This week, I wanted to talk about assumed knowledge and how it can affect (for good or for ill) gameplay. In this regard, there are basically three kinds of assumed knowledge: the kind relating to the characters in a story, the kind relating to the players of a game/story and the kind relating to the creators of that story/game. All three influence how a game is played and how that game’s play unfolds.
Assumed Character Knowledge:
This is what characters in a particular setting are expected to know, simply because they are characters in that setting.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that your brand new character, Nebbish McNoob, is an apprentice dust-wrangler on the distant planet A’choo.
Now, most players, while they may know something about dust and some may even know a fair bit about wrangling, aren’t necessarily going to know the first thing about dust-wrangling, let alone how and why that might be done on a distant planet. So, to make that workable in game terms, certain basic things will have to be explained to players right at the start. Filling the player in on what his character is expected to already know, is usually handled in the form of a training area; that semi-safe zone where new players learn about their surroundings, how to meet game challenges and how not to get their characters dead in the process.
Assumed Storyteller Knowledge:
The storytellers (in this case, the game developers) should know everything about their world and the gears that turn beneath its surface. Unfortunately, this is where some games get into trouble. Rather than beginning with a set narrative (and the world building that requires) some game creators seem to begin with little more than a basic premise, throwing themselves into making the game mechanics and assuming that the story can be shoehorned in as they go.
The problem with that is that MMOs, by their very nature, have to encompass huge, over-arching plots and many, many integrated sub-plots in order to be merely believable, let alone enjoyable to those that play them. If you don’t have that plot and those sub-plots worked out, (taking care that they are all internally consistent with each other and the world in which they take place) then you’re going to run into problems down the line that no set of game mechanics can possibly address.
Assumed Player Knowledge:
This is where things really get tricky. The trouble comes in when game developers achieve such thorough knowledge of their craft that they forget the days when it was all confusingly new; when they assume knowledge on the part of all players that not all players possess.
While it can be safely assumed that most online gamers, no matter how new to the process, are familiar with point-n-click, and that they can quickly be brought up to speed on both character and camera movement, assuming further is a fast track to player frustration.
I myself am not new to gaming of any kind, and yet I’ve quit MMOs because basic game functions and story issues weren’t properly explained, or explained at all. Some might say that that’s what game wikis are for. I say that relying on an outside wiki is lazy writing. If you have to use an outside context to explain what’s going on in your game/world/story, then you haven’t done your job properly in the first place.
My thoughts:
Personally, I think most training areas are too short and too limited. Yeah, I know, there’s a whole contingent of you howling at your screens after reading that last bit, but hear me out.
From a storytelling and, indeed, a real life standpoint, no one gets into their teens (the point at which most heroic journeys begin) knowing how to do absolutely nothing. But in games, that’s essentially what we’re expected to believe.
What if you could start your character off at the age of ten, or even five? What if you could spend a certain number of hours, growing your character in the world that she will later be expected to fight for?
How much more invested in a game world would people be if those sandboxes, those training areas were graduated, based on character age and development? If at least the basic levels of all the secondary skills (crafting, etc.) could be learned then, rather than in the middle of the story’s main conflict? Honing one’s craft on the fly is one thing, but really, does learning the very basics in the middle of a war (or whatever) even make sense?
“Golly, I’d love to help stop the dust smugglers from doing their dastardly deeds, but first I gotta learn how to harvest and refine navel lint to make into interpretive dance sculptures…”
How much more of the overall story and game mechanics could be learned in that early time? How much more individual would the experience be, not just from player to player but from character to character; bringing players back again and again, knowing that each new try would be a different experience from the last?
An extended sandbox realm doesn’t need to be pastoral or boring. This is where the story foundation is set; where the PC (player character) develops the motivation to do what he or she does later in the game. Do they have a family? Does that family survive the coming conflict? Later, is there a love interest? Does that love interest survive? Does that love interest leave to join the battle, inspiring the PC to do the same?
Certainly, there are gamers that wouldn’t want that much of what some might consider prologue. For them, make certain parts something that can be skipped; maybe giving them random skills and attributes that they would have acquired in the training phase.
I submit though, that this kind of starting (training, sandbox, what-have-you) area shouldn’t be cast off as “simple” prologue. It’s ALL story, and there is so much potential there for expanding gameplay and player involvement that it absolutely boggles the mind.
Fair Game updates every Monday.
By: Lisa Jonte – New installments of Fair Game can be found at MMORPG.com.