Decoding Dragons

[GW2] Some quick thoughts from early access

Just a few things that have been on my mind since I started playing on the live servers.

Save up for that 3pt Healing Skill

The default one is fine, but man alive, the 3 point one will kick it’s ass and make your life so much easier during early levelling. I am playing a Norn warrior, and the 3pt healing skill is a regen passive with a flat rate heal. The default scales with your adrenaline.

Buy gathering tools immediately

Not only is it an easy way to make money, once the Trading Post works, but it’s necessary for any of your eventual trade skills. This is probably obvious to most veteran MMO players, but worth remembering if you’re a disorganised person like me.

Be wary of levelling your trade skills immediately

Don’t do what I did and blow a wad of silver (which is in tight supply to begin with) on trade skill items. You’re basically paying to level (and the buff food is lovely, but it does only last for 15 minutes.) If you’re going to do it, set a budget!

The Digital Deluxe Edition was not worth it

So I got some cool stuff, but I didn’t read the fine print while I was in the throes of saving my characters name and have in the process lost a lot of the ‘one off’ buffs available. Why? I’m rather used to Rift and other games, where you get the ‘buff’ items on all your characters whenever you create them. Hmm.

I’m really enjoying this ‘do anything’ thing.

Like, one minute I’m protecting a lady chasing a Jackalope, the next I’m a Snow Leopard. And then I might wander off and throw some snowballs at kids and it all COUNTS. Helping to ressurect someone during battle nets you experience. Going back to an earlier area and helping with events nets you karma, copper, and experience. And then there are vistas, and skill challenges, and points of interest! If you talk to NPCs you get to work on your character traits too!

I’m alone

There has been a thread of conversation in the blogosphere lately about individualist vs collectivist. Guild Wars 2 is at it’s heart individualist – but this often what a lot of MMO designers say they want. They want the player to be the hero. You can only do that if the experience for the player is as smooth and ‘you centric’ as you can make it.

While I think the omission of a /thank emote is a glaring oversight (as pointed out by Siha) I have noticed that I am more willing to throw myself into a fight involving others. Early on it was a big free for all, and very confusing, but as I mastered my skills and figured out how things worked without the triad, I found myself grouping up wordlessly and working well with strangers.

This fella wants bunny food. You can carry the food and get knocked over by bunnies, or you can scare bunnies away from someone carrying food. You can help. You both get credit. Someone has bitten off more than they can chew and is now a jam stain on the road. I see their ‘dead player icon’ and run across the map to help. Most of the time. As our understandings of conditions improve, we find ourselves paying more attention to positioning.

It all adds up.

Am I still alone? No, I’m in a world filled with thousands of players. Just because I’m not talking, it doesn’t mean I’m not playing with anyone.

Siha also pointed out that you can’t help anyone complete quests in the same way that you can in WoW (group kills and the like) and this is true, but I think it might just be a different way of defining ‘helping’ and ‘working together’ in MMOs.

[GW2] Some quick thoughts from early access was published on August 25th, 2012, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Games, Guild Wars 1/2 category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

I’ve seen it all before

I must admit, between 2 WoW accounts, The Secret World, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Rift, Guild Wars 2, and the sneaking possibility of Wildstar, I’ve been feeling a bit blase about MMOs. To the point where my ‘been there, done that’ attitude had turned into a brick I was carrying around whenever I logged in. It got kinda heavy, and playing wasn’t fun anymore.

When I was a youngster, I devoured Sci-fi and fantasy books at a very large rate. I imagine that many of the people who are likely to read this did so too. I read LOTR when I was about 7 or 8, and followed it up with the Silmarillion not long after. I read Game of Thrones when I was about 12 or 13. I remember this because I recall my reaction to Daenerys’ predicament, and the revelation that she was my age.

My Dad, who is the awesome geek who is responsible for raising me on a steady diet of David Bowie, Jethro Tull, classic Scifi, LOTR and Red Dwarf, used to look upon my discovery of old authors with a benign sort of amusement. The amusement lasted until I made him read something. His reaction came in two flavours.

