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Pale HorseKotaku posts about Funcom’s latest offering: The Secret World, an MMO. Quite some anticipation as it’ll be the third MMO from some masters of video game storytelling. Then there’s the interesting fact that the game will take place in our own world. So it’s a virtual world whose setting is reality - plus monsters.
Says product manager Erling Ellingson:
“The setting for The Secret World is actually our own world… But there is something out there, another world beyond our own. In this world there are monsters and there are some very, very dark conspiracies. There are also many myths and legends from our own world, that may play a part in all of this.”
Hmm. Says Kotaku:
“The game will be using real-world locations like London and New York, giving certain players the very meta experience of strolling around the virtual streets their real-life arses are too lazy to stroll.”
Now that’ll be some social commentary . . .
Filed under: Games, internet | Tagged: funcom, kotaku, the Secret World
Interesting. Hellgate: London (made by some former Blizzard employees who worked on the Diablo games) touches on this concept by making several areas of real London accessible in the game – places like St-Paul’s and Big Ben.
Secret World’s approach is pretty ambitious. Recreating entire real-world locations is a cool idea, but it makes you wonder how some places will play out as battlegrounds. Will we one day be able to engage in a desperate axe battle against berserker demons through Teresa’s house?
Oh, and I guess that making expansions will be pretty straightforward, too – just add a new city or two! Battle in Beijing or Massacre in Montreal, anyone?
On the other hand, Funcom have a history of releasing very substandard ports, as well as games with often severe control or mechanical issues. The flipside is that they have a really terrific staff of writers, and are much better at PC games than their console bretheren.
I’m also not sure how one studio is supposed to run two major MMOs at the same time; these guys are generating a buzz about the much more “adult” Conan game as well. Both sound like great ideas, but I still need to be convinced that Funcom can handle them. Dreamfall looked great on paper too, and turned out to be one of the most frustrating mixtures of great story and hideous gameplay ever to have gone gold.
Still, you shouls all download “The Longest Journey” from the Funcom site, play the hell out of it, and understand why people like me are still fans of Funcom.
Oh yeah, and I’ll hesitate from making any joekes about demon battles at our esteemed editor’s house.
“Dreamfall looked great on paper too, and turned out to be one of the most frustrating mixtures of great story and hideous gameplay ever to have gone gold.”
I think you’re right, and I think this highlights one of the crucial differences between games and other media. Dreamfall wasn’t really a game - it was more of an interactive movie. Games are about gameplay, not story. Some of the best games have no stories - chess and tetris spring to mind. Even games with a story aren’t about that - games are about building and acquiring skills, going from n00b to pwnage. Story is not why games are fun. After all, why do you play Halo 3 Multiplayer? there’s no story . . . except the ones you tell afterwards.
More on this here. . .
And as always, props to Raph Koster . . .
“Games are about gameplay, not story. Some of the best games have no stories - chess and Tetris spring to mind. Even games with a story aren’t about that - games are about building and acquiring skills, going from n00b to pwnage. Story is not why games are fun. After all, why do you play Halo 3 Multiplayer? there’s no story … except the ones you tell afterwards.”
You make a very good point here. After all, what are games without gameplay?
You’re also right about many of the best games having no stories at all. But some of the best games DO have stories, and to argue that those games aren’t “about” their stories is taking a simplistic and overly theoretical view, in my opinion.
Rusty offers a great example, with Dreamfall. From a gameplay perspective, it’s pretty terrible. But from a writing/story perspective, it’s actually very good. Rusty persevered through that game, in spite of the awful mechanics, because he wanted to know how the story ended. For Rusty, Dreamfall was about the story.
Furthermore, strong stories offer a compelling context within which to acquire and build his skills. This can be especially important in a single-player experience. Keeping the player engaged in the gameplay through the story is vital to success. Of course, as we’ve established, not all single-player games rely on some explicit narrative to keep the player engaged. Chess ands Tetris are stimulating intellectual challenges. Strategy games, like Civilization and the Total War games don’t have stories per say, but I know that when I play those games I often create a narrative for what is going on in my game.
Now when you get to multiplayer games, then I think that the need for a story to keep players engaged is vastly diminished, because now you have other humans to vie against and work with. At that point, gaming becomes a social activity (see molotov’s comments on the griefing article) and doesn’t need a story to be interesting, any more than a rugby match does (though even in professional sports, a narrative can add to the fun; just look to any two teams with a long rivalry to see how much more exciting the games can be!).
Increasingly, gamers are expecting their games to provide compelling gameplay AND story, and I think that the end result will be a stronger, more mature medium.
“Increasingly, gamers are expecting their games to provide compelling gameplay AND story, and I think that the end result will be a stronger, more mature medium.”
This, I feel, is the crucial point. As games mature from novelty to art form - something I like to assume they will do at roughly the same pace films did - clearer definition will be required on the part of the developers as to where the artistry in their games comes from.
Early classics like Tetris had their hands full just functioning and playing properly, and were sorely limited by the technology available at the time. While I don’t think there have necessarily been huge leaps in that department (analagous to, say, the introduction of single point perspective), game tech has been advancing steadily. Some early games (Zelda?) did have story. Some were better because of the stories we created for them while we played (something I still do that when playing games like Total War). The point is that the tools available in the medium are expanding, allowing for actual artistry either with or without story.
What I want to see is games that have artistic merit. The definition of “artistic” will need a bit of work, given the new options presented by the format, but it’s a debate I’m looking forward to having.
Come to think of it, I’m already having it… is Deus Ex as artistically relevant as Neuromancer? Is Portal as dystopic as Kubrick? Is BG&E an adventure at the same level as Charlotte’s Web?
All I’m saying is that we have to focus on the defining feature of the genre.
Of course games have stories, and as cultural experiences I certainly think that’s part of their appeal. I’ll play a game with a good story over one without any day. BUT that’s not essential to the genre. Many of the best games I’ve played have no story.
And let’s look at how different genres tell stories:
Films tell stories through images.
Literature tells story through language and thoughts.
Music can tell a sort of story through eliciting a sequence of emotions (lyrics don’t count; that’s poetry, ergo literature).
Games tell story through images and language, supported by music for dramatic impact - that is, to tell a story they must incorporate elements of those other genres. The essence of a game is a challenge mechanic that you have to master as a player.
So I’m not saying games don’t have stories, or that games don’t have artistic merit. I think anyone who claims that is obviously a blinkered idiot. All I’m saying is that games - reduced to their very essence - are not about story.
As cultural artefacts - as things you acquire and play - they’re much more complex than that, but I’d argue that critiquing a game properly requires understanding of their essential nature. You can’t critique a movie properly unless you realize the different things that cast, director, cinematographer, composer and designer bring to the total cultural artefact you experience. Games are complex, just like movies. And at their core is not a story, but a game mechanic.
i really can’t recommend this enough : A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster . . .