My So Called Second Life: 'Second Life is MSN with Legs'

Below are my notes for the paper I gave yesterday about MMORPGs and Virtual Worlds, using WoW and Second Life as case studies and arguing/test driving some of the ideas JP and I have had about player agency within these games. The paper was meant as an overview of the ways in which players want to and can respond to these environments, and the restrictions of both.

Tom has blogged his own notes to mine, and I'm pleased because it seems from his writing that my points were clear as what he has written is a clear summation at speed of my own arguments. We got a lot of very postive response from the paper,  and had some extremely interesting discussion about potentials in games given our arguments, so I'm very pleased with the results.

'Not everybody wants to be a troll'

‘Not everybody wants to be a troll’

Art and Entertainment in MMORPGs

Dr Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Justin Parsler.

This work is protected by a Creative Commons Licence in accordance with the terms set out for the weblog 'Break of Day in the Trenches' (http://www.whatalovelywar.co.uk/war)

 

 

1. Artistic, Creative, Entertainment

 

In recent months MMORPGs and online virtual communities have suddenly become big business, with 7 million users of World of Warcraft and Second Life growing at a rate of 120 000 users a week.

 

These games have quickly become a forum for entertainment and advertising, with the interest in MMORPGs predicted to outstrip cinema and television sales and with many groups quickly jumping on the bandwagon. In the same way that websites have become mandatory for companies, a presence in digital worlds is fast becoming a way to attract an audience.

 

Theatre troupes meet to rehearse, Second Life has a well established ‘campus’ for teaching, social groups meet in themed areas - eg. Religious groups can practise, and academics can meet to debate issues about the games themselves

 

Slide: Reuters

 

Slide: The Truants

 

Providing entertainment is fine, but how to get people to respond to it is the challenge.

 

Because a lot of people just want:

 

SEX or FUN

 

Slide: Serendipity Shake Down

 

On a base level this means entertainment must also recognise that it is, or needs to create a COMMUNITY.

 

 

1. Life      inside these worlds

 

We tend to think of games as singular activities – not ones in which many people intersect. Our traditional view of a gamer is someone looking at a screen – not someone inside that screen moving through a world in which they are an active member. Perhaps it is better to think of the gamer now as performing a collective, not a singular activity.

 

2. the      Virtual World is not a MMORPG

 

Slide: differences MMORPG and Virtual World:

 

       

MMORPG	Virtual World
Game       World   based on genre eg. Fantasy or science fiction       Quests   and Tasks       Narrative   created by Game Designers	Play       World   is malleable and has different spaces in it for genre.       Community   based       Narrative   created by Players (if any)

 

 

One is a game, with rules, quests, activities and a persistent world.

 

The other is a space of play in which these things can exist but is instead a community or virtual space. Second Life is MSN with legs

 

The latter appeals to more people.

 

In a Virtual World, players create their own games and make their own entertainment – if they want to. Virtual Worlds like Second Life remove the need to ‘play’ a character that might be outside some people’s framework. You don’t have to be an orc or do quests to ‘play’ in Second Life I,nstead your avatar can be as human or like to yourself as you wish.  

 

 

Why is this important to entertainment and art?

 

- There is no typical gamer anymore.

- To produce effective entertainments, audiences and groups need to be identified and separated from this, or commonalities need to be discovered within these worlds that people will engage with.

- Deviant play needs to be encouraged

 

The avatar is a representation of self in some way. It’s an idealised ‘you’. This means that aspirational tools in Virtual Worlds have far more ‘value’. This can include the need to better yourself creatively as well as financially - learning and entertainment as well as ‘things’.

 

3. User      autonomy – Virtual Worlds

 

Slide: Hamlet on the Holodeck

 

The more realised an environment is, the more alive we want to be within it.

Janet H. Murray. Hamlet on the Holodeck

 

 

Users of virtual worlds don’t want to be in a game. They want to take part in a world.

 

If user therefore has the same concerns as ‘real’ life social situations, this means that they also want a degree of CHOICE (or agency) which has not previously existed in games.

 

Second Life gives players the ability to create and manipulate their own worlds. By default, they also choose whether to be involved in actions around them (unlike MMORPGs where there is an objective or a quest).

 

Introducing ‘entertainment’ into this must be seen as it is in the real world – not as something that players have to consume, but which they choose to interact with. The difference is that, Having done this it should then also acknowledge this interaction with a mark of success - things which players can then see the lasting effect of (eg. The ability to build something, change a plot, make a picture). (like going up in levels in a normal game).

 

Slide: AGENCY (King and Kryswinska)

 

Definition:

 

What a player in these worlds wants is AGENCY. They want to feel that now they are there, this world is genuinely going to be affected by them. And, hurrah, MMORPGs and Virtual Worlds have the space to encourage huge interactive plots and scenarios.

