The Heart Of The Game (A VRMMO Creation Quest)

[sunandshadow]

The Heart Of The Game (A VRMMO Creation Quest)​

If you've ever played an MMO, you probably have several ideas about how that game could be improved, or what features and content might be awesome in a new MMO. Most of us, sadly, lack the technical skills, time, or money to contribute to the massive undertaking of trying to actually make an MMO.

This quest is the next best thing – come help us herd cats *cough* hammer out a compromise between widely varying design philosophies, artistic goals, and play styles iiiiiiinnnn... *drumroll* The Heart Of The Game, a 100% Transparent Micro-Kickstarter MMO Project. The only MMO design project to truly put the design decisions in the hands of the players! (Or rather, in the players' imaginary wallets, as you will vote with your weekly government-issued stipend of luxury credits, the only 'currency' supported by 2077's "Private Works For Public Benefit" government website, one of the most popular of the world government's Neo Deal programs. Be warned: if you loathe the concept of socialism or communism, this quest is probably not for you.)

Voting rules will vary by update; we won't get to the kickstarter voting-with credits thing until at least update 3. This first update is write-in only, game title suggestions, explained at the bottom of the post. Next update we will vote on the suggested titles (after they are winnowed down a bit by me). After that we will vote on actual game design choices. Also this is my first time running a quest and I don't have a beta-reader or an illustrator, so both of those positions are open. (I'm so disappointed I couldn't create original tags for this thread... just pretend it's tagged "post-capitalism", "creative vote counting", and "Teddy Roosevelt's New Deal".) Meanwhile, please do point out typos, I will fix them. I am aiming for 2 updates a week: one in the Tues/Weds/Thurs range and one in the rest of the week. You should always have at least 48 hours to discuss and vote. US Pacific time zone, if you aren't sure which day counts as.

This quest was inspired by CoreBrute's MMO quest. He said it was fine for me to make this one. It's rather different anyway, since we're not hiring employees. Thanks also to Gaemnomut and Ataraxia who gave feedback on the quest concept and this first post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

2088 (flash forward 11 years from the present day, after your MMO has become a wild success)

Interviewer: Today I'm interviewing KrispyKode, the Head Programmer of the global phenomenon, [MMO Name]! Krispy, your team's game has become the worldwide most played VR game of the 2080s. But where did this phenomenon begin? Where did you get the idea to create [MMO Name]?

KrispyKode is portrayed by Nine from the anime Terror In Resonance​

KrispyKode: The first tiny seed was formed in 2077, in an unremarkable conversation between two friends: myself and Octahedral, our team's environmental artist who created many of the amazing locations in our game. Anyway this conversation was that extremely common type of game conversation, the complaint session. The only thing that was a little bit unusual about this conversation was that it delved a bit more into the topics of history, economics, and psychology than the average gamer complaint session...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

2077 (present day)

A man and woman, both somewhere in the 20-25 age range, were hanging out in the shared living room of their four-unit 'communipartment' - a style of living promoted by the government since the 2050s, and eventually provided by the government after the Currency Crash. Various studies had showed that communal living helped prevent depression by a significant factor compared to solitary living, provided that the living space also contained enough private, sound-proofed areas for individuals to retreat to, and that the living space met various light and air quality standards. More directly relevant to the government's interests, the ecological footprint and resource costs of 80 people living in a communipartment tower were much lower than if those same 80 people were living in suburb.

Octahedral is portrayed by Cana Alberona from the anime Fairy Tail
​

The curvy woman with the long brown hair, known by the handle Octahedral, was the one who had contributed several crystals and prisms to the decor of the room, as well as a few 3D-printed sculptures of her best modeling work and a retro afghan which she had designed and had machine-crocheted at the local fabrication center. Currently she was seated in the corner of the couch, with her tablet PC in 'casual mode', meaning that she was just using her fingers for navigation, rather than one of the several art styluses she owned.

The expression on her face was quite melancholy. Not only was she so bored of EarthCraft, that she was browsing its forum instead of actually playing it, the contents of that forum were players making a variety of distressed cries at the recent announcement that there would be no more major development for the game. This news wasn't particularly surprising, because EarthCraft had received only the most minor additions over the past five years; but the fact that they were telling people to stop asking for anything other than minor bug fixes was truly morale-breaking. Not just because it was a death-knell for the game, but because now the people who had been begging and pleading for new content weren't even allowed to express that longing in the game's forums.

There was no similar alternative game they could migrate to, either. EarthCraft was one of only two major VRMMOs still in operation, and the other, StratusStrife, was a themepark focused on shooting at other players in an endless war. A war among the clouds, which was almost cool, but still, it was only about destruction, players couldn't create much of anything. Destroying stuff all day was too much negative karma, not to mention boring. Octahedral far preferred EarthCraft, a sandbox focused on creating architecture and sculpture. If only she could find something to do in it that she hadn't already done a dozen times...

Closing the game's forum site, Octahedral sighed and remarked to her apartment-mate KrispyKode, "The current state of MMOs makes me truly sad."

The man with short spiky black hair and caramel colored skin looked up from his own laptop and made a face like something smelled awful. "Sad? Instead I'd say it's disgusting. When full immersion VR came out, dozens, maybe even hundreds of MMOs started development. That was when currency was still around and you could actually pay other people to work together on one idea, even though they didn't all think it was the best possible idea."

Now fully invested in the conversation, KrispyKode pushed aside his laptop aside in favor of waving his arms to illustrate his description of the history of MMO development. "Some great single-player games made it out the other end of that production pipeline before capitalism collapsed completely. But MMOs are the behemoths of the game world, they can take four or more years of development. Four years was long enough that the projects of the currency-collapse years hemorrhaged staff faster than they could train new hires, as more and more people got enough of a personal robotic workforce to be self-sufficient in their own homes. Hundreds of new indie MMO projects were started by tiny teams of people who were newly free of the need to work for someone else, but how many of those ever made it to some kind of launch? Even a playable alpha?"

Octahedral, whose brow had been getting more furrowed as KrispyKode went on, objected to the implications of his praise of capitalistic-era methods. "Wage slavery was horrible though... I mean, practically every human on the planet was enslaved by the economy they were born into, for centuries. Rates of suicide and stress-induced mental problems used to be way higher than they are now! Going back to a system where everyone was forced to sacrifice eight or more hours of their day doing something they didn't want to do just to keep themselves fed and comfortable... that's definitely not the answer!"

Krispy snorted. "No no no, I'm not suggesting we try to re-institute capitalism; that would never work anyway. It collapsed because robot labor became plentiful, and I'll be the first to say I love our fully-automated laundry system! And CaffeineBean might actually axe-murder us all if we told him he had to give up his espressorator. I'm just frustrated that people have to be so much like cats - without a bribe to dangle in front of their noses it's impossible to herd them all in the same direction. I like cats, and people. But they can be such snooty bastards, so finicky that they'd rather starve - for games, I mean - then compromise and cooperate enough to make one."

Octahedral was mostly placated by this explanation. "Well, that's true. It sucks that there are only two VRMMOs with even a trickle of new content each year. And the nearly infinite amounts of player-created item skins don't count; why EarthCraft supports such a uselessly narrow range of player-contributed content I'll never know."

"StratusStrife doesn't even support that much. And technically there are a handful of other MMOs that are still playable, but they are total abandonware, with a few broken quests or missing graphics here and there. But you're right that EarthCraft and StratusStrife have the biggest player populations, by far. And the people who want to interact with each other within the environment of those games are out of content to fuel those interactions."

Octahedral nodded vehemently. "And practically every new movie that is released is made in Myala, so they all have the same humanoid models, the same buildings, the same trees... it's awful! I try not to be over-dramatic, but I've seen this situation actually reduce some VRMMO fans to tears! But, if you think so too, how come I don't see you joining or starting a project to create an MMO? In fact I remember you complaining quite a bit when you were working on that mod for a single-player game. Did you not like it when the cooperation had to start with you?"

KrispyKode groaned at the memory of that project - he had eventually finished the mod, which he was still proud of, but damn had it been unpleasant getting to that finish line. "What I was complaining about, if you'll remember, is the fact that I couldn't get anyone to work with me – the exact same problem as the inability to hire people! I don't mind working, and I actually like working with other people's ideas, as long as there's some room to put my own in. But I hate working by myself, with no feedback, no one acting as a leader telling me what to do next... I was whining to you because I was hoping you'd work with me."

Octahedral winced. "I didn't even like the game the mod was for! I'm sorry that I couldn't be supportive of you, but where would I have found any motivation to work on a mod for a game I don't play? Plus, I was busy taking that video class series then – I had to put in some serious time on those exercises, I could tell the results would really be worth it, and they were. But what about starting your own project, then? I'd actually be interested in working with you if we could make something new where I could get my ideas in from the beginning!"

