MMOs need mysteries

In 1588, long before the invention of internet but shortly after the beginning of the career of Cliff Richard, John White, governor of Roanoke, Virginia returned from a three year voyage for emergency food and supplies (there was a queue) to find that the village wasn’t where he left it. 117 people - 90 men, 18 women and 9 children - had disappeared into thin air, along with their homes and any proof they had ever been there.

On a tree, in a clearing, the word “Croatoan” had been carved into the bark. Nearby on another tree, the ominously half-completed Croa was written. Now, logic dictates that the people were either killed by hostile natives or simply taken into other tribes, but the fact of the matter is that we’ll never know, there’s no way we’ll ever discover exactly what happened to the colony and when you’re in that situation, logic doesn’t matter.

The Power of Mysteries

If you were of a certain age and capable of standing up on your own steam in the late nineteenth century, you have since been accused of being Jack the Ripper and somebody, a sad man with an anorak, has managed to prove it using documentation and a liberal reading of contemporary accounts. Atlantis could be any of a thousand different locations, all but one (if that) completely wrong. The sphinx, Stonehenge, JFK – the world is full of mysteries and mysteries are what makes the world so interesting. Whether we’re asking questions of science, history or theology, “what if?” is the most important question a human is capable of and it is that that the modern MMO is missing.
Now I should probably admit that while mysteries are important they are also, let’s face it, pretty damn infuriating. Thanks in part to the excitement the press managed to create around Jack the Ripper, they’ve turned a series of otherwise uninteresting murders (Whitechapel wasn’t a nice place at the time) into perhaps the greatest mystery of the Victorian age. It’s not that there’s not enough evidence to choose a convincing killer, but that there’s too much evidence and, thanks to time and haphazard keeping, some of the more important aspects of the case are lost. In short: we will never know for certain who Jack the Ripper was, even the name was a press invention. The average person probably doesn’t care but it annoys the hell out of me.

MMOs need Mysteries

And it would annoy the hell out of me if I were to come across a mystery I couldn’t solve in a video game as well, it really, really would. But it would also make the world that MMO presented me with that much more interesting. It doesn’t happen enough, not in the MMO world or in the wider gaming world. People don’t like plot holes, they don’t like mysteries, and leaving an explanation out would probably result in the writer being insulted throughout the internet. It would annoy the hell out of me but, at the same time, it would give me something to think about, something to look over. It would make the MMO that much more realistic, it would give me a discussion to be a part of. Not just a series of random clues, nor a few innocent cameos, but a mystery never to be solved. Hell, put in two mysteries.

The article this week comes from a combination of too much reading and a general disinterest in MMO storylines. It Is true that MMO gamers don’t like anything too far from the beaten path, they prefer fighting monsters often and they enjoy simple tasks they can complete quickly and without too much effort. While games like The Old Republic tries to put an actual story into the situation, it is still made up of a collection of short missions which have you fighting monsters and collecting things you have little fun actually picking up. Everything has closure and, in reality, you probably wouldn’t care if it didn’t. You do a bunch of stuff and then nothing happens – the same as every other MMO.

Playing Devil’s Advocate

And I don’t mean to pretend that I know all the answers. The last people who know what they want from an MMO are people who play a lot of MMOs. I would love to see an MMO with a deep and engaging story but, in terms of pure sales, I don’t have the market research to say that’s a popular opinion. And to add to that, I’m not sure that an engaging story would be enough to keep people playing an MMO – there would come a point, surely, when the story would be left out and you’d be left with nothing to do any way. Would that make it a better game or would it make it a great game up to a point where it seems worse by comparison?

It’s difficult to know for certain the barriers that an MMO developer faces when coming up with stories, mind-benders to keep you hooked. The more I think about it, the more I think I’ve landed on the problem: you. And by you, I mean us – the great unwashed MMO fan that knows every game’s pros and cons from the top of their head. I don’t remember the last time I actually read a mission description after playing a game for more than thirty minutes. Granted, that’s because they’re usually pretty terrible, but are they terrible because the developers know nobody is likely to read them?

The question is, is it worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay writers to come up with a decent plot when the average programmer can put in a quick bit of text as a placeholder, knowing it’s unlikely that the vast majority will notice the spelling mistakes and boring plot points?

The Secret World

So after reviewing Age of Conan this week, it was a thrill to see that Funcom are turning their attention to a different sort of MMO. The story for The Secret World has players explore a world based around urban myths, pop culture, legends, history, all tied together in an original world. I’ve got pretty high hopes for the whole thing, I’m confident it’s going to be one to watch and, according to Funcom, 750,000 wannabe beta testers agree with me. No doubt we’ll have loads more coverage on the game when it launches later in the year.

Conclusion

The gaming world lacks mystery, even in terms of the industry itself. We know the specs of consoles as of yet unannounced, we can name countless games in development and even give details that have yet to be confirmed by publishers. As of yet, I can’t decide whether it would be a good idea to add mysteries – solved or unsolved – not unlike the real life mysteries I mentioned earlier. Some would love them, but I’m not sure the majority could get into it. Believe me, the mystery behind this will keep me thinking for weeks to come. I’ll let you know what I come up with.

© 2012 DevilsMMO.com