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General: Confessions of an MMO Writer
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Matt Daniels, the former Lead Writer for Mythic's Warhammer Online, stops by MMORPG.com to talk a little bit about what a game writer does when working on an MMO.
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As the Lead Writer for an MMO, I used to secretly envy those lucky people that got to write for single-player games. They have it so easy, I thought to myself. They've only got one player in their game, and they can make the whole game world revolve around that player. Good luck trying to make a player feel like the main character of the story when there are dozens of other main characters of the story all standing around the same quest giver, merchant or respawn point. Even better, those single-player game writers can immerse their players completely in the setting. You won't see a lot of characters with names like "King Smackahoe" or "UncleOwenzjoo" or "D33znutz" spoiling the mood in your game of Final Fantasy XIII or Mass Effect 2.
But you know, writing for an MMO isn't really so bad. In fact, there are challenges and rewards that are utterly unique to the genre.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
This was a great read and a fun opportunity to see a game from the perspective of one of its writers.
I would add this thought. When I do a quest, I don't need to feel like I am a hero. And killing 10 boars is not going to make me feel heroic. But that doesn't mean the quest can't be interesting. I would rather the focus be on why the quest giver is an interesting character (e.g., a unique personality), why the task I am given is intriguing, and/or the location I am being sent to is cool or mysterious.
I think a lot of game writing goes off track when it tries to make the player feel like a conquering hero instead of just giving the player an opportunity to do or experience something cool. Instead of telling me I saved the town by boar killing, tell me, for example, that unfortunately one of those boars I just killed had an evil spirit in it that is angry over losing its boar host animal, and now send me to kill or appease that spirit I have loosed.
How heroic can a player feel when they do 20 quests a day and as it turns out, they are supposedly Sir Gallahad for every one of them? A quest that tells you what a swell guy you are should be the rare exception. For the rest of the time, in my opinion, there should just be some fun factor to the task.
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Very good. I can appreciate the challenge of writers. I have never had anything published but I love writing. I am my biggest critic and still continue to write and try to put just what you have laid out. Something that keeps them coming back and wanting to learn more.
Gikku
Amathe touches an interesting point. I also think that always being the hero is just unrealistic. Teenagers might not care. But one reason I quite playing WoW, was that I just felt like a number. Trying to make me feel heroic, doing the same mission as anyone else just makes it worse. And you even say yourself it's just making people feel like they're the hero, as anyone else. I don't fall for that.
I can really appreciate a story that's more about the characters I interact with. And though I'm not much of a PvP player, I can really appreciate the sandbox worlds smaller MMOs (which already makes me feel less like a number) like EVE, PotBS, ATITD, heck even Puzzle Pirates create. I might still be doing the same generic thing as other players. But my actions can have a direct influence on the world.
Great piece. To reiterate what others have been saying, the idea that a game has to make you the one savior of the world is just a lot of nonsense. What's important is feeling like you're a part of something. Asheron's Call never made you feel like you were the messiah - in fact it's quest giving wasn't even a particularly strong part of the game. But it created atmosphere, an explorable 'real-life' world that was changing all the time, and a general sense that player actions could change that world. The combat was fairly primitive by today's standards (in terms of no different power choices), but the world, the plot and the unique character customization opportunities made it the great game that it was. A lot of modern games could learn from the classics.
This:
"Good luck trying to make a player feel like the main character of the story when there are dozens of other main characters of the story all standing around the same quest giver, merchant or respawn point."
Is a perfect example which shows that todays MMO developers just dont get it. MMOs are not supposed to make every player feel like the main character of a story, that is what single player games do, MMOs are supposed to make the character feel part of a persistant world where, if you excel, may become the main character of a story.
Observe the key words may and a story (not the story, since in a world there is no one story). I know WoW changed all that by turning MMOs into huge single player games but that is what is actually degenerating the genre and creating a horde of WoW clones that believes that if they follow WoWs model then they will suceed. You wont, there can only be one WoW and that is WoW.
If you want to create an MMO with good retention then you need innovation. Eve is a perfect example of an MMORPG that is innovative, not a WoW clone and which is growing. All other themepark, WoW clones (including WAR) are shrinking in subs. Now why do you think that is?