KrispyKode pursed his lips. "I'm no leader – the very idea of trying to recruit people and keep them organized and motivated sounds completely exhausting. Plus, I'd have to have a clear vision for a whole MMO; I have some ideas about what kinds of settings and gameplay I like, but a level of complexity above... no, more like three 'plex levels above anything I've ever designed. No, what we need is to have someone like your brother Star supply the design ideas, because he daydreams about game design all the time anyway – he's probably got more than one MMO design sitting around already made. And someone like my Parkour-kitty to be the leader so she can kick everyone's asses into gear when needed."

Octahedral laughed, "Are you sure ParkourTiger wouldn't just scare away all the recruits? Energy she's got in spades, and she has a naturally dominating personality, but being a leader requires diplomacy, which really isn't her strong point. She's not the most organized person I've ever met either."

KrispyKode also chuckled at the memory of the last time his girlfriend moaned and whined because she had made plans to go out to some big social event and then, when the time came, didn't want to get out of bed. "Lol no, the most organized person ever is clearly Porcelain. Do you remember her color-coded chart thing-"

Octahedral grinned. "That covered the whole wall of her bedroom? Haha yes I remember. Praise be that she got that tablet and figured out how to keep all her timelines and stuff in virtual space."

Propping his chin on his hand, KrispyKode pondered. "But would Porcelain run a MMO creation project? I think she has at least played an MMO, but…"

Octahedral paused, having never considered this idea before. Thinking out loud, she commented, "Porcelain, run an MMO creation project? I mean, she's obviously a competent manager, and if Parkour acted as her, erm, 'enforcer'... Aha! Let's consult the cards!" Drawing out the tarot deck that she constantly kept in her pocket, she brandished it triumphantly.

KrispyKode gave a long-suffering sigh at the mention of Octahedral's security-blanket *cough* he meant tarot cards. "Or, you know, we could just ask Porcelain if she even has any interest in making an MMO..." But recognizing that protesting was pointless, he set his laptop aside when Octahedral joined him at the dining table and started shuffling.

While KrispyKode had certainly heard her explanation of how to properly ask a deck of tarot cards for advice on a problem before, he usually did his best not to listen. Seeing that he was actually paying attention this time, she took a calming breath and launched into an abbreviated version of her usual lecture: "Now, to properly ask the cards about Porcelain's suitability as a leader for the massive project of creating an MMO, and whether it's a good idea for us to attempt to make an MMO at all, we need a name for the project. Not the game's final title when – or if – it gets launched. We need a nickname that captures our deepest wish for the project."

"Why do we need a name at all, though?" KrispyKode wondered (or perhaps whined a bit). Can't we just call it MMO Design Project?"

Octa rolled her eyes. "If you call it that, that's like inviting the local magical forces to make sure it stays a project and a design forever, and never becomes a full game. Names have a lot of power, we need to choose carefully. Anyway, weren't you the one who showed me that ancient Star Trek story about the Enterprise's name being the reason it always gets into trouble?"

KrispyKode heaved a put-upon sigh. "I showed you that because I knew it would be just your cup of tea, not because I agreed with... Oh, nevermind. A good name can only help with recruitment or asking people to donate credits toward a server anyway. So, what name will help it become an actual game?"

"Well, like I said, it should capture your deepest wish for the game. What kind of MMO would you absolutely love to play?" Octahedral searched for some alternate ways to put the question that might help Krispy get a better grasp on it. "What would it need to have to make you satisfied – deeply satisfied, to play it for a long time? What kind of virtual world do you want to live in – would you become a wiser or more alive person by living in?"

KrispyKode groaned melodramatically, but spoiled it by laughing. "Wow, you don't ask for much, do you? I'm really not the right person to be asking this – you need to text that whole series of questions to your brother, Star might actually be able to come up with an answer for that kind of heavy philosophical... no that's not the word…"

"Metaphysical?" at Krispy's nod of agreement, Octahedral continued, "Yeah, you're right – not just StarSeeker, we need to send this question to everyone and pick the best name out of it tomorrow. Though, let's just say it's a survey of what people would really want in a new MMO; let's not tell them we want to actually make this MMO until the cards have, hopefully, declared that the project won't be doomed."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Time to Vote!

ALL VOTES THIS ROUND ARE WRITE-INS TO PROPOSE NAMES. ACTUALLY CHOOSING A NAME FROM THESE SUGGESTIONS WILL BE NEXT ROUND.

*I reserve the right to discard suggestions that don't fit the theme of this game. I might chuckle if you suggest naming it World of Warcrack or Game of Farts, but don't expect to see it in the voting round.

*Titles may not contain real IP names or profanity. I don't object to profanity myself but Octahedral says it's bad karma to put it in the game's name.

*You only get to vote for 1 wish and 1 title for that wish. If you want to combine wishes, use the write-in Forum User's Wish option. If you have more than one title you really like, pick one to vote for and put the others up for adoption, maybe another player will choose one as their submission.

*If you vote for someone else's Title you will be wasting your vote because no counting is happening this round, so don't do that. If two people submit very similar titles or wishes I'll pick my preferred one.

*You CAN use the same write-in wish as someone else, but your title must be different.

*You may vote for one of my example titles below if you really like it better than anything else you can think up, but voting for one of my examples won't count as flattery toward me or earn you any brownie points.

*The MMO itself is intended to fulfill ALL of the NPC wishes! They are a team, the theme is that they must cooperate and compromise to make Best! Gaem! Evar! You also are part of the team, as a kickstarter donor, so if you have a wish that's different from anything the NPCs want, please add it for the team's consideration. They want to know what you yearn to play! ​

The next day Krispy and Octa had six responses from themselves and their friends to evaluate, and on top of that, it seemed that StarSeeker had liked the question enough to post a thread about it on VRMM. org, his favorite MMO forum, so Octahedral and KrispyKode also had the responses there to consider. Disclaimer: Examples may be terrible.

[ ] KrispyKode's Wish is for "A world that feels more natural and vibrant than reality."
- [ ] Write in a title for this wish. Examples: MetaNatural, Vivax

[ ] Octahedral's Wish is for "A game that enables self-realization; really helps its players become wise and happy. Maybe we could even do some matchmaking to help players make new friends."
- [ ] Write in a title for this wish. Examples: Actualidream, Path Of Becoming

[ ] StarSeeker's Wish is for "A truly foreign culture that players would learn about through exploration, and have to act within the culture's social expectations when interacting with NPCs."
- [ ] Write in a title for this wish. Examples: Far Intricalia; Spice of Ancient Geomense

[ ] ParkourTiger's Wish is for "An experience where I, as a ninja, assassin, or wizard, really move my body or the magic within my body as needed for a technique. Bonus points if I have extra-keen senses. I want to feel the breeze and smell my leather armor."
- [ ] Write in a title for this wish. Examples: Sensaturnalia, WeaponDance

[ ] CaffeineBean's Wish is for "A life of drama and excitement; an aware world that writes an interactive story around each player to suit their personal taste."
- [ ] Write in a title for this wish. Examples: PersonalEpic, Chronicalis Experientia

[ ] Porcelain's Wish is for "A game that combines the best of sandbox and themepark; I want to be able to build and experiment while still being able to meet great NPCs and discover deep worldbuilding and be a heroine who fixes problems."
- [ ] Write in a title for this wish. Examples: Contrivocation, Architale

[ ] YourName the Forum User's Wish is for "YourWish."
- [ ] Write in a title for this wish.

 

[sunandshadow]

Vote for THREE (3) of these titles. Yes you may vote for your own, in fact I expect you to. The one with the most total votes is what we'll go with.

[ ] Return Time...
[ ] Neverwhere
[ ] Truth World
[ ] Lone World
[ ] Cerulean Moon
[ ] Streams Of Power
[ ] Novarra
[ ] The Old Market

Remember, the number of the voting shall be THREE! Four shalt thou not vote, neither vote thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

For the second day in a row the lean, spiky-haired programmer and the long-haired, artist/mystic found themselves huddled like conspirators over Octa's deck of tarot cards. The dining table had also gained the addition of thing shaped like a crescent moon that Octahedral had referred to as an 'essential oil diffuser'. It had been gradually perfuming the area with some herby smell Octahedral considered lucky while they considered the many title suggestions and finally agreed on a favorite.

Despite the odd scent and his continued disbelief that some kind of magic or collective human subconscious was going to speak to them through a deck of cards, KrispyKode looked more content with this state of affairs than yesterday. "I have to admit, asking everyone your mystical questions" he made a 'casting a spell' hand gesture, "netted us a pretty cool name. I still don't really understand why we are keeping it a big secret though. I really wanted to tell ParkourKitty last night; when I'm excited about something new I always tell her about it. And you keep looking at CaffeineBean like he's a spy."

