Virtual heroism
People spent all these years in MUDs and video games fantasizing that they were back in the Middle Ages wearing tights and clashing with swords to fight monsters and save damsels in distress in castles. With SL, they now have the opportunity to actually live in a real guild-like medieval economy, too, and be at the mercy of the artisan class and their mercantile backers.
– Prokofy Neva
Only without any monsters to fight and any damsels to rescue. Instead, what we have for heroism is a quieter sort, and realer, the actions of those like Prokofy who fight for ideals.
There isn’t as total a dichotomy here as it seems; it’s unfair to both the social worlds and the game worlds to say that only pretense heroism exists in the games, and that no ludic joy exists in the social worlds. Things are always blended, and it’s more like a teeter-totter, tilting towards one side or another.
“Real” heroism is tedious and repetitive and difficult. It requires you to absorb many slings and arrows. Many, if not most, people can conjure up a heroic action in their lives. Far fewer can do it day in and day out.
Game worlds can pose problems of governance, of ethics, and so on — and I don’t mean ones involving the creators at all, but rather ones that hinge on interpersonal relations between the players of the world. UO players who tried to police their lands found that policing against the barbarians at the gate was exhausting and thankless except in a philosophical sense.
In the end, people persist in an activity because it isn’t thankless. Because somehow, there is a bit of feedback, a message floating into the doer’s consciousness that says “good job.” Be it other players’ recognition, or a bit of Pavlovian trigger code in the game, we want that marker telling us we’re on the right path.
Many will not play the social worlds precisely because there are no monsters dying satisfactorily, no damsels to give that movie-ending kiss cementing the achievement. This is a larger problem writ small.
The social worlds can learn fom the game worlds that there are benefits to recognizing, celebrating, rewarding. And the game worlds can learn from the social worlds that the real problems are worth tackling, and that we need not limit ourselves to slaying only virtual monsters, ideas, creeds.
23 Responses to “Virtual heroism”
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I read Prokofy differently or at least as saying something more specific. It seems to me that Prokofy was discussing the consequences of societies that are based on the modalities of the middle ages.
It doesn’t sound like SL is as bad as true feudalism and guild-controlled citystate. However I think that while a lot of people persist in the fantasy that living in medieval times or the middle ages would be fun, it is important to realize that most people during those times were serfs who didn’t do a lot more than spend lives moving dirt. Lives were short. And bloody. Notions that we have today like “human rights” or even something like “love” were completely foreign concepts in those times.
In other words, life in the middle ages under feudalism, etc., really, really sucked for the vast majority of people. And as such, these probably are not the best model for games that are supposed to be fun.
I agree with this point certainly although I’m not sure I agree with the zeal behind it. It’s not clear to me that the feudalist/guild analogy really applies to SL just because they try to keep land cheap, etc., and I’m not sure that more capitalistic approaches would succeed either. More monopolistic approaches without further regulation by *some* body might just fast-fowards the game from the middle-ages to the age of monopolies where land barons, rail barons, steel barons, etc., filled basically the same roles as controlling elite.
I wasn’t responding to what Prokofy was sayng so much as going off on an tangent. 🙂
That’s exactly why game makers should make sure they have a good role that women want to play. A good solid attractive social game that the male dominated kill stuff game can sit happily side by side with. You need damsels in your world so that there are damsels to be distressed.
That’s what made UO and SWG so great for me and my friends. Our wives and girl friends could play with us without being forced to try and find fun the exact same way we did.
Is this why one your intents was for player created towns in SWG to be able to decide to make their towns non-PvP? So that the system would recognize their noteworthy achievement and take it from there? Automatically pushing back the heathens instead of requiring players to do it day in day out?
I don’t know how it worked in the end but, assuming I’m right, makes it a little clearer why you’d have set it up that way.
Yes, Igni, that is exactly why. I think I even said so at one point on the beta forums… basically, if players worked together (with “real” heroism, so to speak) to control an area, at some point the game could lighten their burden by officially recognizing their achievement and automating some of that process.
That’s also, of course, why I wanted the converse, the player militia…
Hmm, Raph, trying to up those traffic numbers on a slow August day lol? Let’s try to find something we can *really* fight about, like reverse engineering the SL client!
