Online Worlds Roundtable #16, Part One

RPG Vault has published the initial installment of a sixteenth Online Worlds Roundtable feature, discussing storytelling in MMOs with the likes of Cryptic Studios’ Jack Emmert, Funcom’s Andreas Ojerfors, and others.

Compared to single-player shooters and RPGs, MMOG storytelling obviously lags behind. Nearly all MMORPGs have terrific backgrounds and settings, but the story from there is fairly static. In other words, nothing really changes or evolves. The same monsters vex the same towns forever and ever. As a player and a fan, I’d love to be able to change the actual condition of things and make a real difference in the persistent world.

Quite simply, the main barrier is cost. The reason why the same assets stay in game year after year is because MMORPG are very, very expensive. As a developer, I don’t want to jettison any content because I’ll need to replace it. Players voraciously devour everything that gets presented. Decreasing content is a real threat to a game’s retention rate.

Should MMOGs be story-driven? Hmmm. Well, that’s a choice the developer needs to make. Games in general don’t need stories. What’s the tale of Chess? Or the epic of Monopoly? There’s a basic narrative to both games. In one, you’re abstractly leading an army. In the other, you’re taking the role of a real estate owner trying to dominate the market. Past that, the games are all about what the player does.

It would seem as if video games as a whole have trended towards cinema style storytelling (cutscenes, dialogue, etc.) This, I think, would be a fascinating research topic. Why are we going in this direction? Games really don’t need to. Historically, they certainly didn’t. I have no clue what Pitfall Harry was doing, but I loved jumping on those darn alligators and swinging on those vines.

So, an MMORPG doesn’t need to be driven by storytelling, but it certainly could be.