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I'm not sure why MMO dev houses even bother with writers. I can't think of a single quest that I've done in an mmo over the last seven or eight years that wasn't a tired variation on kill X and deliver Y. The very nature of the games means that will you will be doing nothing but repetitive tasks, the same tasks everyone else is doing, until you cancel your sub.
The majority of players don't even read the quests (yes I know a few do, I do myself, but it's rare).
Also, for pre-existing IP's with a lot of canon, developers inevitably ignore or outright change much of what makes an IP's story unique (SWG, WAR, and STO all bear very little resemblance to their source material beyond aesthetics).
The roleplayers that I know generally ignore the game lore because it's too confining for the character they want to play, and because the mechanics of every mmo force players into being mass murderers (which some roleplayers embrace but most end up roleplaying around and ignoring large parts of what they're doing in game).
Current generation mmo's just don't have any room for story or good writing. It's wasted on the majority of the player base. Bioware may change this since they're focusing so heavily on narrative with TOR, but as of right now, writing in mmo's is kind of a joke. It's kind of like the articles in Playboy. Yeah it's there, but no one cares.
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This is a very enjoyable article. As someone who writes short fiction, DMs a few D&D games here and there, and enjoys MMOs on top of that, I find the writing in the games I have played to be pretty lacking. I agree with the stance that MMOs should not make every player out to be the Chosen One, Messiah, etc.. I realize that that in a large game world, my character really is just a number, but I think the game should present challenges in the world that give the opportunity to do things that really do make you feel like a hero. I'm not talking about led-by-the-nose quest lines, but unscripted encounters you can seek out and test yourself against.
because there are more TP games then good Sandbox games perhaps
Good article, and I must say that I enjoy reading WAR's quest text, so this guy (and his friends) did a good job.
I think the problem with the way many of the present day MMO's deal with writers is that they stress production over quality. It takes a lot of time to write a good quest when the kill x of y is far easier to implement. Also many of the present day MMO's lack the lore or while the IP may have lore it is not present in the game, hence problems with using quests to explore the lore.
Exactly. For me, WAR is such a poor game, that player just won't do justice for his abilities.
Yes, I liked WAR's quests VERY much - but only what was written. The gameplay was boring for me, and I even wondered - "hey, someone needed to be REALLY creative to write such good stories in a simple, and PvP-dominated game".
I think this guys should apply to write quests for D&D Online (Turbine). Quests texts there are obviously lacking, we need MORE immersion. The game is great and gives MUCH more spaces for creativity - private instances!
So, whoever wrote it - apply and help Turbine create DDO to be as good and story-driven as Asheron's Call! The game itself is great, but could use such improvement.
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As others have pointed out, you've exposed a flawed approach to how to write stories for the masses. It isn't about the player anymore, and trying to make it about the player, only compounds the difficulty of not only *getting* immersion, but *maintaining* it, once the player so much as talks to another player. Now they feel like they weren't 'special enough' and that the first exposure was superficial.
It's about the game. Where is the common denominator? In a single-person RPG, no matter who plays it, it's about the world, unfolding events and the single player. They are alone, and everyone who plays is alone. In this example, all 3 (time or events, space or the world, and audience or person) are common denominators no matter who picks up the game.
The second you translate your model from that environment to a multi-person, much less *massively* multi-person, the only common denominators that remain are time and space. The flaw to writing, and MMORPG approaches in general, lies with which denominator is chosen as the starting point. As you've examined, Asheron's Call did it best by your own terms, because they focused on the denominators that *could be applied to every gamer* in their audience.
As a sidenote, I did feel like WAR's quests were better written than most MMORPGs I've played, but I feel like the mechanics of the game didn't do justice to the IP it was drawn from. I realize the mold of the game weren't boundaries you as a writer had control over, but what you did have dominion over, you did your job well. So a thumbs up from a WAR IP fan out here in cyberspace...
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
Hello everyone
I'm the lead writer of an MMO currently under development (Taikodom) and also the lead content designer of the project. The 'single-playerness' of most MMOs has always been what put me away from this kind of game. Thats the reason why I have worked to aim Taikodom in a different direction. While I can't talk a lot about it yet, I can point you guys towards a post I've made on my Developer's Blog on Gamasutra, where I talk about the subject of stories in MMOs.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoaoBeraldo/20091128/3671/Metastory_Doing_Stories_The_Right_Way.php
MMOs CAN be made without each character having to be the main character. It's a matter of developers learning how to tell a story in this new type of media.
Interesting read.
As others here, I mostly disagree with the you are the Hero feature... in MMOs.
While this concept works in single players games it does not works in MMOs. Soon or later players realize they are just a nth character among thousands others.
Too many designers forgot gamers play an MMOs for the feeling of a living and changing world and eventually to group/socialize.
The funny thing is most players don't mind being a grunt among others, as long as they can live their own story and be fairly efficient against foes, mobs and players alike. Regarding WAR I never ever felt I was THE hero, nor even tried. However it does not remove all the fun I had reading the first paragraph of most quests.
Although, unless an MMO brings dedicated GM to small groups to manage them as we did in PnP RPG, or find a genius way to build interesting and well polished quests: you won't make a player feel like he's a hero doing FedEX quests, nor killing the same type of mobs for the 100th time.
In that way I find LotRo approach interesting, as the player isn't THE hero but someone on the side line with the feeling of being involved into greater actions. In the future we shall see the outcome of SWTOR and their, probably, heavily instanced story points.
To be honest, I wasn't expecting much about SWTOR but the more I play MMOs, the more I feel the lack of actual story and such to keep me interested, and often find myself thinking "Well maybe SWTOR is the way to go?".
The current MMOs on the market are far from original, with a few exceptions. Grocery list quests forcing you to walk back and forth between 1 monster spawn and 1 NPC for the sake of "Gathering leather to make new clothes" is just damn pathetic. One of the reason why I currently play Sandbox MMOs is that, despite the total lack of written storyline, I find myself immersed in a much bigger story. As if we, the players, were authors, slowly writing the history of the world as we venture and interact with everything.
I'm curious to see if BioWare will be able to bring the Story back into Storyline. Perhaps this will be the new future for MMO Writing.
Asheron's Call, old school Star War's Galaxy, and to a lesser degree Final Fantasy XI did awesome jobs making you feel like a character in a persistent world. No one seems to be even trying for this. I'll admit I haven't played Darkfall, but I've heard that the game has the elusive spark that many of us seem to be pining for.
I'm sick to death of the contemporary crap. I want a sandbox game, a true sandbox game. A game where non-combat classes are a significant part of the game world and combat mechanics. What was so wrong with the interconnectivity of the professions in SWG's original form? Can we please get some complex and engaging gameplay in this piece?
Would it be so damn bad for a developer to emulate Asheron Call's character progression and story presentation?
For the love of God, somebody give us a solid, well thought out, polished, and dynamic game to play in this mother humper.
I hate what the MMORPG genre has become. Will we ever see it turn around?
I like how he mentioend promised content and evolving stories and the things that made the original games so interesting. Now we have half-assed buggy releases, piss poor customer service, talk about additional content most of which will be put into expansions or fee based DLC and the stories are marginally interesting at best. I don't think i need to feel i am a hero, unless i am playing a hero in say city of heroes of course, but there should be some effort made into stories that make you feel invovled. Involved and heroic are not the same thing.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
MMOGs are businesses. Here to make money. They will do whatever story/immersion they can get away with that people are prepared to pay for. Despite what posters to this thread may wish otherwise, WOW has got that pretty well sewn up. WOW makes heaps of money, and people are prepared to pay for it, so axiomatically, they have done it right.
To all here who crave "some fantasic immersive story", or "pure sandbox world" full of player-written stories, you will need to look elsewhere. Or write your own.
Personally, I get my "immersive story fix" in Second Life. That's is total sandbox, and the stories are entirely what players have written. Admittedly, it is probably only MOG (not massive), but it has kept me immersed for well over three years.
I've always wondered. When a game is being made, do artists plop down a bunch of skeletons near some ruins, and then ask the writers to come up with a reason why they are there? Or do writers tell the artists hey, we're going to need some skellies and some ruins near this town?
