Let me make a small confession. I find it somewhat troubling yet strangely fascinating that video games are largely popular because they provide people with a safe, sanitized and consequence-free way to act out their violent fantasies — things they wouldn’t dare do in real life.
As a person who spends a considerable amount of time playing MMOs I am guilty as charged. But I have to ask: has modern life become so devoid of passion, meaning and fulfillment that we must resort to the escapist delight of killing and murder in our spare time on our computers and consoles? Is the ultimate destiny of video games to be nothing more than a murder simulator?
Must we always kill in video games and MMOs?
Why We Love to Escape
I’m not a cultural anthropologist but maybe part of the reason is that we seem to love escapism is the current reality of humanity: for the most part our western culture is metropolitan and industrialized. I don’t think people were meant to live in cities; people weren’t meant to work in cubicles and on assembly lines either. The paradox of civilization is that it has not made us more civilized. Deep down we still yearn for those primitive and primeval pursuits such as the thrill of the hunt, the need to be competitive with our fellow humans and our love of warfare with other tribes.
Since the limitations of living in a civilized world preclude us from engaging in those aforementioned uncivilized behaviors we instead turn to sports and entertainment. Even as far back as ancient Roman times people have loved to watch bloody carnage in the coliseum to satiate those primeval urges. Today’s coliseum could be football, any other professional sport or even a virtual world! (You knew I’d eventually link this back to video games.)
I admit that it’s far better for people and soccer hooligans to act out their aggression fantasies in a video game then to do so in real life. So let’s concede that entertainment, sports and video games play a very important role in allowing people to blow off steam in a safe and controlled environment. Still the fact that I have to exclusively kill in MMOs in order to progress bothers me.
The Virtual Body Count
For as long as I’ve played MMOs I’ve killed things. I did it not out of virtue but out of necessity — I had no choice — I needed to level my characters. You soon learn that to advance in MMOs means to kill and kill as fast and efficiently as possible.
In the past ten years I’ve probably killed enough humanoids and creatures in video games that would make infamous hunter Hemet Nesingwary look like Ghandi. I’m sure the virtual universe is littered with WANTED posters with my name on it accusing me of a multitude of crimes against virtual humanity.
For the record, in the past few months that WoW Achievements have been in existence the statistics show that my dwarven hunter has killed over 20 thousand creatures. I’m the kind of person in real life that hates to kill a fly but somehow in video games I’m shamelessly transformed into a ruthless cold blooded mass murderer. How did this happen?
Tired of Killing Yet?
At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, the fact is that killing has become far too common in MMOs. It’s sucked the air out of the room to the degree that other types of play styles that one might expect in a virtual world (explorers and socializers according to Bartle) are left to whither and die due to a lack of nourishment.
I was reminded of this by a brilliant article recently penned by Tesh entitled Tired of Killing. Just as some of us like Muckbeast and myself have recently started questioning quest-directed gameplay in MMO’s, Tesh and others like Ysharros and WQID in the new MMO blogosphere are starting to present alternatives to the combat-centric MMO mindset as popularized by Blizzard. The short version: we are tired of the same old crap shoved down our throats.
Tesh puts forth this challenge to the MMO industry:
That’s just not satisfying in what I want out of MMOs. I want living, breathing dynamic worlds, not murder on rails. To be sure, some players do want that, so I don’t disagree with including the combat mini game, I’m just pointing out that it’s not a satisfying world that only offers new and unique ways to kill stuff and raid corpses. There are so many more things that could be done to make an interesting world.
Channeling everyone through one “golden path” of gameplay (the combat mini game) does work, for many people, but it’s just so… shallow (and ultimately static), compared to what this genre could really offer. In other terms, it’s just one (highly burnished) facet in the gem that a spectacular MMO could be.
Now before you think I’m going Jack Thompson on you — this is not a call to eliminate violence or to sanitize it. Instead, I’d like to see MMO players have more options available to them that let them progress their characters that don’t involve death and destruction.
Bob the Killer Meet Bob the Builder
As an alternative to the murder and mayhem carnival that MMOs have been reduced to let me ask this: would it really be so wrong to let players create and build things that matter? Sure crafting and professions exist in most MMOs but the devs are just paying lip service to them as some vestige of days gone by — translation: they are not very important and get a token amount of attention paid to them. Crafters should be able to advance their characters in meaningful ways. Developers need to start putting some manpower and resources into developing content for crafters.
Please correct me if I’m wrong but despite the fact that WoW earns around $600 million a year, I’ve heard that Blizzard has one or maybe two people hired to work on crafting for 12 million subscribers. What’s wrong with this picture?
Blue Sky 101
How about letting people raise animals in virtual worlds? Let players grow permanent gardens and crops too. Let them build homes, towns, and cities if they are so inclined. Single-player games like King’s Bounty are already starting to let players get married and have children. Give players the tools to make music and art! Sure this all sounds like fantastic and wishful thinking but every one of these activities is distinctly human and wired into our psyche — daresay more than killing is. My point is that they could easily provide some alternative form of progression and advancement for people who are tired of the murder simulator that MMO’s have been reduced to.
The Usual Suspects
I think much of the problem is that the video game industry is dominated by young adult males full of testosterone. They like games that are focused on aggression mechanics such as combat and killing.
I’ve done some reading on the problem of the young males in the world in general and it’s generally understood that when their population is disproportionately high you have more problems in that society such as the proliferation of gangs and religious extremism. Look around at most trouble spots in the world today and you’ll see that much of the unrest and crime is caused in countries where young males are over-represented in the population demographic.
From the perspective of a male in his 40’s, I know full well that young adult males have very little life experience and aren’t typically the older more mature Renaissance men who in my opinion should be making virtual worlds. Yet they tend to be the ones who end up making them as they seem not to mind working obscene 16-hour days. Also, you can bet they are making those games for people just like them — other young adult males. It’s easy to see why providing a virtual world that has an alternative to achievement oriented mechanics like killing and murder would be somewhat problematic if not perplexing for them.
Part of the solution would be to see more females involved in the production of making MMOs and virtual worlds to balance out the rampant male hegemony.
Another problem is that young game designers who fancy themselves as storytellers don’t find stories about people building things or growing a garden very exciting or appealing. Death it seems is the ultimate plot mechanic and is in vogue these days as you see skulls on just about every kind of merchandise and clothing imaginable.
