Comments on That's a Terrible Idea: Liberate the Narrative!

Nice post. I agree that player-generated stories ...

2009-12-22T21:54:52.990-05:00

Nice post.

I agree that player-generated stories are the way to go in MMOs. In fact, I was just thinking about this issue in light of Keen's recent post about a dramatic keep defense in Dark Age of Camelot. I had similar experiences in the Ettenmoors in LotRO.

Even in WoW there was quite a bit of informal story-telling, often in the form of player-made videos. Leeroy Jenkins is one obvious example. I also recall a popular video about a battle against a dragon that had been kited to Ironforge.

I think stories like that would be most interesting to other players if they had some sort of lasting effect on the world. In games where players' actions have only short-term effects (e.g. keep-swapping), it's not as interesting to read about them unless you're personally involved.

Almost every great story revolves around tragedy. ...

2009-12-22T17:01:15.398-05:00

Almost every great story revolves around tragedy. Georges Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations is neck deep in victims and abusers. All the great stories of EVE, and the few I consistently retell from my time in UO, are similarly grim and destructive. History is written by winners, but it includes losers... and in a PvP MMO those people will be paying a monthly fee for that bad press.

The tools that provide access to most narratives are precisely the tools most easily turned to grief.

"Second life was more an example of how the c...

2009-12-22T14:27:58.878-05:00

"Second life was more an example of how the content of the stories is what matters, not so much the tools."

SL doesn't give you the tools. You can change your environment arbitrarily, which renders environment changing meaningless. There's also no real game rules in SL. SL doesn't have accessible event tracking so even if there was something interesting to track, it would most likely go unnoticed.

"I don't know about the impact of stories Evi. EVE talks a lot about the big stories it has, but playing it shows that they are rare, and surprisingly remote from many players or corp's experience. The Goons are the biggest alliance in 0.0, but their impact on the average player specifically is minimal, and I haven't even seen one apart from forum posts. EVE bank failing didn't affect all that much either."

How do you get to "player stories are irrelevant" from "in one enormous game that doesn't even implement a player-story system, player stories don't affect me"?

It's a complete non-sequitur.

"I think for it to work players would have to step up seriously and be worthy of the tools provided."

If your game actually encourages and makes visible storytellers' efforts, I bet it would see a lot more storytelling than you expect. Most games do not encourage such story-telling because their mechanics lead to unexciting play most of the time and even when play is exciting it has little effect on anyone anyway. EVE included.

Second life was more an example of how the content...

2009-12-22T13:58:22.915-05:00

Second life was more an example of how the content of the stories is what matters, not so much the tools. I don't think you can get more refined than having complete control over a local environment to create the kind of story you want, or even the kind of game.

I don't know about the impact of stories Evi. EVE talks a lot about the big stories it has, but playing it shows that they are rare, and surprisingly remote from many players or corp's experience. The Goons are the biggest alliance in 0.0, but their impact on the average player specifically is minimal, and I haven't even seen one apart from forum posts. EVE bank failing didn't affect all that much either.

I think for it to work players would have to step up seriously and be worthy of the tools provided.

I long had the idea that players should have the o...

2009-12-22T04:41:38.177-05:00

I long had the idea that players should have the opportunity to kind of "record" all incomming data from the server and the ability to "play it back" with the game client in offline mode. Not much is needed to make this happen, really, and it would be a tremendous step towards player driven storytelling.

Tho this is a form of metagaming and as all metagaming, I do not agree with it - but presenting these in-game would create more problems than it would add content.

Second Life has nothing to do with what I'm ta...

2009-12-21T17:55:21.565-05:00

Second Life has nothing to do with what I'm talking about here. I don't know how SL would be relevant to suggesting that RPG mechanics should be further refined as building blocks for stories.

You don't need even a 10% participation rate in the storytelling aspect to have enough story to make the game a rich experience. A surprising amount of story-related work is done by a small minority of users in games like EVE. When the story is actually useful to you and informs your gameplay decisions (as the political maps created by players clearly show) people will take it seriously and put a surprising amount of work into it.

Heh, its a case of be careful what you wish for. S...

2009-12-21T17:00:25.690-05:00

Heh, its a case of be careful what you wish for. Second Life isn't a game, but it lets people create their own stories by manipulating the game itself, and it has a rep as a place for flying genitalia and deviant sexuality.

Most players simply won't be able to create a rich enough story to make a game like you suggest transformative. Its not their fault, not everyone is a storyteller. They can create porn, do bad twilight-style RP, and recycle 4chan memes though.