Getting the Raw Deal

Please know that I'm a BioWare fanboy. A big one. They are my hometown heroes, and I can gush on about their corporate and game histories and achievements for longer then you'd care to listen. Everything they do seems to be done with their community in mind. They make games with care and detail, they provide their own support (and do it better than most others), and they encourage advancements in open and community generated content.

The Neverwinter Nights Premium Modules were a great step into the age of online distributed content. For a nominal price you can buy new content, professionally produced, that includes additional audio, textures, and other details not usually included with free, community created, content. Chances are you've read about this somewhere, so I'll not go into too much detail here.

I must tell you that I am now worried about the direction they are heading with online content. After a great start they seem to have fallen into the trap of offering bad deals in the name of online distribution. Here's the quick breakdown: Jade Empire Special Edition (for PC) comes out in a couple of days. EB Games is listing the game (with Bonus for preorders) for $40USD. BioWare is listing the Digital Download of the same game (no mention of bonus) for the same price.

Why am I paying the same price for just the data as I am for the retail packaging? They even warn on the information page:

This is a downloadable purchase. No product will be shipped.

Well, at least I know. But I'm guessing that the 6 gigabyte download (and 15GB install!) is going to take longer to get than a return trip to my local BestBuy to grab the meatspace version. From personal experience, 6GB is an overnighter. Which is probably why they are encouraging fans to pre-order now so that you can pre-load the game.

But all of that isn't what got me frazzled enough to write this post. I know that A-List games are suffering from content bloat. I realize that someone has to pay for the bandwidth to push 6GB several thousand times. I understand that they can get a better ROI by not having a disc, box art, and shipping costs. What bothers me is what I found in the FAQ section:

A full version digital game can be installed up to three times. If you have exceeded this limit please contact support with your account name and the reason the limit was exceeded. [emphasis mine]

Three times! There are many games that I've installed more than three times. The reason? I wanted to play it on more than three occasions. I've bought a new computer. I had to reinstall my OS. I simply don't have hard drive space for a (15GB!) game when I'm not playing it.

I don't know about you, but I play a game and then I generally uninstall it if it doesn't have a lot of immediate replayability. Some games get the privilege of a permanent spot in the Games folder. They are usually the ones that I can play for 15 minutes anytime, or can play online with others. Just because a game is story focused doesn't mean that I'll never play the game again. I'd certainly like to have that option.

Please don't buy the Digital Download of Jade Empire. Doing so would encourage the publisher-centric mentality that has gotten us this kind of raw deal. We need to send the message that they cannot confuse the consumer by offering something that sounds convent but really isn't. When you spend your money on content, you should have access to that content without the worry that you'll extend the limits of its use. This is not how online distribution of content should work, and we need to say so.

Gaming Wikipedia

Wikipedia works pretty well when you are popular, established, and provable. It works, with a fair degree of success, for things like games, TV, books, medical terms, and even politics, debates, and history. Of course it fails as a system of information cataloging on a much broader scale. Which makes it useless as a source of information. By design it cannot even be trusted as a reliable source. In fact, it has more elements of social game than serious reference about it.

Take for instance Wikipedia's user structure. A large user base accesses information via the free and open portals. This information is easily searched and accessed by the public with no restriction. The information is provided by a content generating subset of the total user community. This subset is primarily responsible for addition of content, modification and editing of content, and the discussion and possible nomination for deletion of content. Of that subset, a smaller set of administrators determine final importance of content and can subsequently delete content not deemed significant.

So, while a lot of people (including myself) rely on Wikipedia for information, trivia, insight, and source points for further research, it by design will only ever cater towards the desires of the minority of content creators and managers. While major topics of interest can be easily covered, it lacks the agility and finesse to tackle topics of wide controversy or emerging content. Even if something is verifiable as information, written in a neutral form, and conforms to the other content rules, it can still be removed if a vocal minority of active players deem it insignificant.

This has cropped up most significantly (for me, at least) in the area of Webcomics. For more than two decades intrepid artists have been creating comic content and publishing via various forms of distributed network communication, even prior to the popularized internet. There are hundreds, nay thousands, of comics in constant inception, production, hiatus, or archival states. Many consistent comics have readerships in the thousands themselves. Each of these comics have histories, characters, story lines, and other verifiable data associated with them. Data that could be collected and entered into Wikipedia.

