Jun 14
Bada Bing
I’ve never watch the HBO series the Sopranos, and now I can say that more than a little bit happily. David Chase has had his last laugh, demonstrating that he has ultimate control over the series, and the fans can fuck all the way off. It’s awesome to be able to know there’s no point to watching those many seasons of content … because there is no ending. If you aren’t’ familiar with the ending, I highly recommend you check out a quick discussion of it from Monday’s Fresh Air.
The thing that occurred to me while I was listening to David Bianculli was how much the outrage of the fans made sense to me. Ultimately, these fans are infuriated because they’ve been robbed of a sense of closure. They didn’t get resolution for their long commitment to a single story. They’d spent years interacting with this world, only to have their time their abruptly cut off without a true finale …
Sound familiar to anyone? I know we’ve been over this before, but there are some very obvious parallels here with a Massive experience. After years of play, you are denied (in every game currently out there) a true ‘end’ to your character’s story.
The idea is that you’ll play forever, but realistically that just isn’t the case. Raiding and endless high-end content aside, there are few people who will play a title exclusively for years on end. I’m sure there are people who have been playing EverQuest from game launch through to today, and who have no intention of stopping. I’m also sure that those people could probably be counted on a few hands. Real life is a harsh mistress.
Several people I’ve talked to recently have mentioned back to me an idea I’ve brought up here before, where episodically released content forces users to play together at specific times. With a tighter control over the narrative, these Minorly Multiplayer Online Games would be able to tell a specific story arc that ends with a definite conclusion.
I think such titles … think of them as cooperative interactive television shows, if you like … could be very successful. I think that somewhere out there is a developer with the Fort save to make a Massive game with an ending; I look forward to playing that game quite a bit.
edit: Doh, I meant to include a link over to a discussion on Raph’s site, and I completely forgot. He talks about the span from instanced to worldly games, and touches on several of the issues I brush up against here.
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Two games I’ve played that made some worthwhile efforts in this regard: Earth and Beyond and Star Wars: Galaxies. Incidentally, these were the first two MMOs I ever played.
Earth & Beyond didn’t necessarily have an ending on the horizon, but their storyline was top notch, with new, world-changing developments every couple of months. Star Wars: Galaxies started off having 3-month long story arcs that would then change and progress based on which side (Rebel or Imperial) had put in the most effort toward that arc.
City of Heroes has a somewhat close system in that each series of quests constitutes a story arc for your character, but it’s almost entirely through text, and nothing changes afterwards.
Ack! I had to stop reading this post because I’m still on season 7 of the Sopranos… You should indicate at the top whether there are spoilers or not within. :/
From what I’ve read of Tabula Rasa so far, I’m liking what Richard is going to do with instancing (using them to help tailor a story to individual players).
It seems almost like putting a bunch of single player/small group games into a MMOG if I read him right.
If it works I can see a lot of other games doing it too. Single player focused story lines combined with the community focus story lines of a MMOG…sounds like the best of both worlds!