“I forgot I read this”

This particular one happened with alarming frequency. Or at least it was alarming to him. I was possibly highly entertained. At the time I couldn’t understand how anyone could forget these amazing reader experiences. There are moments when I wish I could read that scene in Game of Thrones, as though it were the first time. Times when I wish I could absorb THAT moment in Fledgling again. But forget? Nah.

Except that has started to happen to me now. I come across books, and start to read them because the names and synopsis are so completely unfamiliar to me and then I get a moment of ‘Uh, oh. It’s that book!’ I get very disappointed when this happens. Books don’t last me long, as consumable entertainment, so I feel cheated when my memory actually goes to the effort to the point that I know I’ve read a particular book before.

Other times I won’t remember until the last couple of pages of the book, in which case all is well. But hey, even I get old.

Playing older games is a bit like this. I know I played Duke Nuke’m, Secrets of Monkey Island. I know I played an Alien game on something that was probably an Amstrad. I know I played Chucky Egg, and Myst. Do I remember any specifics? No. But I remember that I loved them. It’s becoming much the same way with my early WoW experiences. There is no way to get those times back, tied up as they were in a different phase of my life when WoW was my escape.

“Oh, it’s another one of those”

This second response from my Dad, on the topic of books I’ve recommended to him, is more frustrating to me because it represents a moment where my judgement has fallen short. My judgement often falls short when recommending reading material to my Dad (and my friend @minus_caffeine, for that matter) because the man has had time to read and absorb a hell of a lot more storytelling than I have. He also values new experiences, as well as quality. Getting that balance right is hard at the best of times. For instance, I’m not certain I’d bother recommending that Brandon Sanderson series to him. It’s exactly the sort of book that he’d find tiresome because it tries to do new things, and falls somewhat short when it comes to actual execution. And not actually being that new.

That is not a critique of those particular books, but just an indication that it is extremely hard for creators to do something properly fresh in an established genre. Many authors I absolutely love have fallen at the hurdle of ‘Dad is bored with this now’. I’m now getting to an age where many ‘new’ books coming out don’t feel especially fresh or revolutionary to me, even when other rave about them. I really have to dig to find an author that steps outside the standard milieu. But that’s okay – that’s what happens when  one combines memory, pattern recognition, and experience. I suspect most readers will experience similar phases of malaise with their favourite genres, and will similarly find a new way to consume and enjoy the sort of books they’ve historically loved.

What has this got to do with games?

Coming back to the virtual spaces that we’ve all be inhabiting since MUDs opened their doors, the issue is this. Firstly is that narrative and characters need to grow, and evolve. Secondly that the gaming/MMO industry is having to mature at a very rapid rate, as evidenced by the ongoing ‘games as art’ and ‘games and feminism’ and ‘games and other ‘isms’ discussions, and the emergence of credible research communities and programmes in the field of game studies.

We have access to an ever expanding number of games, old and new, through digital downloads and multiple mobile platforms. Mediums like Tablets/iPads are bringing board games to videogaming. We have games like Dear Esther that prompt discussions about agency and narrative.

Yet these huge, massive MMOs that promise us so much, will always be battling against ‘Oh yes, I’ve played this before’ or ‘Oh man, this is so much like x Game.’ A while back I compared Rift and World of Warcraft to two different novels by Terry Pratchett, and the comparison was appropriate, but I think the Books/Games metaphor can be carried a little further. Yes, I know the player has a huge influence on how their MMO experience develops (through choice of in-game progression paths, character identity, guild choice, participation in group activities) and this isn’t something that is present in books, but a game is still a supposedly cohesive presentation of consumable and modifiable content, allowing a player to have an experience through a number of mechanics that will be somewhat familiar to them.

Still with me? I’m not sure I’m with me yet, so it is okay if you’re not!

