Today at the ION Game Conference! Story vs. Story

It’s here at last! We will be participating and moderating the panel Story vs. Story: Redefining Narrative and Player Engagement in MMOs today at 3:30pm at the ION Game Conference.

Moderator: Anne Toole, The Writers Cabal
Panelist: Sande Chen, The Writers Cabal
Panelist: Sam Lewis, Cartoon Network
Panelist: Katie Postma, FireSky

MMOs have earned success due in part to extensive, immersive game content and players’ ability to play their own story, both individually and as a community. As the number of MMOs grows, each will try to gain market share by offering a new and unique experience to the player. Many new MMOs strive to incorporate more narrative elements into the game world, trying to grow the reported 25% of MMO players who actually pay attention to story. Narrative designers, a systems designer and a community director will reveal the challenges, successes and failures of incorporating narrative into current and future MMOs. Issues such as Bartle’s player types, scope, and the role of casual players impact both player story and game narrative. This panel of veteran MMO developers will explore the gameplay elements most important in engaging different player types and developing player story, and brainstorm how these elements can effectively combine with narrative elements. Attendees will leave this panel presentation with a good understanding of current narrative and design issues in MMOs as well as practical solutions to bridging the gap between player story and game narrative.

Date/Time: Thursday, 3:30 PM

See you there!

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Engaging players through story in MMOs - but which story?

It’s the first day of the ION Game Conference in Seattle, and already the fur is flying. Not really, but I just like saying that. We’ve already had a number of conversations about game narrative (internal narrative) and the emergent story. While some insist that MMO game story will never match its single-player counterparts, some think the future of MMOs requires game story to make those grinds meaningful. Can they both be right?

The internal narrative plays a key role in creating the context and meaning for player actions. We’ve already spoken at length on different ways to tell game story — if you missed it, check out the SxSW postview with some of the highlights. In an MMO, you can offload a lot of the storytelling to world building, level design, and ideally gameplay, just like you would for a single-player game. From a narrative perspective, the player character is the great unknown. You can write story for player type, you can write story for player class or race, but it is difficult to write story for a player character, especially if branching is not possible. Players chafe at too much direction in how their player character should act or feel. In an early level of the Vanguard MMO, one player class started as a soldier ordered to fight defenseless villagers. After you performed a few of these tasks, you were told you were starting to feel guilty. Innovative, but it can be off-putting for many players.

Players more readily connect to the emergent story in an MMO. Emergent story is often referred to as the choices the player makes during any type of game, but in an MMO it should be taken one step further. It’s also the choices other players make during the game; this unending variety of choices makes the genre appealing. Sure, you may have to save the maiden from the trolls as part of your quest, but your best friend in real life just took over another guild and now you have to decide which one to join. No one would be surprised if you felt more emotionally engaged when your friend was involved. Today Charles Manning of PLAYXPERT pointed out that MMOs are social networks and developers should integrate these systems earlier into the design process. It is through these formal and informal social networks that the emergent story is told, via guilds, forums, and more. But from Manning’s perspective, MMOs haven’t gone far enough.

If so much of what makes MMOs fun surrounds the social systems and stories, can the internal game story steal a page from the same book and use some of the same techniques? If internal narrative creates the context and meaning for your actions, can the social systems as well? What do you think? Our ION Game Conference panel at 3:30pm on Thursday addresses these very questions. Stay tuned…

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Digital Hollywood: can content help online games?

I’m attending Digital Hollywood today, a conference allegedly focusing on the intersection between Hollywood content and digital technology.  One panel particularly caught my attention, since we’ll be speaking next week at the ION Game Conference on a similar topic: “Innovation in Games, Game Networks and Social Gaming - Massive User Communities and Commerce.”  This panel brought to light how online communities and content can have an impact on each other, as well as pointing out a few more trends in the online space.

The online or social component of games is what makes them viral or “sticky.”  Gene Mauro of Bunchball discussed how the internet creates a new form of social status online.  People can invest in online communities and build equity online, the same way others might buy a BMW to gain status in the real world.  Chris Donahue, from a company that legitimately sells gold and other virtual goods online, noted that users ascribe value to his product, rather than it having any inherent value.  Of course, something like WoW gold has value in-game, but only if the user values the experience or status you get there. 

How does this tie in with story or content?  The developer behind NBC’s THE OFFICE virtual world/experience incorporates fans’ love of the show into an interactive, game-like experience.  Fans create video, mashups, and answer trivia to earn virtual bucks that buy merchandise.  Connection to the content reinforces the social status loop, which in turn reinforces the connection to the content.  While this example may seem like a fabulous reason to license existing properties, games have shown they can develop fans of original content as well. 

The biggest changes in MMOs especially will have an impact on community, story, and design.  While the subscription model of MMOs encourages and caters to the hard-core player, the free-to-play models work better for other types of players.  Would that mean fewer WoW-esque MMOs, both in terms of story and design?  Another trend online is the growth of asynchronous play, like with Scrabulous.  What impact will this have, if any, on MMOs, which historically encourage synchronous play?  What do you think?

