Isn't every game an RPG?

I have been playing video games my entire life. This is not hyperbole. From a forgone Christmas in which I tore open the shiny wrapping of my very first Nintendo Entertainment system until today, I have spent far too many hours, dollars, and tears on video games...and I've loved every minute of it. This may not come as a surprise to any of you given my general source material for this blog, but my favorite genre of games is the majestic RPG (roleplaying game for those of you who are uninitiated into the video game lifestyle). However, over the years I have had my definition of this oft-misunderstood genre challenged time and time again. And here's why:

Back in the day, the pivotal, quintessential RPG was Final Fantasy (or Phantasy Star, depending on which system you patronized, Nintendo or Sega...I enjoyed both games, though I only owned a Nintendo). In Final Fantasy you had a staggering level of character customization: you chose your name and your character class. After that, you followed the journey of your highly customized, personalized avatars (each with four-letter names only...luckily Reid fit) as they traveled through the nameless world, fighting four elemental fiends (how exactly is a lich related to "earth"?) and recovering the four elemental crystals to save the world from Garland and his pimp, Chaos. Final Fantasy was meant to be the last game developed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, who believed that if it did not sell well, it would be his final game. Of course, it sold like hot cakes...as did its 13 sequels and multiple spinoffs, each less final than the one before.

It's safe to say that Final Fantasy is, in a way, one of the (though not the only) forbearers of the modern RPG and I have enjoyed most of them immensely. Even given the criticism I will level against them shortly, bear in mind that there has never been a Final Fantasy game that I did not enjoy on some level. I have not /loved/ them all, but I still believe the series is solid and has a lot to do with the early life of the RPG.

However, in continuing along with this series, after the first game (and possibly the second...I never played Final Fantasy 2, that is, Japan's Final Fantasy 2), you no longer had any sort of option in who you controlled in your game. That is to say, you were playing a pre-defined protagonist. In many of the game's sequels, you could rename your character, but you were always the same person following the same quest along the same rails. The stories were always engaging, but there was really no choice in how the story progressed--with the possible exception of how long you told the cosmic horror threatening to destroy the entire universe to wait while you played mindless, inane mini games and followed pointless sidequests for better weapons--most of which you didn't need. It was only recently that I started to wonder, then. When faced with this entry into the genre (and just about every JRPG, or Japanese Roleplaying Game, ever made, in fact), how exactly do we define what a roleplaying game is? What about Final Fantasy makes it an RPG?

As with any lexical dilemma, we should probably start with actually looking at the words we're trying to define: role playing game. In essence, this simply means that we are playing a role, controlling some entity and guiding them along their journey. Let's try it out and see how it gels with three RPGs on the market today:

* In Final Fantasy 10, you are "playing the role" of Tidus, a bratty sports star with daddy issues.

* In Mass Effect, you are "playing the role" of Shepherd, a commander in the military who is considered for and eventually admitted into an elite interstellar police force.

* In Fallout, you are "playing the role" of a refugee from a vault designed to save people inside from the nuclear holocaust.

So far, so good. All three of those games are, technically, roleplaying games by just about every website, magazine, or video game store who categorizes them. However, how about this:

* In Super Mario Brothers, you are "playing the role" of either Mario or Luigi as you venture through eight (or more) colorful worlds chasing after King Bowser to rescue the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom.

* In Halo, you are "playing the role" of a space marine called Master Chief in an epic conflict between humans and aliens called the Covenant.

* In Madden 2011, you are "playing the role" of the Minnesota Vikings (or any other football team) through an NFL season in an attempt to win the Super Bowl.

See what I did there? In just about every video game (with the possible exception of puzzle games like Tetris), you are technically "playing a role." In that way, roleplaying game is possibly the least informative and most unspecific genre title anyone could have thought of. If Final Fantasy is a roleplaying game because you are controlling a certain individual, or group of individuals, through an epic storyline--then almost every game out there is a roleplaying game, from Super Mario Brothers to Halo to Madden 2011. And I'm pretty sure no one, from the die hard roleplaying game fanatic to the frothing Halo fanatic, would agree to such a broad definition of "roleplaying game."

