Random Dialogue: The Setting is the Story II
Dialogue, 2004-02-09

Horror

As a genre, Horror is one of the most gentrified. Stoker's "Dracula", the film Nosferatu, and the books of H.P. Lovecraft have given horror a sort of respectability that sordid subject matter and movies like Dawn of the Dead can do little to sully. But what about games? Overwhelmingly, traditional computer games touch on the horror genre through the lenses of games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Indeed, these are good games to touch on because of what they do well: Set the mood. Horror is all about mood. A book or movie that in the light of day may seem ridiculous and childish can be transformed into a terrifying experience if seen in the dark. A good mood is set through subtlety. The reason the xenomorph in Alien is so terrifying is because we barely ever get a good look at it. If you throw buckets of blood on a player within the first few minutes of a game he'll treat it like a carnival ride. A lonely walk down a deserted city street in the fog? That's a different story. And story in the horror genre is very important. Horror tales are introspective and verbose. The real scare factor comes from the person in the story having to deal with the unknown and the supernatural. Horror stories are not stand-up gunfights (that's why Alien is a horror film and Aliens is not). Action in horror stories is relatively infrequent, and when it does come it's usually over quickly. The snap from perceived dread to real terror is quick, and any good storyteller wants to quickly return you to a state of perceived dread rushed with adrenaline. The moment in Signs when the alien walks past the camera on the footage of the birthday party is a perfect example of "action" in a horror film. Something definitely happened. You know it, you saw it, but then it leaves your field of view and is gone again. You're left wondering where it has gone and when it will return. That's horror.

Now that we know what horror is, would it make a good massively multiplayer game? While I'm trepidacious about it, I think a horror setting could make a wonderful game. There are a few big issues blocking the way to a successful commercial MMOG based on horror, however. First, the players need to be scared. As I've stated above, this is the bread and butter of horror. If you're not scared it's not horror. Horror without fear is like thirteen year olds putting on mascara, drinking purple kool-aid, and calling themselves Goth. Players of any video game, MMOG or no, are very hard to scare. You simply can't control the mood outside of the game or the state of mind of the person at the keyboard. Second, fear and dread are extremely hard to keep going. After a while even the most terrifying imagery and experiences becomes just another occurrence as the player becomes jaded enough. Traditional MMOG tropes such as repeatable quests and mob-farming are totally inappropriate to the horror genre. For the horror genre to work as a massively multiplayer experience, there would have to be significant changes made to the normal formula. A level of realism would be required, for starters. If characters are killed and then immediately return to life, there will be very little opportunity for the player to fear for the character's safety. A horror game may be a good example of a situation where permadeath is a valid option. Attention to detail would be another requirement. The demands of a survival or investigative themed MMOG would place greater strain on a world than that of a fantasy setting. If there are no footprints left behind when a character walks through the mud or snow, a fantasy player won't blink, but that level of detail could be just what is needed to follow a trail, provoke a sense of dread, or provide a vital clue. Finally, the most likely change in the genre standard would be extensive isolation. Characters (and parties) in horror stories are almost always alone. The best way to do this would likely be to make heavy use of instancing. Within "social" spaces it may even be a wise idea to use instancing to avoid overcrowding.

The horror genre is a fertile ground for books, movies, and games. There are at least two massively multiplayer games on the horizon that will touch on the realm of horror. One is Priest, the action/horror game that was said to be kicking around at JCEntertainment. It was supposed to incorporate (see the next entry) western themes into the game as well, making for an intriguing combination (ala "Deadlands", no doubt). Regrettably while there is some word on this game from late 2002 and mid 2003, this game seems to have fallen off the map somewhere. The other game I know of touching (more seriously) on horror is an unnamed game from Funcom, makers of Anarchy Online. Here are the only details on the game I could find from a quick look at the game Gamespot had at E303. A MMOG based on horror would have to look very different from other MMOGs currently released on the market today...but is that a bad thing?

Westerns

From the aristocratic and dusty hallways of the horror genre, we move to the open plains and big stories of the Western. Many Europeans may be familiar with the style of western movie popular in Italy earlier last century known as the "spaghetti western". In the US, the western has evolved to be a gritty tale. Even in the early days of western film in the US, serious flinty eyed heroes faced down reckless and lawless vigilantes. The western is a seminal trope in the United States (and elsewhere) because of what it represents: Freedom. The "wild" west has been romanticized into a time when you could reach out with both hands and grab a hold of your future. With a gun, some friends, and a touch of resolve you could found a town, own a ranch, or strike it rich with gold. The reality of poor and starving people beholden to land-owning rich men is somewhat different. Either way, the frontier nature of the western has drawn in many people, and there are plenty of representations of the theme to choose from. The frontier is a core concept of the western genre, as well as the danger of the landscape. Everything is deadly in a western, from the bite of a rattlesnake to the kick of a horse to the bullet of a gun. Stories, as a result, are very personal and tend to be small scale. While a plot to overthrow a government is standard fare for a s/f or fantasy game, a western is more likely to devote itself to the exploits of a handful of people and their impact on a town or county.

While the tales may need to be more personal than in other genres, western games may be one of the most fertile grounds for a MMOG when it comes to game-play styles. Achievers and Killers can enjoy the action-flavored environment the old west brings to mind. Plenty of opportunities should exist for a player to take the part of an outlaw or lawman, becoming skilled in gunplay or earning power over his fellow players. Explorers have miles and miles of canyons and riverbeds to search, caves and caverns to explore, and new farmsteads to found. Socializers, likewise, can enjoy the challenge of founding a farmstead or a town, enjoying the company of other players in the local saloon or conducting productions in the town theatre. The western setting is also rife with opportunities for crafters of all stripes. Architects can put down settlement staples like saloons, Tailors can put out lines of attractive western garb, Railroad Engineers can assist the player population at large by laying track across the landscape. Because of the grounding of the western setting, possibilities are as endless as the realities of life in the 17th century permit.

The western setting is a daunting change from the sf/fantasy bread and butter of most MMOGs. The most interesting western game currently in development is the ambitious Frontier: 1859, a game being independently developed by the folks of Cosmic Origins studios. Everything I've discussed and more is being thrown into the reality of Frontier, with the added complexity of the first game to truly address the race of a character. The development process for Frontier is ongoing, and the game has no current release date attached to the project.

Pirates

The final genre I'd like to talk about today is already gaining in popularity among MMOG designers. Pirates and pirate worlds offer settings literally rife with opportunities for fun gaming. Pirate stories, which often are set in the freewheeling Caribbean in the 1800's, are often quite upbeat despite the sometimes grisly details. Pirates are an aquatic band of barbarians, very akin to the Norse raiders from halfway around the world. Their stories are usually tales of mercenary minded men with grandiose visions of themselves and the world around them. Swashbucklers in the tales usually didn't do anything unless it was done spectacularly. Tempering their freewheeling nature was a theme that often ran through pirate stories of loyalty to their captain and crew. A band of men with such disparate visions and goals could only be held together by the most forceful of individuals, leading to the idea of the strong and fearless pirate captain. The captain, of course, usually had but to say the word to get the salty dogs under his command into a battle. Combat in pirate tales was usually an all-out brawl, with zestful pirate crews going toe-to-toe with their naval cousins. Their actual money-making opportunities could be more sedate, with pirate captains usually having the say in whether anyone on a ship the group was raiding was killed, and whether the ship would be sunk.

Pirate tales are already rich with combat and money-making. To me, this already sounds like your average player party. Just throw in an eye-patch and a few parrots, and you've got yourself a pirate game! Probably one of the biggest selling points for a pirate MMOG is the already built in guild and party mechanism: that of the ship. Groups can own ships and then crew them on the seas of the Caribbean, the coast of Europe, or perhaps the sunny shores of Africa. What they do with those ships is also an open question for the players to answer. They could raise a black flag and go after other ships, be they crewed by NPCs or PCs. They could hire themselves out to move cargo across the often dangerous sea lanes of the world. Or perhaps they could sign up with the British Navy and patrol the waters of the Atlantic looking for scalliwags to keel-haul. The biggest obstacle with ship-play is the need to have a bunch of PC on-line and together. This would be made easier of course by having only a small number of players absolutely necessary to run the ship, with extras merely making the craft work better. Players who want to spend some time playing on their own should be afforded the opportunity to sign on short-term with a PC crew, or perhaps sign up with an NPC crew of merchants or Naval men. Additionally, players could be given the opportunity to live and work on shore at a port of call. All the various crafting disciplines could be represented with one in particular, the shipwrights guild, being especially well respected among the water-going PCs. One of the most interesting options with a Pirate game is the ability for it to have multiple areas of interest for the players. A pirate game that stretched all around the world would not be out of the question, from the Spanish Main to the Caribbean to the coast of Africa, all the way to the shores of China where players could be Confucian pirates riding a modified junk into battle against the British out of Hong Kong. Not entirely accurate, of course, but it's a game, right?

The pirate setting is so obviously a good choice for MMOG gaming that there are already a group of games in the works right now, with one unusual game already released. Yohoho Puzzle Pirates, a quirky and fun puzzle game from Three Rings centering around pirates in the Caribbean isles, has already released to an extremely favorable reception. The blend of the quirky pirate setting and the fun and addictive mini-games makes for a really great MMOG experience. The concentration, though, is very much on the puzzles. Social interaction is fun and possible in Puzzle Pirates, but much less so than in most MMOGs. Two pirate games are in the works as I write this, and they both look promising. World of Pirates, an independently created game is currently in the Beta test phase right now. It appears to be an open beta, so if you are interested in checking out the Caribbean in the 17th century, go check them out. They appear to be aiming for a healthy dose of trading simulation on top of their action. Finally, the most well known pirate game in development right now, Pirates of the Burning Sea. PotBS is aiming for a high-adventure game with dozens of ships involved in combat and a full compliment of Arrrrrrrrr! on the side. They appear to be aiming for a Q4 release date this year.

Next Week

Next week I'm going to go back to a more technical subject, the issue of persistence. Most MMOGs commercially released today are persistent worlds where actions ostensibly have a meaning years after they've occurred. Why is that, why is it that even in persistent worlds actions are often meaningless, and what are the alternatives? I'll talk about a game or two that doesn't do it the persistent way, and touch yet again on the meaning of "game". Until then...

Am I interesting or talking out of my ear? Let me know!

For more on this, please see Karrin Jackson's Games I'd like to See.