StGabe, it seems to me that we have both the feudalism and the barons in SL simultaneously. What you don’t have is a robust and diverse middle class that could mitigate the extremes. There are land barons who take advantage of the fact that the King or the Medicis keep the land artificially cheap — it’s allow to go up *just a bit* and the auctions are *just a little challenging* so that those with huge amounts of investment capital or time to burn flipping the land list and using scripts to run and pick up liquidations can kinda sorta make a profit. To make that profit, they’ll have to constantly scramble.
Land barons are progress by contrast to the medieval period, at least they fund hospitals and foundations that 50-100 years later, still keep funding their slacker great-grandchildren and friends at no-show, non-high-productivity jobs in the non-profit sector.
We’re supposed to be making a better world, however. And the “controlling” elite isn’t better if it is merely content barons or worse, newfangled Internet content-creators who are in fact thuggish creator-fascists who can’t recognize the doctrine of first sale.
Raph, honestly, I don’t know what you mean. In SL, even though yeah, yeah, I know it’s not a game, I’ve never hurt for all kinds of levelling up, skill grinds, beating of bosses, capturing of territory, loot, various rares, and even Easter Eggs. Come on SL some time and I’ll show you the rares and the Easter Eggs.
I read Raph as saying that there gotta be lots of trails and tracks to achievement in the space. Or if you want to be philosophical about it: self-actualization.
The guild form of organization provides a very novice-apprentice-journeyman-master format to social world that are similar to “levels” progression. The the real advantage is that the players organized it themselves.
So, game worlds got lots of rigid tracks and rails, while social worlds have the form and freedom to create broader tracks and rails. If both come towards the middle, then both would benefit.
Structurally, I think Raph see game worlds built onto a social world platform (which I philosophically agree with). So if a version of UO were build on a version of SL, it could work quite well).
Frank
Oh, reverse engineering the client and the server would move towards that goal 🙂
I’m a fan of personal heroism, and totally agree it’s not something easily persisted. It takes a lot of work, and often at the expense of ones own ability to play the game itself, to be thinking more about others all the time.
Many I’ve met have been through momentary heroics. A willingness to die to let others escape. The drive-by heal (in games where that doesn’t affect the target’s XP gained). The nuke from afar. Money not asked for given anyway. Whatever.
People who set out to be heroes seldom are. Those who just do it because of their personalities though, those are the folks can really impact someone else’s impression of the community ingame.
Personally, I gain no greater joy in these games when I encounter someone I once helped out in some way who I see paying it forward or returning the favor in kind in spades.
You can’t get that from watching movies 🙂
Im not sure if this is a tangent or not, but some of the greatest acts of heroism I’ve seen in games, is when a person or persons who see an injustice perpetrated by another player, contribute to the resolution of that injustice when it takes the most precious thing a game player has:time. Example. About a year ago on the SWG server I was playing on, a certain player had made countless DWB runs to obtain Mando Armor. For those of you not familiar with the game, Mando is the hardest armor set to obtain. In fact, the only set that cannot easily be purchased, as most who get it dont want to sell. A member of our server gave admin on one of his houses to a player he thought he could trust. Long story short, the players Mando suit was stolen. When others heard about this the help came pouring in from both factions, Imp and Rebel alike. Players who had never met the man before helped run him through the instance for several weeks straight until he had replaced the suit. In addition, the server united and city banned the offending player, disallowing him from using the vendors in the given cities. With peoples busy lives, the greatest thing in the end people give up to help another player is time. This to me was a great example of virtual heroism. Im not sure if this pertains to the topic as you mean it Raph, just throwing in my own definition.
Regarding the above post…errrr….I seem to have had a momentary lapse of reason and forgot about a little thing called paragraphs. Apologies
It seems like the “middle class” in SL is getting the short end of the stick because the rules that help the consumer-only types — the general cheapness of land, and the availability of good content for bargain prices — only help those who are big enough and organized enough to take advantage of economies of scale.
Is it heroism anymore if you champion the cause of a self-selected minority against the good of the majority?
(Posted mostly ’cause Proke was just begging for a fight*. 😉 )
*See comment 6.
I’m trying to think in the fashion you’ve described: getting the system to recognize the accomplishments of the individuals on a collective level.
The only enduring social organization – and I use enduring lightly – in a game like WoW is a guild. What would be similiar construct for that guild in WoW as the ability to turn off PvP was a construct for towns in SWG?
We’ll put aside for now the question as to whether running a guild and organizing a town are equal achievements.
Would it be an epic or legendary piece of equipment that is bestowed upon the GM? Would it be be some added ability to the entire group like everyone in the guild gets a third trinket slot? Would it be a guildhouse where everyone from that guild could gather? What would it be?