Dear Video Game Industry
Finally, I’d like to take the video game industry to task with a statement that won’t make me very popular. This may sound trite and pious but it seems that almost everyone involved in the video game industry is part of this problem to some degree. With the exception of children’s games and puzzle games, most video games and MMOs are predicated almost entirely on combat and violence.
Let’s be honest here, you are in the business of making virtual violence simulators.
To the people who work in the industry: is this something to be proud of? Is this the legacy you really want to leave this world?
Conclusion
Being a realist, I know full well that combat and killing will probably always be with us in video games and in MMOs. Combat-dominated games pay the bills. The problem is that due to the reliance of combat as the highest form of expression within MMOs it creates a play experience that is tedious, one-dimensional, and vapid. It also has the negative side effect of creating a brutish, monotone, sophomoric player community where everyone must fall into line as they board the murder on rails amusement park ride.
It’s high time that the sleepy captains of the MMO industry consider that there are other people who might like to be part of their virtual worlds too. If given the opportunity these new recruits would welcome alternative forms of player self-actualization mechanics that appeal to the better part of our natures and give this genre a much-needed breath of fresh virtual air.
-Wolfshead
Straight to the point! I agree with you on most things but like to add a few points 🙂
Gief moar violence!! There is nothing wrong with violence in video games 🙂
If we have to dissect the human mind, my opinion would be that we resort to game violence because we like to feel in power. Being superior, feeling that we are in power, is what makes us feel good.
Now, power comes in many levels, I’d stick to Alvin Toffler’s scale of physical/financial/knowledge power, but surely there are many other kinds.
When it comes down to it though, raw physical power is the way to go – nothing says “I’m in charge” like bashing someone in the head.
Surely that’s the most primitive reaction, a basic instinct that every human being has inscribed in it at the most lower level, primarily males of course.
Point is, when you want to feel good, you want to satisfy some basic urge, and one of the most basic is the feeling of being in control (others like the sexual urge fall under more restricted game categories 🙂 )
I for one have absolutely no problem with satisfying my urges to destroy, kill and dominate in a video game.
And if you’re saying that modern games are made by adolescent males, for adolescent males – why do you play them? This sounds like quite a niche in the market, and surely there are other niches to cater to the creative or more pacifist audience.
That said, the tendency of having nothing else to do but kill in video games is pretty dull, especially MMOs. It is shallow, restrictive, and pretty boring.
The basic hunter trap of digging a hole, putting in sharp sticks and covering it with leaves requires more creativity than what you’re required to do in games like WoW.
There is nothing wrong with creating stuff, and I’m quite sure even teenage boys would like it, if you give them the opportunity to do that.
Besides, more options like growing gardens or decorating houses would certainly help break the stereotype gamer – basement living, acne infested, teenage no-lifer.
If you look at Fallout 3 for example, it is pretty easy to implement giving character experience for: unlocking new dialogue options, hacking computers, stealing items, etc. Obviously there are other things that can advance your character than murdering every living creature.
My idea of what a game should be is that it must stick pretty close to reality. Not in terms of avoiding dragons and fairyes, but in terms of game mechanics (physics etc.) and game possibilities. The more freedom you have in a “game world”, the better the game is. If the game restricts you to following a simple path, you might as well go watch movie. The very idea in the first place was that you should have a choice.
For example to all this – the most fun I had in a very long time was playing Crayon Physics.
It is a simple game, tailored in the fashion of a child drawing board, and still it is brilliant, it can keep me occupied for hours.
Those are the little, CREATIVE, fun ideas that used to make great games in the past, not just mass-produced game patterns.
Most of the games coming out at present are like fast food, get something that works, copy-paste. Thats what happens when you let production managers tell game designers what should and shouldnt be done… unfortunately it has always been like this.
But after all it is the designer who should do something about it 🙂
Like a line I read somewhere said “Why would you want the power to destroy, when you can have the power to create?!”
One can play a MMO for other purposes then enjoyment. As a designer myself I’d be remiss if I didn’t play WoW. As a MMO blogger I’d be out of my mind not to play WoW and understand the mechanics behind it. Lots of people mistakenly attacked Richard Bartle because he said he played WoW even though he disagreed with some of Blizzard’s design decisions.
My point about young males being the predominant force in creating games is that they have a limited understanding of life which gives them less of a vocabulary when making a virtual world. If you are painting with a box of Crayons instead of the full palette of an oil artist you are going to get a much simpler less sophisticated outcome — you get WoW.
Also this speaks to why designers like Jeff Kaplan and others are afraid of the term “virtual world”. They are intimidated by the idea and it’s far easier for them to rationalize making a “game” rather then a world. When they are making a just a game they don’t have to worry about the grander implications about making a world and those pesky socializers and explorers. 🙂
Exactly. That’s what my article is really all about — creating more opportunities in MMOs for a deeper and more interesting gameplay experience.
You’d think that 10 years after the release of EverQuest, Asheron’s Call and Ultima Online that would be true but sadly it’s not at least in the MMO industry.
Amen to that!
MMO gaming is still in the early stages of development and waiting for a quantum leap. Especially the virtual fantasy world kind of MMOGs. Take a look at movies and television, they evolved through new ideas and technologies. Compare MMOGs to fantasy literature, then we are still in the “Swords & Sorcery” period, but without even the slightest hint of story or anything else but fighting. Swords & Sorcery has a heavy focus on fighting, just think of R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt, but it would not work at all if it would be so extremely focused on combat and killing alone as MMOs do, which have different strengths like player interaction.
Basically, MMOs have to develop meaningful things for players to do other than killing to gain power and achieve something of fun and value to the player, and learn how to tell stories differently from a fantasy novel or a fantasy movie, ideally you let players create the story themselves. If you give players meaningful options, they will be able to write their own history, creating content by themselves, no longer depending so much on yearly vertical expansions.
The problem is the neverending nature of MMORPGs, we grow bigger, better, stronger and the whole world falls behind. WOTLK introduced a nice quest chain were people can help build a deathknight base in Icecrown, but it is a one-time event, after that it is just one more quest hub. Kaplan is right, we do not want to read a book while playing, and we do not have to read quest text to do the simple tasks “kill 5 X, bring 6 Y, collect 7 Z and get item A,B,C as reward” that are still called “Quests”. We are still stuck in the hunters and gatherers period of MMO gaming, despite efforts to give us somewhat more interesting quests. I think questing alone is a dead end.