Except that since the vocal minority of players and administrators consider many of these comics unknown or insignificant they are removed from the content base. In fact, the social bias of the minority is adversely affecting the ability for webcomics to enter the wiki-world and become standard and significant. This feedback loop leads the wiki system to a state of game-ability. If one player was intent enough, they could significantly alter or delete an entry based on spurious information by playing to the bias or ignorance of the minority.

The proof is here: http://www.halfpixel.com/2007/02/15/delete-wikipedia/

As it turns out, it’s not hard to get something deleted from Wikipedia, especially if it’s on some ice-blasted, barren frontier land on the internet like webcomics, where no one really knows what’s important and what isn’t, and no one really cares to make sure. That’s pretty goddamn weak.

The feedback of the system leads it to a game of social ladder-climbing and self-important watchdogging. New players interested in adding content have to butt heads with established players who can gainsay information based on rank and community influence. Griefing even rears its ugly head, with users who are dedicated to causing damage, inciting argument, and establishing personal prestige. Articles about arguably insignificant TV, Sci-Fi, fantasy, game, and movie trivia are widely available and strongly supported by the vocal few while fresh content trying to gain a foothold in the larger consciousness is shoved aside as weak and ill-defined.

How could the game be changed to encourage unbiased, factual, and complete information from all areas of interest? How could the game be changed to respect and support expert knowledge (another large wiki-complaint)? How could the game be changed to draw a larger percentage of the participating players into creating and managing interesting content without needing to be obsessive about editing? How can we make Wikipedia a better social knowledge game?

Unique Snowflakes

It isn't a coincidence that all engaging stories are about someone. Sure, they often stray into the realm of being about something, but while metaphor and meaning are interesting they are not the meat of great tales. It all comes back to character, because character is where conflict and resolution lie. The draw of character is so powerful that many non-fiction writers use it too. The most compelling biographies, true crime novels, history books, marketing books, whatever, draw you in by creating or relating characters to you, or even go so far as to make you a character in their narrative. They build a sympathetic connection you are able to follow, tying you to the actions and motivations of the characters. The main character(s) become proxies for your own temporary escapism. We read to be transported which happens best when we connect to a character and, in some small way, become them.

Games with immersive storytelling in their core design usually depict the main character as a strongly defined individual or a faceless avatar. On one had you have characters with recognizable profiles, pronounced design, carefully written dialog, and even voice acting. The character is crafted to fit the role and each touch builds a better character. The idea is to create a strong link with the avatar by making it distinct and catchy — something you would want to emulate. The other hand holds the blank, generic, undefined, and sometimes unshown visage. There is minimal writing, and almost never any voiced dialog. By leaving the avatar as blank as possible the designer hopes that the player will imagine himself in the role, adding their own (possibly adopted) behaviors and reactions to the character to bring it to life. These techniques are amplified echoes of similar character development styles in traditional writing, but with a heavier focus on agency. The players are encouraged to become the characters, either by emulating the character given, or by assuming the role of the character left blank.

It is this agency in games that acts as a further step towards transparent escapism, when done properly. Rather than following along inside the character's head, or hovering, invisible, just over their shoulder, we take control. We inhabit their head, decide their motivations, direct their actions, and reap their rewards directly. Agency is the most powerful interactive story tool because the direct connection we have to the character can be exploited to create tension, conflict, and other story elements. Properly directed, and with a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief a game may even be able to induce self-reflection and internal change in the player. I'm getting off track. The question I want to address is: why is understanding character connections and motivations important for video games?

Focus and Intent

A book that is written from the perspective of a nobody who inhabits a world where nothing interesting happens is boring. No one would read it because there is no conflict, and our connecting character is uninteresting. Even books that claim to be about nothing, or have boring characters, are lying; the theme is a facade for the internal conflicts and meat of the story happening inside the outwardly boring world. I just want you to imagine the impossibility of a narrative that has no story, because nothing happens. Now we can make a small change and create story without altering our boring character: Make Mr. Boring a witness to interesting things happening to other people. Conflicts create interest, but notice that the focus is now on world (and people) that surround our non-character. The focus has shifted without our intended avatar changing. You can move the focus back to our boring guy by having the interesting things around him change him. With the conflict internalized again (even if the actual events are happening to a 3rd party), our relationship is now with our intended character again and nothing interesting has to happen to him directly. Notice that he also isn't as boring as he used to be. Of course this would make for a shit game.