CaffeineBean, all 2 meters of him, was currently stretched out on one leg of the room's L-shaped couch. He had his arm over his eyes and his shoulder-length wavy hair spilled over the couch arm he was using as a pillow. He was completely ignoring the other two while listening to an audioplay. Audioplays were quite popular these days, because voice-acting could be recorded by individuals in the comfort of their homes with standard gaming equipment, and then the pieces could be assembled with a few hours of work and a standard music editing program. Ambitious writers or voice-actors (which CaffieneBean was) liked producing audioplays not just for the medium itself, but because as a soundtrack it could be used to convince 3D artists to make movie footage to go with the audio, resulting in a full-fledged movie.

Octahedral puffed out her cheeks in frustration, then released the air and looked sheepish. "Well, I suppose we didn't really need to keep it a secret, but I really am afraid of being the one who drags the whole group into a project that doesn't go well and makes everyone disappointed. It's just such a big project. So I'm really hoping my cards will reassure me that this is actually a good idea. And then we can go knock on Porcelain's door and see if she's willing to tear herself away from whatever How To she's writing this week to listen to our reasoning about why we think she should be be leader."

KrispyKode gave Octahedral an encouraging slap on the shoulder. "Well then, consult your cards! We got the powerful name you wanted… you like it too, right? Do you need anything else before you can do your thing with the cards?"

Octahedral was surprised this was even a question. "Oh, I definitely like the name! It's a powerful title, just hearing it would make me want to find out more about the game. And no, I don't need anything else. So I guess… here I go!" Octahedral retrieved her tarot cards from their deck box, then held the deck framed between her hands, right in front of her face. She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, trying to let the familiar fragrance guide her into a meditative state of mind. With ritual intonation she spoke quietly to the cards. She described their desire to improve the world by creating a new game that could answer the heartfelt wishes of thousands, even millions of people. Then she acknowledged that this was a truly formidable goal, and asked for guidance; were they meant to invest all their effort into this great work, or was the idea offensively overambitious, or perhaps inappropriate for the current state of human existence? Finally she shuffled the cards, and laid the first one down.

"Ten of Cups… well, if that's not an ambitious vision of an MMO I don't know what would be." She frowned at the card consideringly.

"Is it Over-ambitious?" It looked like a pretty happy card to him, with 10 shiny cups kind of floating in a lush outdoor environment with grass, trees, flowers, and a bright blue sky. Altogether the scene looked like a really nice day at the nature park, aside from the magical floaty treasure cups. Each cup seemed to have some different kind of treasure or other thing you wanted to obtain: one dripped pearls and gold chains, one had apples and turkey drumsticks and a wheel of cheese, one had a heart (the romantic kind, not the anatomical organ) cushioned in a bouquet of roses... Could this somehow mean doom in Tarot-code???

Krispy was surprised at the spike of worry he felt at the possibility that Octahedral was about to say nope and try to cancel the whole project. It hadn't occurred to him that Octahedral might use her cards to talk herself out of this MMO-creation idea entirely. She was clearly intimidated by the scale of the project. But… hadn't she been the one to talk him into it? Thinking back on it, actually he wasn't sure who had talked who into what. But he was really excited about the idea now, darnit! He couldn't let Octa just give up on his behalf, especially without even trying.

"Well, no… not specifically over-ambitious. The Ten of Cups represents satisfaction, satiation, success, and security… it's a mnemonic for remembering the meaning of that card actually: SSSS. In plain English that means having all possible varieties of good things, as least as far as emotions and inspirations are concerned, because those are what cups symbolize."

"So, it represents an amazingly good MMO?"

"At worst the card could be read as decadence, but in the context of an MMO it hardly seems like a problem if we somehow manage to give our players an overabundance of everything they want." Octahedral shrugged uncertainty.

Krispy laughed - of course gamers wanted decadence to be the ultimate reward of all their questing and leveling up. "Well, duh… I don't think it's actually possible to give gamers an overabundance of everything they want, but it actually seems like a really good goal of the 'Aim high, even if you miss you'll be further up than where you started' type. Seems like an appropriate philosophy for our project's design phase."

"I suppose it is appropriate. I just wish it would have been the six or the three of cups, something with a similar positive meaning but less extreme… well no, nope, I shouldn't be ungrateful. It might have been the Ace of Cups, which could have implied we had a ridiculously big, vague dream without a solid plan. Or it might have been something ambiguous, like the Hanged Man which could imply struggles and trials to gain wisdom but not say anything about the project's ultimate success. Or it might have been The World, which would probably represent all the gamers out there who want a new game, but wouldn't tell us whether our project would give them what they want. Or-"

Octa seemed to be just babbling out of anxiousness, so even though interrupting her was rude Krispy thought she would be happier if he cold shove her onward to the next useful topic. "So, it's a good card with a pretty clear meaning. I think it's a vote of confidence for the name we chose, and I think it implies that the wishes we collected from everyone can add up to a great game, yeah? I think we should declare this card-drawing a success and move on. So, do you need to use more cards, or…?"

Octahedral expression had gone from anxious to annoyed. She stuck her tongue out at him. "Well of course we need to use more cards, Mr. Impatient-pants. We had more questions, right?" Lifting the cards to her mouth again, she asked them, "Is Porcelain the right person to lead this project to a successful conclusion with minimal strife along the way?" Then she gave the deck another shuffle and laid the new card to the right of the first one. This card showed a blue gowned woman with a wise look on her face, seated on a throne made out of a giant seashell. She held a flower in one hand and a cup-like sea-snail shell in the other. She was crowned with some abstract mix of a crescent moon and sun rays, . At her feet was a pool of glass smooth water where an ibis or some similar water bird was standing, looking very serene, and under the water a line of sea turtles also glided by peacefully.

"Queen of Cups!" Octahedral laughed, looking much more pleased by this card. "That is undeniably Porcelain - radiating calmness, dispensing wisdom, and nurturing art or productiveness, depending on how you want to read the lotus blossom." Krispy was relieved to see Octa looking less likely to bail on the whole project. "Well, those are exactly the traits we thought would make her a good leader, so that's a ringing endorsement as far as I'm concerned. It's even a good sign that she's the queen of the same suit as the signifier - that's the technical term for the first card because it represents our project."

"Porcelain is the 'Queen of Cups', huh… Heh, remind me to tell CaffeineBean that from now on he has to ask Porcelain for permission every time he wants a cup of coffee."

Octahedral snort-laughed, then covered her mouth with her hand in mild embarrassment. "Yeah no I think that rule would go over like a rock. Not only would Caff be offended at the idea that our mugs belong to anyone other than him, it would annoy the crap out of Porcelain to have him interrupting her all the time." Octa took a big breath and huffed it out. "Okay, last card, last question." Another shuffle, cards held in the ritual question-asking position. "Is there any prerequisite, ingredient, or condition we should carefully make sure we have when starting this project?" She laid this card to the left of the first, and immediately looked alarmed. "Oh that's not good, that's not a good card at all. But what the heck does it mean as an ingredient, condition, or prerequisite???"

Concerned (and somewhat irritated, because he has just decided he had no reason to worry and allowed himself to relax) KrispyKode peered at the card to try to figure out what was so dire about it. The bottom third of the card was the foreground, which showed several dirty people in ragged clothes digging into sun-baked barren ground. They were digging up a huge golden ball though, wasn't finding treasure good? In the upper two thirds of the card four other golden spheres, which the group presumably had dug up previously, were in various stages of being transported by ox-cart up a mountain path to a gorgeous castle. The castle was decorated richly with jewels, and its gate was guarded by muscular golden knights twice the size of the… peasants? Probably not slaves, they didn't seem to have chains or collars of anything indicating slavery. One cart-driver on the path up the mountain was gazing with amazement or longing at the castle. The top-most sphere had been delivered to the castle, and the driver of this cart seemed to be being paid with... A plate of porridge? "Uh, so, what is this card? What's its general meaning, if you don't know what it means as a ingredient or whatever?"

Octahedral frowned at the card even more intently. "This is the Five of Pentacles. It means Poverty or Insufficiency. See, these laborers are doing hard work while underfed, their clothes are poor quality, and their environment is depressing and uncomfortable. Can you think of any way that poverty is useful or required for beginning an MMO project? I really hope it's not saying that we should pretend we are wage slaves and only feed ourselves if we get our daily gamedev work done. That's not happening."

Krispy mad a razzing noise at that absurd idea, then dismissed it in favor of thinking about the last time he has been poor in a game-related context. "What about when starting the game?"

Octahedral's forehead scrunched up in confusion. "That's… what I said?"

