And although later I might post a review of sorts for the game, this isn’t it.

This is a gripe which applies to Afterlight and a philosophy which pervades games everywhere.

My complaint is that the game will not let me be a part of it. Oh sure, I can play it. I can go through the missions and research the technology and fight the monsters and win, but it’s all according to the developer’s vision, not mine.

UFO:Afterlight is similar to a giant in the PC gaming pantheon: the X-Com franchise. In some respects, it may be a better game than any of the X-Com games, but there is one glaring, nearly unforgivable omission: I can’t put myself in the game. In the original series, you could name your soldiers, level them up and become attached to them. You could make yourself in the game and lead the charge, or cower in the base at your discretion. In Afterlight, you are stuck with the character names they thought up.

The rationale is (I imagine) that there is a story based around those characters, so they need to be the same to preserve the story structure. That’s fine. Some set characters are good, but if I want to have some fresh-faced, new, alien hunter recruit be named Shootja Indaface, where’s the harm? I think it would also be nice to be able to name my base, my spaceship, my weapons, my robots and whatever else I can. In a single player game, where my choices would impact only myself, what’s the difference to the developer?

The cause could be developer hubris, or perhaps laziness. There is also the possibility that they may feel it isn’t a significant point to address, but it is a gripe of mine nonetheless.

It extends beyond the non-ability to name the characters in Afterlight. It’s everywhere. In nearly all games, the developer’s craft a perfect little polyethylene bubble over their creations which won’t let the players “screw them up.” I’ve ranted similary in the past.

In an MMORPG if you want to name your +7 Sword “Death-Pain Slayer with Whipped Cream,” you can… but only in your head and only people you mention it to in passing will know. The game won’t let you enchant the name onto the sword, or engrave it into the blade, permanently marking it so for the rest of the world to see. You have to settle for whatever name the developers have given it like “Windbreaker” or whatever amazingly perfect name they have chosen and is, of course, exactly the same as every other sword of that type. The same applies even if you craft the sword yourself from a lump of iron and a twist of rawhide, mashing and folding the metal into perfection. Yet even before the blade is created, its fate has been determined.

Want to cast a spell you have dubbed “Great Ball of Fire?” Sorry, instead it will read Fireball III, but someday you can aspire to cast the much more creatively named Fireball IV. Some areas of MMORPGs are crying out for creative player additions. And I’m not even at the point where I am asking to record my own voice for a battle cry, put my own image as an insignia on my armor or introduce true user-created content. This is just about customizing things that already exist within the framework of the game.

People will argue that names provided by the game “fit” and player created ones might “ruin immersion,” which I think is a funny concept. Would being able to make the world you play in uniquely reflect the personality of the players in it ruin immersion or increase immersion? I suspect that opening the hermetically sealed cases to the unwashed masses might ruin the immersion of the store display version of the playscape, but it would begin the process of increasing immersion in the new world conceived by the players.

So in MMO space the question really becomes: Is the world the developers create “better” than one the players would create themselves?

Struggling to remember why I feel like I have already explored these lands, I run through the possibilities in my head. Was it in a dream? Nope. Did I somehow catch a glimpse of them in the murky mists of a fortuneteller’s scrying crystal? I don’t think so. Suddenly I realize I’ve got it all wrong. I’ve never been to this world at all. It’s simply the same as every other fantasy MMORPG I have ever played no matter which world it is supposedly on.

Oh sure, there are different races and different monsters in every game, but let’s face it – there are going to be: ants, bears, crocodiles, dogs, elephants, frogs, gorillas, horses, iguanas, jaguars, kangaroos, lions, monkeys, nautilous, octopi, pirahna, rats, sharks, tigers, vultures, wolves, yellow jackets, zebras… and plenty more of your garden variety species found right here on quite mundane ol’ Earth. This isn’t an exhaustive list.

But why? Why simply recreate real-world things to place into a fantasy game. Why do developers cede ownership of their own world to that of the one we already know?

Although I have never designed a game, I imagine the desire to maintain certain conventions from the real-world into the fantasy realm serves many purposes.

1. They immediately enhance player familiarity with your world. Players know what to expect from real-world creatures. Looking at how they are portrayed in your game also gives them a yard-stick by which to judge other creatures which they may be unfamiliar with.
2. Conventions are easier to design. Who wants to think up all new types for every single organic on a planet? New plants, new animals, new aquatics, new fliers… it’s daunting. So, use some of what you know and fill out the rest of the world with new ones.

I’m sure there are others as well.

When I began thinking about this, I was wondering how a developer might populate a world with all new creatures, plants and even minerals completely unique to that specific game-world. Could it be done?

And if it were done, what impact would this new range of creations have on other dependent sub-systems, such as crafting perhaps?

Would the minerals still be mined as normal? Would leather-working exist as a skill? Would having these kinds of craft skills break the mold of not having real-world conventions?

Should all the weapons be different? Should the fighting techniques be new? Should the classes be different?

It seems like there simply has to be a dividing line somewhere where some things are re-created and some are new, but is where that line is typically drawn the right place?

I’m still mulling this over.

In a typical encounter, the Tank will position themselves in front of the engaged monster and try to get the critter to focus all of its attacks on him/her. Tanks typically have the best armor and the most hitpoints, so they can stand there being beat on for a good long time before they keel over dead. So while they are being assailed with impunity, Tanks use their other main skill “taunt” to, I assume, say bad things about the monster’s mother to really piss it off while the Tank’s flimsy counterparts in the group deal damage without fear of being hit. When the group has a healer present, the Tank’s massive hitpoints can be constantly refreshed to full until the mob is dead.

