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Why can't people grasp the idea of a true Virtual World?
12 years ago
So as far as the virtual world thing goes, we've currently got two very different ends of the spectrum.
We've got most MMO’s, which are essentially just single-player RPGs with optional co-op play, where you’re ALL individually THE ONE HERO and tied with a million other people for position of #1 most important person in the world, and you just go along your linear quest-lines interspersed with the meaningless filler of grinding and farming, and you see the shadows of other people and desperately try to pretend that they aren't also THE ONE HERO and sometimes you either have to wait in line to fight the infinite reincarnation of THE ONE SPECIFIC BAD GUY or else the game stops even trying to be massively multiplayer and sends you to an instanced map.
There’s NO IMMERSION there because you’re going through a pre-written story, the other players usually don’t even matter (and when they do it’s just for pointless PvP or an extra-big co-op party to fight a giant damage-sponge) and you never have meaningful interactions with the game world unless it’s a pre-scripted event in the pre-written story-line.
On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the flat-out Sandboxes like Second Life, where instead of too much structure you have NO structure; the world is only as wide and as persistent as any given plot-owner wants their Sex Roleplay Background to be, and you either have to make it a private instance for you and specific people, or leave it open to people planting 3D-modeled genitals or whatever all over your stuff. Either way, you've only got a Chat or RP backdrop, not a dynamic world.
What I have always wanted to see more of would be in the middle-ground. Something designed from the ground up as a virtual world, NOT as a pre-scripted RPG you can choose to share with others. Something that would give you the tools to affect and interact with the world, but with structured systems for making those changes, with a fully realized world as the starting point. I want to see an online world where the players can CREATE NARRATIVES. I want a land filled with mysteries to unravel, not by every individual player who takes a quest but by one dedicated sole among many who fail. I want a player, while exploring, to uncover an artifact of immense power, and with it and a group of loyal followers, attempt to conquer a small town, with success being an actual, possible outcome. And I want for other players to have the means to stop the villain, or undo what he has done, and cripple him such that he will need time to recover or need a new source of power before he can attempt such a thing again. And for people to see that player and know his reputation as a villain and a conqueror.
I want to see players as shopkeeps because that’s what they've chosen as their purpose in the virtual world, not just auctioning off the product of a bunch of menial farming, en mass. I want to see players as barons or even kings, others trying to usurp them or assassinate them. I want to have the possibility of making a name for myself not just by being the top name on a leader-board, but by accomplishing something worth talking about.
People say, “What you describe there you could get in EVE”. EVE is a nice game, for sure, and an attempt at what I’m yearning for, but it isn't nearly there. I can just play EVE like a game and unless I choose to participate in a fleet war or get directly ganked by another player, the only evidence that I or anyone else are a part of the game’s world are some gently fluctuating item values. At the end of the day I’m just derping around in a vast void trying to make some money. I have the OPTION to roleplay, but it’s something I’d have to go out of my way to do.
Consider the real world. Even if you never do anything NOTABLE, you’re still a PART of the world. Your life reacts to changes in the world and the actions or inaction of other people. If I put a box out on the sidewalk, I have now affected the world and other people have to either walk around the box or deliberately move the box. If I find a dollar laying on the ground and take it, that’s a dollar that nobody else will have the opportunity to take. But, they’ll find their own, separate opportunities in turn.
Even if you keep to yourself, you can’t forget that you’re part of the world (without smoking some serious shit, at least) because it just doesn't exist in a way that you can do that. Ignore it, try to escape from it, eventually you have to eat and pay your bills and get things done and all of that requires interacting WITH your world and the people in it.
What I want is a world that comes close to being, by all means, a virtual world, as dynamic and changeable and full of possibility as the real world is, lacking from the real world ONLY the tedium and need for commitment and fear of permanent consequence. I want a virtual world in which you take part by existing, not by choosing to play pretend.
The closest anyone has come, I’d say, were certain MUDs of impressive scale. But, of course, they were limited in their complexity such that “the game” was still present, and more importantly immersion could only go so far by power of imagination alone, with little audio or visual presence.
I refuse to believe that what I’m yearning for “Can’t be done”. No, I think it’s only that nobody is TRYING. For the time being, they’re all content making their World of Warcraft and their Second Life and every iteration of the two, either too structured or not structured at all.