My idea would be a focus on economy and having features like player death and item decay. Weapons would break, lose quality, armor would lose durability. Smiths will craft and sell you better weapons than NPCs. Your char would age, 100 days roughly being 100 years… so you will not live forever. Wounds received in combat would also reduce your lifetime and overall stats, but you would gain skill in combat related stats. You would be able to have children with NPCs or other players, and determine their future career at birth (i.e. send them to a monastery, a combat school, let your son become a squire or merchant, sell them to slavery… ok, just some examples). This would prevent neverending growth and also open up for a nice feature, a “Temple of Remembrance” that shows the glorious deeds of your ancestors. Like Sir Longasc killing the dragon of Angmor before getting eaten by a Muckbeast, his son Bane the Bastard assassinating the painter Tesh the Elder and getting hanged, his daughter Faile ending as a … dancer … after conspiring to seduce the King of Corvia. Or the short genealogy of the prophet Wolfshead, who was killed by Priests of Chaos while preaching, rumored to have transcended to the blogosphere after death.
Let people build bridges, let them run a business, let them aspire to become a king or queen (I would add a quickly increasing random chance that the king/queen will be assassinated after 7 days… so that others can take over), let them make laws. I can imagine dangerous and longish sea travels on ships where success and survival is not guaranteed, even highly unlikely, but that also feature huge rewards.
Basically, a simplified virtual fantasy world in a medieval setting. I just worry how to add housing, popular games like Ultima Online managed to have so many houses that a whole continent/world had to be assigned almost exclusively to provide housing space.
I think we see how WoW struggles with the neverending problem to generate more and better content every expansion, the refinement of combat, quest and raid mechanics has in the long run lead to a degeneration and severe power creep. Compare today’s WoW player chars to WoW in 2005. We no longer kill single mobs slowly, we kill tons of mobs with AoE spells by now, faster than ever before.
It is time for a complete change of design, something daring and new. Maybe it is ArenaNet or Curt Schilling with 38 Studies (IIRC) who pull it of, but WoW 3.0, 4.0 or 5.0 would definitely be dead ends. We need a revolution, or we will face a constant attack of the clones. Single player games are often more innovative and inspiring than more variations of the DIKU MUD design that is predominant nowadays. A re-launch of the whole MMORPG genre.
Hmm.
EVE online doesn’t require you to murder to play. Nor did Star Wars, at least when it first came out (I really have no idea what the status of that game is now.)
There’s two major games that break out of the murder-simulation mold, at least. There’s also more casual and kid-friendly stuff, too.
While I can’t argue with ‘most’ videogames and MMOs having violent premises, I can point out a significant number of counter-examples.
Every sports game… well, except for things like Speedball and Blood Bowl.
Every racing game… although Burnout does encourage fatal car crashes.
Simulation games… SimCity and ilk, The Sims, flight sims, etc.
Civ-style games, where violence may be an option but isn’t necessarily the purpose of the game.
Rhythm and Music games, such as Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Singstar, Dance Dance Revolution.
Board and Card games, sure it’s a bit of a cop-out, but Uno is hugely popular on Live.
Puzzle games, of which vast numbers are played every day, including in MMO for via Puzzle Pirates.
Portal. Harvest Moon. Katamari Damacy. Jet Set Radio Future. Mirror’s Edge. Lemmings.
I could go on. But I think that between Sports, Sims, Racing, Music, and Puzzle games, that the non-violent aspect is very well represented in the video game industry. There is a vast ocean of low-quality crap that is based off the fighting/shooting genres, because those are easy to create using extant engines. But just because vast quantities of lowest sommon denominator drek is out there, I don’t think that the industry as a whole is failing to provide gamers with compelling experiences that don’t involve killing things and taking their stuff.
MMOs are a bit different, at least in a fantasy setting. The D&D/Diku mindset is that you kill things to get stronger. Fantasy MMOs are still pretty limited in what they can offer the player, because the core conceit is that you’re a hero who kills monsters. How far can you get away from that conceit and still be playing an ‘Epic Fantasy Role Playing Game’?
I’d love to see Blizzard implement systems that encouraged growth through other avenues, and really polished player housing, player crafting, and player resource management and control. It’s annoying that to play a tailor, I have to murder thousands of humanoids to maximize my skill (or pay others to murder them for me and buy the cloth from them). But, I’m not playing a tailor to be a crafter, because WoW’s crafting system is ill-suited to the game’s premise. As a tailor, I give up other choices so that I can find more cloth, make a few custom enchants, and make decent starter epics. Once you’ve made the epics, you don’t keep tailoring outside of a few bags and doing things for friends… I’ve got dozens and dozens of recipes that I’ve never used and never will. It would be nice if there was a reason to make some of that stuff.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with video games portraying violence — I’m certainly not sold on the “games = RL killings” angle, just as I never particularly bought the “D&D creates rampant satanic serial killer suicides!” angle. What’s wrong about it is when it’s the only major activity that’s portrayed in games that are available to me (or anyone else).
You can’t eat nothing but carrots all the time; my brother tried when he was about 4 and it made him turn orange. In games as with most everything else, we need variety, and I suspect even the young adult males might come to appreciate it. As Longasc says, MMOs are stuck in the “Sword & Sorcery” part of fantasy — and not even the better stuff. I doubt most game designers have read Dunsany for instance — I actually wonder how many of them have even read their Tolkien.
As Wolfshead says though, most of these games are designed by young adult males, and it’s pretty natural that they should design the stuff they enjoy, assuming everyone else will too. Problem is, some of us would like the occasional helping of broccoli. 😉
While we certainly can and definitely should encourage players to enjoy different playing types (get the young nerd out of his parents’ basement), in the shorter term and as regards MMO design I would much rather see a greater commitment to using “older” talent in making these games. Sadly, even from the outside (I’m only a gamer, not a designer) it’s pretty obvious not only that there isn’t such a commitment, but also that most of us older would-be designers are too smart to sign away our lives and our talent for peanuts and bad treatment. (Instead, we blog for free.)
