Shared World Gaming (MMO-Lite or Destiny-Like) is becoming more prevelant across the industry due to the abundance of open worlds and the fact that its more fun to play with others then by yourself. This shift is unlikely to let up soon with most major publishers announcing shared world experiences at E3.
For instance EA had Anthem, Microsoft had Sea of Thieves, Bungie/Activision has Destiny 2, Ubisoft had most games they showed embracing this style of gameplay. Yet with this emphasis on social gaming, storytelling also needs to evolve with the genre. The title of this thread was a joke to that effect, pointing out the narative dissonance between what is happening to your character in game and the knoweledge that the same Hero's journey is being experienced by millions of others. Yet the player character belonging to those other people is a real person within the games universe and specifically a nobody.
So how does is this issue adressed? There are several different solutions and each are appropriate in different types of games. The real trick seems to be choosing the right type of shared world for the game you want to make.
Type 1. The Hero Shooter (Borderlands, LoL, DTOA, Team Fortress, Overwatch ect.
This model is the closest to traditional RPGs games with players choosing to role play a specific character and experience the story through their eyes. This model seems to allow for the most effective storytelling as nothing much changes. Its essentially playing your favourite RPG and having your friends or strangers play as their friends. Its playing through FFX with your partner as Titus/Yuna and your best friend as Wakka or playing through Mass Effect as Garrus or Wrex while getting paired up with a someone else who is shepard or Tali or Liara ect
This Hero Shooter model is also great for endgame content and replayability as designers can in definitely continue story content in an episodic fashion as classes are represented by characters. Want to design a raid for 2 hunters/rangers and a tank? Now you are designing it for the specific characters that represent those classes, you can tell a story about the three characters that represent those classes in game.
This is my personal favorite type of shared world game and we will hopefully see more of them. I think it is also a boon for designers since now you only have to instance as many players as there are characters.
The Multiverse Model (Soulsbourne, Watchdogs, MGSV, Final Fantasy XV )
This type of shared world involves a fairly typical singleplayer experience but allows you to drop into the games of others as a neutral 3rd party that can either assist or grief. This is effective since it doesn't really mess with the story, the player dropping in is just a stranger, and comes and goes like a ship passing in the night.
The biggest problem this model can face is if every player that drops in looks the same. For instance if you are playing Watchdogs online you have a bunch of Aiden Pierces dropping into your game and every player has the same stupid face and "Iconic" Hat. This is problematic because the online player isn't meant to be from an alternative dimension but rather an active NPC. This is why having a character creator and lots of clothing/armor options in a game like this is essential.
Turns out you aren't the hero. (Eve Online?, The Division at launch when it had bugs)
This model is interesting because it embraces the mundane. You aren't a hero. You are just a regular person trying to make it. The NPCs that hand out hundreds of quests will want that particular item hundreds of times. You are your avatar, but you are just an idealised version of a regular person with more money and unlimited lives. (Although sometimes not even that)
This was probably best exemplified by the division when it was buggy at launch and there was an NPC that could only talk to one player at a time. In practice this meant that players had to line up and que out of a door in order to speak to this NPC.
However the biggest problem with this model is that its entirely community dependant for content. The creators and publishers just have to hope that others hold everything together and wont do anything that will hurt the brand.
Final Thoughts: Destiny, Guided Games and its Westworld future
Destiny is one of the biggest games in this space and is largely unique in this space. What makes Destiny unique is that in many ways Bungie is both the enabler of the Destiny community and its primary antagonist. Just like the ingame storyline sees guardians coming together to fight against a growing darkness. (or whoever is the next annual villan)
Destiny is an Eve like in the sense that all of its most meaningful interactions are community driven. The majority of players play the game not for the story which Bungie didn't have time to explain in game, or the loot which is a brutal RNG treadmill akin to a horse chasing a carrot on a stick. People play Destiny because of its genuine and wonderful community. A community that was forced into solidarity and co operation by the decisions made by Bungie. Early on it was the now infamous loot cave where players would team up to blast enemies as they desperately tried to overcome a RNG system so unfair that it was later changed. Later it was the Raids that spawned millions of LFG posts across various websites as players sought to find teammates outside of the game to complete activities that were impossible for most to do alone. This encouraged and fostered generosity within the community as it was impossible to succeed alone and most looked to pay it forward. It also created a barrier of entry that weeded out all but the most motivated players. In a way Griefing in Destiny was almost pointless because the game did it better then any player ever could.
