Anti-Aliased: Socially awkward
So, ok, we've been talking about Champions Online recently here in the column. Been talking about it a lot, as a matter of fact. I don't feel like risking having this column turn into a Champions love fest (as much fun as I'm having with the game), so we're going to change gears significantly this time and get onto a completely new train of thought.
This week's topic: social gameplay. No, I don't mean those games you play obsessively/compulsively on Facebook or your social network of choice. I'm talking about how some aspects of gameplay completely rely on human interaction, for better or for worse. It's present in all of our games, but are we really taking advantage of it? We're going to take a look at some games that do take advantage of human-powered conflict, and why, perhaps, it might be a wave of the future for online games.
MMOs: They have huge......... numbers of people online at once!
If there's one thing the MMO was made to do, it was to connect people all together to play the same game. Note that I did not say in the same world or same universe, simply that they're built to connect people. Soloers be damned, this genre was founded on bringing people together to cooperatively overcome obstacles or competitively beat the everloving snot out of one another.
Yet, most of the focus of our development is on the things the player is expected to do rather than on the player themselves. What I mean is that we design objectives and items in the world and create set content rather than giving the player the option of doing the things they want to accomplish.
Of course saying that is easy, but implementing it is insanely hard. Designing quests, raids, and other set content isn't a walk in the park either, but developers can keep control over the player's activities. If you design a quest to kill 10 rats, you know the rats are going to be in X and you know that your players will all follow the quest's instructions in order to benefit.
The drawback to this is the gameplay is static. Everyone's going to be killing 10 rats. If you make an alt character, you'll be killing 10 rats again. The experience will not change for the better -- it may, in fact, change for the worse. If you have a high level character killing all of the rats before newbies get the chance to kill them, that creates an unsuitable situation. One player might be getting his jollies, but he's doing so at the expense of every other player.
So how can you harness the power of people's douchebaggery? Dynamic social content.
Case in point: EVE Online
Yes, yes, you commenters hate it when we talk about EVE Online for some reason. I've read your e-mails, and your comments, and your begs for us to stop talking about EVE. However, we just can't. EVE is one of the very, very few games that includes unscripted game changing events, dastardly plots, and absolute uncontrolled chaos.
The reason we have so much to talk about is because of EVE's focus on the player as a source of content. Now, you're probably saying, "So what? We've heard about the sandbox already. We know what it does." And sure, that sentence is very true as the sandbox is a big part of social gameplay. But the other aspect, the one that pushes EVE beyond a simple sandbox, is the ability for a player to fall into a class of an evolving society.
EVE is a give-and-take style of system. Sure, players have the sandboxing freedom to do what they wish, but the game allows them to fall into certain styles of gameplay that suit them the best. These styles of gameplay interact with one another on an extremely complex social level that turn what can be frustrating experiences into gameplay elements.
The simple act of griefing a pilot may spark an intergalactic war that wasn't there a minute ago. Moving cargo from one place to another might lead you headlong into another corporation's gate camp. A trader might need you to pick up some minerals for him so he can sell them to another corporation who will use them to create a weapon to wage war on another corporation who in turn might hire you to defend their moon base. Players are interacting with one another using the tools given to them -- not simply using the tools for the sake of fun. Dynamic goals are being created simply due to the effects of people working with and against one another.
This isn't a function of the sandbox -- this is a function of society. It's people being people, and it's being supported by the game's design.