 

Virtual Soap Opera:

 

What if a small fee got us time to speak to the actor who played xxx in a virtual soap opera. The soap opera is free to see but to take part, and the actors are ‘live’ agents in the world. The things that players tell them have real effect on how they respond to the plot they are given. The virtual world makes these players indefinite – they don’t even have to be acted by the same person!

 

 

2. Creative needs

 

If the user is average, that means the user is also individual, and has individual needs.

 

 

Sometimes, this is simply an act of providing the right place to play.

 

The mistake on entering Second Life atm is that you see a load of shops advertising expensive body parts, stockings, and designs. These are all very expensive (in Real and linden terms) and they have little meaning to a new player. What if instead, a user were to see a billboard advertising a free game or film? They clicked on the link and it took them straight there – right to the heart of an entertainment that can be understood in real world terms. Inside, a paid actor or even an automated bot came to speak to them, judging their level of skill but subtly encouraging them in.

 

Various environments for various ages for example, encouraging less computer literate people into an area by targeting their demographic (age in particular) without appearing to make an area more simple or patronising. The key here is to use creative elements that correlate rather than obviously simplifying elements of gameplay.

 

 

3. Creative Spaces

 

Slide: Telling stories

 

MMORPGs are heavily related to ‘fantasy’ worlds, but the creative impulse of humanity seems to always break through and subvert the game. This can range from deviant play to acting more fully ‘In character’. Overall, players like to adhere and reinforce the world background of the game because it encourages feelings of belonging, and they also like to feel like agents; building, achieving, gaining. In this case creating creative areas, or areas with the potential for creativity is just as important as outstanding gameplay.

 

 

4. Films and Static Media

 

A big problem, because one has forms of agency and one doesn’t.

 

In a virtual world or MMORPG, the player has to believe the world, but also has to feel important. This is not just a case of levelling up.

 

Film environments lend themselves more to MMORPGs because both are narratives, and both contain greater elements of the fictional

 

People want to feel they have influence on a world (belonging and agency as above). This is why Enter the Matrix failed – because no matter how much players played it, the events of the film still took place (quote on this from Stacy’s book). Trying to marginalise the main characters in the films within the games had no effect – Laurence Fishburne is always going to appear more important than the player in the player’s own mind.

 

Quote: Stacy

 

The Matrix Reloaded overshadows Enter the Matrix. The proximity of the master narrative limits the sense that the player’s actions have demonstrable or alternative outcomes. This in turn limits any sense that the player is exercising their prerogative and making meaningful choices – prerequisites of compelling play experiences.

 

(Carr in Gillis ed: The Matrix Trilogy, Cyberpunk Reloaded, 2005:46)

 

Films and books cannot be manipulated in the same way as online environments can. Whilst staged MMORPGs like WoW have relatively little agency, interfering by introducing a narrative which the player cannot affect directly despite how hard they ‘work’ within the game is problematic.

 

Slides: Tanya Onyxia Quote x 2

 

Creating Change in Warcraft

 

The game world itself is a protean form in certain respects, with various additions and changes to the game’s world included through regular updates, which includes temporary festival related material (quests, items such as fireworks and dresses, and decorations).

 

(Krzywinska, Games and Culture: 2006)

 

However…

 

Some aspects of the game do however lend a sense of stasis (Groundhog Day): you may for example have killed Onyxia, but you will still find her alive in human form in

Stormwind

Castle

and encounter her in dragon form in her lair over and over again.

 

(ibid)

 

 

Cameron’s solution to this is to reverse engineer Project 880 – releasing the MMORPG before the film. This could be a way to amalgamate the two as long as the mythos of both correlates seamlessly. If the two appear to have plot inconsistencies, or the film characters are seen as ‘more important’ than the players, this can be problematic.

 

They have to sustain the world view, and they have to have an effect.

 

 

5. Conclusion

 

 

MMORPGs and Virtual spaces need to be recognised as different and having different needs.

 

Game players are not a minority. They need to be treated as players and not eccentrics – this is what puts many people off. This also includes providing them with ‘normal’ entertainments inside games.

 

Players/consumers need agency – the ability to change their worlds. This means the entertainment provided should not be static - play and entertainment need to take place from inside.

 

 

Comments

[alanp]

Esther, it was a very interesting talk - especially the structure you put on the different sort of games.

Also I can think of some interesting tracks to go down with the agency ideas you put forward.

But, from what some of the other speakers told us I though sex and fun were being replaced by shopping for shoes ;)

I put some thoughts down here at http://broadstuff.com/archives/37-My-2nd-Life-on-Web-3.D.html

[mayes]

Hey dear friends thanks for providing this game to play and understand normal entertainment

mayes
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I am trying to do a business plan for my own massive multiplayer game and was wonder how they spread out the resources.
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