Interactive fiction vs. games (and world-like worlds)

Interactive fiction vs. games (and world-like worlds)

12 January 2007

by Mike Rozak

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I thought I'd spend some time discussing how I think interactive fiction, games, world-like worlds (like Ultima Online), creation-worlds (like Second Life), and role-playing intensive worlds (RPI) relate to one another.

Games as a base, adding interactive fiction

Imagine a game, like a fighting game where players stay in one room and kill hoards of aliens that mindlessly attack. This game is the basis for CRPGs and MMORPGs. Similarly, puzzles are the basis for adventure games.

However, to make the game more fun and meaningful, authors try to create sympathetic goals, which explain to the player why they're killing all those monsters or solving all those puzzles. These goals inevitably take the form of a short story explaining that hoards of aliens are trying to invade earth, or something equally cheesy.

When the game is varied to keep the player from getting bored (see sub-game variation) the story is also expanded; Perhaps the player defeated the first wave of aliens, but new (and more powerful) aliens have arrived. They look different and use more powerful weapons and tactics.

At some point, the story becomes prominent enough that players try to change the story through their gameplay. Perhaps they can kidnap the alien commander and stop the fighting now, or perhaps the war has all been a huge misunderstanding.

As soon as players want to change the story, which was originally added to simply answer "why", they are entering the realm of interactive fiction.

The transition to IF isn't binary. Some "games" can be 100% interactive fiction, while others are still games, but with a heavy emphasis on story.

Starting with interactive fiction, and adding games

Approaching the problem from the other direction, imagine beginning with a Choose Your Own Adventure, which is pure interactive fiction. (CYOA books have no games or puzzles.)

However, games and puzzles are easily added. They serve a few purposes:

• 
  Games and puzzles lengthen the experience; they are filler, and reduce the problem that interactive fiction has with the exponential growth of possibility branches.
  
• 
  Games and puzzles provide choices at short intervals, something that isn't technically possible with CYOA branching. Players seem to like making frequent choices.
  
• 
  Games and puzzles can help immerse the player in the story. A CYOA can only tell the player, "You feel scared!" or "You are feel lost". A game can make the player feel scared (by having them chased by aliens) or lost (by putting them in a maze).
  

Multiplayer games have another direction they can take:

1. 
   Instead of adding stories (interactive fiction) to games, multiplayer games can encourage players to compete.
   
2. 
   Competing players will team up.
   
3. 
   Teamed up players form social bonds.
   
4. 
   Players with social bonds tend to stay in the same game longer, 500+ hours.
   
5. 
   Players that stick with the same game tend to ask for new and varied features. Many (or most) of these features have social ramifications, emphasising social status and meeting other players.
   

• 
  Guilds
  
• 
  Clothing (to impress)
  
• 
  Player housing (to store clothing, and to impress)
  
• 
  In-game crafting and trade
  
• 
  In-game government
  

Creation worlds

Clothing, player housing, in-game crafting and trade, and in-game government can take over the virtual world, forming a "creation world", like Second Life.

The fun of a creation world comes from creating new objects and seeing what other players have created, not from playing the game. Additionally, as developers expand the players' ability to create, they find that it unbalances the game to the point where the game is no longer playable, and it's discarded.

Creation worlds don't blend well with interactive fiction either; players simply have too much power.

A pattern? Genres?

These four types of worlds seem to form a pattern:

It doesn't seem like a game can get much broader though; a world-like world cannot have interactive fiction in it (except in very limited form), and a creation world cannot be a game (although it can contain games in their own magic circle within the world).

Notice how the genres forms a linear sequence, going from "The author has all the power" to "Players have all the power."

Role-playing intensive worlds (RPI)

Some virtual worlds place a heavy emphasis on role playing. I'm not sure where they fit in relation to the other four genres of worlds. They can be based on game-like, world-like, and creation worlds, but they're often modified with extra features to encourage role playing. For example: If combat is supported in the game's "physics", it often has features that allow players to supersede the combat rules in order to maximise role-play.