"No, not when starting to design the game, when starting to play the game. With that first card, you were talking about players having an overabundance of everything they want. Probably like the people in this castle. But that not supposed to happen until you've played for years. One of the most enjoyable things about starting a new game is that you are usually this orphan dressed in rags and armed with a stick," he brandished an imaginary stick-sword, "and all the NPCs turn up their noses at you or demand you prove yourself to them doing scutwork before they'll even give you a slightly better chore. It's so motivating to see a high level player on an impressive mount go by and imagine which mount you will get when you get higher level..."

"Oh! I guess a lot of single-player RPGs still start like that, don't they, and some of the older MMORPGs did? In StratusStrife I think the designers tried to eliminate that in favor of getting players shooting at each other as soon as possible. And in EarthCraft You have to make everything for yourself, there aren't any NPCs to run errands for; it's not really an RPG. Huh, interesting interpretation. More broadly than literal poverty, it does seem important that we think about the situation we will drop our players into when they enter the game world. That situation, especially if it's kind of a problem or predicament, is one of the things players will want to start playing the game to experience, and it should fire up players' emotions and make them feel motivations."

"Yeah, I think that's definitely something we need to keep in mind when deciding the bare bones of what the game will be about; the game world has to present the players with motivating problems and challenges, not just at the beginning but all the way along. So, like, villains for the players to fight against, NPCs that need help, factions they could feel proud to work their way up the ranks within, and even things like stunt achievements - Parkour loves those. Maybe even minigames if there are high score prizes or ranking prizes to make you want to beat the game or the other players."

"Or, the design of the game's economics would probably be in there as an interpretation of necessary insufficiency too, though I'm dubious about the ethics of actually including a currency system in the game. But, that's a detail we shouldn't worry about until much later. Anyway, good thinking! I was worried there for a minute. Alright, I think I'm finally ready for us to pitch this concept to Porcelain. I feel a bit silly now - it probably felt to you like I was dragging my feet, and the result was just that we're going to do the same thing now that we could have done this morning, as soon as we picked a title."

KrispyKode pursed his mouth and tried to picture how things would have gone differently if Octa had just decided to be confident from the beginning. "No… actually I don't think that would have worked as well. The fact that we've been talking to each other about this project will mean we are more prepared to talk to Porcelain about it. And the idea of a motivating lack or problem for the players should make a good brainstorming prompt once we get everyone together to start doing some actual design. You might think of me as someone who likes speed and efficiency, because I do like those. But you might not realize that before I do a speed-coding session, or drive a race in game, I often need to take some time to be slow and thorough instead, making sure I have a clear plan and am prepared."

Octahedral laughed - "I think the way you prefer to prepare for a race is by making sure your car is armed with missiles. And a parachute. And a button that converts it into a speedboat. But thank you for indulging me, and I'm glad you weren't too bored."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Porcelain is portrayed by Takane Shijou from the Idolm@ster anime​

When they told Porcelain they wanted to make an MMO, her first response was a skeptical, "You and what army want to make this enormous game?"

Krispy served his own sarcasm right back, "Well, General Porcelain, I think that will ultimately be up to you, though we recommend Parkour as your drill sergeant."

Porcelain narrowed her eyes in her 'tell me no bullsit and I'll kick you no asses' look. "What do you mean, 'General'?"

Octa, looking a bit alarmed, stepped in between the two. "Porcelain, we think you have all the skills necessary to be an amazing leader of a game-making project, if you're just willing to give us the benefit of the doubt that we can actually make a game like this come to life. Between the six people living in this apartment we have almost all the skills needed to create a game: StarSeeker has several years of experience doing game design as a hobby and studying player psychology, Krispy and I have both successfully created different types of mods, Caffeine has experience with all kinds of script-writing, voice-acting, and movie-making stuff, ParkourTiger can rig and animate anything from a tank to a ninja, and you have mad organizational skills, patience with fools like us, experience analyzing games to make walkthroughs, and you set up that Public Benefit campaign for Star's roleplaying manual. Yes, MMOs require a ridiculously large array of skills to make, but we have a ridiculous number of game-related skills in our little family-of-choice here. It should be completely possible to fill in the rest with existing content-packs or enthusiastic volunteers." Octahedral nodded firmly, like there was no way Porcelain could possibly refute that argument.

Porcelain looked a bit pained, and turned back to Krispy. "You're really determined to do this? Even though this task is something like a hundred times larger than that mod you found so difficult to make? And you don't think Star would be a more logical choice of project leader, being the game designer and all?"

KrispyKode's expression held a mixture of sympathy and amusement. "StarSeeker will in fact be in charge of the design of the game; we're going to give him your wish that you wrote for us yesterday along with everyone else's, and he'll do his usual thing of coming up with some proposals and surveying us on whether we like them. What we need you to do as our Great Leader is run the team like a manager. Which Star wouldn't have the time to do on top of his designwork, and also would be terrible at. That's why he needed your help with the Public Benefits campaign to begin with. Now, would it really be a tragic waste of your time to spend it organizing your friends in their attempt to make something great for the world's whole population of bored MMO players?"

Porcelain actually looked embarrassed when she heard it put this way. "Well, no… working together with everyone at an epic creative goal does sound kind of fun, and spending time with you guys isn't a waste of my time even if no game actually got made…"

"The cards had surprisingly positive things to say about our chances of success." Octahedral put in brightly. "And even if the project fell apart, we could publicly release all the progress we had made and someone else might want to build on it."

"It would be a learning experience for everyone too!" Krispy imitated Octa's chirpy tone, to more comical effect.

"Alright, alright! Did you and the others have some plan as to what our first step on this long road should be?"

"Er, well," Octahedral blushed a bit, but gamely forged onward. "Our first step is to tell the others we're going to be making an MMO!"

Porcelain's jaw dropped open in disbelief. "You came here to browbeat me into running this project 'for everyone', and you didn't even tell them yet…?" She facepalmed. Not bothering to remove her hand, she mumbled through it, "Of course you did." Straightening up, she finally stepped into the role of commander. "Actually, what I think you should do is go see StarSeeker right now and give him a copy of these 'wishes' - message me a copy too. StarSeeker is the one who will have to 'take his turn first' to produce some options for us to refine, and then possibly put up for a Private Works For Public Benefit campaign; I assume we'll need the credits to requisition some higher-end hardware to get started with the real development. So, go warn StarSeeker so he can have something ready for this evening after dinner. That's when we'll call a household meeting, pitch the concept to the others, and see whether they are enthusiastic about it or inclined to rebel. Meanwhile, I'll try to read up on the process of making an MMO. Now get out of my workroom."

"See, you're great at this already - giving Star some time to prepare is definitely a good idea." Octa laughed. Ok, we're going!" She grabbed KrispyKode by the arm and started towing him out.

"Good luck with your research, Great Leader!" Krispy tossed a salute at Porcelain and allowed himself to be towed away to find Star.




The tarot part felt really long to me, did it feel too long to you guys? Also, I would have liked to have a second vote here, but I could not fit the set-up for it without the update getting excessively long. Next update's vote should finally be about an actual aspect of the game's concept/content.

 

[sunandshadow]

Also, I find this lack of MMOs confusing. Why not just open-source the dead ones? Surely there's no longer an expectation of property rights in them now, with this sort of system? It's not somebody's stuff. It's abandonded and therefore I would think free game. Pun not intended but very much approved of.

(Also, basing our project off of some existing thing gives us more character.)

Seriously though, please tell me the government isn't being that derpy as to have not even requested old dead games' code.

And what happened to Github?

Click to shrink...

Oh good, a worldbuilding question! Well, the first thing I want to say is that the worldbuilding in this game is not at all what I think Earth will actually be like in 60 years. So, realism wasn't really my goal; instead my goal was to explore certain themes. The failure-of-capitalism thing is more improbable than the lack of MMOs in a socialist future culture which has great VR tech. But I'm suspending my own disbelief about it and asking you all to do the same because this set-up enables the story I really wanted to tell ad thought people would want to read. Without the situation where there was a lack of MMOs in general, it would be really hard to present the creation of an unspecified MMO by this amateur group as a heroic goal. The reason it has to be an amateur group is that we, writer and readers alike, constitute an amaeur group, so we can identify well with these characters.

My own personal MMO design and development experience has all been with volunteer indie teams that had no budget. So to make that type of development take center stage, I wanted a world where AAA game development does not exist, and all indie gamedev teams are volunteer. I wanted to blend in historical stuff like the video game market crash of 1983 and the great depression/new deal events of the 1920s and 1930s. The great stock market crash and the video game market crash were similar events both caused by failures of unregulated capitalism, so they are semi-parallel to this fictional situation where capitalism has failed permanently, but the government instead of actively propping up capitalism like the New Deal did, instead managed to move past that because it was focused on making sure all its citizens had something to eat and clean water to drink and somewhere to live, plus internet access was considered a basic necessity by then. One of the things they did backslide on was mandatory education, so although the main cast of characters here are about as educated as college students, an average MMO gamer would have less education than the average MMO game today, which means they are even less qualified to do MMO development.