Allow me to make a rather controversial statement that has gotten me flamed somewhat in the past: Final Fantasy, and indeed most JRPGs, should not be called RPGs. Now, it seems to me like this isn't a particularly inflammatory statement. It isn't making a value judgment about the games (most of which, as I already said, I tend to enjoy)...it's simply calling for a better classification system for games of this nature. Just like how any difficult-to-classify game like Psychonauts (SHAMELESS PLUG: buy this game, it is amazing) becomes an Adventure game by virtue of being difficult to classify, it seems like any game with a modicum of choice (whether real or imagined) becomes immediately lumped together as an RPG. But there is a world of difference between a game like Final Fantasy (pick one...particularly relevant if you pick one of the latter ones) and a game like Dragons Age. Both have a sweeping, arcing story. Both have a system of character growth in which characters become stronger as they progress through the game. But these two things alone are not particularly rare in games today. Heck, Bioshock had an experience system in which characters grew as they progressed through the game. Borderlands had an experience system in which characters grew as they progressed through the game. How come these games are “first person shooters with RPG elements” and not RPGs? It seems like they'd classify as much as Final Fantasy and many of its JRPG ilk.

Perhaps I need to step back and allow for a redefinition of “roleplaying”. After all, if every game is a roleplaying game by virtue of the fact that you are, in fact, playing a role, then this is no classification system at all. Just call them all video games and be done with it. No, perhaps there is something significant to the role that must be defined.

Note: Everything from here on out is my opinion and is likely to be viewed as inflammatory to diehard Final Fantasy apologists. Let me again remind you that while I have fundamental problems with some of the design decisions made in recent Final Fantasy games, I cannot recall a single one, with the possible exception of Final Fantasy 8, that I disliked on any level. So this is not an argument made out of bias. It is simply me reflecting on an issue that has bothered me for some time.

Allow me to turn away from Final Fantasy for a moment and examine a game that I know, seemingly instinctively, to be a roleplaying game: Dragons Age: Origins. Now, I choose this game over its sequel, Dragons Age 2, because A) I have not played the sequel and B) I am somewhat opposed to some of the decisions they made in its design (I may elaborate on these later). Now, what sets Dragons Age apart from Final Fantasy is that you define the role you will be playing. By doing this, the game gives you direct control (in a way that is limited by the nature of video games, of course) over not only your character, but also key points in the narrative that truly allows you to customize, indeed personalize, the story. In Dragons Age, your character's origin defines certain aspects of how the action unfolds. Your decisions throughout the game continually change the direction the story goes. Of course, as I mentioned before, this is all constrained by it being a medium is controlled by the possible (unlike Dungeons and Dragons in which an actual human being is controlling the action—allowing just about anything to be possible). You can't, for instance, kill any major characters in the story (unless it's mandated by the plot), or take a break on the beach for a year and let the story unfold without you. But you can, within the confines of what has been defined by the programmers, choose your own path.

Now, compare this to Final Fantasy—any Final Fantasy, even my personal favorite, Final Fantasy 6, or my least favorite, Final Fantasy 8. In Final Fantasy, you are given the role of the protagonist, a character defined for you before the game starts. You are set along a pre-determined path, fight pre-determined battles, and watch as the character makes pre-determined decisions for you without any input from you. This makes for an interesting narrative, of course, but there is no choice. In this way—and I believe this is, it must be, key in defining a roleplaying game—you are not so much playing a role as you are controlling the action and watching the role, in the most fundamental ways, be played for you. This “controlling the action” is not the same kind of control you will find in Dragons Age, of course. Just like every game has you “playing a role” in the most fundamental way, every game also gives you control of the action. In Super Mario Brothers, Mario jumps when you push the A button (or whatever crazy way we make Mario jump on the Wii these days). In Halo, Master Chief fires his gun when you push a button (I don't even know which button it is, I'm proud to say). In Final Fantasy and Dragons Age, you make tactical decisions during combat in order to see the protagonists through the conflict safely. This is the actual gameplay and every game has it. What Final Fantasy and its ilk lack is the true thing that defines our ability to play a role: choice.