Now with Destiny 2's Guided Games initiative Destiny is seeking to replicate what happened across the internet within the game. Essentially replacing LFGs with a quick filter system and entrusting the larger collective to take care of those that prefer to play alone. However what seems interesting is the potential for commerce within the guided games system. Clans within the guided games system essentially act as tour guides of Destiny's world, and we have already seen some players monetise the ability to guide other players in game during the Trials of Osiris event.
This incentive to monetise guiding games is going to eventually cause publishers to respond and react in order to recieve a share of the pie and further control the experience of users playing their game. This will be a boon for developers as storytellers since there will now be an industry of professional players who are focused on digital tourism.** These same digital tour guides, who's avatars represent the primary point of connection to the game for most players, will give the developers a pool of paid actors from which to draw on to perpetuate ingame storylines.
This is essentially the buisness model of the fictional theme park in Westworld a recent HBO series based on a Michael Crichton*** film of the same name. Its a park where guests stay at and all their interactions are controlled by staff, and aside from the sentient robots**** it appears to be a somewhat viable buisness model going forward.
This experience of using paid actors to create a dynamic and rich fully functioning interconnected online dream world will allow Publishers and Developers to better control dynamic in game storytelling. Is the most powerful person in the land a Queen? Well that Queen is now a paid actor and her decree's are written by staff writers. Yet regular players would be able to interact with her, maybe as a member of her personal guard or maybe as a random player she meets in a social space that is chosen to begin an epic month long questline that they will tweet about. Meanwhile another staff member may be playing a revolutionary looking to overthrow the monarchy. They will also rally regular players to their side. This ability to write ongoing dynamic storylines similar to how they appear in Eve seems to be the future for any large scale MMO/MMOLite
* I forgot where i put this.
** This already somewhat sumarises the streaming industry, but currently it is without structure
*** Author of Jurassic Park
**** Or with Sentient Robots once devs can create good AI and publishers realise AI is cheaper then paying humans.
Edit: Mods if you could edit the title so the word Users doesn't get cut off that would be great. Maybe take out the word active.
For instance EA had Anthem, Microsoft had Sea of Thieves, Bungie/Activision has Destiny 2, Ubisoft had most games they showed embracing this style of gameplay. Yet with this emphasis on social gaming, storytelling also needs to evolve with the genre. The title of this thread was a joke to that effect, pointing out the narative dissonance between what is happening to your character in game and the knoweledge that the same Hero's journey is being experienced by millions of others. Yet the player character belonging to those other people is a real person within the games universe and specifically a nobody.
So how does is this issue adressed? There are several different solutions and each are appropriate in different types of games. The real trick seems to be choosing the right type of shared world for the game you want to make.
Type 1. The Hero Shooter (Borderlands, LoL, DTOA, Team Fortress, Overwatch ect.
This model is the closest to traditional RPGs games with players choosing to role play a specific character and experience the story through their eyes. This model seems to allow for the most effective storytelling as nothing much changes. Its essentially playing your favourite RPG and having your friends or strangers play as their friends. Its playing through FFX with your partner as Titus/Yuna and your best friend as Wakka or playing through Mass Effect as Garrus or Wrex while getting paired up with a someone else who is shepard or Tali or Liara ect
This Hero Shooter model is also great for endgame content and replayability as designers can in definitely continue story content in an episodic fashion as classes are represented by characters. Want to design a raid for 2 hunters/rangers and a tank? Now you are designing it for the specific characters that represent those classes, you can tell a story about the three characters that represent those classes in game.
This is my personal favorite type of shared world game and we will hopefully see more of them. I think it is also a boon for designers since now you only have to instance as many players as there are characters.
The Multiverse Model (Soulsbourne, Watchdogs, MGSV, Final Fantasy XV )
This type of shared world involves a fairly typical singleplayer experience but allows you to drop into the games of others as a neutral 3rd party that can either assist or grief. This is effective since it doesn't really mess with the story, the player dropping in is just a stranger, and comes and goes like a ship passing in the night.