It's also unpopular for people to study video game creation as a hobby for cultural reasons - the most valued achievement in their culture is fame, and being part of a big team working behind the scenes for years to make a game does not get you fame. Most people prefer to create or perform in ways they can do either alone or in a short amount of time: written fiction, performing in a band, pin-ups, and functional 3D art from clothing and jewelry to pillows, bedding, and other household decorations. Their MMO shortage situation is mainly a lack of NEW MMOs, though old ones tend to stop having reliable hosting and internal functionality. Thematically their situation looks like the opposite of our current glut of crap, but instead matches a different point in the video game market cycle, the post-crash lack-of-confidence period where there was a reduced audience and a shortage of big games. I haven't really talked about it in the first two updates, but they did have a game development boom followed by a glut somewhere around 2050-2060 when they developed the hardware for deep-immersion VR; EarthCraft and StratusStrife are the last, 3rd-gen products of the VR boom/glut.

More specifically responding to your question, one of first few paragraphs of the rough draft of update 3 has KrispyKode talking about what public code resources are available, which includes some but not all of the code which was (re)used to make StratusStrife and EarthCraft. This availability of code libraries is the only reason KrispyKode thinks it is theoretically possible for him to assemble the majority of an MMO by himself. The design is already looking likely to be a hybrid though (from the wishes), so he's going to have to get some pieces from here and some pieces from there and make them work together. This is the topic of the next update so I won't spoiler it any further here.

Private intellectual property does still exist as a concept in this culture, though the main purpose is security, not market value In a culture where the most sought-after thing is fame, the identity-theft of celebrities, including writers, visual-artists, and yes programmers, was a problem they considered extremely important to make laws against. So, in this society Individuals who create anything have that creation be heir private property by default, and must actively make it public if they want it to become public. For MMOs as group projects suffering from constant shortages of skilled labor, security is also an issue because they just have 0 spare man-hours to waste fighting hackers; instead the trend is that any currently-running MMO is closed-source as an anti-hacking measure, even though much of the code they started with was open-source.

The government wouldn't request old dead games' code because the government doesn't use MMO code at all, they just have a system set up where citizens can vote which bread-and-circuses/cultural support stuff they want to allocate funding to. The government also doesn't really pay people so it is much more of a skeleton organization than our current government. So they can't spend man-hours on much innovation, and their highest priority is the ongoing process of figuring out how to make the country maintain itself automatically without crap like bridge collapses, plagues, floods, rioting, gang violence, etc. happening. But certainly private individuals would be expected to regularly request that any and all games be opensourced, and it would be legal for private individuals to request the government to bribe someone with luxury credits to opensource their code. I think I'm going to say that at least one MMO, about 10 years before the present day, accepted a bribe to release their code and then the whole game was immediately suborned by a hacker, who basically killed its playability.

 

[sunandshadow]

Due to technical difficulties, this probably has more typos than usual, so I apologize in advance. Due to the tie I am rendering the winning title as "The Ancient Markets of Neverwhere". (AMoN) This can be shortened to either Neverwhere or Markets. Hope you guys like it. Also, I wanted to portray Krispy and Parkour's romance too, not just Star and Caffeine's, but Krispy and Parkour kept having their cute moments 'off camera'. So maybe I'll catch them next update.



After checking his status, KrispyKode and Octahedral determined that StarSeeker was at the social club down the street. A social club was basically a large room with tables for games, couches, some drink machines, a fabricator for paper stock like cards and game tiles, and another for plastic stock like dice and miniatures. And of course there was a flock of cleaning robots, something vital to any public building. This particular social club's founder had also installed an interesting sound cone system, which allowed each table to have its own music and conversation, while muting sounds between tables. Someone had also printed out and assembled some cardboard boxes, so people could put cards and other game pieces they were done using out for others to 'adopt', rather than recycling them just to have someone print a new copy of the same thing.

Octahedral messaged StarSeeker to check whether he was in the middle of something that couldn't be interrupted, like a GMing session or a tournament. He messaged back that he was just finishing a roleplaying session. Krispy and Octa, knowing that Star might easily get sucked into a card game or board game rather than coming home, decided to walk over there and collect him before he could get distracted. Plus they could use the exercise after spending all day in the apartment.

StarSeeker is Portrayed by Kei Takishima from Special A
​

KrispyKode spotted StarSeeker first. Seeing that Star was cleaning up after his roleplay ended, called out to him excitedly. "Star! Hey, remember that question about your wish for a new MMO that we sent you yesterday? The one you posted on that forum?"

​

"Uhhh… was I not supposed to do that?" StarSeeker looked from Krispy to his sister Octa to try to figure out what was going on, but she was glancing nervously at the other patrons of the social club for some reason.

​

Krispy enthusiastically reassured StarSeeker, "No, that was great, we liked seeing what other people had to say. Actually we have some great news for you! How would you like to help us design an MMO that can fulfill the wishes of everyone in our apartment? And then we'll all work together to create it!"

​

Star looked completely astonished. "Are… are you serious? I've wanted to help design an MMO for years! But Krispy, you intend to be the lead programmer? That seems like you'd have to study up on a lot of things and make a lot of technical decisions no one in the group can help you with. Are you sure it won't be too stressful?"

​

"Hey, I've got forums I can ask for help too, you know. And a lot of the code that all of the past generation of games has used is public libraries; they did some private mod work and additional development, but a lot of that has been reverse-engineered by ether fans or hackers. You come up with a general description of the game and a features list, and then I'll know for sure how much we can make out of code that already exists. Plus, if there are small enough modules of additional code we need, we can post a description on a coding community and get a volunteer to do it in exchange for being credited in the game or praised on our project home page or something like that."

​

"Oh, do we have a project homepage?" Why were KrispyKode and Octahedral, of all people, starting such a project, and how had they managed to get it running without Star noticing?

​

"Not yet, but Porcelain just agreed to be the project manager, so she's going to be in charge of our project's interactions with the outside world, more or less. She's the one who sent us to talk to you now; she wants to hold an introductory meeting after dinner, and she thought you'd want some prep time so you'd be able to share some initial ideas." Porcelain was involved too? Ah, well it wasn't running yet. But wait, what?

​

"After dinner tonight?!? That's less than three hours! You expect me to put together a pitch for an MMO concept in less than three hours?"

​

Octahedral finally intervened. "Oh no no, don't worry Star! We haven't even told Parkour and Caffeine that we're making an MMO yet. We just want to give you this list of what everyone's wishes were, so you can think about what basic kind of game would be compatible with them." Which meant that yes, Porcelain at least expected him to put together something to get the team started after the last two members of their group were brought in. StarSeeker didn't know whether to complain at their timing or cheer with excitement at the fact that someone had actually invited him to design an MMO. After a moment of vibrating in indecision, he compromised by slinging an arm around each of their necks and dragging them out the door of the club and back toward the communipartment - he needed to get started immediately!

​

~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

​

On the way back, Octa had for some reason been insistent that Star not tell Caffeine about this MMO project until Porcelain's planned meeting. StarSeeker had no idea why this should be kept a secret from his boyfriend, but since it was only for three hours he agreed without pondering it too much. As it turned out, though, this promise was immediately tested because as soon he came through the door of the apartment Caff spotted him and came over for a cuddle. Star seeker hugged him back, a bit distracted with the thoughts whirling in his mind but still pleased by the attention.

Caffeine is portrayed by Dino Cavallone from Katekyo Hitman Reborn​

​

"Babe, you're back! Hey there's a new Wingwoof episode out, did you want to watch it with me?"

​

StarSeeker was quite tempted by that offer... but on the other hand, Caff was one of the people he would be impressing if he could have something useful ready to present this evening. Plus, it would totally waste the Wingwoof episode if he watched it while he was distracted by thinking about MMOs. "Luv, I don't mean to ignore you at all, but I have an idea burning in my mind right now - I ran home so I could type it up. Would it be okay if I hide in my VR helmet for a bit right now and we watch that tonight?"

​

Caffeine hesitated; visibly dithering over whether to give me a hard time, prima donna that he is. Octa jumped to the rescue with a distraction though. "Hey Caffeine, why don't you and Krispy and I play Snapalack while Star's busy?" Caffeine immediately accepted that offer - Star hated that card game and never wanted to play it with him because it was all about quick reflexes and Star was consequently terrible at it. Caffeine was better than anyone but Parkour at Snapalack, and since she wasn't back from her martial arts class yet Caff was basically guaranteed to win. And Caffeine really liked winning.

​

StarSeeker, glad to be finally able to focus on js one mental task rather than having his thoughts divided, left the three to their card game went into his workroom. He sat gratefully in his most prized possession: an overstuffed recliner. While the government mass-produced cheap beds and couches and had a standardized system for installing them in apartments at minimal resource cost, they didn't do armchairs. This recliner was a reupholstered antique, and the only thing StarSeeker had spent some of his luxury credits on that was just for him. Half of the chair's cost in luxury credits had gone to the craftsman who restored it, and the other half to the government for the special delivery that had been needed. The rest of StarSeeker's luxury credits had all been spent on shared gaming equipment for the apartment or donated to various creative projects like splatbooks or miniatures sets, or to online games that needed more hardware.

​

StarSeeker plunked his old-gen non-immersive VR helmet on his head and slid his hands into the haptic gloves that went with it. The helmet was quite effectively noise-isolating, and Star found the mild sensory deprivation of the old equipment tremendously helpful for his concentration. Once the helmet's operating system was fired up he spoke the command New OpenLayout Document. This brought up a blank page that could be typed on, drawn on, and even used to animate drawings or embed existing videos. OpenLayout could be used from tablet PCs as well as VR gear, and was the most common tool used for everything from writing novels to making webpages. StarSeeker's greatest accomplishment with it had probably been the manual for an original tabletop roleplaying system that he has written up and, with Porcelain's help, got a few precious Luxury Credits for on PWFPB.

​

Off to the right of his OpenLayout document StarSeeker opened up the note Octahedral had messaged him. It contained a working title for the game and a list of 6 wishes from their group of friends and a note that one wish from his forum thread had interested them. Star had no idea how KrispyKode and Octahedral had managed to title a game without knowing anything about said game; his own working titles ended to be things like "dragon game" or "shapeshifter game". But their chosen title seemed appealing enough. More importantly though, would these wishes even tell Star what kind of VRMMO the group wanted to make? Were they even going to be able to agree on a particular type of game, or would their wishes be in conflict with each other and require some severe compromising?

Game's Working Title: The Ancient Markets of Neverwhere

1. KrispyKode's Wish: "A world that feels more natural and vibrant than reality."

2. Octahedral's Wish: "A game that enables self-realization; really helps its players become wise and happy. Maybe we could even do some matchmaking to help players make new friends."

3. StarSeeker's Wish: "A truly foreign culture that players would learn about and have to act within when interacting with NPCs."

4. ParkourTiger's Wish: "An experience where I, as a ninja, assassin, or wizard, really move my body or the magic within my body as needed for a technique. Bonus points if I have extra-keen senses. I want to feel the breeze and smell my leather armor."

5. CaffeineBean's Wish: "A life of drama and excitement; an aware world that writes an interactive story around each player to suit their personal taste."

6. Porcelain's Wish: "A game that combines the best of sandbox and themepark; I want to be able to build and experiment while still being able to meet great NPCs and discover deep worldbuilding and be a heroine who fixes problems."

At the bottom of this list Octahedral had written: We also thought one of the wishes from your forum thread was interesting, though we need to run it by the others. Lilithium's Wish is "A fully immersive/simulated world capable of both changing the player and being changed by the player in turn and scale. Balanced between Fantasy, Science, and Realism; where one can choose to fight and follow various intertwined meta plots- or simply relax by diving into a different life in a foreign world. All beside Npcs capable of living and growing just as players do."​

Now, StarSeeker believed that the best, or at least most human-friendly, design workflows were iterative design workflows. An iteration was a cycle, like a loop in the workflow's flowchart. Of course, this kind of cycle was only useful if going through it repeatedly would result in more progress each time. One type of iteration StarSeeker found particularly useful was Narrow Down/Expand Out. In this case he was starting with the ridiculously large range of "all VRMMOs", and he wanted to see if these wishes were asking for a more specific type of VRMMO.

The first two wishes were so abstract that they could pretty much be set aside at this early stage; they described goals for the details of design that would come later. Though wish #2 was somewhat related to story, the same thing was stated more strongly by wish #5. So Star set the first two wishes aside and looked at what the other four were asking for.

Wish #3, his own, explicitly required that the game have NPCs. So, that basically eliminated all MMOs which do not have NPCs. And because it was his own wish, he knew that robot-like NPCs would not satisfy this requirement. EarthCraft was an example of an MMO that had uselessly terrible NPCs, from Star's Perspective. He wanted, and had written in his wish, that NPCs should have an actual culture and be able to respond to the player's actions or choices. This type of 'deep' NPC was almost exclusively found in RPGs and RPG hybrids, aside from the rather niche visual novel and dating sim group. StarSeeker liked that type of game okay, but they were almost always single-player games, probably because they lacked combat entirely and had barely any gameplay besides their interactive story and maybe a few strategic choices about what to spend time or money on.

But anyway, it didn't seem right to declare that The Ancient Markets of Neverwhere had to be an RPG based purely on his own wish. What about the other wishes? Did any of them disagree, or have other requirements related to whether the game was some kind of RPG?

Wish #4 specified a game where the player inhabited the body of an avatar, and strongly implied a realtime action combat system. This was compatible with several types of RPG, though it could also be found in FPSes and MOBAS. (First-Person Shooters and Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas.) StarSeeker decided a venn diagram might be helpful here, so in his OpenLayout document he drew an oval labeled Deep NPC and partially overlapped it with another oval labeled Realtime Action Combat.

Wish #5 specified an interactive story. That was an interesting choice because neither of the two current big games, EarthCraft and StratusStrife, had interactive stories. Well, EarthCraft had almost no story within the game itself; they used to release a comic alongside each new expansion, but they hadn't done that in years, and it had always been a traditional linear story. StratusStrife had plenty of story in the form of 'mission briefings' which were basically quests, but the stories weren't usually interactive unless you lost the mission, and in that case the interactivity was limited to an NPC taunting you or an "after this critical battle was lost, your faction suffered terribly" video montage. Interactive stories were much more common in single-player RPGs, those visual novels again, and to a lesser extent could appear in any genre that had a story, including FPSes, adventure-puzzle games. After a moment of thought StarSeeker decided an interactive story was compatible with both existing ovals. He drew a big circle that contained them both and labeled it interactive story. Looking over the wish one more time he added the note "world as GM/delivers individual story for player's taste". That was quite a bit further than than the average interactive story went, and he wasn't immediately sure how to implement such a thing, but it was an interesting idea and still compatible with the other wishes so far.

That brought him to the last wish from their group. Wish #6 explicitly stated that the game must be a hybrid between a sandbox and a themepark. A sandbox could be an RPG, an RPG/sim hybrid, or a sim with no significant RPG elements. The wish specified "building" as an activity, and building was fundamentally a sim type of gameplay, so this wish excluded pure RPGs and any RPG-hybrid which didn't include sim content as part of what it was hybridized with. And since the other wishes specified RPG content, they ruled out pure sims. Therefore Star could firmly conclude that The Ancient Markets of Neverwhere would have to be an RPG/sim hybrid (or RPsim), though it might also be hybridized with other genres. StarSeeker drew a third oval that intersected the first two and labeled it Sim Hybrid. Ok! One narrowing-down cycle complete, and he now at least had something to tell the others at the meeting. Now, did he have time for an expanding-out cycle?

The topic for the expanding out style would naturally be, 'What is an RPsim like? How can themepark and sandbox elements be successfully combined into one game, a game that is at least as good as either a pure themepark or a pure sandbox?

The difficulty with hybridizing a sandbox and a themepark was that they represented two different design philosophies. A themepark game was intended to give the players a series of intense experiences comparable to riding various rides at an amusement park. A themepark could also be compared to putting the player in as the main character of a movie. When creating a movie or a themepark game the writer and director would have similar goals - control the pacing so the player would alternately go through adrenaline-packed moments of action and loud emotions (anger, fear, bravado, glee) vs. relaxing moments of story and quieter emotions (humor, romance, melancholy, curiosity). This alternation was psychologically ideal for preventing boredom. The original tool of choice for creating this alternation was the quest; the player needed to quietly listen to an NPC describing a problem in town, then go out to the wilderness or into a dungeon to violently solve the problem, then return to civilization ot quietly be thanked and rewarded (and trade their unwanted loot for refills of supplies and new gear).

Like any kind of game, themepark MMOs had various well-known problems. They shared the common problem of all story-based games, which is that stories are consumable content which isn't fun to replay. Even in this moneyless era there were still economic pressures on development due to its cost in man-hours, and these pressures pushed themepark MMOs toward linear stories so that no content would be 'wasted' by being seen by less than half of players. Linear stories, however, tended to make players feel their efforts were futile, their opinions and decisions were meaningless, and the virtual world was fake. Similarly, little effort could be spent on creating hidden objects of interest for explorers to find; often, every inch of the map was involved in one quest or another; unused map areas posed a danger of creating dull or confusing player experiences too.

Sandbox design, on the other hand, had arisen as a reaction by players who did not like the highly designer-controlled experience of themeparks and linear RPGs. The intent of a sandbox was to give the players an environment to play in (the world as sandbox) and a system by which they could use that sand to craft some sandstone building blocks to play with. This would theoretically enable exploring, pretend play and activities like sports and hobbies like hunting. In more ambitious sandbox MMOs players would be expected to cooperate to build towns and protect them from other players as well as monsters. As a side effect of their design sandboxes generally lacked NPCs; they usually had no pre-created towns where NPCs could 'live' and also there would always be some players who would want to kill these NPCs. But sandboxes had their own problems; many players wanted to enter a virtual world specifically to experience an exotic culture and a different way of life, and sandboxes did not provide any of that content. Additionally, sandbox creators often eschewed tutorials or imposing goals on the player, but this left some players (such as Star himself) feeling lost and like his actions within the game were basically meaningless.

So the question was, how could these two design philosophies be made to compromise or take turns within one game?

A sudden tapping on his shoulder startled StarSeeker, though not too badly because this was how Caffeine always got his attention when he was using his VR helmet. Quickly reading through his conclusions one more time, Star committed them to memory, then shut down the helmet and pulled it off.

Indeed, Caff was standing there grinning (probably at the crazy hat hair the helmet always gave him). Star's nose told him that something smelled like food at the same time Caffeine told him, "Dinner's Ready! Hopefully salad and stew are ok since you seemed too busy to ask."

"Smells great, thanks for 'waking me up'." Star rewarded his boyfriend with a hug and then made his way to the table.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~


ParkourTiger is portrayed by Kenna Yatsushiro from Medaka Box​

When diner had been mostly eaten an impatient KrispyKode stood up and addressed the group around the dining table. "ParkourKitty! Caffeine! I've got some exciting news for you! And also I'm sorry to be asking you two last - that happened due to our disorganization, not because we were intentionally leaving you for last or anything."

"What's this exciting news then, babe? I knew you were distracted thinking about something this morning." Parkour leaned forward and pinned her boyfriend with a look of intense interest, rather reminiscent of the big cat she was named after.

"Yeah, out with it coder boy," Caffeine demanded jokingly, "what's so exciting that it made Star go hide in his VR helmet for 3 hours in his super-thinker mode?" StarSeeker snorted at this description but decided not to comment.

"The big news is this: we are going to make an MMO! 'We' includes everyone here at this table - we need everyone's skills and experience to even have a chance at getting to a playable game. Parkour you said you wanted to feel your avatar doing acrobatics and stuff, we need you to create the animations for that and be our combat consultant. Caffeine you said you want the game to write an interactive story around each player to create a dramatic virtual life for them, we need you to help us figure out how that would work and work with star to create cool NPCs with dramatic dialogue, and figure out some large scale conflicts to motivate players. Porcelain is going to be the project manager, and her first accomplishment is this meeting. Uh, we're having a meeting now BTW, if that wasn't clear."

Octahedral laughed and face-palmed. "Okay Krispy, sit down now, let me try. Ahem. ParkourTiger and CaffeineBean, are you both interested in helping make an MMO with us? We don't actually want to push anyone into doing anything they don't want to do. This is going to take a rather absurd amount of work, so if you're not excited about it now, you're rapidly going to run out of tolerance for this."

"Well," Parkour suggested with dry humor, "Maybe you could tell me what kind of MMO we're supposed to be making, so I have some idea whether I am excited about the idea or not?"

Octahedral shyly explained, "Well, we decided on The Ancient Markets of Neverwhere as our working title - we thought that title captured our ideal of a magical world with exciting mysteries, cool historical lore, and opportunities for being clever or strategic. And then our second decision was that Porcelain should be the manager of the project." Octahedral laughed nervously and turned to Porcelain with a look that said Lead please?

Porcelain gracefully assumed control of the meeting. "The purpose of today's meeting is actually to discuss what type of game The Ancient Markets of Neverwhere is going to be." She politely asked, "Star, did you have time to come up with a general recommendation, or should we reconvene later?"

Star cleared his throat and sat up straight. Caffeine would have referred to it as his 'professor mode'. "Well, it certainly wasn't much time, and those brief wishes aren't anything like a comprehensive description. That wish you included from my forum thread is kind of a curveball and I need more information before I can try to work in parts or all of it. But I was at least able to compare the wishes of everyone in our group and conclude that to satisfy them all the MMO would have to be a hybrid combining the story, NPCs, and monster-hunting content of a themepark-type RPG with the building and crafting sim-style gameplay of a sandbox. This hybrid genre of game is called a sandpark, or you could also refer to it as an RPsim. We might choose to also hybridize the game with more genres, but RPG would be the primary genre and sim or sandbox the secondary genre.

Additionally, the main type of combat of Neverwhere would specifically be a realtime action style of combat. I say 'main type' because the game could potentially have additional types of combat or other versus activity, from card games and board games to mount racing or pet battling. Even fishing could potentially be considered an additional type of combat."

StarSeeker looked around to check for reactions to his conclusions. "So, does this type of game seem acceptable to everyone? If not we should discuss that before trying to move forward. But if everyone is content with this then I have a first design decision I'd like to have a group brainstorming session about." Star passed control of the meeting back to Porcelain; he was more than happy to let her handle the part about mediating disagreements and making sure everyone's feelings were considered and, if necessary, placated. Star chuckled to himself; this wasn't like GMing a tabletop roleplay where he could just drop rocks on players who were being annoying, and then rewind time to undo the flattening of their characters if they promised to have a better attitude.

CaffeineBean hmmed thoughtfully. "Well, that's still too general to even count as a concept, but I have no objection to helping make an MMO of that genre. I wondered why Octahedral sent me that question about my dream MMO, since she probably knows I have a low opinion of the way most MMOs do story; they usually aren't great for either passively watching or acting out as a roleplayer. But I like the challenge here - it's like, if I can't figure out how to do story well in an MMO, I should quit complaining when other people can't figure it out either. I never really expected to find myself working to create an MMO, but this project is interesting so I'm happy to cruise along and see what the actual game concept turns out to be."

StarSeeker poked Caffeine in the side. "Babe, you could even be proactive and think up some concepts for us to consider going with." Caffeine blinked, apparently having not actually considered that.

Parkour cut in "You had me when you said the game would have realtime action combat that I could personally tweak to make it perfect. As far as the mix between a regular RPG and a sandbox game, I can't quite picture what that would be like, but I've always felt that RPGs are too restrictive while sandboxes are too barren. So if you can fix that by scattering things like stunt opportunities around the world and making it so I don't have to do particularly annoying quests to unlock important shit, this hybrid thing might be pretty sweet."

StarSeeker was briefly confused by the idea of stunt sites, until he remembered Krispy complaining to him about Parkour's ability to do absolutely insane skateboard stunts in some sports game, and laughing at Krispy when he fell on his face attempting to do the same thing. Also, now that he thought about it Star had long ago played a spaceship-piloting game where there were certain areas that the game basically dared you to do some really tricky bit of piloting. That must be a stunt site. There was no guarantee this game would have any wheeled vehicles, but he did hope they could work in flight, either on some kind of mount or by the player's character gaining wings somehow, flight stunts could certainly be a thing...

While Star's mental cogs were turning Porcelain took the opportunity to check in with the others. "I feel that this idea of a hybrid story/simulation game fits my wish well enough. It's probably a safe assumption that Star came up with a plan that doesn't violate his own preferences. But what do the rest of you think? Octa, Krispy? Does this fit the vision that motivated you two to start this project?"

KrispyKode grinned. "Yeah, a game where I can choose whether to do some storyless group activity like PvP or racing when there's a group online, and then when I'm by myself I can go quest or craft or something, that would be great for me. And more importantly, I think I'll really enjoy working together with everyone no matter what exactly the game ends up being like. I like many kinds of game, and I have confidence that we're all pretty smart and we won't manage to screw up badly enough to make a game that isn't fun."

Octahedral had been beaming since CaffeineBean and ParkourTiger didn't immediately reject the idea of creating an MMO, so it was probably a safe assumption that she didn't object to Star's suggested genre. "I think it's good that we aren't making a game that's the same as either EarthCraft or StratusStrife. You all know I've played EarthCraft for years, and I think there are a lot of people like me who have played one game or the other or both for so long that they are beyond ready for something new. A sandpark sounds like it would have something to appeal to both groups while also inviting them to discover new things they like. The cards thought this game could become a virtual world that would make a lot of people happy by fulfilling a variety of desires, and this sounds like a good path toward that goal."

Porcelain nodded, satisfied. Whether it was the agreement and cooperation among the group members, or the smooth progress of the meeting, for the first time she looked rather pleased to be in charge of this project. "Okay Star, I think we're ready for the topic you wanted to brainstorm about."

