It’s Not You, It’s Me…Or Maybe It IS You…Or Me
So what’s my point, aside from taking the waaaaambulance out to do a few donuts in the snowy parking lot? I guess I’m realizing now that I may have always been doomed to part ways with the genre simply because my station in life has put me on the periphery of the bread and butter of the MMO. I’ve tried to blame the way people thought about them, that being solo-friendly isn’t a bad thing, and that grouping isn’t why everyone plays them. I’m sad to report that yeah, other people are the reason why people play them, or at least they’re the reason people keep playing them. I’ve been doing it all wrong all along, and have been belligerently trying to justify my inability to form connections on the fact that people weren’t seeing the forest for the trees. I guess I never understood it properly from the start, so what the hell have been doing?
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Tesh:
March 5th, 2012 at 3:53 pm
I maintain that the “Multiplayer” bit of MMO is a often used as a bit of a misnomer. It need not always mean “playing in a group”; it can just as often mean “playing in a shared game space”. At least, that’s the niche I find myself in. I play these things my way, but I find others on occasion to play with, or the blogosphere to blather about in. That’s a different sort of sociality from a tight guild, sure, but it’s equally valid, I think. That loose web of interconnections has led to me trying a few games I’d never have played just on my own (RIFT, for one), and a few “internet” friends.
To put it another way, shared experience may be asynchronous, and that’s OK. I wish more devs understood that, as well as more players.
Scot:
March 5th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
The catch is that in no other video game genre does “multiplayer” not mean “playing in a group” or at the very least, playing directly with the other players. And that is very likely where people see “massively multiplayer” and rightfully think “oh, LOTS of people directly playing together” only to discover they’re anything but…
But I can relate to what Chris is saying. I used to be very outgoing in chat and enjoyed being the life of the chat party. Problem is when you turn on the voice chat (or real life) I’m not like that. My social skills are still rather undeveloped, and I rely on the anonymity of text and the slower pace of text chat to unveil my witty repartee that I can never (unless occasionally inebriated) manage to get to the surface over real-time voice or face-to-face.
But even say, in STO where Chris is a member of the fleet. We chat about various things daily in G+ but in-game I’m wary that if, say I ask if he wants company for a mission or anything, that I’m being obnoxious and infringing upon his personal game time and whatever goals he personally might have had. As much as I sometimes malign MMOs as being really bad games with IRC-Lite chat, sometimes that’s exactly what people are looking for and don’t want to have to “deal” with any further obligations than occasionally writing something in chat.
Chris Smith:
March 5th, 2012 at 5:10 pm
That’s the way I preferred to look at it. Whenever people said “if you want to play alone, go play a single player game”, I always thought it was people playing in the same space. It didn’t HAVE to be people directly interacting, because no matter how true to form your intentions, no one could EVER play with EVERYONE, so playing with NO ONE was just as valid…?
I still dislike mechanics that try to force players to group, though. There’s technically no mechanics that force players to solo, so why should someone be forced to play in a way that doesn’t suit them? Mechanics aren’t the same as socializing, which even some rather vocal players have trouble with XD
Chris Smith:
March 5th, 2012 at 5:14 pm
“in-game I’m wary that if, say I ask if he wants company for a mission or anything, that I’m being obnoxious and infringing upon his personal game time and whatever goals he personally might have had.”
That is EXACTLY what I’m talking about! At least from one side. On the flip side, I have a friend who is always in people’s faces. If there’s someone standing around idle, he’ll be asking them (politely) if they want to group up or need help or something.
Maybe if the trend had actually been more towards forcing the grouping (I’m contradicting myself, I know) it might actually be more acceptable…but in the interest of accessibility it’s gone more towards soloing and then EASING players into grouping. I really don’t know if that was a wise idea because it HAS created situations where we’re wild with our friends, but more reserved (and then less inclined to be social) with the 99.9% of the rest of the community out there.
Tesh:
March 5th, 2012 at 5:31 pm
I actually think it’s highly valuable that these MMO things do allow that sort of asynchronous “playing beside each other” paradigm. It’s a valuable addition to the gamer pantheon, I think. Always-with-others, all-the-time is, well, draining. I’m biased, though, as I won’t play a game that uses forced grouping for long. That’s just not what I want, but I like the option of being around other people.
Call it the “wallflower” gamer mentality, maybe, but it’s one I wear with no regrets.
Scot:
March 5th, 2012 at 11:42 pm
Using my Xbox Live habits, I love competitive multiplayer, namely shooters. However, and we had this discussion today on G+, I’m not overly fond of competitive PvP players’ behavior so I typically will put myself into a Party alone. That way I can play all the Team modes but not actually have to listen to the smack talk or the little eight year olds swearing and singing, the coughing and belching, whatever. If Aaron is also online and he’s in the mood to be social and talk or play the same game together, he can click a couple buttons and he’s in the Party with me and we both get to ignore the little kiddies. It’s the console equivalent to having separate channels on Ventrilo, I suppose.
So, from a certain perspective, I guess I’m both “playing directly” with the others but also “playing indirectly” or “playing beside each other” as Tesh phrased it, at the same time. I may be fully on team support mode or I may be in lone wolf while teamed mode, but I’m always conscious of the team scores and I’ll try to protect teammates and all that even though I’m not communicating or coordinating with them. And that suits me just fine. Same for doing STFs with randoms in STO — there is very rarely any communication whatsoever and that’s fine. Everyone learns the patterns and adapts to whatever role they are able to fulfill and life goes on.
Brian 'Psychochild' Green:
March 8th, 2012 at 2:19 pm
A bit behind in my blog reading, but this was a though-provoking post.
For me, people in an MMO feel like co-workers. Maybe this is easier for me since as an indie I’ve not had a lot of co-workers over the years. But, most people in an MMO fill that space between “someone I kinda feel like I should hang out with” and “people I can share my personal problems with.”
I also rank really high on the Socializer motivation, so my perspective is skewed a bit in that direction. I’m definitely in the “I’ll play a single player game if I don’t want other people around” (or “I’ll open Twitter if I want chat while playing” perhaps) faction.
I think the big problem is that so many games put roadblocks in the way of people actually just playing together. The whole mechanism of having to ask people to join groups, for example, is a social imposition that makes people uncomfortable. Add to this the system for “locking” fights so someone doesn’t get rewards (or worse, steals rewards!) from helping you have a lot of stupid obstacles in the way of fun. The whole frustration with focusing on soloability is that MMOs have done that instead of taking what I see as some fairly simple steps to make it easier to play with others.
Anyway, interesting post and a fascination conclusion. I’d say don’t give up hope yet. If MMOs are to survive, I think we’ll see some major changes in future. Especially if I have any say in it.