Poll: Story line in multiplayer!??!?!

[KILLA-COW]

Rotinja you on your fucking period or something? Moaning and whining all the time when I read your posts. Snore. Getting boring.

[Major Banter]

Not the place for a counter-bollock or apology, or a whinge, so I'll keep it simple.

K. Fixed. Will be nice.

[Dionysos]

Actually, in regular mp games (not coop), what I've come to realize is that there you're rather provided with a setting than a story.

[peegee]

This is a very interesting question and not easy to answer.

Games are neither books nor films, telling a story by games is a complete new challenge,
especially in a multiplayer game.

It´s all about how one define a "story". It´s right, in multiplayer it has to be told
more visually than narrative. And i don' think that a backstory is not important.
A backstory in a mp-game marks a begin of a development which has not completed yet and we are currently in.
Every medium finds it way by the time to tell something and send a message.
The way to tell cinematic stories had to be developed as well as the way to write a novel in history.
There has to be found more non-linear ways to describe the world.

It will become an important point in the future of development mp games (and not only mp games), i believe.

[popcornjake]

I certainly care for any story telling at all within any portion of a game, sp or mp - I warmly welcome any added depth with open arms.

Though I surely doubt the screaming 14 year olds who are content to play halo 3 and call of duty 4 on their xbox would care for a multiplayer storyline, or any form of story at all.

I guess it's very subjective but oh well, there's my short 2 cents.

[thebeanie]

I was just thinking about this, actually. A multiplayer game with a story. I think that for this you need an MMOFPSRPG (pronounced Muh-mor-fpesser-pu-guh). I've been reading a lot about emergent narrative, that sort of thing. How's this for an idea:

Cold War spy game. Set in Berlin in 1974. Basically, you play either a citizen of either West or East Germany, or you play a field officer of an intelligence agency such as the KGB, CIA, MI6, DGSE, GRU, etc. There are tonnes and tonnes of NPCs that make up the population. Whenever a player joins the game, they take control of an NPC of their choice. The idea is for spies to infiltrate the opposing side, set up spy rings, dead drops, and complete objectives for their parent agencies. If you're a civilian, you can, perhaps, go to work on something. Join a political party. Let's say a player is playing a construction worker. He's approached by a person who wants details of the project. A foreign spy? Or a false-flag op, designed to test how loyal you are? If you're a spy - suppose one of your informers' cover has been blown. You need to get him over the wall or otherwise past Checkpoint Charlie. That sort of thing. The world is persistent. When a player leaves the world, their role is taken over by an NPC.

In this game, there is an overarching narrative - the Cold War. But the actual story is created by the players. I think that if you start off with a big story and leave it to the players to fill in the details, you can get a story into multiplayer games.

(Of course, this kind of game would attract a certain kind of person - probably poker players, or something like that)

[Dionysos]

I was just thinking about this, actually. A multiplayer game with a story. I think that for this you need an MMOFPSRPG (pronounced Muh-mor-fpesser-pu-guh). I've been reading a lot about emergent narrative, that sort of thing. How's this for an idea:

Cold War spy game. Set in Berlin in 1974. Basically, you play either a citizen of either West or East Germany, or you play a field officer of an intelligence agency such as the KGB, CIA, MI6, DGSE, GRU, etc. There are tonnes and tonnes of NPCs that make up the population. Whenever a player joins the game, they take control of an NPC of their choice. The idea is for spies to infiltrate the opposing side, set up spy rings, dead drops, and complete objectives for their parent agencies. If you're a civilian, you can, perhaps, go to work on something. Join a political party. Let's say a player is playing a construction worker. He's approached by a person who wants details of the project. A foreign spy? Or a false-flag op, designed to test how loyal you are? If you're a spy - suppose one of your informers' cover has been blown. You need to get him over the wall or otherwise past Checkpoint Charlie. That sort of thing. The world is persistent. When a player leaves the world, their role is taken over by an NPC.

In this game, there is an overarching narrative - the Cold War. But the actual story is created by the players. I think that if you start off with a big story and leave it to the players to fill in the details, you can get a story into multiplayer games.

(Of course, this kind of game would attract a certain kind of person - probably poker players, or something like that)

Yes, I've often thought of these kinds of games. Create a world with a certain setting and possibilities of interaction, and you more or less drop the player into it, to discover the narrative himself. With todays more advanced engines, the possibility for a rather more "open" and self-evolving narrative become a possibility. Of course you can't just leave clues lying around, you have to accommodate the player to a certain degree, or else it would be too much like real life and not much fun anymore.

In any case, I think it would be time for more games finding ways to develop the story in another way than to force it down your throat in a carefully predicted manner. The graphics of todays games having reached the level they have, I think it's time to focus the creative attention on other things.