I’ll have to archive a few discussion that I’m tackling on two message boards. Even if the topics are different, often there are points of contact and everything converge on a general point of view that should be considered all at once, without too much fragmentation.

In this part I want to link the discussion to something I already introduced. There are strong ties between words like “virtuality”, “virtuous”, “contingence”, “identity”, “narration”, “story”, “history” and more.

The original dichotomy is:
Contingence -> possibility -> virtual -> potential
against
History -> identity -> virtuous

An identity is something that NEVER changes. It cannot change. It’s a fixed point, an unavoidable reality. An history already written. It’s something with a personality, something to tell because there’s a story to hear. It’s hand-crafted content with a precise, fixed use. It needs rules because it must be experienced in a precise way and with a precise direction. It becomes a narration with a sense. With an order and so, again, rules. Borders. A precise message, a precise “lesson” to learn.

The contingence, instead, is open-ended. It’s generic because it adapts itself. It changes, it’s virtual, potential. It’s here now but it can be somewhere else then. It’s dynamic, it follows variable rules, interconnections, mediations, compromises. If the possibility isn’t “held” we obtain an high degree of chaos. From the game design perspective the chaos is the origin of the creativity but it’s also hard to manage and impossible to digest for the players. It’s not fun because it’s hard to discern patters, it’s hard to develop content within it because there aren’t fixed rules. A world without a compass.

If you want interaction, complexity and depth you choose the second approach. If you want to tell a story you choose the first approach. Similar choices are done wether you want effective PvP or effective PvE. This transcends the game design because the premises are deep-rooted into real-world concepts and even games (for real peoples) needs to go back at these roots if they want to be effective. We can communicate because we have something in common, if MMORPGs are “large-scale” communication (or art) they still need to consider what we have in common as human beings.

Now all this reasoning starts when it was asked why World of Warcraft (and other games) has zones closed between impassable walls, with a defined space that doesn’t seem near to the geography of the reality:

DeepT:
What is a “bowl” world? Well each ‘zone’, is like a bowl. Player’s play in the middle, and all around the sides are impassible barriers with a few exits ‘cut’ into the sides of the bowl.

Why I consider WoW in the specific? Because different games organize their space in different ways. The rules aren’t fixed when what you want to deliver is different. But at the same time there are basic rules that regulate your choices. If you want an open-ended game you aim at something precise and you’ll follow rules that wouldn’t work in a story-driven world where you want the players to remain on the path and follow it, without making them feel too much constraint.

So how the space is organized on WoW? Could it be considered a “narrative”? There are rules that the game follows? On which elements these rules are based?

Those are the answers I searched and I believe that my conclusions finish to tie with other important elements that I may discuss in the near future. In the “seamless or not” debate there are design elements that aren’t just technical and depend on the type of experience you want to deliver. The roots are above, where I put “virtuality” against “identity”. There are basically opposite ways to see the genre, opposite types of games. In a similar way as PvE is opposite to PvP.

—
(discussing the concept of the “closed spaces” in WoW)

DeepT:
2) It is unrealstic. The natural world is not built like this.

Games aren’t supposed to be realistic, they are supposed to take those elements from reality that are interesting to plug in a system, wiping those that create problems and are unfun. There’s always a selective process.

Even in the real world you need guides or roads to not get lost in a place you don’t know. If you get lost, in general, it isn’t fun.

DeepT:
3) It is monotonous. It limits exploration.

It leads the exploration. It is limited not as a side-effect but as a decision to lead the player along. It’s OBVIOUS that WoW isn’t an *open ended* game. We can argue whether we can build better, open ended games but WoW is far, far away from this and both its strength and its weaknesses are here: in the FOCUS.

DeepT:
Also I didn’t say all zones should be all open. Most zones should not be cupped in impassable barriers, however. Only rare zones, such as the grand canyon zone might be surrounded by impassible barriers with just a few access points.

This is what happens already, but on a different scale. There are corridor-shaped zones, there are vast plains, there are valleys, there are peaks. All that you describe already happen WITHIN each zone, just not often between different zones.

Why? Because you are, again, following a narrative. A narrative can be a line of words on a page, but can also be a linear sequence of places you visit. This linear sequence exists and is experienced by: Every. Single. Player.

It isn’t exactly linear, but it is segmented. This means that the players are able to displace the segments (quests) but, in general, the gameplay is about visiting different places in an order. Moving from the spot where the troggs are to the spot where the slimes are, to a crypt, to a cave and so on. This is a narrative. WoW is fun because it is pulverized into an infinite amount of goals, all accessible. Always offering a variation (as opposite to a grind and repetition).

The “walls”, even the concept of a “zone”, are to mantain an “order” or a linearity. This means that it’s easier to move within a zone, it’s easier to receive feedback when you are stepping outside the path. “Borders”, as a concept, lead to a control. This is a BASIC concept of WoW because the whole and only keyword on which the game is founded is: accessibility.

So if WoW is considered as a semi-linear story, it can also be considered as a book. The pages in a book are organized with a sense. There are precise reasons why page 13 should be read after page 12. You cannot have the pretence of taking this book, tear off every page and then reorganize them with a random order. In the same way you cannot have the pretence of wiping off basic rules on which WoW is built.

—

Silverlight:
Yes, DeepT, there are reasons to have walls. Yes, HRose, there are reasons not to have walls. The presence of them is a design decision that could go either way.

Oh for God’s sake.

I’m saying the EXACT same thing. I’m not against open ended games but here we were discussing WoW. For THIS game there are reasons why an open ended approach wreck its premises and its strengths.

You may build a good game that is open ended, you may also build a good game that isn’t, like WoW demonstrated. But you cannot take WoW and negate directly all its rules and pretend to make it better.

The reason why SWG, as an example, has no borders, is EXACTLY because it misses a narrative. There isn’t a place where the troggs live opposite to a place where slimes lurk. Every single spot in the game world MUST be virtual because it may “host” an house or an elephant or a strange bird or a rebel hideout and so on.

The world NEEDS to be virtual because it is open ended. But being open ended means that it isn’t virtuous, so it CANNOT tell a story because a story needs an history. Something that happened THERE, not somewhere else. In SWG all the elements can be displaced at any time.

You wonder why it feels “generic”?

—

DeepT:
Ok Hrose, lets just forget about WoW. In ‘general’ why do most MMOGs go with bowl world and what are some good reasons to keep designing them like this? And please to not bring up “It will ruin the narrative” because you have totally failed to convince me that would happen.

For the same reasons but depending on the cases. Since it’s about a control, it helps to predict and lead the players along “paths”.

Open spaces, by definition, are unpredictable. PvE, by definition, is about telling a story in a fixed environment. Games focusing strongly on PvE, in general, need predictable spaces, so controlled, closed spaces. It’s how you maximize their fun (in fact now everyone does the instances to have a complete control over the players).

Open ended games or games focusing on PvP can use better open spaces (but close in the scope, so no infinite land everywhere). At least without considering battle dynamics. For example DAoC “went bowl” with the new frontiers to create choke points and allow the players to fight, adding some strategy.

For similar reasons even in PvE you want the players to move along semi-fixed paths so that they can meet each other.