Everything is connected.

Yesterday Raph posted on his site an obvious provocation about single player games but I sort of anticipated that theme already a few days before. And not because I was proposing it in the first place, but because I was “giving voice” to some discussions I was reading on various forums and continuing on the same lines of the discussions that started a couple of months ago.

I’m not going to tackle Raph’s arguments because I don’t feel like adding to them or criticizing them. I still believe that what he wrote was a provocation, something strategically planned to trigger the “he’s nut” comment. So he went to search exactly that type of conflict of opinions. Throwing in a completely wrong footing comment but that he knew how to defend at best. I like the way :) It helps to surprise and create the interest. If you are intrigued, you can then follow his arguments.

My opinion here worked like a jo-jo. Raph says that single-player games will vanish because they are a “mutant monster” that has no real place and purpose. Instead of falling in the trap of his deep arguments I just quickly commented on a superficial level, but that is also the level where the generalizations are made:

Books and movies are single-player, though.

This comment is stupid to the point that it is not even worth a consideration. But, you know, I follow the flow.

On Q23 Charles commented (I still have to archive the discussion we had about RPGs):

And yet if you view games as media, media is something often experience alone. Books, movies, TV. If I am playing the hero in my own form of media, I don’t necessarily want to share that experience with anyone.

If you look at every single player game as a unique movie, then it’s perfectly valid to want to play it alone, not ‘aberrant’.

To state that single player games are unnatural is to miss a large part of what makes games interesting and enjoyable.

That’s another step.

If now I jump back to Raph’s comment thread, I find him commenting:

JoeBillBob:
So in other words: Very soon, Single Player Masterpieces like Ultima IV and Ultima VII will no longer be possible. Instead, they will be superceded with “triumphs” of multiplayerism like Ultima Online.

Raph:
No, more likely a masterpiece like Ultima VII will be an instanced adventure within something larger.

And this is another step. The circle is complete.

What Raph said there, from my own point of view, is exactly what I wrote in the last three months about questing mechanics, accessibility, single-player stories, immersion and so on. It’s all tied together, all following the same flow. The same purpose.

We discussed the “sandboxes” and their accessibility problems. I suggested linear paths to help this accessibility and give them a proper structure (direction) and I arrived again at the conclusion to solve some of these core problems by using the concept of “permeable barriers” that, from a side, would help and direct the player, creating a structure that can be simplified and “chunked”. While from the other they would open up the possibilities, removing the barriers that separate and segregate the players. Because I believe that’s where the potential is.

My fancy tripartite game scheme follows those ideas, with the purpose of “gating” content. Each of the three layers isn’t an independent game, but a gate on the other two. One continues in the other and draws legitimation and sense from the other. The idea I was following was to create (permeable) paths to walk the players along. Help them to move the first steps, remove the accessibility barriers of servers, factions, classes, group requirements and so on to immerse directly in the game world. Then progressively open “portals” to other parts of the game, again working on the accessibility.

The goal here is diametrically opposite to what every game out there has done till now. I’m not creating three layers on the same game to target them at specific “player types” that I expect and enforce to specialize in the part they like more. The opposite. I create three layers that flow one into the other so that every player will naturally experience and draw the most out of ALL THREE. It’s about opening up the doors instead of shutting them. Removing the barriers, working to make the game more accessible for everyone. So that everyone has the right to participate.

While other games work on a selection of the players, where some are accepted and some rejected. Mirroring our real society. What I do, instead, is to EDUCATE the players. I don’t select them, I don’t put barriers between them, I don’t impose, I don’t require, I don’t segregate, I don’t create differences, I don’t offer reasons to “hate”. Instead I try to bring together. Integrate. Bring in those players that in other games are rejected. This is the purpose. This is my ideal.

So, for me, using single-player patterns and strategies is something extremely valuable. It’s the very first step to bring the players in, getting them involved in the game. Recuperate the level of the “immersion” that right now is completely lost and forgotten in this genre. This isn’t about wasting resources on a type of “narration” that isn’t appropriate nor the “raison d’être” of this genre. But it’s instead a way to “gate” the players to a genre they don’t know yet. An entrance. A starting point.

A clear sign that says: “I have a story to tell you, follow me”. Your story begins here.

This is why my comment above about movies and books being “single-player” turns into a jo-jo. It’s not anymore a comment against what Raph says. But confirming it. Adding to it.

It’s absolutely false that movies and books are single-player. In fact we watch movie and read books so that we can still share them with other people, on other levels. Somewhere what we do returns there. Maybe not explicitly, but it will. Not differently to what Raph says about Geometry Wars:

It’s multiplayer because we talk about it on a message board, PLUS have persistent identities when we play it, track high scores across the network and compete with each other, get notified when our friends are playing it, and (presumably and potentially) are datamined whilst we play it.

The same reason why a non-explicit multi-player layer in a mmorpg could still be extremely valuable. It’s not something alienated from the genre, but an interesting idea to “gate” the players between different layers of possibilities.

Prologue of “A Theory of Fun”:

“Yes, this is something worthwhile. I connect people, and I teach people.”