It seems, by this observation, that there are two things that truly define a roleplaying game, then: customization and choice. The less controversial of these two is choice. In a roleplaying game, you are given choice over how the game progresses in some way or another. This may range from minute aspects like your actions determining which paths open up later in the game, or may be substantial and profound like which characters live and die. The more controversial of these two aspects of roleplaying games is customization. In a roleplaying game, you are not just /given/ a role to play. You define the role. I hesitate to throw this out there because I know it is the vast minority of so-called RPGs that allow you to customize your character...but for reasons I mentioned above, I believe we must be a bit more picky and specific about games that wear this moniker, and a game that you have no control over the protagonists seems, in many ways, to be as much a “roleplaying game” as Halo and Super Mario Brothers. On the other hand, a game in which your definition of your character, which in some way significantly affects the storyline of the game, seems to be several steps closer to something significantly different...different in such a way that it wouldn't necessarily share a classification with aforementioned non-RPGs.

There is another potential aspect of RPGs that I have left out because it confounds the classification somewhat, and that is character growth—the time-tested experience point system. In RPGs, traditionally your character became stronger as you gained experience (and often experience levels). By doing this, they gained more abilities (often defined by their class), more hit points, more attributes, etc, etc. This system is older than video games, of course. Dungeons and Dragons used it in 1974 when it first launched, so it's nothing new. However, I get the feeling that this system of character growth (I call it growth and not customization because I believe that character customization is more an attribute of character creation than any experience level system) is actually what defines an RPG. I find this particular metric lacking in many ways, particularly because many, many games these days are touted as having “RPG elements,” which almost always manifest themselves as some kind of experience level system. Now, I don't have anything wrong with other genres working this sort of element into their game—and, in fact, encourage it because, as I mentioned in a previous blog entry, any sort of customization options we have in our protagonists will inherently personalize the experience for us and draw us into the game—but I feel like if it was the /only/ metric by which we define roleplaying games, then Bioshock, Borderlands, Alpha Protocol, etc, would be considered RPGs. And they're typically not. They are first person shooters “with RPG elements.” This leads me to believe that there /must/ be more to an RPG than this sort of character growth system. And besides that, I instinctively feel like there should be more to it than that. This, I feel, is where many of the Final Fantasy apologists and I will diverge paths and they will feel like this is enough for Final Fantasy and JRPGs to be classified as RPGs, and I feel like, in this, we will have to agree to disagree.

Actually, my problem with the general method of Final Fantasy character growth systems is it generally lacks that sort of personalized growth that I like to see in my RPGs. In fact, to wrangle this meandering pony back on track, it lacks /choice/, that thing I find pivotal to RPGs in general. In Final Fantasy 10, you generally just followed a pre-defined grid of abilities and attribute growth. Final Fantasy 13 did the same thing. It wasn't until very, very late in the game, higher level than most casual players would ever get, that you could start branching out and doing odd things like making Tidus a dedicated healer or tanking with Hope. So even in this, Final Fantasy fails this sort of litmus test of “choice,” which I believe to be an all-important aspect of any true roleplaying game. Indeed, if you're just following a pre-determined path of character growth, you're little better than games where you simply get more skilled as a player, allowing you to pass through more and more challenging sections of gameplay towards the end of the game.

Actually, what I tend to liken the Final Fantasy character growth system to is Mega Man games. In Mega Man, you proceed from level to level, defeating boss robots and taking their power, which takes the form of a special weapon that you can then use to proceed further in the game. In this way, it is very much like leveling a character up in Final Fantasy, gaining new spells to proceed through the plot until its conclusion. In Mega Man, you even have a choice of what powers you gain in which order (as well as when and where to use them, of course). You do not gain experience to make these powers more effective, of course, but you are, in a way, leveling Mega Man up and gaining new abilities—much in the same way as any mage in any fantasy game ever made. And yet, Mega Man is not an RPG.

So, what to do with Final Fantasy. The easiest solution is to make a completely separate classification for them. They are not RPGs by my definition (and probably many other people's as well—I get the feeling they just get a free ride into the genre these days, especially as they become less like games and more like movies in which you must occasionally press buttons to force them to proceed), but they are also not bad games (which is beside the point, but I feel like I have to say it again to avoid getting flamed). They simply need a separate classification—one that would actually be fairly populated when you see games like Eternal Sonata, Infinite Undiscovery, the various “Tales of” games, etc. I suppose we could simply call them JRPGs, but that still leaves “roleplaying game” in the equation. I'm not entirely sure I have an answer for what kind of games they are, and I think my stamina is just about spent for this particular blog—so I will leave it up to my plethora of readers (four, I think, last time I counted) to mull it over themselves. As for me, I think I'll go spend all the sexy experience points I just gained from writing this goliath introspection. Maybe I can get a skill to help me stop wasting time on blogs and start working on my thesis paper...

Playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Allow me to recreate my gaming experience to date via stream of consciousness:

Walking down a hall, following a trail of weird-colored liquid. Not sure why I'm doing this. Seems like a bad idea.

Oh, look. A couple cabinets. This should help me save when the cosmic horrors start chasing me. Make sure they're both open so I can jump into one. No, wait, if I jump into one and close the door, the mind-bendingly horrible beast from being the stars might see one open, one closed, and get wise to my act. Close one, leave one open so I can jump in and close the door behind me. Will I be able to do that in time? Oh well.

OH SHIT A DOOR BLEW OPEN. ...why am I walking into the room with the blown open door? "It's just the wind" doesn't work in a game like this...

*walking into a dark room* HOLY SHIT THERE'S A DUDE THERE. ...no, wait, there's nothing here. Just a silhouette in the darkness. Oops, I better not stare. It might be sensitive. I'll bet it'll eat me if I sit here staring at it.

What's that sound? Why is the world getting bigger? No, wait, I'm just slumping to the ground crawling along like I just got off a bender. ...I'll bet a monster'll jump out of this next room while I can barely move. No? No. Oh well, keep moving.

Keep following the blood/goo stuff--SHIT, another door blew open...and it's really getting dark.

...is someone throwing plastic silverware into a blender up ahead?

Why is this door locked?

...I can't take this shit anymore *save, quit*

This may sound nonchalant, but imagine that with about 50% more "I'm going to pee my pants," about a dozen more whimpers and cries of terror, and you have the first HALF AN HOUR of Amnesia. Christ, I haven't even seen a monster yet...I'm playing it in BROAD DAYLIGHT and I can't play more than half an hour at a time. This game is masterfully crafted. I don't usually like horror, but I felt like I had to buy it for the experience. Good thing I only paid $10 for it...I doubt I'll be able to finish it, but my hat's off to Frictional Games for understanding the genre. I got through a good chunk of Silent Hill 2, and people say that that game is terrifying. And certainly games like Bioshock and (presumably) Dead Space just don't hold a candle to this. Sure, some of the monsters can be startling, and the splicers in Bioshock are certainly unsettling, but once you see them up close (and blow their heads off with a high-powered shotgun), the game looses some of its fear-factor. I remember being terrified early on in Bioshock...but after about an hour, it lost all of its ability to scare me...largely because even the Big Daddies weren't even a threat (even when I did choose to fight them)

But Amnesia...this is a game that has me on the ropes in 15 minutes. And I haven't seen anything truly life threatening yet. Indeed, that's why the game is terrifying. First of all, thanks to some brilliant advertising, you know that if you see a monster...you're already too late. You can't fight. All you can do is run and hide. And second of all, this game truly capitalizes on anticipation. Anyone who knows what they're getting into knows that this game is going to be terrifying...so their mind is doing all of the work. All Amnesia has to do is make some funny noises, keep the lights low, do weird things with the camera, and blow the doors open once in awhile. I am genuinely afraid that if I continue playing I will lose control of my bladder/bowels/both. I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a good scare...and has steel innards.

As for me, I need to go play League of Legends to relax. Ciao.

Why WoW stopped being "WOW!"

I think it all began when I was in Terokkar Forest grinding basilisks for leather (for the uninitiated, this is not a sexual innuendo, "to grind" is an MMO term for farming, or continually killing a mob, or monster, for a certain item...it is as interesting as it sounds). At that point, one of my guildmates said over our guild chat that he had found some [Kaldorei Windchimes] during his archeological searching. I believe the conversation went something like this (paraphrased, of course):

Him: Woo! [Kaldorei Windchimes]

Someone else: Awesome! Grats!

Him: Thanks.

Me: What do they do?

Him: They're windchimes, what do you think they do?

Me: ...they make sound?

Him: Yup.

Me: That seems kind of pointless.

Him: Who cares? The whole game is pointless.

Now, as I said, this is almost criminally paraphrased. I'm sure much of what my guildmate said was lost...but to me, this is essentially what the brief interlude, and the two hour discussion that followed, amounted to: WoW is a timesink. It is no longer concerned with substance, with impressing, with WOWing its player base. All it is is sparkle and tinkle, hollow and meaningless vanity items hiding behind blue and purple names...all it is is "good enough."