The biggest problem this model can face is if every player that drops in looks the same. For instance if you are playing Watchdogs online you have a bunch of Aiden Pierces dropping into your game and every player has the same stupid face and "Iconic" Hat. This is problematic because the online player isn't meant to be from an alternative dimension but rather an active NPC. This is why having a character creator and lots of clothing/armor options in a game like this is essential.
Turns out you aren't the hero. (Eve Online?, The Division at launch when it had bugs)
This model is interesting because it embraces the mundane. You aren't a hero. You are just a regular person trying to make it. The NPCs that hand out hundreds of quests will want that particular item hundreds of times. You are your avatar, but you are just an idealised version of a regular person with more money and unlimited lives. (Although sometimes not even that)
This was probably best exemplified by the division when it was buggy at launch and there was an NPC that could only talk to one player at a time. In practice this meant that players had to line up and que out of a door in order to speak to this NPC.
However the biggest problem with this model is that its entirely community dependant for content. The creators and publishers just have to hope that others hold everything together and wont do anything that will hurt the brand.
Final Thoughts: Destiny, Guided Games and its Westworld future
Destiny is one of the biggest games in this space and is largely unique in this space. What makes Destiny unique is that in many ways Bungie is both the enabler of the Destiny community and its primary antagonist. Just like the ingame storyline sees guardians coming together to fight against a growing darkness. (or whoever is the next annual villan)
Destiny is an Eve like in the sense that all of its most meaningful interactions are community driven. The majority of players play the game not for the story which Bungie didn't have time to explain in game, or the loot which is a brutal RNG treadmill akin to a horse chasing a carrot on a stick. People play Destiny because of its genuine and wonderful community. A community that was forced into solidarity and co operation by the decisions made by Bungie. Early on it was the now infamous loot cave where players would team up to blast enemies as they desperately tried to overcome a RNG system so unfair that it was later changed. Later it was the Raids that spawned millions of LFG posts across various websites as players sought to find teammates outside of the game to complete activities that were impossible for most to do alone. This encouraged and fostered generosity within the community as it was impossible to succeed alone and most looked to pay it forward. It also created a barrier of entry that weeded out all but the most motivated players. In a way Griefing in Destiny was almost pointless because the game did it better then any player ever could.
Now with Destiny 2's Guided Games initiative Destiny is seeking to replicate what happened across the internet within the game. Essentially replacing LFGs with a quick filter system and entrusting the larger collective to take care of those that prefer to play alone. However what seems interesting is the potential for commerce within the guided games system. Clans within the guided games system essentially act as tour guides of Destiny's world, and we have already seen some players monetise the ability to guide other players in game during the Trials of Osiris event.
This incentive to monetise guiding games is going to eventually cause publishers to respond and react in order to recieve a share of the pie and further control the experience of users playing their game. This will be a boon for developers as storytellers since there will now be an industry of professional players who are focused on digital tourism.** These same digital tour guides, who's avatars represent the primary point of connection to the game for most players, will give the developers a pool of paid actors from which to draw on to perpetuate ingame storylines.
This is essentially the buisness model of the fictional theme park in Westworld a recent HBO series based on a Michael Crichton*** film of the same name. Its a park where guests stay at and all their interactions are controlled by staff, and aside from the sentient robots**** it appears to be a somewhat viable buisness model going forward.
This experience of using paid actors to create a dynamic and rich fully functioning interconnected online dream world will allow Publishers and Developers to better control dynamic in game storytelling. Is the most powerful person in the land a Queen? Well that Queen is now a paid actor and her decree's are written by staff writers. Yet regular players would be able to interact with her, maybe as a member of her personal guard or maybe as a random player she meets in a social space that is chosen to begin an epic month long questline that they will tweet about. Meanwhile another staff member may be playing a revolutionary looking to overthrow the monarchy. They will also rally regular players to their side. This ability to write ongoing dynamic storylines similar to how they appear in Eve seems to be the future for any large scale MMO/MMOLite
* I forgot where i put this.
** This already somewhat sumarises the streaming industry, but currently it is without structure
*** Author of Jurassic Park
**** Or with Sentient Robots once devs can create good AI and publishers realise AI is cheaper then paying humans.
Edit: Mods if you could edit the title so the word Users doesn't get cut off that would be great. Maybe take out the word active.