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Some more deep insight thoughts from Jessica Mulligan can be read at her latest Biting the Hand column. This time she arguments that eventhough we as a player would like to have fun in an online game, the designers just want to make something pretty, where we are just a part of the nice artwork. She adds some examples to it which were more confusing to me then it was enlightening to tell you the truth, but it's a good read anyway. The one part that did stick in the article was about consensual PvP as I am following Darkfall a bit, which is a game focussing on PvP.Thus, introduced are key design elements that ignore the realities of the Internet and online gaming, trying to shoe-horn the players into being unwitting performers in an Art piece in which the results are a pre-ordained vision in the head of the designer. Soi-disant "player-driven justice" systems in a non-consensual player-versus-player environment are a perfect example. There is no doubt a place for niche games that feature non-consensual PvP and this isn’t the place to get into the arguments for and against in detail. The fact is, the market has shown clearly that even most hard core gamers don’t want non-consensual PvP in a commercial environment. That hasn’t stopped designers’ arguments for and attempts to implement such systems. My favorite rationale for it has to be "Non-consensual PvP promotes community." I’m sure that it does, occasionally and among a small and highly motivated sector of the community. As Ultima Online clearly showed, however, non-consensual PvP far more often promotes "I’m tired of being constantly ganked by a gang of social misfits" and "I’m taking this piece of crap back to the store." |
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What are we? Art figures???
