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advertisement First off, let me address something. The titles I use are a bit of homage to Rocky and Bullwinkle, without the puns. While I do like puns, I am not really good at coming up with them. Secondly, with my last column, I talked about what makes a good game, but did leave out one important thing. Genre. One definition of genre is 'a kind of literary or artistic work.' For us, genre defines what kind of world the game takes place in. First, let's go over the various genres. The are fantasy, gaslight, modern, cyberpunk, horror and sci-fi. Yes, there may be another genre or two, but the majority of games fall into at least one of these genres if they don't fall into more than one. And I am definitely not including the 'card game' genre. As with the last column, we are going to use Paths of Glory©, the game I am designing on paper, as a comparison for some of the MMORPGs that are out there. I am also including in my view of the genre how well it 'blends' or mixes with other genres to produce a game that is more than one genre. [Note: I don't know if I have © where I should have ® or whatever. I am not attempting to dilute trademarks, copyrights or anything like that.] A key aspect of genre, is that of technology. Or to put it a bit more simply, what is available for our heroes to use to accomplish their goals? Are they limited to swords and sorcery or do they have blasters, space ships and robots to help them? Or is the height of transportation a '83 Buick? What is available helps to define a genre. If all that you have for weapons are a torch, a pitchfork and a revolver, you are likely in a horror genre. A laser rifle, power armor and automatic range finder, sci-fi or cyberpunk. I guess a better word would be resources, but I'm going to stick with technology. Resources tends to, for me at least, include things you can dig up out of the ground, and while they have their place in a game, it's not exactly what I'm talking about. I don't mention story in this, because as well all know, a good story can transcend genre, Fantasy: This is listed first, simply because it is the genre that most people can agree on. People with a wide range of backgrounds can agree at least generally on what mages, fighters, clerics and the like should be able to do. Likewise we have an idea of what monsters should be there to slay, weapons to wield, armor to wear, etc. However, the downside is that by being simply fantasy, you end up limiting your content to that which wouldn't be anachronistic in your world. So no ray guns, unless you are making a Might & Magic© game. EverQuest© and Dark Age of Camelot© represent this genre quite well in different ways. You can have epic stories concerning the battle of good vs. evil, flights of dragons, epic quests for items of tremendous power, and so forth. Not that this is limited to the fantasy genre. It's just a touch more common. An item of epic power in a fantasy world is the blaster rifle in a sci-fi game. Fantasy can easily blend with gaslight or horror, blend slightly with modern, and not blend well at all with cyberpunk or sci-fi. The primary reasons are that technology is not prevalent in fantasy, at least not beyond a certain point, so adding a lot of technology destroys the 'feel' of the game and makes it less of a fantasy world. Gaslight: This genre is for the turn-of-the-century type games. Trains, simple technology like revolvers, and obviously gas lights are the mainstay. The Sherlock Holmes stories were gaslight, as was the game Arcanum©. Though not a MMO game, this did represent the gaslight genre quite well, while also blending fantasy in as well. What is important in the gaslight genre, since the characters are typically not supposed to be tremendously powerful, is that the story and content for the players is engaging. Without a good story, any game will falter, but a gaslight game will go slightly quicker since it is more dependent on story to help it along. Again, not a bad thing. Gaslight, by its very nature, only really blends well with fantasy or horror. The other genres require too much in the way of technology to make gaslight fit well with them, since by form, technology is limited in a gas light game. Story and content is essential to gaslight and has to be carefully monitored so as to not have your players lose their suspension of disbelief. Modern: This is any game that would take place in the modern world. While the game may have some advanced technology (or magic) available to the characters, it is understood that they are the exception, not the norm. Few can pull off a 'modern' game, simply because of the pace of advances in the modern world (i.e. real life) happens far too quickly to be incorporated into a game. Now, as a remedy to this, you can make your modern world an alternate time line, both to avoid those pesky real world news releases being a factor, but primarily to explain the reason for your world being different. Several games, not just MMOs take place in modern times, and nearly all have various takes on current events, trends, fads and humor. Which is why these games are hard to produce. They get dated fairly quickly. Animal Crossing and the Sims are examples of