Thanks for the link, Wolf. I’m going to make it circular here shortly — anything that expands the “alternatives” debate is worthwhile. It may not have an effect immediately, but more and more people are discussing different ways of creating games and I’m hopeful enough to think it will eventually trickle through into practice.
“Gaming corrupts our disposition and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind” Thomas Jefferson.
So was Thomas Jefferson prophetically brilliant? Did he see something back in the 1700’s about human beings? I don’t know. I just always thought it was an interesting quote of his.
A building game has several innate problems to consider.
First and foremost, if you can destroy, people will. It’s almost always far easier to destroy than to build, and psychologists tell us that roughly 1% of the population fits the criteria for being psychopathic. That means griefers do exist and they WILL play your game. If they can get their jollies by tearing down what you spent all week, or all month, or all year building up, they will. That’s devastating to the builder. There are ways to limit this potential, such as forcing every player to have some sort of investment of their own, which they risk in destroying the works of others (that’s how real life works, after all; people don’t want to go to jail, since they have investment in their own free lives).
If destruction isn’t possible, there’s the problem of overproliferation of creations. Eventually there are buildings everywhere, and your amazing, perfect city is buried in a morass of tens of thousands of other cities. This can be ameliorated with a rating system, but even so, there comes a point where there’s too much player-generated content for players to really experience, and the chances get higher and higher that your masterpiece will never be seen by anyone but you.
Can a game about building be made that overcomes these obstacles? Sure. I think player investment is highest in things they’ve created collectively with other players, and the greater the personal agency, the greater the investment. That leads to a very “sticky” game with potentially high retention, where combat isn’t the focus at all. I’d be intrigued to see such a game come to market.
I must admit I also would have trouble to get inspiration for a MMO from Lord Dunsany’s “The King of Elflands daughter” or whatever it was called. 🙂
Tolkien also did never really dig into the everyday life of Middle-Earth. But the challenge for a MMO that does not solely focus on “cool killing” would be to create a world where living is fun.
We could mix in Harvest Moon style farming minigames that are really about growing crops and so on, but the virtual world would ideally not be all about farming as it should not be all about combat.
I think a strong economy model could be the driving force of a virtual world MMO. It could provide people with Realm vs Realm combat over resource zones, encourage trading (transporting goods from Realm A to Realm B, through PK land, for instance) and besides trading, running your own farm in fantasy land or a tavern should be a cool thing to do, too.
Muckbeast created a pet breeding system for his upcoming Primordiax, IIRC. I can imagine faster and more enduring horses, or cows giving more milk.
PvP in a more complex world is a problem, someone already mentioned, if people can destroy something, they will destroy it for sure. On the other hand player death and item decay are systems that could prevent power creep problems of modern MMOs. Your first char could be a fighter, the son or daughter an artisan, a merchant, a farmer… lots of options. I think a reboot and loss of most money and possessions is something many people have trouble to accept. There is also the problem of guild memberships and social networks if your char dies after 90 days for instance, and other members of your guild as well. Even if you have them in your friends list and will always recognize them because of the same surname or player ID this will cause a lot of organizational trouble, almost as troublesome as permadeath.
I’ve only a minute, but let me ask another question or two:
Why must we, as writers and pontificators about games, often preface our commentary with asterisks and caveats? Say, “I’m no Jack Thompson” or “I’m not *personally* against violence, but”…
Just because JT is a complete buffoon and others have taken the “gamez are eeeevil” thing too far, does that mean there’s no place to honestly criticize the preponderance of violence as a means to conflict resolution? I’m of the mind that people are taking the Jack Thompson thing to a Godwin’s hyperbolic end to avoid looking at the subtleties that might actually mean something. There actually are “risk factors” for psychological problems, some of them in games. Ignoring them for fear of being lumped in with JT and his idiotic ilk doesn’t actually help the discussion.
Worse, demonizing the critics is just as intellectually bankrupt as them demonizing gamers. It’s a lot easier to rationalize your own position if someone else can be shown to be wrong, but it doesn’t logically follow that you’re right.
It’s safe to say “I just want to open up MMO design to other avenues of gameplay”, but I’m not convinced that it really addresses the whole problem. It’s better than nothing… but without addressing why people really *do* love the “murder on rails” games, are we really going to find any lasting alternatives?
I’m not sure of the answers… but I do know that asking the best questions doesn’t always provide comfortable answers.
Oh, and lest I sound self-righteous, I danced around the issue in my blog article, too. I’m fully aware of that. I just have to wonder if we’re not looking far enough to really find anything useful. Without understanding why people do what they do, alternatives will likely just wind up as the same old DIKU grind with new sheep’s clothing.
Is there something better, or are we stuck with making virtual violence simulators? (Nice phrase, by the way.)
I think when people say this as I did, it’s to immunize themselves against a possible backlash. It’s somewhat analogous to the way people say “I’m not a racist but…”. In our culture people are afraid of being judgmental or labeled as being narrow minded so we tend to be more self-censoring and timid then we should be. It’s very easy to equivocate when something more spartan and direct would be better.
I probably should not have made a reference to Jack Thompson but did so to let readers know that I am aware of the controversy surrounding him which is a preemptive technique to help ward off the anti-Jack Thompson folks that might end up here.
Good point. Which is why I examined some potentially risky and uncomfortable questions and conclusions in my article which were inspired by your article.
Well the anti-Jack Thompson zealots are a prime example of this. Using this guy as a red herring to absolve themselves from even examining sex and violence in video games is just as reprehensible.
Well I think I attempted to look at this problem from both a historical, anthropological and societal perspective. I didn’t just say, “I’m bored of killing stuff…give me other things to do Mr. Game Designer” 🙂
At least we as bloggers/designers/posters are trying to find a consensus that we do need to broaden what MMOs can and should be about other then just mass murder. Hopefully the sum result of all these blog articles is that we are trying to spearhead a revolution in how MMOs are made.
On the other hand, there’s nothing really wrong with saying “I’m bored of killing stuff” either, even if it’s not as learnedly supported — most gamers would probably say just that if they had to express their ennui. 😉 From what I’ve been reading around the blogosphere it’s not so much that we suddenly hate bashing stuff, it’s that we’re a little tired of it being the primary, and sometimes the only, choice of activity in most of the “larger” (dare I say “mainstream”?) MMOs.
Heh, sorry, Wolf, I didn’t mean to sound grumpy/critical; that was mostly musing with no particular target in the article (you’re not the only one with such a caveat in your writings). Also, JT has been in the news in my neck of the woods lately, so I’ve seen some hyperbole and it’s been on my mind.
Ysh, indeed, expressing such isn’t anything wrong, just as expressing moral/psychological concerns isn’t anything wrong. Perhaps I’ve unfairly conflated the two when a discussion of each independently might serve better, since the inevitable heightened emotion about the moral/psych factor usually doesn’t accomplish much. It’s still highly relevant to my own “tired of killing” concerns, but perhaps the core *game design* issue is indeed just the tiredness of “the same old thing” that just happens to be killing stuff and looting the corpses.
I completely agree. Ultimately everyone’s opinion is worthwhile. The problem is most people never bother to express their opinions to the companies that they deal with and just stop patronizing them which hurts those companies in the long run as they have no feedback that they could use to change their products and services.
In the case of MMOs people just leave en masse as we’ve seen in the past few years — most players are used to being ignored by MMO companies.
As bloggers presenting thoughtful and cogent arguments that challenge much of the current MMO design philosophy is one way we can take up the mantle of helping MMO subscribers who feel that they are disenfranchised by the company (see the WoW forums). Hopefully we’ll see better MMOs in the future as a result of that.
It’s also a valid way to rebut the current Blizzard dogma of how MMOs should be made. The masters of the universe in the MMO industry rarely if ever subject themselves and their design philosophies to public debate. Just once I’d like to see Pardo or Kaplan have the courage to engage the public in a no holds barred debate on the future of MMOs.
At least with our blogs and the many thoughtful posters that frequent them we can provide aspiring MMO developers with feedback, concerns and ideas that will pave the roadways of future MMOs and virtual worlds.
No worries and no offense taken. I do appreciate the honesty. 🙂
Although violence in video games is the common thread, I think this subject is only tangentially related to the Jack Thompson controversy. It’s not a call to remove all forms of violence from MMO’s rather it’s a call to the MMO industry to provide some relief from the tedium and offer more variety in their virtual worlds. After all we believe in this genre and we want it to succeed!
Definitely.
Running another tangent, I’ve noted before, as have others, that combat itself doesn’t change substantially through most of the modern MMO design. Sure, you may be using slightly different abilities, and hitting palette swapped bad guys four times instead of three, but it almost always degenerates into a fairly simplistic routine, not only becoming tedious, but also robbing the actions of much of their interest and implications. These MMO things have vast potential, more than perhaps any other game because of their nature, but the killing treadmill isn’t tapping much of that potential.
To be fair, neither would be a game whose sole method of progress was a reskinned “achievement grind” with periodic “reward pinatas” that just happened to not be killing stuff. That’s what I’m picking at by looking at the game mechanics; we’re really just popping “loot pinatas” so that we can be equipped to pop more with bigger numbers. Frame it as killing foozles, digging up treasure, or some other “Ding” mechanic, it’s all the same genetic strain. There has to be something more than that.
In much the same way that violence can desensitize someone to further violence, by sheer repetition, highly repetitive game experiences can desensitize players to the possibilities of MMO games. Pretty soon, the common seems to be “normal”, whether or not it’s ideal, and it behooves us to take a step back now and then to ask “why is that?”, and “what is really happening here?”, and more, “what could be better?”.
I must agree, Tesh. The combat obsession and the flood of DIKU-MUD-WoW-clones are definitely acquired tastes. There could be so much more!
This reminds me of many modern movies. Take “Transformers”, all I can remember about it are gigantic explosions and Megan Fox. But I am used to great CGI, I expect nothing less. I am also used to female actors being sexy as hell. Could I please have all that PLUS some decent acting and a better story?
People seem to have a desire to fight and overpower enemies, and sex is also a driving force and in Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs it is at the bottom, basically very important.
The comparison is flawed, but I want to point out that I am no longer satisfied with just killing and looting anymore. Once these desires are fulfilled, people want more.
In terms of MMOs, I already said it, we are still in a very primitive hunters and gatherers stage of development. There is still a lot of room to improve the very automatic and gear dependant combat of WoW, but I think we need a completely new system that gives us more options. EverQuest made the DIKU MUD popular and was ahead of its time, WoW just follows in its footsteps, but does not go ahead.
What we get so far is a new back to grind design, daily quests, odd achievements and stuff like that. They do not really entertain players, my friend Steve who is still playing WoW said “they give me something to do, a reason to play”.
When I was reading up a bit on the Stargate MMO I discovered that one of the huge differences between it and other MMOs is that they’re trying to get away from the “Hit point war” that is exemplified in EverQuest and shortened in later games (WoW).
Perhaps it is a step in the right direction. Perhaps not.
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/04/open-sunday-thread.html
People are talking about content delivery and dynamic WORLDS in Tobold’s Open Sunday Thread.
It is not about violence in MMOs, but I see a wish to more dynamic events, a living and breathing world. I think this development will lead to less violence. Because a WORLD cannot be build on the basis of combat and more combat.
Maybe there is hope for future MMOs. I have still not given up to hope for more! 🙂
And then you get picked up by this:
http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-04-04/20090404203127553,1.shtml#notop
and the amount of tripe in the comments makes you (well, me, certainly) despair of the human race.
Thanks for the link Ysharros! I think those cretins make my point:
They are the sad and twisted product of an amoral video game culture where violence has become the norm. I feel sorry for society when these freaks enter adulthood –perhaps some of them are adults which is even more tragic.
Absolutely in agreement. I’ve been preaching that for years. Jeff Kaplan thinks it can’t be done so what does he do? He promotes achievements as the savior of MMOs. *scratches my head*.
The fact that players *are* talking about a dynamic world truly is hopeful! Maybe they are finally getting tired of the Groundhog Day way that MMOs are currently scripted and structured.
Now I know why an extra click is required to read player comments on MMOsite.
Those are some really good ideas you have there Longasc 🙂
I dont know what point I am trying to make, I just wanna throw in two games for example’s sake.