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I like this topic and I do enjoy the article especially in regards to the insight within the game industry as a writer. I want to disagree, with mostly everyone else, in regards to having to make everybody feel like the main character. Yes, I believe its important to an extent, I think people would mostly prefer just to be acknowledged. I don't think they need that special attention that the analogy was referring to make players feel immersed, I would figure the exact opposite.
Most people that are familiar with MMORPG's will know that only few people actually reach some kind of "heroic" proportions in the game and I mean heroic in regards to being known across the whole community that everyone exists in. I wouldn't underestimate the common gamers ability to acknowledge that they aren't the greatest players within the game and are probably far from it. My belief from this would lead to immersion actually fitting players into a more general population ("commoners") role/mode rather than more of a heroes' like starting as a grunt in the army. I don't expect upon creating my character that he's going to be discovered as the key to all things good for the world against all the evils especially acknowledging that thousands of other players exist within the same plane. Let the community pick out the heroes amongst themselves and fit everyone into a more average role starting out (at least don't make me be the savior of <insert noob town here> within the first 30 minutes of gameplay, it gets very old very fast.
Reading text supposedly meant for a unique protagonist when there are obviously so many other individuals about simply erodes the reality of it all away.
I think great writing is essential for developing the world of an mmo, but it really fails when it comes to providing a narrative in a world shared by so many others. Seeing physical changes happen to the gameworld is something far more tangible that can be shared with everyone, as the article has pointed out.
Personally I'd like to see quests and thus quest text done away with completely. Replace it with some kind of personally generated log of observations that doesn't revolve around the world of npcs. That gives writers the chance to play the part of journalist rather than a writer of a fiction which clearly makes no sense. Features such as the Tome of Knowledge do that quite well, but they're usually just an anthology of exerpts fro npc writers, rather than a journal of a sort of player-perspective ghost writer.
A rich lore and backstory is great, but its not as potentially meaningful as the -actual- history of the server, IF there were dynamic world changes happening.
Let the players' actions and the events of the world create the narrative, rather than the writers with their massive onslaught of short stories. Well, that's the dream anyway. MMo's still fall short after all these years of it.
We so rarely see a article about MMO writing, great too see one!
I found AC’s storyline a hallmark that has never been matched. Lotro has a better storyline but you know where its going, AC kept you on your toes. Of course it was not just the story, it was their willingness to change their world.
I understand staff writers are getting replaced with anyone who can put a pen to paper these days, so generic drivel may be all we have on the horizon in an effort to cut costs
writing for a game is LOADS easier if it already has an established presence like Warhammer Fantasy, Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, etc.
If it's something COMPLETELY new then it gets alot harder as you have to craft lore and backstory to start with then build up the house of cards from there.
Unfortunately alot of times certain companies just toss the backstory out the window and either warp it totally or make something altogether new (Point in Case World of Warcraft:Wrath of the Lich King and Dungeons & Dragons Online using Eberron instead of the more popular Forgotten Realms IP)
And for the Kill X monster quests....well....what else are you gonna do? If you do it once or twice with different monsters in each one it's not TOO bad but again WoW dropped the ball on this as well considering once you get to a certain area in Outland it's the lvl 20 quests again but doubled. Go kill XX monster here collect XX item from monster then go kill XX monster YY monster and ZZ monster. I felt like strangling someone when I did those thinking that outland quests would be vastly different from the core quests.
Warhammer Online at least gives you a quest to involve you in the storylines and DDO:U gives you an adventure all your own to experience since 90% of the instances are linked together to multiple ones inside it.
Not sure.
See, you have to please the die hard fans and welcome the newcomers by teaching them about the world. Any small miss step could be your drowning.
An MMO is not supposed to make a player feel special just because he is playing, they should honestly be treated like dirt, scum, peasants, garbage.
Now if a few players decide to join forces and make a difference, these will gain higher reputations around regions and gain more benefits.
An MMO is a game world that revolves around the players in general, not you, you, you and you.
No one is a legendary hero, there ,may be many minor heroes around the regions if they get up and try and do the impossible missions, make the player actually feel special by making him do a task that is difficult to accomplish and that not everybody will do.