I have played World of Warcraft for six years. From launch until today, with only two brief breaks, one when I was banished to Wisconsin and did not have the internet, and another when I decided to cancel my subscription for awhile (a couple month break that ended with me returning and being drafted into a guild raid that artificially lengthened my stay long after the game ceased being interesting). So it stands to reason that I believe WoW is a solid game. However, I do not believe that it is a good game anymore. This is a fairly controvertial topic, and one that I have met with a great deal of resistance on during my many attempts to convince others. However, I realized that I was trying to convince people that WoW is no longer great (and indeed, probably no longer /deserves/ to be the top-selling MMO on the market)...while playing WoW. It rather undermined my point somewhat.

Now, once again it bears repeating: I do not think WoW is a bad game. I have greatly enjoyed my six years with it. While I no longer enjoy it nearly as much as I used to (even sitting here trying to decide if I still actually enjoy it, I can't come up with an answer), I still think it's a solid, well-designed game. Those who still enjoy it are entirely justified. However, I feel that those who have grudges with the game, like I do, are entirely justified as well...however, problems truly arise when we try to quit.

Think about where you've lived during your life. Pick a place you've lived for a decade or more. I'll bet you made a few friends. Probably more than a few. Now, think about what it would be like (or was like) to leave that place. This analogy works even better if the place you're thinking about was (or you can imagine it being) somewhere pretty awful. Maybe the weather was bad, maybe it had bad pollution or your apartment/home was in disrepair. I'll bet you'd still have a hard time saying you were happy to (or would be happy to) leave it. This is essentially how I feel about World of Warcraft. I have made many excellent friends, many of whom I have met in person outside of WoW, many of whom I will remain (or hope to remain) good friends with long after I have left WoW. However, this creates a sort of...artificial tether for me, and I believe most of the people who play the game. We're afraid to leave because we think once we do leave, we will sever these ties irrevocably. Worse yet, we believe that it will be difficult, impossible even, to reestablish these ties in another game. It's too much trouble. So why bother trying? So, even long after the game has lost all of its luster, I believe many of us (or maybe it's just me...) stay, loathing the game itself, but loving the people we associate with.

I won't go into some cheesy friendship message here and say how a true friend, no matter how you made them, is one that will stick with you even when you're gone (whoops, I just did say it), but I will say it's a rather unfortunate state of affairs for the gaming industry. I personally know several MMOs that have failed because WoW controls the market...otherwise fine MMOs broken because people were unwilling to give them a chance, unwilling to leave their safety blanket and their good friends to make new friends and find a new game they can genuinely enjoy. In most cases, it's not that these games are bad, it's that A) they are unpolished, as most MMOs are (though we tend to remember with rose-colored glasses, WoW really wasn't that much when it first came out), and B) people aren't willing to give them a fair shake before they go running back to WoW.

I am leaving WoW, and I'll explain why. It's a rather simple reason, really: I no longer believe WoW is the best game on the market. But also, perhaps closer to the point, I do not believe it is the game that it could, nay, should be. I believe it has appeal (perhaps to me and me alone) only in the social bonds you form in the game, which, admittedly, is a good thing for an MMO to have. However, I've felt like the game's innovation, from a company that has shown to be one of the most innovative in the market, has fallen flat. The updates to the game, such as they are, are a parade of raid content (admittedly spectacluar stuff, but it's still only one type of gameplay) with the occasional "dungeons" thrown in when the current raid gear simply won't cut it for what they have planned. While I suppose this works pretty well for what WoW is trying to be, I don't think this is enough to base a game that is the biggest time sink in the history of mankind on. By the end of the last expansion, I was playing the game once a week for the raid content alone. And during the raids, if it weren't for the comical and amusing banter of my guildmates, I would have been bored stiff--or even worse, annoyed by the more quirky and difficult raid bosses. And what was the point? What was the grand reason for raiding? To get gear so you can raid more. Ironically, the end-game raid for this expansion, Ice Crown Citadel, was only there to get better gear so you could finish Ice Crown Citadel...since there was no major raid after that and the new expansion, Cataclysm, would make most of this gear moot. This endless cycle of raiding so you can get more gear so you can raid more just no longer appeals to me.