When will people start constructing true, meaningful virtual worlds for us to take part in?
We've got most MMO’s, which are essentially just single-player RPGs with optional co-op play, where you’re ALL individually THE ONE HERO and tied with a million other people for position of #1 most important person in the world, and you just go along your linear quest-lines interspersed with the meaningless filler of grinding and farming, and you see the shadows of other people and desperately try to pretend that they aren't also THE ONE HERO and sometimes you either have to wait in line to fight the infinite reincarnation of THE ONE SPECIFIC BAD GUY or else the game stops even trying to be massively multiplayer and sends you to an instanced map.
There’s NO IMMERSION there because you’re going through a pre-written story, the other players usually don’t even matter (and when they do it’s just for pointless PvP or an extra-big co-op party to fight a giant damage-sponge) and you never have meaningful interactions with the game world unless it’s a pre-scripted event in the pre-written story-line.
On the other end of the spectrum, you've got the flat-out Sandboxes like Second Life, where instead of too much structure you have NO structure; the world is only as wide and as persistent as any given plot-owner wants their Sex Roleplay Background to be, and you either have to make it a private instance for you and specific people, or leave it open to people planting 3D-modeled genitals or whatever all over your stuff. Either way, you've only got a Chat or RP backdrop, not a dynamic world.
What I have always wanted to see more of would be in the middle-ground. Something designed from the ground up as a virtual world, NOT as a pre-scripted RPG you can choose to share with others. Something that would give you the tools to affect and interact with the world, but with structured systems for making those changes, with a fully realized world as the starting point. I want to see an online world where the players can CREATE NARRATIVES. I want a land filled with mysteries to unravel, not by every individual player who takes a quest but by one dedicated sole among many who fail. I want a player, while exploring, to uncover an artifact of immense power, and with it and a group of loyal followers, attempt to conquer a small town, with success being an actual, possible outcome. And I want for other players to have the means to stop the villain, or undo what he has done, and cripple him such that he will need time to recover or need a new source of power before he can attempt such a thing again. And for people to see that player and know his reputation as a villain and a conqueror.
I want to see players as shopkeeps because that’s what they've chosen as their purpose in the virtual world, not just auctioning off the product of a bunch of menial farming, en mass. I want to see players as barons or even kings, others trying to usurp them or assassinate them. I want to have the possibility of making a name for myself not just by being the top name on a leader-board, but by accomplishing something worth talking about.
People say, “What you describe there you could get in EVE”. EVE is a nice game, for sure, and an attempt at what I’m yearning for, but it isn't nearly there. I can just play EVE like a game and unless I choose to participate in a fleet war or get directly ganked by another player, the only evidence that I or anyone else are a part of the game’s world are some gently fluctuating item values. At the end of the day I’m just derping around in a vast void trying to make some money. I have the OPTION to roleplay, but it’s something I’d have to go out of my way to do.
Consider the real world. Even if you never do anything NOTABLE, you’re still a PART of the world. Your life reacts to changes in the world and the actions or inaction of other people. If I put a box out on the sidewalk, I have now affected the world and other people have to either walk around the box or deliberately move the box. If I find a dollar laying on the ground and take it, that’s a dollar that nobody else will have the opportunity to take. But, they’ll find their own, separate opportunities in turn.
Even if you keep to yourself, you can’t forget that you’re part of the world (without smoking some serious shit, at least) because it just doesn't exist in a way that you can do that. Ignore it, try to escape from it, eventually you have to eat and pay your bills and get things done and all of that requires interacting WITH your world and the people in it.
What I want is a world that comes close to being, by all means, a virtual world, as dynamic and changeable and full of possibility as the real world is, lacking from the real world ONLY the tedium and need for commitment and fear of permanent consequence. I want a virtual world in which you take part by existing, not by choosing to play pretend.
The closest anyone has come, I’d say, were certain MUDs of impressive scale. But, of course, they were limited in their complexity such that “the game” was still present, and more importantly immersion could only go so far by power of imagination alone, with little audio or visual presence.
I refuse to believe that what I’m yearning for “Can’t be done”. No, I think it’s only that nobody is TRYING. For the time being, they’re all content making their World of Warcraft and their Second Life and every iteration of the two, either too structured or not structured at all.
When will people start constructing true, meaningful virtual worlds for us to take part in?