In a story and character focused game (like most cRPGs, MMOGs, FPSs, and Platformers), if there is nothing interesting happening to your avatar in the game world then there is no direct action, and passivity makes for unsatisfying gameplay (hence all the complaints about cut-scenes). So games tend to be about exciting things happening to you. And because games are relatively immature (as a storytelling form), they tend to be about fantastic things happening to you. So you fight Hordes of Terrible Monsters and Save the World, or battle the Unstoppable Armada and Save the Galaxy, or travel through Impossible Worlds and single-handedly Save the Princess from captivity. You act and your heroic efforts turn the tide and save the day. You are special and important (the mantra of all good escapism, and most public schools), or you become so because to do otherwise would — we assume — be boring. This is the general motivating force behind most non-abstract games, from Mario to Shadow of the Colossus. The fiction is that you are the center of the world's attention, the sole hero. So what happens when you aren't alone?

Repeat After Me

HELEN
Everyone's special, Dash.

DASH
Which is another way of saying no one is.

One of the things I find absurd about many MMOGs is that they try to support a focused story and a core linear narrative. Everyone follows the same quests, does the same trials, fights the same bosses, gets the same loot (Corvus beat me to talking about this). You sit down, you load up, you log into a city where everyone is a hero or villain (can anyone guess which game I'm think of as I write this?). In fact the active, intelligent population is 100% special, with abilities far above the "norm" of society. Except the game isn't about living in a world peopled with superhumans (or Underwear Perverts). The narrative being told is about how your actions affect a world filled with normal, helpless people. Normal, helpless people that had to be invented. I find it bizarre that in a world where everyone has incredible power the majority of the population has to be created out of digital stuff. Special people wouldn't be special without everyone else. To support the player-as-hero infrastructure, the world has to be constantly refreshed and maintained, rebuilt and changed, so that the repetitiveness of the actual gameplay can be hidden beneath a thin, shifting veneer of self-important storytelling.

Jeff Freeman and Raph Koster have been recently back-and-forthing about rewards in a linear style MMOG. Their discussion has been mostly about how rewards are related to progress and prestige, and how those status symbols are corrupted by a system that allows people to purchase advancement. I'm more interested in Raph's later comments about the control developer's have over the feedback the game provides. In one comment he says this:

With the games we’re making now, people are mostly going around and doing stuff independent of one another. We aren't even measuring and then giving out prizes based on how WELL they slew the dragon — just that they took the ride.

Reaching New Depths

Eventually, video games will strive to new depths of creativity, interactivity, and (ultimately) storytelling. What that may look like is anyone's guess. It may also depend on how we play our games in the future. Games intended to be played alone may look very different from games intended to be played in community. Single-player stories can achieve incredible levels of pathos if we learn to use the tools of storytelling we have in new ways. Massive worlds may become interesting and sustainable if we learn to create balance and diversity that allows players to tell their own stories from anywhere inside the complex world of the game. Realism isn't something that the graphics designers have to worry about. Storytellers, world builders, game designers have to be reaching for new ways to make something real — tell something true — in the story-worlds that they are building, whether they are meant for one or meant for many.

Perhaps the greatest design change we can look forward to is the realization that different tools lead to different ends. As an outside observer I see a lot of time and effort being thrown at "problem areas", when oftentimes the answer isn't in the code. This is a common engineering design flaw which has bled into games through programmers (engineers of instruction sets) and designers (engineers of play structures). We see something that we think needs a particular solution and single-mindedly drive through hell and high water to find a solution. What we often miss is the beautiful and elegant solutions already around us, and the irony. I'll illustrate with a simple question:

Why are single-player games being designed to solve the problem of complex social interactions, while massive online worlds are being designed as linear stories with limited playable scope?