For a little over a year now I have been
able to work on a number of MMOGs without having ever played a commercial MMO
or virtual world. This doesn’t have anything to do with this actually blog
post, but I wanted you to know that this assignment has stolen my favorite
bragging right…and now for something completely different.
For
my first foray into the world of massively multi-player worlds I wanted to play
the two most popular, World of Warcraft and Second Life. Despite my undeniable
noob status I was already somewhat familiar with both games based off numerous
stories from friends. That being said it wasn’t until I played these games that
I realized just how different they are. Specifically I found major differences
in three of the high level aspects of the game. The first major difference is
WOW’s goal oriented game-play vs. Second Life’s distinct lack of any
objectives. Secondly, the development of game spaces is vastly different in
each game. Finally the games differ in their approach to player’s control over
the game.
The
game-play of WOW is based around a series of quests and objective that the
player completes a series of quests and objects. Players complete these quests
in order to gain levels and thus unlock better quests. As for second life I
think that Curtis said it best with, “[the game] is not goal-oriented; it has
no beginning or end, no ‘score’, and no notion of ‘winning’ or ‘success’.” [1]
(*this quote was originally meant for the game Lambda MOO, but I felt that it
was just as applicable here). This difference has a number of repercussions
throughout many aspects of the game. For example, because of its basis in
quests WOW has a distinct lack of persistence. This stems from the fact that
every player in the games needs to have the chance of defeating the evil mole
king of mordew, not just a single character. Second Life in contrast is highly persistent.
Every time the player affects the world, that effect is permanent. Admittedly
Second Life players are very limited in what interactions they have, but they
are persistent none the less.
Despite
its lack of persistence WOW manages to have a much tighter narrative
experience. A players personal story in Second Life would read something like
this, “built a house, talked with John, purchased a humping emote, used humping
gesture on John”. No matter how you cut it, this is simply not an engaging
narrative. A player’s story in WOW, however, has the potential for much more
variety. Besides numerous side activities like fishing and black-smithing,
player’s main engagement with the game is much more exciting. On a purely
narrative level an epic raid on castle makeupname is far more interesting than
talking with your fellow second lifers. Pearce states that, “[by] moving
players beyond the role of spectator and towards the role of a full participant
in the narrative, MMORPGs allow players to “live” in their magical worlds as
citizens” [2]. Simply by having a more engaging narrative WOW has great
potential for a deeper level of immersion than that of Second Life.
Despite
its barren narrative content Second Life has the interesting feature of letting
players construct objects inside the game with very little restriction. WOW’s
lack of persistence precludes features like this and thus leads to all spatial building
to the game designers.
Taylor states that
"Turning
our attention to the people on the back-end of these environments - the
programmers, designers and world builders who actively work in the space of
socio-techno construction-- are central to critical examination of these
spaces" [3].
In Second Life every player
has the potential to become the world builders in the game and democratizes
development of this deeper special meaning. At the same time, this leads to a
terribly disjointed aesthetic experience. Still, it is game- play innovations
like this that Pearce is referring to when she states that “[the] boundaries
between play and production...are blurring” [4].
Finally
there is a big difference in where the control lies for these games. In WOW it
would be hard to argue that full control lies with anyone but Blizzard.
Blizzard has gone out of their way to remind player’s that they own nothing in
the game, not even their character or gear. There are numerous instances where
Blizzard has banned players that participated in in-game protests. In contrast
Mnookin states that in virtual worlds the rules and regulations are always
changing in response to the player base [5]. For example in her article, A rape
in cyber Space, Dibbell recounts the digital molestation of Lambda Moo characters
by a player known as Mr. Bungle [6]. The public outcry at his actions caused actual
laws to be placed in virtual worlds. Since then the player influence on how the
world is run has continued. Special areas owned by players have their own
custom rules for interaction and their own penalties for breaking the rules. As
Morningstar and Farmer stated when discussing their own virtual world, “we didn’t
really hold the steering wheel – more influence, in fact, than we had had when
we were operating under the delusion that we controlled everything.” [7].
[1] Curtis, P. "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities."
[2] Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf
[3] Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." ion 19, no. 1.
[4] Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006.http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf
[5] Mnookin, J. (1996) Virtual(ly) "Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO." Volume 2, Number 1: Part 1 of a Special Issue, June, 1996. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html
[6] Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace."http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html
[7] Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991) "The Lessons of LucasArts Habitat."
I'm proud of you, Michael
Posted by: Daniel Fuller | 12/04/2009 at 11:30 PM