Ok, some of you might argue that that's the point of the game, to which I concede the point. But for me, that is simply not enough. I would like to emphasize this again: FOR ME, that is not enough. Paying $15 a month for one day a week of questionable enjoyment (questionable because I could, and hope to continue to, enjoy time with friends for free), while not a horrible value, just isn't worth it in my mind. So I am left with, admittedly clever, raid content that eventually will always grow stagnant and boring, which I plod through for better gear with which I can see the next batch of raid content that I can plod through for better gear with which I can see the next batch of raid content that I can plod through...

Once again, I can't call WoW a bad game. But in my opinion it is not the game it could be and I think the real beef I have right now is that there is absolutely no reason it is not the game it could be. What does it need to make it fresh again? I don't know. I'm not a game designer. I can say when /I/ feel it needs: better character models, more customization options to make my character feel unique and special (I went over this a bit in my previous blog, about how City of Heroes and Champions Online's character customization puts you immediately in the right mindset, bonding with your character so as to allow you to better cope with the MMO drudgery), player/guild housing, etc. Player housing in particular is an interesting concept that I really think Blizzard needs to revisit. Allowing its players another timesink, collecting trinkets to decorate our houses with, new crafting professions (carpenter?) and recipes to make kitch for our houses, etc, would add another layer of the game that I know that for me, personally, would rekindle my desire to play...for a time. And therein lies the rub, my friends. Most games are required, in order to continue keeping their players engaged, to continue to innovate. City of Heroes constantly puts out new power sets, powers, costume pieces, as well as their architect system that allows players to come up with their own quest content...they continue to push the envelope because they /have to/. And all of this is on top of releasing what are equivalent to WoW's raids and dungeon content. Since World of Warcraft has been on the top of the heap for so long, Blizzard really just has to kick back and continue giving the lowest common denomonator what they came to see while those of us who keep hoping for more are constantly left disappointed. As I said before, Blizzard is one of the most innovative game developers out there, but they are stagnating simply by virtue of the fact that no one is challenging them to be better. They don't have to be better. They just have to stay good enough to make sure not to completely alienate and chase away its player base. Of course there is also the issue that people are completely crazy when it comes to the slightest change and anything they do outside the norm may chase people away...so maybe it's that they have no reason /to/ innovate and every reason not to. I don't know. What I do know is this: expecting them to change their tune while continuing to subscribe to their service is both hypocritical and against all that silly free market capitalism I'm so fond of. I can speak with my wallet and me and my $15 a month are going elsewhere.

What do I hope to accomplish with this little rant? Nothing, really. Believe it or not I am really not trying to encourage a mass exodus away from WoW. If people still genuinely enjoy it, then I am happy for them. Nor do I expect anyone from Blizzard to read this and have a grand epiphany and change how they operate. That simply is not going to happen. No, I suppose my point is simply to give voice to my major grievances with a game that I once enjoyed but feel has slipped into stagnation, to explain to those I have come to love why I will no longer be playing the game that they still (apparently) love. Perhaps I hope some kindred spirit will read this and say to themselves, "Hey, I feel the same way," to which they will gain the courage with which to follow my example...but I hardly think myself that profound. No, I think in the end I am only engaging in my favorite pasttime of listening to myself speak (write, whatever) and airing some grievances to clear my head. I would leave those of you brave enough to follow this rant through to its conclusion with this: do what you love and what you enjoy. If you enjoy WoW, continue playing it with my blessing...but do not be afraid to leave it if it is no longer the game it used to be, if it has failed to keep up with the market (as I believe it has), or even if you feel it is not the game it should be (also as I believe it has). Gather emails of the people you have come to call friends so you can keep in touch with them and KEEP IN TOUCH WITH THEM. Internet friendships are only hollow and meaningless if you let them be. There is no reason you can't keep in touch with these people. And who knows? Maybe someday you will meet again in World of Warcraft 2.

...Heaven help us all.

MMO NO MORE!

I usually don't bother with blogs. Aside from the fact that it's an extremely silly word that sounds like it belongs in some no-talent ripoff of Tolkien ("and Blog the troll laid waste to the countryside!"), I generally have issues with anything I am expected to update regularly. My brain seems hard-wired to shut down whenever I am expected to do something at set, pre-determined intervals, from blogs to social networking updates, and even games like World of Warcraft where those fiendish devils at Blizzard implement time sinks necessary to get the best stuff (I say thee nay!). But lately, something has tweaked me just right that I've decided to put all my reluctance on hold and write this, and that is the recent surge of MMOs that has swept the gaming community like the long awaited eleventh plague of Egypt.