Authors play with narrative devices, structures, grammatical rules. They break them and and follow them, and do all sorts of things with words in order to present us with the BOOK EXPERIENCE. The publisher adds to the BOOK EXPERIENCE throw marketing, covers, related images, editing and commissioning the rest of a series. The ebook revolution may be changing this formula slightly. Yet the regular reader will navigate the narrative of a book in much the same way every time, and we don’t get tired of the the overall format of ‘reading’.

With gaming, a similar thing holds true. A player of FPS games does not get grumpy because Half Life 24.546 includes a first person perspective and some shooting. And the point here isn’t that ‘fresh new story telling’ is needed to make a new FPS something special in terms of sales and a GAME EXPERIENCE. Nor even that MMOs do. MMOs do a particular job, and each next gen MMO re-iterates familiar formulas in the attempt to give us a newly compelling experience. All in the name of shareholders.

But I’ve had nearly 8 years in MMOs. As fondly as I look back on my first 2 years of roleplaying and regular raiding, it ain’t never going to be like that again. And I have to accept that with my experiences in games, and fantasy ones in particular, that I’m always going to have a sense of ‘oh, its this again.’ I’m rarely ever going to be alleviated of that brick, unless I play something I’ve truly never experienced before. I can’t expect the game developers to come and take that brick away for me – I need to find some way to carry it, or some way to put it down, while I go about my usual business of consuming games that otherwise bring me a large amount of fun and relaxation.

Excuse me, I think Guild Wars 2 has a stress test tomorrow, and I want to see if I can learn to play my Shadow Priest again in the time.

I’ve seen it all before was published on August 8th, 2012, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Fandom, Games category. There are currently Comments Off on this article so far.

[MMOs] Social Ills in Games: Narcotics in our MMOs?

While Massively has not been my MMO news outlet of choice for a while, today it has posed an interesting question. Do narcotics belong in MMOs? The article in question compares the inclusion or exclusion of narcotics to violence, gore, sex and thievery, but I think there is a more interesting question at the heart of this issue.

If not narcotics

As someone with a bit of a bent for so-called ‘Social Justice blogging’, I regularly call out things that I feel are problematic. This might be detailed analysis of the way a company handles being called out over a particular turn of phrase  (a’la Blizzard and Geek Chic Cosmetics), or it might be a more textual analysis of gender roles within a game. So for me the parallel in this phrase comes from those sources. Whenever players like me cry out about the heteronormativity of things like the Goblin Starter Quest, or even when companies like Bioware start introducing Gay and Lesbian romance options; there is invariably someone ready to say ‘why do I have to deal with these real world issues in my game, I just want to have fun’.

I may have paraphrased with that, but essentially it’s another version of the ‘It’s fine as long as it’s not in my face.’ The SF&F world has long prided itself on being more progressive and open-minded than the mainstream. While shows like Star Trek look dated and sexist these days, back in the day they were somewhat revolutionary. Yet the all pervasiveness of the erasure fantasy is going strong.  Not only drugs are supposedly erased from the MMO market, but so are addicts and the associated social problems. Representation of poverty is sanitised, made clean.

Sanitised Narcotics

The Massively article makes mention of Spice in Star Wars Galaxies, and pipeweed in LOTRO. As I understand it, Eve: Online has an actual drugs trade as part of it massive economy, although I am not familiar with the in game mechanics (is it just a commodity, or can you actually take the drug?) In World of Warcraft players are able to buy alcohol, and will experience short lived ‘drunk effects’ – drunkenness is often played for a laugh in game. Blood Elves are known for their addiction to magic, and addiction to magic is a fairly common trope in the SFF world.

Downer Effects

I’ll venture to say that ‘temporary drunk effects’ are probably the most a player will see of withdrawal symptoms, or what the presence of drug addiction can do to a person and their community. While there are great SFF books based around drug addicted protagonists (hello Sherlock), I’m not really certain how that could translate into a playable, fun game for users. I’ve talked about immersion and absorption as goals for world building before, is this one of those cases where things get too real?