One interesting thing that came to mind when reading this is the following: Heroism generally occurs by a combination of chance and choice. The chance aspect is that something irregular must generally occur. The choice aspect is that the potential hero must choose to pursue the chance and (usually) to sacrifice something.
How can the chance be introduced into an online world? Perhaps a damsel calls out from a tower, guarded by a fearsome dragon. This might only happen if there are not enough people around to defeat the dragon, and the time involved in mounting an assault would leave the damsel dead. The player must then attempt to mount a rescue on his own, with little chance of success or survival.
Of course, there is the underlying problem of heroism in games: As you pointed out, players want to be rewarded for their actions. That very fact poses a problem. Heroic actions are only heroic if the motivation is to do the right thing, whatever the deed may be. In a game, the motivation would be the reward for performing the deed, not performing the deed itself. In a sense it’s almost impossible to design in heroism, as it has to come from the individual.
Igni asked:
Oh boy! One of my favorite topics. 🙂
When I start thinking about collective awards for collective achievments, I look to single-player rewards and think about how they might be translated to the community level. So, what about community leveling?
To have a workable community-levelling concept, you would need to have some sort of community XP. Simple population level for the community may be one such XP, but there are probably other alternatives to consider. If you have ever played Caesar III, think of the metrics they use to define successful completion of the mission. Meeting security goals, prosperity goals, cultural goals, etc. could also give XP. And maybe each community decides for itself where it wants to get its XP, so that you end up with many different flavors.
Once you have a community XP concept in place, you need to figure out community rewards. One reward would simply be to recognize leveling through a title. So, residents of Outpost Phineopolis just leveled to Town Phineopolis. Other reward possibilities might include things like the ability to build new community structures, attract better NPC trainers, hire better NPC guards, etc.
But levelling isn’t the only goal in most MMOs. Item collection is also important. So, what if you had items that could be quested for, owned by, and a benefit to the community? For instance, when Phineopolis levelled to a Town, they got the ability to build a cathedral. Once built, the cathedral can hold five religious icons. The town can now quest for, purchase, steal, or otherwise aquire these icons and bring them back to be “installed” in their cathedral. Each of these icons represents an ability for the priest class so that all priests who are citizens of Phineopolis can now cast new priestly spells because of the icons in their cathedral.
For me, this is where I would like to see MMOs go. What Raph said here resonates strongly with me:
I would really like to see game worlds become much more social without loosing their game-ness. Or I would like to see social worlds become more game-like while maintaining their social underpinnings. Either way, I think there is a real sweet spot in there that both sides are missing. And I think what I described above would hit that sweet spot. For me, anyway.
–Phin
Have to agree with Paul, which btw I thought that set of ideas was pretty damn good, I think DnL tried this with thier political system and L2 as well (where players can participate in a “political” game) where political achievement effects other players.
I think that yes heroism is hard to promote, it seems to be an internal motive by some players in game, you see this in player volunteers, in UO “counselors” in other hames “helpers” etc. Thats a form of heroism, free labor for the gaming company to be sure, but thats a player taking time, helping build a community, when they dont need to…..something done when not required that benifits another in game, community heoism
(easy to identify)
Players helping another player when they dont have to at the cost of time, or loss, interpersonal heoism.
(hard to identify, and should it be? can you reward personality traits?)
Guilds building a city, which becomes a hub of factional activity at a cost to themselves, but from which everyone benfits, group heroism
(easy to identify, easy to reward, and builds community)
I think of what was posted along these three tangents, sometimes they intersect, sometimes they do not.
Example:
A player who spends time as a “volunteer helper” to others in game is often very accomlished in that game, also someone who helps people out in a non neutral way, and may belong to a large helpful guild
A player who helps people of the same faction out who are also PKer’s, and belongs to a guild of Pk’ers, whove built a city that caters to helping Pk’ers….
Well now maybe thats not what some people had in mind with community building and heroism?
Just some observations about fellow gamers behaviors over time…
Ryan, I think that there’s a sort of heroism that manifests very easily and frequently in the game worlds, but that it does require the world to have a certain level of danger to it. Putting one’s character in harm’s way to save another player can be, given the enormous emotional attachment one gets to one’s character, a significant act of self-sacrifice. I am thinking here of stepping in to cover someone’s retreat against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy; assisting in a corpse run into highly dangerous territory, and so on.
