. But don’t start playing God by (to use the expression of a former DM of mine who ostensibly watched too many cartoons as a kid) dropping anvils on everyone when things don’t go your way. (At the same time, it shouldn’t be an endorsement to be a proactive d*ck; don’t try to bring all matters to a head by setting one camp against the other on purpose, or smarmily build your ad campaigns around the hijinks of your players (EVE Online). I’ve seen too much of that already.)

What is interesting is that true virtual worlds are being abandoned by the mainstream, with WoW, as usual, leading the way. I can’t really find a different approach in Conan, even though it was a far more cohesive world, or in Warhammer Online, or in Pirates of the Burning Sea, all more or less “mainstream” or “niche-mainstream” (PotBS, after all, was picked up by Sony). All overly instanced; instancing alone is the death knell of any virtual world, by preventing malleability, by making sure that not everyone, but just a select group, can experience the same reality at the same time on the same server. Hence you get “epic” quests that don’t really deliver, because the player ten levels below you must be provided with the opportunity to behave as epically when he has leveled up. Everybody must be a hero these days; understandable, but also not conducive to the building of virtual worlds.

However, I don’t think Facebook gaming is the salvation. Instead, I find interesting stuff coming from “independent” developers. I left Wurm Online a while ago, but I was impressed by players’ ability to terraform the landscape, to build entire villages on ledges against cliffs, and so on. Likewise, Haven & Hearth (still in beta, unfortunately a griefers’ paradise these days) leaves you free to settle where you want. And I’m curious about Dawntide as well, even though it’s in closed beta.

What is also interesting, and I’m wondering whether there’s anything to it, is that all of these independent games I mentioned are from Scandinavia — which, for that matter, is also the case for Mortal Online, EVE (if you extend Scandinavia to Iceland), and even Darkfall in its early days. All of which are games which, despite their differences (Wurm’s free server has no PvP, while EVE has PvP everywhere; and so on) have been called “sandboxes” at least once.

Perhaps the time has come, as with “Korean games”, to find definitions for “American games”, and so on. Increasingly, I find that “American games” means shallow, superficial, appealing to the lowest common denominator, usually through well-known franchises. If the focus is entirely American (like your damn debate over health care, regardless of what the rest of the world has achieved while your insurance companies fattened their wallets), then Facebook might well appear as the messiah of virtual worlds. But I doubt it, very much.

“Perhaps the time has come, as with “Korean games”, to find definitions for “American games”, and so on. Increasingly, I find that “American games” means shallow, superficial, appealing to the lowest common denominator, usually through well-known franchises. If the focus is entirely American (like your damn debate over health care, regardless of what the rest of the world has achieved while your insurance companies fattened their wallets), then Facebook might well appear as the messiah of virtual worlds. But I doubt it, very much.”

– quoted for truth.

I expounded on that opinion here:

http://www.frogdice.com/muckbeast/arrogance/are-zyngafarmville-types-games-damaging-the-market.html

My thoughts are far too spammy to post here.

I’m sorry, but I find as much or more “cash grab” schlock from the Korean grinders and the Eastern European/Russian 90s throwbacks.

Piracy has absolutely nothing to do with this. You can read pretty much any book you could possibly want for free from your local library, and yet books still make money – lots of it. Furthermore, what are the piracy issues related to online games of any sort? It is nearly non-existent.

The CoD/MW franchise has made billions of dollars now. And what about Guitar Hero and its ilk. Sorry, there is still a freakishly huge amount of money being made. Piracy isn’t stopping that.

Piracy has absolutely nothing to do with this. You can read pretty much any book you could possibly want for free from your local library, and yet books still make money – lots of it.

Do I really need to poke the obvious holes in that for you? Well, I’m not going to, that’s less a real argument and more a declaration that you’ve cranked your stubbornness dial to 11 on the matter.

But I will go so far as to say that piracy is a novel thing to blame for the games going overly casual. I’m really more on the side of saying it may have been a contributing factor that is making things worse-than-usual on the PC platform in particular. The more universal factor that pushes for more casual games is simply knowing there’s a whole lot more dosh to be made servicing a a wide body of gaming newbs than there is a small niche of gaming veterans.

Although, I am hearing a lot of talking heads these days saying that going casual has backfired. Nintendo went that way and is now regretting it. The trouble with making your games deliberately simple so first timers can pick them up is you’re left in the lurch when it comes time to deliver a follow-up product (or, in the case of MMORPGs, any kind of lasting appeal). Not even a gaming newb finds being spoon fed for an extended period of time to be all that entertaining. On top of that, those who prefer not to play games can’t be expected to be regular customers.

As the easy cash grab is becoming a whole lot less successful than it once seemed, it’s seeming like reducing attention on the core audience of gaming may well have been akin to killing the goose that was laying the golden eggs. Just how many hundreds of thousands of gamers might have given up the habit because they simply couldn’t find games that entertained them anymore?

And the Korean grindfests, tell me about it

One thing I’ll say about Korean grindfests: they’re not casual friendly games.

I believe a lot of these eastern MMORPGs work the way they do because they were developed under a different mindset. In the West, we tend to prize individuality more, and consequently we demand more ways in which our characters can personally excel. In the East, there’s generally a more communal mindset, and consequently shallow gameplay of the individual play experience is just fine because they’re really more interested in working together.

So I don’t knock Korean grindfests. They work great for their original demographic. There’s dozens of Eastern MMORPGs that have several times more players than World of Warcraft ever did.

Actually, when I ran into Dragonica Online, it actually caused me to feel that Western MMORPG developers are really far behind the curve. A full action platform RPG game, very well realized and stable, with visceral action and properly balanced instancing, an effective item economy… well, the other game I was playing at the time was Cryptic Studios’ Champions Online and I had to face facts: I actually found the Korean grind more entertaining even on the individual gameplay level. It’s not a good sign for Western MMORPG developers when we’re beaten at our own cultural specialty.

I think we should start seperating ‘video games’ from ‘software toys.’ Toys R Us sold Barbie dolls and Chess sets, but no one ever conflated the two as having any kind of relation to one another.

my favorite character on the Plants Vs. Zombies game is none other than the Michael Jackson zombie.;,-