However, that, for me, segues back into the discussion of NPCs with disabilities generally not being in games. You might hear of a character in a wheelchair (Oracle springs to mind) but for the most part physical disability is erased from the fantasy/sf world, except in cases where physical deformity is used as a manifestation of mental weakness (i.e. drug-induced madness.)

Presentation of poverty

I haven’t been able to do a lot of research for this post, so please excuse the brevity of the references. In Warcraft the only addicts we actually see represented are the Wretched. In many ways they are remarkably similar to the Broken, who are pretty classic post-apocalyse-survivor types. Their bodies are physical manifestations of their addiction, in the same way that we might associate looking pale, thin and sickly with drug addiction. One crucial point here is that the addiction is accompanied by madness. Representations of mental illness in SFF are generally beyond the pale, so I’m not going to focus on that in this post, but the characterisation of these addicts as being beyond help and something to eradicate is important to note. Sympathy for addicts and recovering addicts is often in short supply in the real world, so it’s not surprising that beings who succumb to their addiction are shunned almost without thought in fantasy. Blood Elf players are shown this attitude to addiction in their starting area.

In many ways this approach is also rife with classism, as it is in the real world. A rich addict can get support and help – in effect they can afford their addiction. A poor person, already marginalised by the education system, jobs, and other factors becomes an outcast even amongst their peers. In a world of limited resources, the only way to cope with someone in this position is to de-humanise them.  In Blood Elf society, we know that Blood Thistle Addicts are looked down on as well, so this disdain for what is seen as weak behaviour is inherent even in an entire race of elves that continues to struggle on a racial level with issues of addiction.

Yes, I know I’m muttering about de-humanising an elf.

In contrast the consumption of alcohol is often played for laughs, or even celebrated because it is much more socially acceptable and not viewed in the same class as narcotics. This is probably due to the ability of millions to partake in moderation, where ‘moderate’ use of any kind of narcotic is pretty much invisible due to it’s illegal nature. Thus when poverty is presented in a game like Warcraft, which is very cartoony, it is often in the form of refugees and bandits (see the current version of Westfall in particular.)

One of the things that struck me about Star Wars: The Old Republic was it’s willingness to show the down side of life – a product both of Bioware being more aware of social issues and one of the original protagonists of the Star Wars movies being a smuggler. It’s hard to be all neutral and all about the contraband if the contraband and it’s consumers aren’t actually in the universe.  I’ve not played SW:TOR for a few months so I cannot easily research exactly how this is presented, but I do seem to recall that drugs and smuggling were definitely something associated with the ‘underdog’ aliens that suffered other economic and social opressions.

Plus, you know, the dark side often seems very much about addiction to power when you first take a look at it. And a second look. And possibly a third look. The fate of Darth Vader is very much tied up in what addiction can do to a person, although poverty certainly doesn’t impact on his life.

Lore and world appropriate

The original Massively article makes a point about game makers sanitising narcotics for the sake of censors and other such things, which in some ways simply baits the reader for a response of ‘well they let all those violent naked chicks through, why does a little drugs hurt’? And in many ways I agree with them. It certainly isn’t appropriate to touch on heroin use in Hello Kitty Online, but seeing as addiction is actually referred to in many more adult MMOs perhaps it is time for developers to think a bit more about how drugs and alcohol are handled in game. A society’s attitudes to alcohol and narcotics is a large part of world building, as it will touch on everything from social traditions and ceremonies, to social entertainment. Attitudes towards substance abuse inform class-stratification, and add depth to the world you’re trying to create.

This is one of the reasons I’m hemming and hawwing about getting an a copy of The Secret World. As an ‘alternate universe’ game set in the real world, it’s approach to sexuality, gender, race, class and disability may well be thrown more into the spotlight than in a game like EvE: Online where you almost may as well not have a humanoid avatar at all. (I have taken to imagining all EvE players to be like the Pilot from Farscape.)

[MMOs] Social Ills in Games: Narcotics in our MMOs? was published on May 31st, 2012, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Game Development, Games, Social Activism, Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Secret World, Warcraft category. There are currently 6 comments on this article so far.