Ultimately, though, my love has been for science fiction since I was a wee tot. Heinlein, Aasimov, Clarke, Stephenson, Gibson … these are the folks that I think of when I go to my happy reading place. As has been noted many times by NPD sales, developers, and money-men, I’m in the minority. Apparently the idea of surgically implanting a stainless steel port into your skull, in order more easily connect with a computer, is something not everyone enjoys. In space no one can hear you scream, and it’s hard to love a robot.

I’m tired of it. The Sci-fi ‘niche’ is a fantastic venue for creative thinking, and it’s an incredibly evocative milieu for gaming. Here are my five reasons why science fiction makes for a better setting than fantasy …

Update: Welcome io9 readers! Make sure to check out Grimwell’s fantasy-oriented response to this post, and my podcast followup to get the full discussion.

1. Down With Poncy Elves – I’m so freaking tired of immortal long-eared humanoids, I could spit. Elfy welfies are boring. Everybody plays elves instead of humans because when faced with the choice of immortality or blotchy skin, immortality and flawless pores win every time. What’s the point of even offering elves and humans in the same game: they’re the same freaking thing. Beyond elves specifically, I see the lack of magic or the purely fantastical as a strength to sci-fi stories. No one is saying you have to stick purely to boring old reality (ie: Star Trek), but you at least have to try to come up with an explination for the out-of-the-ordinary. Trek’s technobabble is one of the worst examples, and hedges incredibly close to Clarke’s third law. Most sci-fi, though, extrapolates existing trends into their fantasy world. AI, for example, is presently unfeasible, but not because of any sort of conceptual limitation; we just don’t have the technology yet. I find that much more gratifying than the meaningless pablum of “it’s magic!”
2. Bringing a Gun to a Knife Fight -Swords and axes are cool. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a guy – hitting something over the head with a big metal object is something I’m pre-programmed to enjoy. That said, the variety afforded by modern items and weapons is hard to match in a fantasy setting. Tabula Rasa’s healing widgets are a great example, and the sf/x that represent them are fantastic. Blizzard has certainly shown the variety you can get out of axes, hammers, and plate mail, but projectile weapons are a nice change of pace. Dinking around with TR’s weapons has been a highlight of the experience.
3. Actually Cogent Storytelling – That ‘no magic’ thing (should) extend to better storytelling. Look at the lore of most fantasy titles: blah blah elves blah blah elder gods blah blah chosen race blah blah great conflict. Most of these games have little more than the serial numbers filed off to distinguish between their backstories. Is Norrath really all that more compelling than Dereth or Vana’diel? Sci-fi storylines tend to be based (more or less) in the real world, meaning players have a lot of built-in context on which to base their understanding of the game world. This not only means players might find the lore more approachable, for those who care about such things it should lead to better roleplaying. What’s an easier point of view to adopt: a crazy lizard-guy who can throw fireballs or a human soldier?
4. A Hopeful Outlook – This may be something hard to grasp, but I fundamentally think sci-fi settings are more hopeful than your average fantasy world. In fantasy, so much of the time, the efforts of the players are just chessboard moves. Ageless NPCs, demi-gods, demons, these are the ‘real’ players in the lore. We just show up as incidental actors on a much bigger stage. In science fiction, people are people. The protagonists of the story are set against much more understandable foes; even ravenous space aliens are fundamentally mortal. They may be unstoppable, inscrutable killing machines, but they can still be killed by a well-place bullet. Beyond that, I find the idea of humanity expanding into outer space (even if it’s in self-defense) incredibly uplifting. Our current attitude towards space exploration is so blase that even the flight from Earth seen in the Firefly/Serenity series (”Earth-that-was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many.”) seems hopeful by comparison. How can anyone look up at the night sky and not wish to go visiting some day?
5. The XKCD Factor – Have you ever read the webcomic XKCD? Go check out a few comics if you haven’t. You’ll be able to quickly tell if it’s the kind of humor you get. A Venn Diagram outlining the number of people who can fully appreciate blogofractals, Katamari jokes, and an unnatural fear of velociraptors does not encompass all of humanity. That can also be said for folks who truly appreciate science fiction. Lots of people can debate Kirk vs. Picard, but mulling the finer points of bespoke nanotechnology design after reading Diamond Age is a more rarefied experience. Sci-fi is demanding in a way that fantasy isn’t, and as a result sci-fi gamers tend to have instant connections with their fellows.

His comments today on the schism between in-game guilds and the out-of-game requirements for entry rang very true for me. I always wondered why it was that I needed to pay some idiot architect a bunch of money for a house in SWG, when there were a bunch of perfectly good empty buildings in the NPC cities. Seriously, there’s not one apartment for rent in all of Theed?