Let me start with a disclaimer: I have nothing against the MMO model. They're huge time/money sinks, but honestly, what in video gaming isn't? The whole industry is based on eating up our money and time for entertainment and it has provided us with countless hours of enjoyment (and poverty). Besides that, the innovations that came along with the MMO genre way back in the day with games like UO and Everquest certainly brought a lot of good things to the table (and some bad things too, of course, many of which we're unable to shake off no matter how hard we try). My problem with MMOs can be traced to one entity: World of Warcraft. I am a six-year veteran of WoW and, while not a hardcore WoWer by any stretch of the imagination, I have seen most of the content and I like to think I know what I'm doing within its core framework, even if I get most of my information from aforementioned hardcore WoWers who eat, sleep, breathe, and piss WoW every day. So no, I do not hate WoW. There may have even been a time (long-since passed) in which I loved WoW. But I do hate what WoW has done and continues to do to the market. Ever since Blizzard implemented their magnum opus and made roughly enough money to buy a third of the Earth's landmass, every other no-talent, no-vision video game hack has seen this and said "...hey, we could be making that kind of scratch too!" and has tried to cash in on the trend. This. Has. Got. To. Stop. Not only has it created an endless parade of WoW knockoffs, which by their very nature will never be as good as the thing they are trying to knock off, it has also created an endless parade of MMORPGs, some good, most mediocre or awful.

Like I said before, I have nothing against MMORPGs, but it seems like everything is moving to a massively multiplayer singularity these days. Otherwise talented developers and studios are sinking countless man hours and funding into creating the next WoW-killing bullet (none of which will actually kill WoW because that would require people to leave WoW in order to give an otherwise worthy game a chance...and it's been proven that this will never happen) when they could be making games that are actually going to innovate the medium...or at least be mildly successful and interesting. And meanwhile, Blizzard is sitting in this comfortable position of making (conservatively) eight digits a month without having to do anything. There are two major issues I have with this. The obvious one, of course, is that other gaming companies could be making games that actually matter (which may sound somewhat haughty, but look at all the games that have come along and tried to kill WoW...how many of them actually "matter" anymore?). The second issue I have, which is further from the point but still bears mention, is that Blizzard is a fine gaming company, arguably one of the best, but we don't get to see any of their much touted innovation because, lately, all they've been doing is coasting on easy street releasing a parade of endless sameity that does absolutely nothing to push forward their own game, let alone gaming in general. Compare, say, World of Warcraft to City of Heroes, another game I have a love-hate relationship with dating back to its launch. When City of Heroes was introducing a parade of colorful and creative innovations to character customization, power reskinning, user-driven content, a robust crafting system, etc, etc, what was WoW doing? Releasing raid after raid, tweaking minutia in their grossly unbalanced PvP (never base a game around both PvP AND PvE. One will always, invariably ruin the other and the endless hours spent trying to balance both could be used for much better things), and otherwise doing nothing to innovate their own game. WoW is based on a solid concept and there is nothing wrong with the core game, but City of Heroes was, at its launch, actually pretty crappy. In the years since its launch, however, it has become a powerful, enjoyable, and innovative entry in the genre. But since nothing has challenged the Goliath that is World of Warcraft, Blizzard has absolutely no need to either innovate or challenge their game because anything they add will risk alienating the millions of people who subscribe (since every time they change something the forums alight with flame and hatred). Newness is to a WoWer what water is to the Wicked Witch of the West. So Blizzard does more of the same and continues to get millions upon millions of dollars of our money. And while Cataclysm added a bright and shiny new coat of paint to the original model...it's still really just the same old barn underneath.

Anyways, this is off topic. While I see no reason that MMOs should no longer be produced, doing so in order to cash in on Wold of Warcraft's popularity/ridiculous profit margin is the wrong reason to do it. Games should be created because there's a unique concept to introduce, not because money is flowing into Blizzard like a river to the ocean. Besides that, the MMO is just one of a number of genres that sell well. I, personally, eat up anything made by Bioware, and Bethesda's Fallout games have convinced me to give them another try after the abysmal atrocity that is Oblivion...so why can't we have more RPGs like these? Of course there is the problem of MMOs producing consistent money via monthly fees, and that is certainly appealing I'm sure...but really, when you run the risk of the project floundering completely because no one is going to leave WoW for anything less than the second coming of Jesus (in video game form, of course), is the potential profit actually that much higher than producing a hit game like Mass Effect or Fallout? Again, I say thee nay!