First – Serious Sam (the first part)
Made by a small company, first try at 3d shooter, realy simple – get a gun and kill tons of stuff. I guess you can put in Alien Shooter in the same category. There is nothing but killing and violence in this game, but it is fun. It made me laugh really hard at some points, which looks kinda weird when you are shooting at waves of thousands of critters.
I dont really think a game like that promotes violence. It just caters to your need to destroy, and it does it SO good. Beauty is in the simple things.
Second game – a mod map for Warcraft III TFT called “Ice troll tribes”
When I first heard about WoW being announced, I thought it would be something like this mod map…
Basically your character has body temperature, hunger and fatigue levels.
Fatigue drops constantly, faster when you do things like sprinting (replaces mana), and is replenished when you “sleep”, which is effectively loss of character control for a period of time.
Body temperature drops depending on the weather in game – when it is day you are OK, and actually regain a bit of temperature. When it gets dark you need to light a fire, or you risk dying of cold. Things get worse when it starts snowing, or when a rain puts out your fire.
Hunger level is dropping at a constant pace, and is replenished by eating, which also replenishes hit points.
Your char can craft things like clothes (made of animal fur), a gradually better home (tent of skin and wood, house of stone and turtle shells), fire (wood, flint and tinder) etc.
The game felt very real, and caring for your character’s needs was really fun. It promoted character interaction too – when one player has the wood, another the tinder, and they are both facing dying of cold, they grouped up to build the fire.
Usually the late game consisted of an established village, where one player was hunting for food and gathering materials, another was building the village, keeping the fires going and cooking the food, and others were making weapons and going to war with the other tribe.
It really amazes me how could there be such cool ideas, made by people passionate about a game, in contrast to the burnout of others, in this case, the original game
@SsandmanN, Serious Sam was indeed serious fun. And also had a reasonable low cost price. Even some crackers made zealous statements that people should buy the game.
The ice troll mod is new to me! I never played WarCraft III that much, but I am also the guy who liked Diablo 1 graphics more than Diablo 2, despite having had a 3DFX Voodoo 2… hum!
This mod is more like a completely new game, and it has so much potential: SURVIVAL MMORPG. Our chars usually do not eat, do not sleep, do not crap, do not get sick, do not suffer from wounds… but they are alive? 🙂
If Jeff Kaplan would be part of the design team, we would for sure have to collect crap (literally) to start a fire or to build a hut.
But in the World of Warcraft, people on my PvP server complained that their bank alts were killed by zombies during the Zombie invasion event before WOTLK release. And really dared to mention they fear/care for the level 1 newbies in the starting zones.
The dragons in the harbour were also doing nothing, they were flying around and the abominations got killed by the guards.
I vote for natural disasters to happen regularly, and for hailstorms that dismount flying players! More power to the environment.
I confess, I’m one of those people who really likes killing in video games, especially fantasy ones!
However, I like it precisely because it bears no real resemblance or relation to actually killing anything. Or, as I’ve been saying to friends lately, “Killing imaginary beings with pretty lights makes me full of happiez!” Maybe some of it is just that it feeds my ‘whee! I feel leet!’ urges while knowing that I’m not actually hurting anyone at all.
Because when it comes to real, moral choices (which killing in the games I play at least, is thankfully totally free of), causing hurt can leave a bad taste in the mouth at the very least – and force you to look carefully at who you are (oh noes!). And you might not like that person very much.
I quit playing WoW when WotLK came out. (3 years played, 8-10 70s [2 shared], some alts ran out of badge gear to buy.) I simply came to the realisation that I had lost all taste for their main seller, chase the gear-carrot… and WoW really offered me nothing much after that.
I picked up Guild Wars about 4 months ago, and I fell totally in love with the game. It’s not for everyone… but suffice to say I’ve been boring anyone who will listen to death about how quietly revolutionary and beautifully designed GW is.
This is related to violence – honest! Because the metagame of GW is PvP based.
I love PvP… but I’m an odd sort of PvP lover.
To be more precise, I love pitting myself against people who love pitting themselves against other people… because it can lead to very creative play and use of game mechanics.
Of course I don’t _like_ losing – who does? But the win doesn’t matter to me as much as having fun during the fight. I’ve always preferred a very close win or loss to my loss, or an easy win where I just stomp my opponent into the ground.
I stopped PvPing in WoW after I got the gear I wanted (ironically for PvE… that system is so broken). 20 minutes of pole-dancing as a healer or your team loses… that’s not PvP. That’s a travesty.
While griefing, playing for the ‘epeen’ of the win, simple joy in victimising someone weaker than you, etc etc are definitely on the PvP landscape, I think that there is more to PvP than that.
I realise your post was about killing in MMOs, and not directly about PvP, but I think they are related to some degree.
My love for killing ‘imaginary monsters by using pretty lights’ (which is basically what PvE is to me), and my love for the exhilaration from being outsmarted or outclassed by skill and a mastery of game mechanics exceeding my own, and the reverse too of course (PvP for me), are parts of the same thing.
While fighting (and killing!) in a good PvE frame, I want to be able to admire the artistry and beauty of the game. After a good PvP match, I love being able to admire the artistry and mastery of my opponent.
In neither of these is my goal to cause hurt or pain to another person or being. It’s a little like comparing the movies Zatoichi and Hero. Zatoichi is (to me) simply amazing in the realism of its fight choreography. Hero is an abstract, beautiful dance. I love both movies. But it’s Hero that I watch repeatedly, just for fun. Even though Zatoichi is much more realistic. In visual terms, what I like about Hero is its beauty and innovation within the idea of combat, while in Zatoichi it’s the beauty of combat itself.
I’m one of those shy lurking posters… so I hope I haven’t bored anyone to death. *blush*
…oh and if it matters, I’m feeeeeeeeeeeeeemale!
Guild Wars is indeed a very cool game, I have played it too, but I belonged more to the PvE crowd. You know, the huge majority that decided to play this PvE game with PvP as endgame content more or less in a PvE way. 🙂
GW2 is supposed to become a bit more “mmoish”, whatever that will mean…
You are absolutely right, for people who want to fight on even ground and not pit their better gear vs worse gear, GW has a lot of interesting pvp modes to offer.