modern games. And if Roommate 1.2's girlfriend is any example of things, the Sims isn't getting too old too quickly. A modern game can blend well with horror, but only slightly blend with the other genres because of differences in technology that 'should' be available to other genres. A good story is also required, but you can also rely on players to help out there a bit as well. Cyberpunk: A genre made largely popular by William Gibson, this deals with the not so far off future. Technology is being used for ill by major corporations and your players will most likely have the choice of helping the corps, trying to stay neutral or working against the corps. Anarchy Online© accomplishes this genre quite well to some people, but actually fits well as sci-fi/fantasy game. What is primarily required in this genre is a constant sense of conflict between the various factions that are trying to control the world(s). While the corps may 'dislike' the players that work against them, it doesn't mean that they like each other. Dues Ex is another decent example of a game with the 'feel' of being cyberpunk, if for no other reason, the number of 'moral' choices that need to be made. Effects that simulate advanced technology, either in the form of cybernetics, advanced medicine, new weapons and armor, or even nano- and biotechnology all need to be considered for addition to your game, should you go with a cyberpunk genre. While cyberpunk can blend well with horror or sci-fi, it typically does not blend well with any of the others. This is primarily due to the, once again, the technology that should be available players, if not immediately. Horror: This is probably the hardest genre to duplicate within a game. This is for several reasons. The first is that different things scare different people. You can't be guaranteed that the mood you are trying to set isn't making the players on the other side of the screen laugh themselves silly. Horror, in my opinion, is best done slowly, building up to the fright, so as to not overwhelm the players. Unfortunately, is a MMOG, you can't have the control of this as well as you would in a pen and paper RPG or even a 'normal' computer game. The second is that in a MMORPG, players are going to be doing the same thing over and over again. What is scary the first time is only shocking the second time. By the tenth time, the players are used to it. Survival, the Silent Hill series, and ClockTower are good examples of horror games. Aspects of the horror genre can blend into any other genre easily, but you have to be careful not to go overboard. Sci-fi: One of the harder genres to get 'correct'. Why is this? Because people have different ideas of what the future should look like. You have the futures of Star Trek fighting it out with Gattica, the dark and scary future of Alien doing battle with the space opera of Star Wars. How much technology do you include? How much do you explain it? And are you doing science-fiction or space opera? What is the difference? Science-fiction explains how things work, give you the option to build, upgrade and potentially break scientific devices you were working on. Space opera is much more interested in telling a story. Yes, these are extremely simplified definitions of the genre, but there you go. As sci-fi tends to depend heavily on technology, it wouldn't normally blend well with fantasy, gaslight or modern. Cyberpunk is a maybe, with horror adding a nice touch. Alien anyone? Now, I am betting you are wondering where is the comparison to Paths of Glory©? Well, the largest problem with that is that I haven't fully decided on a genre. While I am leaning towards fantasy, for the reasons listed above as well as the fact that I like fantasy, I do have another idea. That is to mix several of the genres together in a way that hasn't really been done before in a MMORPG. That is to have a fantasy game, a sci-fi game and a modern game, with touches of the other genres rolled all into one game. While other games have incorporated this idea, I haven't seen it in a MMORPG. Now, I will admit that I haven't played all of them out there, but this seems like a fairly novel idea. How would I do this. Well, in addition to the world, there would be 'portals' to other times. These would be static portals, in that they would always take you to the same relative time (meaning a day passes on both sides of the portal at the same rate). Balance would be maintained with regards to weapons from the future (i.e. Ray guns) by requiring power sources that would not be available in the 'past'. Thus, before going and hunting dinosaurs, if I decide to include them, you would have to stock up on batteries and bullets. So in effect, we would have a multi-genre game. In addition to picking a path, you would also have to pick a 'genre' to start in which would determine starting equipment, skills and maybe a few other things. It's a grand idea that I would love to see work. I mean think about it. A true multi-genre game. Yes, there would have to be some sort of balancing act to prevent characters with rocket launchers or lasers from going and wiping out cavemen, but I think it could be done. Now about that funding... |
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