Metaplanar Babel

In the course of surfing around a bit this morning, I came across a couple of interesting articles. One, a semi-transcript of a presentation given by Raph Koster a couple months ago, is about the theory of fun - basically what makes something fun. Incidentally, Raph’s written a book about this same topic. The other, a recent Gamasutra feature, is about the psychology of gaming. Similar topics, and again evidence that more people take gaming more seriously that I would’ve expected.

In a way, reading these things makes me feel better about the fact that I enjoy roleplaying and gaming so much. I’m not weird; I simply choose to take a more active role in my escapism than the many people who sit their free time away in front of the TV. I found another term today that I suspect fits me pretty well: neophile, or one who loves new things, or novelty. I first saw the term in an article responding to Raph Koster’s book about fun. Said article is what actually spawned my finding the two mentioned at the top and is pretty interesting in its own right. Anyway, I guess what I found interesting about the whole thing is that I’ve worried that I am somehow a lesser gamer than others (why this matters, I couldn’t tell you. .just that it does) because I don’t have that Achiever quality of powering up a character to the top. I’m the one who never gets a character to the max level without help, usually because I get bored and find something else to do. Now, see, I have a categorization for this quality in myself: I’m just a neophile, like many others. I’m far more interested in a new story, approach to a game, or learning experience than I am to doing the same treadmill over and over until I reach some pre-ordained stopping point.

There needs to be a new aspect to modern games, at least in the MMO field. We don’t need the same treadmill presented in a slightly snazzier sheep suit - there are dozens of games out there trying to walk in Everquest’s shoes. At some point, the game designer/publisher is going to have to take a risk, make an innovation, and hope it works. Was WoW ever really a risk? God, no. Blizzard has a huge following thanks to Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft. The gameplay they ultimately went with is almost exactly the same as Everquest, with a few refinements and a different set of mistakes. Everquest II, obviously there’s no risk there; it’s the same game with a shinier set of graphics. City of Heroes had an innovative character design system and a niche setting that works, but unfortunately, they too followed the treadmill design. We’re still playing the same game that Richard Bartle came up with how many years ago? Except that in some ways, modern games are more limited, thanks to graphics and the very massiveness for which they’re touted.

Anyway, I’m not a designer, I just know that I’m terribly tired of the grind. My newfound interest in WoW has surfaced because I’m lame enough to let my Achiever husband get some of the grinding out of the way for me, so I don’t have to. He gets to see how quickly we can get a character to 60, I get a character that I can play with my friends without having to play the game and grind so much that I don’t even want to play anymore - I guess it works out. WoW is like a new game to me now, because I don’t have to worry that taking a break to play another game or read a book for an afternoon is going to mean that I’m falling even further behind the level curve of the guild. It still feels lame though.

Wow, have I ever babbled on. I’m not sure I ever really had a point in all of this, though I recommend reading the linked articles. I found them interesting, even if whatever thoughts they inspired seem to have floated out of my mental grasp for now.