Let's take a look at one upcoming and relatively unknown title (unknown as in we don't know anything about it, not that it's being ignored or that no one has heard of it): X-Men Destiny. We know distressingly little about this title. I say distressingly because I am forced to wait with a mix of reluctance, apathy, and breathless anticipation because I do not know what this game will be. Will it be the next in the X-Men: Legends line (which, of course, continued into Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, so this is unlikely)? Will it be a whacky FPS? A fighting game (unlikely because of the recent release of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, of course)? An RPG? The much more likely scenario is this: it'll be another damned MMO like the endless stream of other MMOs trying to take on WoW. This game was initially announced while DC Universe Online hype was high, and given the fact that Marvel was attempting to create an MMO (which failed), I have to, have to, believe they are chomping at the bit to get back into that market and get a nice, fat, tasty share of the profits. If this is the case, I will be very distressed for the state of the gaming industry (to say nothing of my disappointment in Marvel) because here is a perfect chance to create something new and interesting. Look again at City of Heroes and its own little dysfunctional family of offshoots: Champions Online and DC Universe Online.The appeal of and strength of these games (I've not played the latter but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and lump it in this family as well) is their peerless character customization. The gameplay (of CoH and CO...again, I have not played DCU) is relatively straightforward and uncreative, but the fact that you spend hours in the character creation screen making sure that emblem is just the right shade of red to stand out, making sure that cape is the perfect shape to accent the character's fiery aura, etc, really gets you building a raport, an attachment, to your character...whether you know it or not. I believe it is this and little else that carries these games because, besides the superpowers, what is it that causes superheroes to stand out? Their costumes, their backstories, their colorful appearances and quirky personalities. To quote a very wise game critic, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw: "Combat is never going to be unique again." While I don't necessarily believe this (and actually tend to think Yahtzee meant it more as hyperbole), there is a mote of truth buried in his statement. Every game needs to have something special to help it stand out. They're all going to have combat these days, but a game that is JUST combat is going to be boring, while a game with mediocre combat but something else to help it stand out (Amnesia: The Dark Descent anyone?) will probably end up being fairly entertaining--hinging on what else helps it stand out, of course. This is my major issue with WoW these days (to return to that poor, dead horse). It's all about the fighting. The core gameplay is good, as I mentioned before, but there's really nothing else there. The character customization is abysmally anemic, there are no vanity options (player housing, costume design, whatever), they introduced archaeology, but really it just stands as a needlessly obtuse way to get more equipment to use to beat people up. Equipment that will be replaced in short order as they continue releasing raid after raid. I believe the CoH and CO character creation tools are a great "something else" to base their games on and, in City of Heroes' case, is almost certainly the reason why the game's survived as long as it has in a genre that is notorious for cannibalism (that and the aforementioned constant innovation, of course). Moreover, I see absolutely no reason why these character creation tools cannot be incorporated into a single player game to accomplish the same goals, particularly in a superhero game like X-Men Destiny. Sure, you wouldn't be showing off your colorful costume and unique (or not so unique sometimes) character to other real people (unless it was locally or remotely multiplayer), but it could really start a single-player game off on the right foot, getting you invested in your protagonist in a way that a game that utilizes an already established character (like every other X-Men game under the sun) couldn't hope to accomplish. Is it harder to plan, write, and design a game not knowing what sort of character the player will create? Hell yes it is. But isn't it worth the work? I like to think so. Look at Bioware games, specifically Dragons Age: Origins.

So I guess in the end my little rant here turns into something of a plea to the gaming industry. Back off the MMO model for awhile. We have a ton to choose from, none of which will ever make as much money as WoW. Or, if you must create an MMO, be clever about it. Go the free to play route like Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online and let people buy the content they want. That way they won't have to choose between your game and World of Warcraft (because, admit it to yourself, they will always choose World of Warcraft...they didn't spend six years making friends in that game just to leave it for an untested new release that may flop in a month because no one left WoW for an untested new release that may flop in a month). And, if people like your game, which they have invested comparatively little money into trying out, you may find yourself with a tidy little profit despite it all. Because let's face it, gamers are nothing if not masochists who hate having money.