The Illusion of Me

This is the ever present problem I have with the MMO genre - this is supposed to be my story but all of these other people are in it. Not only are they in it … but they are me. I’m the special hero of the galaxy, but so are you - so I guess we are all the special hero of the galaxy and if we are all special then none of us are.

I would be slightly less concerned if I were asked to ignore it but I’m not, I’m asked to embrace it by the designers of many MMO’s. When I am asked to fight the dark wizard in the cavern, I need a team of others to fight alongside me. All of those other players have the same quest and the same objective - and yet we are lead to believe by the narrative that we are the only ones participating in that battle. We are being lead by the story and lied to by the design. This is “narratively” broken. 

But what can you do? By definition, an MMO is a multi-player game in which thousands of other people are in this world with you and they all want the same experiences you do. In games, we are the main attraction, the center of attention. Some MMO’s ask you to share that spotlight in order to help the narrative congeal with the design. In games like Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) - the design and narrative acknowledge the fact that there are many heroes. FFXI is based on just that fact. 

What SWTOR does, and does well, is attempt to solve the problem by fully acknowledging that the story does not revolve around just one person … some of the time.

You undertake quests in which multiple people have say in the outcome. That system recognizes that the story of that quest does not single you out as the protagonist but gives everyone the opportunity to fill that role. 

Player roll to see who in the group gets to have the voice during a dialogue option

This is fantastic - it’s the best solution to the problem we’ve seen. But the quest structure is not consistent. We also experience quests where the player is very obviously filling that “hero” role - affecting the world in a way only they can. But in a world where we all communicate with one another, we are immediately reminded that countless others have filled that role before us and countless more will do so when we have moved on. From that quest … not moved on as in died. Though that’s also true.

The thing I loved most about the “Roll to Speak” dynamic of party quest dialogue was that sometimes someone would say something with which I did not agree. Simple awesome. If the story were real, not everyone would always get along and choose the same thing. So even though it was not what I wanted to say - I still wanted it said.

Listen, there is no answer here. Everquest just sent us off to kill monsters together and we made our own deal with the story as to why. That was enough for then. But now, we want to experience a story while we play (well, most of us do) and we want that story to involve how completely awesome we are. And special. And how we’re the only who are special. But that mentality will always be at odds with the way the game is played. 

Maybe that’s okay. I look forward to the day when someone solves this problem with an enjoyable experience.