Are you more the GvG, RA or Alliance Battles type of player? 🙂
Longasc:
I’m only just starting to get into PvP to be honest, so all I do PvP wise is RA, RA and more RA right now… Trying to get my PvP monking awareness and skeelz up to scratch, so RA seems the best place to learn. I still look too much at the health bars and not enough at the field. 🙁
~_o there’s no better way to make yourself less bad in the beginning by figuring out ways to work around other bad people! XD
While PvP is the metagame, there is lots of PvE fun for those who don’t really go for the gear-that-makes-me-leeter-by-giving-me-a-game-advantage. Acknowledgement that gear need not always be the be all and end all seems to be one of GW’s braver, and more uncommon realisations and implementations.
I still have so much of the world (PvE) to explore! One of the ways GW works so well (I think, anyway) is that the general archetypes of Explorer, Achiever, Killer and Socialiser can indeed coexist more or less happily. Yes, if applied to a specific individual all the archetypes are inaccurate. People are multi-flavoured onions.
But GW really impresses me community-wise. Community is built into the design architecture from the ground up, and it really shows. Player organised events that ANet helps out with, for one thing… Until I started GW, I thought this kind of thing could only happen in MUDs.
(I have a looooooooooong history with MUDs.)
Oh, this is odd! You love the GW community? More the ingame community or the forum community?
Do not get me wrong, I love GW, I am just jaded and already played it for too long, so I am not playing it at all for over a year by now.
But I think that GW has become a single-player experience. Better Henchmen and lately the customizeable henchmen (called “Heroes”, just an explanation for non-GW players) basically destroyed Pickup-Groups and the only social thing is using the LFG channel for trade messages.
You know, meeting people is only possible in cities, have not met anyone in explorable areas so far! 🙂
I have probably a very different view of the game. I played WITH people in Prophecies. Much less in Factions, and in Nightfall and Eye of the North I exclusively played with Heroes/Henchmen and a few good RL friends and a few friends that I met while playing Prophecies!
I think I developed a rather misanthropic view of fellow gamers… I often thought “my Heroes do it better, they will not fail”. But this also robbed me of the fun of doing some runs with strangers.
I also vanquished all three continents except a few areas all alone! Interestingly, I liked and grouped a lot for Hard Mode dungeons in Eye of the North. I could have done them with henchmen, but they felt so much better with human players, unlike the missions in Factions and Nightfall. Or explorables. Who actually groups with other players for “exploring explorable areas”?
I wish they would make the Underworld more forgiving and give player some more incentives than the statue you get for completing it, as it is a visually wonderful and well designed area that nobody plays, is it not funny?? Most people focus on farming the smite crawlers for Ectoplasm. 🙁
I just played it for too long already, but the game was a blast. I remember Ettin farming for runes, Griffin runs in the desert and exploring the Fissure of Woe and the Ravenheart Gloom. I especially liked the Gloom and the odd lighting there, I do not like the Forge or the city, the Stygian Veil is also not my favorite.
I really hope that ArenaNet manages to excite me as much if not even more so with Guild Wars 2! 🙂
Hm. It’s not so much the ingame or forum community as a combination of both. I love that there’s nowhere to ‘hide’. Be a poop, change your name, change your server. Who cares if you’re a poop! doesn’t work when there’s no servers to change and names are linked to accounts. In WoW, I actually used addons to track and avoid poops! XD
I like that guilds and alliances can and do exist that aren’t just there to chase gear carrots and ‘progression’.
I loved that on April Fool’s this year when all the player models got turned into horribly cute Gwens, I actually sat in Shing Jea with total strangers for about 2 hours pretending to eat bugs off the floor – and it was FUN. I haven’t sat online in a game doing effectively ‘nothing’ except chatting with random people for that long since I left my MUD of 8ish years about… 5 years ago.
I love the H/H system to death. It means I only have to group when I feel like being social. And that if the group doesn’t work out, it’s no big deal. I confess I H/H a LOT – basically all my vanquishing is done H/H, other than Prophecies (which I started with), all the other storylines were done the first time round (and most times after that), with H/H.
It’s true that being able to rely on AI to some degree does make for a less ‘social’ game. Especially since average AI is more convenient than average player, you can tell them do this, stand there, and you know that while they’re not bursting with lively and perhaps interesting opinions, at the end of a long day, they won’t be bursting with unpleasantness either. XD
However, I do actually go out and look for groups _when I feel like looking for people to play with_. Having the AI to fall back on when I do not feel like making allowances for humans, when I’ve had a bad day, or when a group simply doesn’t work out makes me more easygoing than I was in WoW, TBH. If every other stupid thing done by a tank means I (healer) die (wow, esp heroic)… and I have nothing to fall back on except hoping for a better tank, it makes me a damn sight more cranky than if I have the option to simply use AI I can work with. XD
I haven’t done any underworld/fow/slaver’s exile/what have you yet… I’ve only been playing for 4 months! So yes, I’m coming in at the, ‘damn this is shiny and beautiful’ stage, vs your oldtimer stage, so I’m sure for some things our views are quite different. But a lot of what I admire about GW is the lasting beauty of the system itself. The kind of thought that obviously went into it.
🙁 It makes me sad that the GW dev team are crunchifying too. I hope they at least love their game as much as their players seem to.
… ok I’ll stop now >.> I hijacked this thing and turned it into a How I Love GW spammalooza. *hangs head*
I am already over-commenting Wolfshead’s Blog. I just noticed that on the front page, “recent comments”, 4x Longasc, 1x Nugget. 😉
And as you noticed, I have burned through a lot of MMOs, and now tend to see a lot of flaws in games that entertained me for endless hours.
I think the impressions of a gamer that is rather new to a game or genre is also important.
GW is actually very special – it is neither a classic MMO, nor is it just Diablo II 2.0.
And I guess there is a good reason why we do not have a statistic page listing killed creatures in Guild Wars – I guess some of my chars would make Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler combined pale in comparsion. So much about “Murder on Rails”.
JedioftheShire wrote an excellent blogpost about the difference of MMO Games and MMO Virtual Worlds, check it out:
http://jedioftheshire.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/virtual-worldtm-vs-mmorpg-they-are-different-and-ill-tell-you-why/
I loved this article! Sometimes I feel like a lone voice in the wilderness when I ask, is this all there is? Is this all it will ever be?