StarSeeker blinked and dragged his attention back on the present. "Ah, yes. I think the first question we could consider as a team is, how should we blend our RPG elements and our sim elements to make our sandpark? To help you understand what I'm really asking, I'll describe some different approaches past games have taken to this question."

"The most sandboxy option would be to not have any NPC-owned terrain; instead most interaction with NPCs and quests would be done through the player's menu, from anywhere. This menu would also be used for utilities from trading to entering battlegrounds. For increased immersion the menu could be presented as a tablet PC or some fantasy equivalent. NPCs could be spawned as-needed near the player but out of sight, and would then walk over to the player to speak with them. It would also be possible for the game to identify an area where no players or player-made buildings were and spawn in a whole open-world dungeon there. These dungeons would be intended to be temporary, so it wouldn't be too problematic if players razed them to the ground. This approach would not allow us to create permanent locations which expressed an NPC culture, so we would be limited in our ability to convey story and lore to players through the use of settings, props, or scripted scenes between multiple NPCs."

"The most themeparky option would be to give each player a private island with sandbox properties. These are referred to as instanced housing, though they would include not only housing but also land for growing crops and interacting with pets, mounts, or other animals. The player would start the game in this location, craft a house here, and through crafting or completing a tutorial would gain the ability to travel to the main game world. The main game world would be a themepark world with many permanent locations and NPCs, as well as dedicated areas for multiplayer activities like racing and group PvP. Arenas could allow sandboxy elements like destructible buildings inside them. These arenas could change/reset their internal layout between rounds. To reduce the isolated nature of the instanced housing it could be possible for friends or guild members to dock their islands together into a neighborhood. This approach provides maximal security and privacy for players but isn't very social or realistic." Star had to pause for a drink because his voice was drying out.

"A compromise approach would be to divide the terrain of the game into two different types. One type of terrain would be 'civilized'. We the developers would create architecture here, place NPCs, and give the NPCs quests and lore to talk about with players. This area would also contain utilities like auctioneers or banks if the game has them, and access to some kind of fast travel. There might also be an instanced dungeon or two associated with each town, if we have those. In 'civilized' areas players would NOT be able to modify the terrain, build buildings, or destroy anything. These small circles of 'civilization' would make up about 10% of the game world, and would be surrounded by wild areas. Wild areas would be sandboxy - players could modify terrain, chop down trees, gather resources, build buildings, and also monsters would spawn there so that's where players would hunt monsters. Optionally we might allow placing indestructible points of interest, such as stunt sites," he nodded at Parkour, "dungeon entrances, or unique resource spawn points in their own smaller circles of 'civilized' terrain throughout the wild. This approach would require open world housing, which can result in urban sprawl, lapsed players leaving abandoned buildings around, and players griefing each other to try to control desirable territory."

"A variant compromise approach combines terrain divisions with instanced housing to eliminate the problems of open-world housing. In this variant players would each have a magically (or science-fictionally) portable private property. By default this property would be shrunk to a tiny miniature and carried in the player's backpack. In order to use this property they would have to temporarily expand and place their property (buildings and crops and livestock and all) onto a piece of empty wild terrain. Or this variant cold have a third type of terrain: player-housing suburb around NPC towns. Then when the player was done using their property or they logged out, the property would shrink itself and return to the player's backpack, freeing up the land it was on. This compromise would allow players to feel at home while traveling to various NPC towns and other points of interest throughout the world, and would provide opportunities for players to admire and visit each others' property, while keeping the gameworld clean of urban sprawl or derelict buildings. However it would eliminate the possibility of players grouping up to live together in any permanent way."


Time to vote! Pick ONE!

[ ] Write In: I disagree with one of StarSeeker's conclusions about what the MMO should be like to fulfill all wishes! (If you pick this you can't vote for a sandpark type.)
- [ ] What do you disagree with and why, what do you recommend instead?

[ ] The world is basically a sandbox, but some quest and NPC content is delivered through the player's menu or a computer-like piece of equipment. Additionally the game can spawn NPCs into the game and send them to visit players. This game would not have permanent instanced dungeons, only temporary non-instanced dungeons.

[ ] This world is basically a themepark plus sandboxy instanced housing and arenas which have sandboxy functionality and are regularly changed or reset. Instanced housing of friends or guild members could be linked together.

[ ] Terrain in the game is divided into 10% 'civilized' areas where NPCs live and players cannot modify terrain or buildings, and 90% wild areas where players can build freely and can interact with wild-spawned items and monsters. There would probably be permanent instanced dungeons, though it would also be possible to spawn temporary non-instanced dungeons into the wild.

[ ] Magically (or technologically) shrunk private property is temporarily expanded into the main game for use, then put away again when not in use. This home travels with the player.

[ ] Write In: I have a different idea for how a sandpark game could work!
- [ ] What's your idea and why do you think it's the best option?

 

[sunandshadow]

...I'm honestly 100% unsure of what you actually mean here. Clarify please?

I'd also like to see some sourcing on this being 'a mmorpg just exploring the ground of real life vrmmorpg tech' given this is set in the future with better tech then we've got in current times. That statement seems pretty dang limiting for what we can do.

Click to shrink...

Ok here's my statement on that: VR tech is actually a solved problem for them. Their hardware is a cabinet that exercises your body while you are playing, but you still have to log out regularly to pee. This cabinet technology is at least 15 years old, and they have something like Unreal Engine/CryEngine/Unity Dev Kit/Unity Asset Store with 15 years of assets/Poser with 15 years of assets all available for them to create VR content with. On the other hand, creating new content is still rather difficult, and there is no such thing as an AI that can act convincingly human.


More important than the tech, though, is theme. The overall design goal of the team is making people happy. Happy is a common word, easy to ignore, but please pay close attention to it here. Primarily the team members, and secondarily the players, must be made and kept happy. The reason StarSeeker has declared that the game must be a sandpark is because multiple team members would be unhappy with a 100% sandpark game. Overall, the team will not accept a game world that is brutal or horribly risky. For example, any suggestion related to player character permadeath or full loot openworld pvp would be immediately vetoed, and that alone means the game world would have a completely different tone from Log Horizon or Sword Art, or other horror-genre trapped-in-a-deadly-game scenarios. Due to the socialist nature of the culture in the real world, the game will also not have any kind of marketplace where real world and game goods are exchanged. So the game will also have a completely different tone from VRMMO novels where the main character becomes a millionaire and faces enemies like organized crime and spoiled rich brats.

Happiness as a goal is about safety, freedom, entertainment, humor, romance; it's not really about challenge, adrenaline, epicness, or providing an overwhelming common enemy to force people to work together against it. Safety is particularly relevant to this vote. Safety, in the beliefs of the team members (especially Octahedral and StarSeeker, but more lowkey Porcelain too), should apply to players' creations, because few things can make players more likely to rage quit or actually commit suicide than the destruction of something they spent a lot of time and care creating, whether that's their avatar or their house. Caffeine is more concerned about the freedom of players to create and roleplay within the game without getting killed.

Brief guide to the characters if they played games of our era:

• StarSeeker like Stardew Valley, dating sims, PS1-era jRPGs, and the Myst series. This is the guy who is the lead designer. Proposing features he's going to hate is unlikely to go well.
• Octahedral is a long-term Minecraft and Sims player. She likes sandboxes but prefers to play them on the PvE server or in creative mode. Se is philosophically opposed to joining a guild and doesn't like being in a group with someone she doesn't know in real life.
• KrispyKode likes Grand Theft Auto V Online and Final Fantasy Online. He likes being a valued team member. He's not really into raiding because it's too big and organized, but he'll have fun pugging and not really care if the party wipes.
• ParkourTiger is a fanatic fan of Assassins' Creed, Tony Hawk Skateboard Games, and she also likes GTA for the stunts, races, and PvP. She will occasionally play Halo or competitive RTS games like Starcraft.
• CaffeineBean makes movies in Second Life and The Sims. When just goofing off he like MarioKart and those zombie shooting arcade games.
• Porcelain likes pet monster games, the kind where she can selectively breed them and then grind individuals up to high levels. She has played the Heroes of Might and Magic games and the Agarest series. She likes tactical games but is frustrated that the big-name IPs, like Disgaea (and for that matter pet monster IPs like Pokemon), are too silly for her taste. She thinks Xianxia settings can be very elegant and mysterious when they aren't being unbearably cheesy or completely male-focused.

So, this is the group of people trying to make an MMO they all like. Thus the 'herding cats' joke in the first post, because they like a fairly large variety of stuff. The psychological challenge of this story is to get them to work together and find compromises that allow room for different players to enjoy different things in the final MMO. This is a legit challenge - the reason more than 80% of indie gamedev projects fail is due to the members not agreeing about what kind of game they want to make because they don't like to play the same things.