One may argue that as all of these things are in a game, and what is risked is merely points, that this is not true heroism. But it triggers much the same in the human mind — and those you save appreciate it quite a lot.
Designing the opportunity for this to happen in an MMO isn’t that hard — you have to simply create situations where someone needs saving, and you have to allow others to do so.
There’s a de-facto understanding in SL that if you leave the mainland and purchase or lease an island, that you’ve “leveled up”. You’ve left the madding crowd of the mainland with its griefers, scammers, and blighters, and now have more control of your land, which is now called an “estate”. When you own more than a sim of mainland or island, you are entitled to the services of the “Concierge” and go to the “Concierge’s Ball” once or twice a year. If you can put together a four-pack of islands, with or without voids, I believe you can then start to speak of a “continent”. These titles are more in informal rather than formal use but there’s no question of the status of the person who has a lowly subsidized 512 versus the status of someone with 33 islands in a row or “continent,” even though the Lindens do their damnedest to pretend that people with islands get equal treatment to those with 512s.
Customers often demand more services for the islands versus the 512s. They think it would only be rational to have more features, like the ability to turn off more obnoxious push scripts, etc. than others. I’ve often been annoyed at the concept that one person on a 512 can deploy an obnoxious or malicious script that downgrades the performance of the entire sim, so that other people who might own half the sim or a quarter of the sim cannot use their land — they can’t even get a door to open, a notecard to open, or a teleporter to work because the kid on the 512 thinks it’s fun to build a submarine and have it shoot off missiles.
Or the club on a 2048 m2 that puts 40 avatars on that one piece of land, so that the other 16 or so owners of land on that sim can’t go home, can’t even enter the sim, because the people on that tiny parcel have created a veto — they’ve sucked up the avatar space or CPU units of that sim.
Thus the egalitarianism — that everybody can take anything because it’s all free and for everybody — leads to the tragedy of the commons. If someone would figure out how to make sure that owners of 2048 or 8192 only get a proportional use of all the available avatar space of the sim, we’d see an end to the club griefing of sims forever. They’d be forced to buy the true amount of land that they wish to deploy that many avatars on, and quit taking their guest list at everyone else’s expense.
In fact, I’m going to go so far as to say that situations created by the LL game gods imbued with all their Better Worldism here, where no one is ever rewarded (supposedly), where everyone is always kept artificially equal (forced equal outcomes, not equal opportunities) is a situation rife for crime and griefing. I think it’s another stellar example of how socialism always leads to crime. In a situation like this, somebody will always try to seize the upperhand *anyway*. Then the rest who “played by the rules” are disincentivized.
There are no heroes because there are no villians. And no griefers aren’t villians. NPCs that stand in a corner waiting to die aren’t villians. Players assigned to opposing team aren’t villians.
Villains don’t have to be people, nor do they have to look like people. The term “villain” refers to the (usually) human manifestation of an obstacle the hero must overcome.
We consider firefighters to be heroes, after all. They’re not battling arsonists: that’s the police’s job. They’re battling the fact that people die in fires. Where’s the villainy?
The guy who created this in Second Life is my hero:
Corpnews thread containing NSFW link
> They’re battling the fact that people die in fires.
Fire is the villain. Yes. Many Firefighters are heroes. But if you made an MMOG about virtual firefighters, they wouldn’t be virtual heroes. In real life, we can agree Timmy burning to death is a “bad thing” and salute the people who stop “bad things” as heroes. But in the virtual world, Timmy burning to death just means we failed the mission or didn’t score as many points. No big deal. I might even use the fire hose to blow Timmy out of the second story window just for fun. He’s just a worthless bag of pixels. Real firefighters risk their lives to save Timmy. Even if your virtual firefighters suffered permadeath, it still wouldn’t matter beyond “awe shucks, I lost X hours of effort.” In real life when a firefighter dies, another person can be trained to take his place but that guy is gone. What made him unique special person can never be replaced. In our games, we just roll up another bag of pixels to run around in.
Villains create “bad things.” Heroes stop “bad things” or minimize them if they can’t. But in these games, we don’t allow villains. We don’t allow “bad things” to be created. I know there are many good reasons why we do this. Griefing, technical limitations, game play. And I know getting me to give damn about what happens to Virtual Timmy is a tall order. But I think that’s what you are going have to overcome if you want heroism in a game.
Also suspension of disbelief doesn’t help with these games. It wears off quickly.