When Vanguard came out, I was very excited to see an alternate advancement, other than battle. The concept of a diplomat, that could level, and provide buffs and other advantages for the nearby towns and adventurers — well at least it was a move in the right direction. The diplomat class, was actually the best part of Vanguard.
Everquest 2, had originally intended to have crafting classes. You could play a crafter, and never adventure if you chose to do so. They changed it during early Beta. I still have hope that a game will have a pure crafting/merchant class. One that provides what adventurers need, and relies on them for goods.
I would love to see a spy class. One that sneaks around, learns enemy secrets, and returns home with the information. The spy should have to avoid combat at all costs, with perhaps an experience penalty if they are found out.
Please..give me something..anything..a true character class, with quests and gear just like an adventurer. Let me have one class where I don’t have to wield a sword.
I agree! We need a virtual world that allows us to do anything we imagine! May it be fighting, farming a rice patty, hanging with friends and shopping, building homes (destroying them), hunting for food in the wilderness, flying high in the sky, gathering nuts as a little squirrel, or eating that squirrel as a wolf!
Most will say “Whats the point of making a world with things you can do in real life?”, well to counter that, violence is possible in real life also, maybe not fantasy like stuff but still violence is possible. And besides people who resort to doing things online rather than in real life normaly cant do those things at that time in their life. I, as a 16 year-old, can not have children (legally). I can’t raise my own farm, nor do I have the option to shop with friends at any moment (not to mention finding love is almost impossible for me). Simply put, people want out of virtual worlds what they can’t have in the real world, and to single out only violence as what they need in the virtual experience is hopelessly incorrect!
Personally, I don’t mind violence! For me its an out reach when I’m angry, but when its my only option all my other emotions turn to rage. I would like a virtual activity to compliment each of my varrious emotions. I intend to grow up and raise my own rice patty in a rural section of Japan once I’ve earned enough money, but until then I want a substitute to fill the viod and that substitute can no longer be violence!
Please e-mail me (alekhowell@gmail.com) if you agree with me, and would like to share your ideas of what your perfect virtual world would be like! I’d love to share all of my ideas with you here but there are far too many!
P.S. I don’t like the current MMOSG’s out today. They limit you to a modern day experience in a high population city atmosphere, and thats not my ideal world. I want a combination of every corner of imagination in the world!
Also (sorry for a double post) I need to add that the games that give options other than fighting like Mabinogi are great, but quickly here, if anyone has played Mabinogi, could you please tell me how you gain ability points to advance those skills? They force you to level up by fighting! No alternative mode of leveling is availible! I mean sure you get small exp boosts from raising other skills but that just wastes your ability points on something you don’t intend to use and the exp gain from such advances is roughly 0.90% of what you need to level up at a very low level, so this method is completely unaffective. Which leads me to my point, such games force you into violence just so that you can enjoy your other abilities such as composing music, blacksmithing, and fishing.
The damn best shooter ever has been released – Modern Warfare 2. Most of the time it is a rather cinematic experience (in single player mode), not that interactive and for sure tubular and gated as hell.
At least to enthusiast player reviews, while a lot hate the need for Steam, lack of dedicated servers and many other things. The game got a 1,5 star rating on Amazon.de, but mostly for these issues and NOT for something that really troubles me: The excessive fest of cinematic and semi-interactive violence.
It embraces violence as a stylistic device. The often discussed airport scene where you play a terrorist and watch how the evil guys shoot civilians in especially cruel and inhuman ways.
But this is actually supreme, as it shows the nature of violence, terrorism in war in all its shocking extent… so at least says the apparent popular consensus.
Shooters now have the extra dose of violence that often gets cut or reduced in war movies. They are actually that, semi-interactive war movies.
And this is the best sold and most awaited game of 2009 for ages and whatever.
In Germany there are ongoing efforts of the government to ban violent shooters that are horrible, misguided and I actually do not want to discuss them again in detail here.
But the tasteless direction shooters are developing nowadays makes me wonder if their negative opinion on the FPS shooter genre is really that dead wrong! 🙁
I watched an old war movie with John Wayne a couple of years ago. It was poignant, mournful and meaningful, all without a shred of the “violence porn” that we see these days. Simply, it’s not necessary to tell a good story, and most often, detracts from it.
War is violent. War is terrible. The things worth celebrating about it aren’t the bits where people die in gory, nasty ways.
I’ve always thought that my ultimate game would be some combo of WoW/LOTRO and The Sims. I remember when I first heard about MMOs, I thought they would be like that — a virtual fantasy world where you could craft, farm, hang out in taverns, build a house, wander around town, marry other players or NPCs, have kids, raise animals, etc. You know, an MMORPG that actually involves ROLEPLAYING. But that’s not what they are at all. It’s definitely more like the “murder on rails” experience that Wolfshead describes.
Even as a longtime fan of LOTRO, I recognize that I spend a heck of a lot of time killing stuff (especially fairly harmless animals like slugs and crawlers — what the heck did they ever do to deserve total annihilation except be ugly? Sheesh). It’s not called ‘killing’ in LOTRO — we’re supposedly depleting a monster’s ‘morale’ so that it is ‘defeated’. But they don’t run away — they fall down. They make horrible dying sounds. Then I loot their corpses. Sure sounds like killing to me.
That said, some of my favorite moments in LOTRO involve getting a good fellowship together and tackling some of the tougher instances in the game, winning the fights and obtaining a new bow or a cool helmet. I enjoy learning how to use new skills and work with a team to bring down a nasty boss. Fellowship maneuvers add to the feeling of teamwork — I’m always pysched when we hit the right sequence of colors and either save ourselves from a party wipe or completely crush our foe. It’s a great feeling.
But I also enjoy decorating my house, exploring Middle-earth, listening to an especially good band play outside of the Prancing Pony, collecting festival tokens so I can purchase a silly pumpkin head masks, etc. I know that many players in WoW enjoy those things, too (at least from what I’ve read around the ‘net). And yet they’re called ‘fluff’. Well, I guess I like fluff. I want more fluff, please.
I would be the first in line to buy/play a game that is fantasy-oriented and more of a virtual world than murder on rails, but still involves the opportunity for adventure, risk, and teamwork. If someone could invent that magical combo, I think they’re have a serious hit on their hands.