Editorial: We’ve Got Personality

By Jeffrey Philipp | October 26, 2009 | | Filed under: Editorials | Tags: Editorial, Editorials, Humour, Writing

Welcome back to the mess that is my inane musings,

I find myself recently spending a great deal of time with Champions Online, and having fun with it if that can be believed. Though there are a number of things that I can say about it, there is one particular thought that came to mind over the course of my playtime.

It all began when I found myself chuckling at a pair of mission contacts. I hail from the great white of Canada you see, and anyone familiar with what I might generously call Canadian culture (if I can stretch the term a little bit) will likely know of two fellows by the name of Bob and Doug McKenzie.

For those not yet initiated in the finer points of Canadian televison they are two brothers that ever so accurately portray what the rest of the world sees Canadians to be, what with the liberal use of “Eh”, and a rather intense fascination with beer. I mention all of this because as one of the beginning zones happens to be in Canada (which I was also pleased to see), I came across the McKenzie brothers as mission givers, albiet with less focus on beer, but the “Ehs” were out in full force.

Between that and hearing one of the greatest evils in the Champions universe proclaim that we heroes were “Less interesting than rival MMO”, I realized that perhaps the most under rated aspect of what makes a game fun is it’s personality.

I don’t mean to say that a game can get by without having something interesting to do while playing it, but rather the proper attitude can make something that was a fun diversion into something enjoyable on a whole other level.

The field of persistent online games has grown to a rather impressive size since it’s inception as a hobby for the nerdiest of nerds, and there are now thousands of titles out there of various quality and production value. One thing that the standouts all seem to have in common is a sort of sense of humour, perhaps a self awareness. It’s a vague and incorporeal quality to be sure, the sort of thing that you can’t point to and say “That, we want that in our game”.

The one thing I can say with certainty, is that for me, any game, in fact anything really, that takes itself too seriously tends to lose my interest before too long. I’m sure that says more about me than any industry, but I honestly don’t think I’m that strange, and I suspect that many other people out there would also find games that play everything completely straight are in some small fashion stuck up their own rears.

My own thoughts on the subject are probably strange, and most likely completely wrong, but I’m the one with the keyboard here so I’m writing them down anyway. I feel that one of the most important parts to keeping online games entertaining, and keeping people playing them, is immersing them in the game world and letting them feel like a part of it. Strangely, I often feel that playing the entire contents of a game completely straight, and taking everything as serious has the opposite effect of bringing the player out of the world. I know that sounds a little unintuitive but stay with me, I have thought about this for all of thirteen seconds so I consider myself an expert.

The problem I find is that immersion is tied very strongly to the suspension of disbelief, and in a great many of the games out there, we’re asked to suspend quite a heaping portion of disbelief. The elf with the magic staff tossing around magical balls of fire that don’t ignite people, and the big guys in the armor getting stomped on by dragons and getting up to take another punch. These are the sorts of things that are common place in the fantast world, and simply don’t jive with our experiences. For a time putting all that aside is no problem, but after a while it always feels to me, like the game is asking a lot and I lose interest.

On the other hand, tasteful nods to the nature of the medium and subtle hints that the game is aware of the inconsistencies, again quite unintuitively, make me feel like a member of the world without having that sense of cognitive dissonance. For me it’s not so much that bit of flirting with the fourth wall allows me to be one of the people who “get” the in joke.

All of this, however, is quite contingent on subletly and tastefulness in execution. There’s a certain light touch required when skirting with “meta”. In my opinion this is one of the few places where there is a definitively right way and wrong way to do something. There are enough examples out there that I’m sure I don’t need to make a list.

Essentially, in my humble opinion, if you’re going to joke around with your players perception of the game, you don’t want to be heavy handed about it. I’m sure it seemed clever when someone decided that they wanted to throw in the line “Hey, it’s almost like we’re being controlled by an outside force” joke, but I personally think that particular style of joke doesn’t finagle with a users suspension of disbelief as it does hang a lampshade on it. That’s all well and good if that’s the joke you’re going for, but you have to know when you’re making fun of yourself, and when you’re trying to ease the tension of the wild situations taking place inyour game. Likewise for things like “That doesn’t seem physically possible” or explicit mention of UI elements or mechanics devised to work around technical difficulties.

I said up above that the feeling was vague and hand wavy, and here is why. Pretty much anything else is fair game. Granted most everything is going to be related in some way to the elements of your game world and their inconsistencies and strange elements, but as long as they’re related to the gaming experience as opposed to the players experience, you can easily make players feel much more comfortable when they find themselves thinking that something doesn’t work out just right, because everyone else in your game world feels that same way.

Now those bits are the subtle bits, the parts that just make you think “Hey the developers thought of everything” or perhaps “Hey at least the developers thought of something” depending on your opinoin of a game. Things like that can add hugely to the “personality quotient” of the game, for lack of a better term.

The other thing that one might consider for making people smile and enjoy themselves while playing, is to jettison self importance and dignity entirely. Just cast them overboard, push them out the airlock, tie a brick around their feet and let them sink. Some of the most incredible gaming memories I have are of Space Quest and Monkey Island. Again maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to be frusterated and depressed when I’m doing something in my leisure time, I want to smile and laugh and chuckle.