The problem that I have with Tanks is that not only do they have no real-life analogue, but they have no fantasy literature based example either. Bilbo, Sinbad, Conan, Drizzt, Perrin, Theseus, none of these guys would stand in front of a sword and let it hit them over and over. It just doesn’t make sense.

About the closest approximation I can come up with to the job of the MMORPG Tank is the rodeo clown, whose job it is to deliberately taunt an angry bull so a fallen bull rider can escape the ring without being gored. And after that point, even the clown heads for a safe barrel to hide in until the bull can be pacified.

So lacking any real or even literary parallel, why does nearly every fantasy MMORPG (and most non-fantasy ones as well) feature a Tank character archetype?

(That’s a real question folks, not just a rhetorical one…)

Without doing exhaustive research, I would say that most MMORPGs seem to fall into just a few different over-arching genres:

1. Fantasy world
2. Science fiction universe
3. Post-apocalyptic anarchy
4. Non-specific alternate life reality
5. Pirates
6. Superheroes

The vast majority of the games seem to be all loosely based on the same fantasy setting reminiscent of Lord of the Rings or Dungeons and Dragons. The fantasy realms of Atlantis, for example, or John Carter from Mars are not typical in the MMORPG marketplace.

The genres developed include both previously created IPs, such as Star Wars or Conan, and mixes of standard elements of the genre chosen, like Horizons, or Eve.

But, I’ve been thinking a bit about how MMORPGs could be designed to fit other genres which haven’t manifested themselves yet, though successful example IPs exist for many other genres.

To begin the exercise, I was thinking how something like the movie “Office Space” could be brought to an MMORPG. Where you would play an Accountant, or a Project Manager or Marketing Rep. and form up a team to complete corporate initiatives or organizes luncheons. I can’t say that a game like that would have much appeal to me though, so aside from just being an idea to be different, it was kind of silly.

So I came up with a couple other somewhat unusual concepts, but I think any of them could be made into a decent game with some thoughtful consideration. Here are just a few:

The G-Man MMORPG
Dark glasses, check. Dark suit, check. Ear piece, check. Foil plots against the President, you betcha.

Stop the Alien Invasion
It’s X-com meets Men in Black meets V, but it’s an MMORPG. Find the aliens living among us, kill them and take their stuff.

Mercenary Soldiers MMORPG
Honduras jungles one day and raiding an Antarctic scientific station the next.

World of Slasher Flicks
Be a teen-ager in a realm of hockey masked, dream-state, chainsaw killers.

Barbarian Hordes
Grab your fur armor and axe, then plunder Rome, Western Europe, or Asia.

Revolutionaries
Overthrow the government by any means necessary.

Mini-people
Be a tiny person in the big big world. No, that’s not a huge brown edifice rising above a rocky plain, you’re just in the cat-box.

Battle for the Body
Fight infections, viruses, cancer and other maladies inside a human host.

In most modern MMOs and in nearly all single player games, the concept of abstracted communication is embraced when it comes to interactions between the player and the NPC. There is a nice menu of choices for what the player might “say” and the NPC responds to that choice as defined by a basic or branching logic tree.

This model is also supported in multi-player interactions on a rudimentary level in some team based and competitive multi-player games, such as Battlefield 1942 where there are a set number of communication options for players to relay necessary game information to teammates. Still other games implement abstracted communication for “trash talking” to the other side, pre-set insults and taunts which allow for bragging rights, but keeping the nature of the bragging within acceptable limits.

What then, if developers took the next iterative step and limited all game supported communication in an MMO to just pre-generated menu choices?

Some possible advantages:

• Decreases the PC/NPC immersion gap.
  With an abstracted communication model in place for all conversation, NPCs and PCs would interact similarly and in some cases might be indistinguishable from one another.
• Gives another possible pathway for character “advancement.”
  With more time in the game, a character might gain more communication options. Certain ability scores might lend to more communication behaviors or choices in different conversational styles.
• Words might have “power.”
  PvP or PvE might be conducted in a dialogue tree. With statements and replies all being “knowns” each could be weighted or valued to generate a victory condition.

Neutral effects:

• Impact to role-playing.
  For many structured conversations would enforce the role-play element in MMORPGs since all communication would, by design, be in character. However, being forced into a pre-set number of choices for expression is not exactly a role-players idea of utopia.

Some disadvantages and drawbacks:

• Drives folks to external game communications mediums.
  With the prevalence of voice chat in MMOs, having a contrived menu-based communication as the only in-game option will push more folks to communicate outside the game.
• Pre-written responses would become repetitive quickly.
  Unlike in real-life, canned video game solutions don’t hold up well over time. Without an unimaginably robust system of conversation openers, replies and finishers, gamers would get pretty tired of the pre-set menu model in a hurry.

Since this is just idle musing on my part, there isn’t any clear-cut conclusion in my head. I believe that an abstracted system might work in situations where the developer wanted to mimic player behavior by NPCs. Couple this with an anonymous or system based identification system and the two might become virtually indistinguishable.”

You say:
1. That would never work and it is true because it is a fact.
2. Your words are those of a poet who does not rhyme, yet creates no lasting impression.
3. I would like a pony.