Angus argues that in games like AO and EVE, it would have made a lot of sense to allow players to join in-game corporations:

You’d have the means to do cool inter-twisted quest stuff like the thing where you get an email from your boss telling you to kill the guy sitting next to you on the airplane ’cause he’s a corporate mole from another company, or more important stuff that everybody else in your guild actually cares about, like stopping somebody from trying to kidnap the princess and poison the king, if you were really high-up in your in-game guild. Of course, on the negative side, you might end up in a corporation with some attention-whore college boy drama queen that never shuts the hell up and drives everyone absolutely batshit. But how is that any different from the shit we’re doing now? 

I wanted to join up with one of the NPC corps about 15 minutes into EVE’s tutorial, and was very disappointed when I learned I couldn’t.

C’mon, just a little RP never hurt anybody.

Shadowbane – PvP / Sieges

“Crush”, right? Well, despite the mixed success and flagging subscription numbers of SB, I would chalk those up to business decisions and code problems, rather than attributing the fall of Shadowbane to design concepts. Design wise, Shadowbane took PvP by the snout and shook it for all that it’s worth. A world fraught with actual danger which pits you head-to-head with fellow players? The stuff of a marketing writer’s dreams and a hardcore player’s wish come true. Shadowbane sent the message to designers that yes, Player versus Player combat is viable as a central tenant to online games. I see Planetside as a sideline to this, a confirmation that FPS combat is something massively multiplayer gamers would participate in. Now if only Planetside would lower their rates to save their sinking ship. *sigh*

Star Wars Galaxies – Chat Bubbles / Emotes / Entertainers

Say what you will about the contentless desert of SWG, you could communicate with other players better and more entertainingly than in any other game to date. The chat-bubble interface, the plethora of fun emotes, and the social venues provided by cantinas resulted in a social atmosphere unparalleled so far in MMOGdom. This aspect is undoubtedly why SWG is still going strong, as it appeals to the other pillar of Bartle’s Player Types, the Socializer. With the Achievers satisfied by grinding to Master Jedi and the Socializers chatting happily away in cantinas, SOE has plenty of subscribers they can safely call “in the bag”. The fact that they’re ignoring the Explorer type has led to many cancellations (including my own), but you can back-fill content easily enough. Numerous and effective chat tools are something you need to have built into the game from the get-go and SWG has proven the inordinate value of this.

Anarchy Online: Shadowlands & DAoC: Trials of Atlantis – Different Zone Architecture

Perhaps I’m the only one who really sees zone architecture as an exciting thing, but the twisting weirdness of the Shadowlands and the aquatic beauty of ToA seemed like a major improvement to me this year. I’m getting pretty tired of forests filled with gnolls, people. Underwater realms and other planes are just the beginning, I hope. Why not a zone of buildings built into a cliffside, like the Anasazi villages of Arizona? Cities have been done to death, but never with any degree of realism. Give me filth-choked alleyways, suburban neighborhoods, palatial apartment complexes, or the depths of a corporate office building. Howabout a palace built inside a cloud, or a tree-top village? We’re getting to the point where we can’t even see the trees for the trees, folks. Zone originality is one of the shiny things you can put on box labels. Show us some.

Star Wars Galaxies / A Tale in the Desert – Crafter’s Paradise

“No one will play a MMOG with no combat!” Well, there are a few thousand people populating ancient egypt (many of them speaking German!) who would disagree with that statement. The sleeper hit of 2003, and in my opinion the best game overall, ATITD has proven that given the right formula a game about making stuff can hook people just as deeply as “Hit A and Walk Away”. Fireworks, looms, mills, statues, tents, and the ever popular flax gin are the end result of ATITD players game-time, and they are just as proud of their creations as any warrior with a +10 sword of dicing. Star Wars Galaxies deserves mention down here as well, of course. The crafting tree in SWG is not as deep, but holds an engagement all it’s own. Additionally, the attention to detail in the cosmetic areas that SWG has is a grand thing indeed. I spent something like 50% of my time in-game making pants, and for the most part I was a happy camper. Someday there is going to be a game that has the depth of ATITD, with the cosmetics of SWG. That will be a good day.

Puzzle Pirates – Mini-Games!

A quick continuation of my last point: The future of crafting is here, in the form of Puzzle Pirates and mini-gaming. Puzzle Pirates uses mini-gaming for everything from sailing to fighting, but where it really shone for me in beta was the crafting aspect. As much as people enjoy making stuff for others, having fun while doing it is still something that MMOGs have yet to do well. Puzzle Pirates does that in spades. Mark my words, a few years from now making that buckler for your guild buddy will involve a Tetris clone of some kind. And I look forward to that day with great relish.

Next week, I’m going to give us all a common language by talking about the basics of MMOG design as I understand them, and setting out a bibliography for us to use. See you then.