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Top 5 trends you need to know in MMOs

In preparation for the ION Game Conference, we thought we’d update you on the state of MMOs. We’ll be speaking about game story versus emergent story, which is sure to lead to a knock-down fight — er, a few disagreements. Read on to find the latest trends that affect story, pulled in party from Gamasutra.

1. Not all MMOs will be successful — and some won’t even get off the ground. Bioware, THQ, Activision are all trying to get into the MMO space. Activision, of course, was successful with the Blizzard merger. However, we can point to as many games that disintegrated or barely made it out the gate. A few have asked if mainstream MMOs really can innovate. Which leads to:

2. Casual and children’s MMOs make money, too. Reportedly $350 million for Disney’s Club Penguin.

3. The days of the subscription model may be numbered. Free and micro-payments games already attract a number of players. Real Money Transfer (RMT) games may be just around the corner.

4. MMOs are not a zero-sum game. More players are entering the MMO space, so higher subscription numbers on one game don’t necessarily mean fewer in another. Although not everyone agrees.

5. User generated content (UGC) appeals to many people, and quest-making tools in MMOs may help players make the technology hurdle. Most UGC appears on fansites.

Have you heard about any MMOs experimenting with or demonstrating these trends? Stay tuned for more about story and MMO this week!

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What kind of NPCs do you want?

You turn the corner, rifle at the ready, and sneak down the hall.  Just as you’re about to shoot, an NPC comes out with his hands up.  What do you want him to say?  When it comes to game writers, arguably we influence the game the most with how we write NPC dialog.  And yet, when we attended a meeting at a major game publisher, we had one executive lamenting the state of games: “There’s no excuse for NPCs with no character.”

I happen to agree.  All characters should have a character arc and as much personality as possible.  Great examples might be from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.  Anyone played GTA IV yet?  However, some people hold that sometimes a guard is just a guard.  NPCs with personality or arc could be distracting or just unrealistic.  If you’re not around an NPC long enough, how could he or she go through a full character arc? 

The obvious answer involves reaching some kind of balance, but I’m still of the mindset that everyone should have an arc, unless they literally have one line.  Where do you stand?  What kind of NPCs do you want?  The quirky kind who learn to love again, or the earnest sort who just gets the job done?

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Writers Cabal First Anniversary pictures

At GDC this year, Writers Cabal celebrated our first anniversary/blogiversary.  We gathered at the Sugar Cafe in San Francisco to enjoy friends and food.

We had much cake — red velvet, in case you’re hungry. 

Thanks for everyone who came.  Hope to see the rest of you next year!

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Do games pass the Disney test?

You could learn a lot from Disney. I went to Disney Animation Studios last week to be brainwashed by Disney minions, and it worked. John Lasseter, the new studio head, has reinvigorated Disney with his business and creative sense. According to his minions, he insists every project coming out of Disney must have the following:

1. Good story
2. Good characters
3. A believable world

You’d think these imperatives go without saying, but apparently not.  If Disney needs a reminder, then so do games. 

Out of all three, games have a definite edge over Hollywood when it comes to building a believable world. Not only do game writers tend to create extensive world bibles for certain game genres, the player can experience the world on his or her own terms.  What happens if you kill the mayor?  Oops — the militia turn hostile.  Is this shadowy figure well known?  You ask the milkmaid, and she says everyone’s seen him once.  Mix in game physics for added believability, and you get all this including the visual storytelling methods games share with Disney and its amazing friends!

Out of recent story games, which do you think pass the Disney test?  If game story can either be linear or nonlinear, and characters can be pre-set or player generated, do you think the test even applies to games? 

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Save the environment with game writers!

Happy Earth Day!  You may think game writing has nothing to do with the environment, and you’d be right.  Undaunted, I will now analyze whether you save the environment more by hiring a game writer in house versus outsourcing a writer, say, in another city.  I will use http://www.carbonfootprint.com/ to discern how many tonnes — yes, tonnes — of CO2 emissions occur in each case.

Remote emissions

I recently took a round trip flight from Los Angeles to Austin for a kick-off meeting.  How much did this flight emit?

• .561 tonnes of CO2

The meeting got us all on the same page, and I went home and completed the writing assignment remotely.  How much did working remotely emit?

• .779 tonnes of CO2 for house annually
• 4.562 tonnes of CO2 for food, entertainment, etc. annually

However, chances are this CO2 would have been emitted no matter where I worked or lived! 

Onsite emissions

Now let’s pretend that instead of living in LA, I lived in Austin, worked on-site and commuted 10 miles to work every day in a car without taking the highway.  How much would that emit?

• 1.826 tonnes of CO2 for car annually

Looks like outsourcing a writer is a clear winner compared to having one drive to work every day.  Even if a writer worked on-site for half the year, it wouldn’t catch up to the emissions of one flight.

But when I worked on staff at a game company, I didn’t drive to work.  I took the bus or carpooled.  So what if your on-site writer took the bus instead of drove?  How much would that emit?

• .717 tonnes of CO2 annually 

Aha!  So if you hire a writer on-site for about two-thirds of a year or less, who also takes public transportation, you would thus be saving the environment! 

How’s your carbon footprint?

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