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Sometimes, quality is up to the gamers.
See, I like fiction because it allows me to vicariously experience things that I normally don't experience because I'm me, and those things don't happen to me. I like old-school RPGs because they're extremely simple, don't reveal too much thought process or deep inner motivation, and allow me to fill in the gaps with my imagination. Old-school games let me take situations I've never been in and imagine for myself what the motivations of various characters might be. They are a springboard for thought, giving me fantastic sets on which to perform hypothetical situations and shells for my ideas and questions about humanity. Newer games are well-fleshed-out and try to explain themselves, which is probably why my heart lies elsewhere; in old games, most of the plot and character intricacies come from my own imagination, which I enjoy. My shameless outlet for this is fanfiction. But as MMORPGs become an even greater part of RPGaming as a whole, I find myself reevaluating: how does imagination affect the experience of gaming itself? Moreover, how is the changing face of gaming coming to affect the imaginative factor?
As games have evolved more complex stories, imagination has played less of a part in my gaming experience; there are less gaps to fill in, less questions to have; we no longer have to wonder what, on a hidden psychological level, might be our favorite character's real motive for joining the party. It's all there for us, so we don't get to fill in our own ideas. A regrettable loss, but it's a trade-off for the more complex stories we also enjoy in a different way.
Then along came FFXI, and with it, the glimmering promise of boundless imagination. The stories might be anything we want them to be! With continual human input, with the constant creation and re-creation, with all the interaction that could allow us to co-create, I thought surely this game would revive imagination in gameplaying! Sadly, it doesn't seem to have done that.
My roommate has only been playing FFXI for a short time, and already she is bored. The game seems to consist of leveling up, going on quests to make yourself a bit more capable, leveling up some more, and haggling for gil so you can buy better armor to make it easier to level up some more. Even the quests make her feel like there is no ultimate goal except getting stronger. Oddly in a game which facilitates interaction, she can find no interesting interaction. She tries to alleviate her boredom by doing funny things like talking to walls, repeatedly casting Protect on absent players in town, and trying to find something worth bothering to do in the game. She searches for story, and there is no story. She wants to create her own plot, but only limited plot can be created by one person alone, and most other players seem uninterested in doing anything but leveling up.
And so she was about ready to quit playing. Frustrated by an entire world populated by players who talk in netspeak and seem to have no higher goals than mastering their next job, and bored with the repetitions of leveling up for no reason, she kept trying to think of some way to engage herself in the events of Vana'diel. She hardly even felt like playing the game anymore, but she thought perhaps she could still think of something to make it fun. After we went to a Fourth of July parade in the real world, an idea struck her: hold a parade in FFXI. No, not a patriotic one, since it's not America or Earth. Wouldn't it be amusing to hold a protest march? Maybe about same-sex marriage, since she'd just noticed it was disallowed in the game. It even sounded like something characters would wonder about, because Galka are genderless and yet can't marry females. She laughed and laughed about the silly idea, and then she said: hey, it might actually be fun; why not do it?
Now, maybe she should have picked a less controversial cause, like a bake sale to benefit impoverished newbies; but it seems like the reactions she got might not have been any better if she had. She knew that some people would get riled up and argue against her cause; but she didn't foresee that even people who supported gay marriage in the real world would think her idea was stupid. Based on nothing but an unobtrusive and plainly worded invitation to her march that she posted in an FFXI LiveJournal community, other players freaked out at the very idea. Without information, they told her that she obviously spends too much time on video games (she hardly ever plays, and when she does it's on her sister's subscription,) that she's too rabid about the issue (she isn't any kind of activist in the real world; it was just a passing idea she had,) that she can't tell the difference between a game and reality, and that she would accomplish more by sending a petition to Square-Enix. However, she wasn't trying to accomplish anything, real-world or Vana'diel. She was just trying to think up an activity that her character might do, to get some interaction in the game and get other people involved in creating story with her. She tried to explain that, but other players were so reluctant to believe her that despite her politeness, they accused her of trolling.
Trolling? Why trolling? Well, because they couldn't seem to believe that anyone would think that an improvement to the game might consist of the players actually getting involved with creating their own story; therefore it must be a cover story to start a flame war. They said that an improvement to the game would consist of getting better armor or making it easier to learn certain jobs, not having players take an active hand in helping to create the story. They could not fathom that she really had just wanted to get people together and have a story-event, though her tone was about as inflammatory as a wet lump of baking soda. It seemed like the real issue at stake was not gay marriage, but the fact that she'd tried to create an in-game activity that other players saw as being "pointless." The idea that creating a personality for her character and acting it out was a valid way of making the game more enjoyable was so unreasonable to them that they assumed, well, she must be trolling, or else just crazy.
Some said that they play games to get away from the real problems of people in the real world, and they don't like the idea that those problems might appear in the game and remind them of actual issues. But in that case, why try to make stories realistic at all? We like fantasy and sci-fi settings because they allow for the currently impossible, but in order for a fantasy to be "well-written," the people in it must behave in the manner of humans on Earth. And we can tell that it is "well-written" when we recognize these behaviors as things that really happen, things that are familiar to us. We might make allowances for the mannerisms of other cultures or species, but ultimately we are only interested in fiction when it reflects aspects of ourselves. In a fictional situation, it's entirely feasible that some of the issues that arise might be the same issues that we face in the real world. If we want games to be realistic, if we want the stories to be deep and broad and complex, if we want serious matters such as the threat of death to be broached in games-- then we ask for these games to be authentic to the behaviors of people. Indeed, it is one fundamental aim of fiction to capture the way that people actually do act, to try and evoke and explain it for others, and to allow people to experience it vicariously. Nowhere does this seem like a more valid act of fiction than in RPGs, where immersive experiences are the trend and goal; and nowhere does interaction allow for as much freedom as in online games.
The great gift of online gaming, besides letting you play with your buddies across town, is that that it allows a level of interaction unprecedented in video games. Before online gaming, the plot in each RPG was set and limited, and you never really got to control what issues were explored or what sides of each issue you got to see. Yet it is the aim of fiction to explore tricky issues. Saying that the real problems of real people have no place in video games is like saying that literature should not explore serious issues because some people like to read to get away from life. Some of the greatest works of fiction arise as its creators try to work through difficult issues, offering a host of differing viewpoints with which readers will or won't agree.
The Final Fantasy fanbase has always been a harsh critic of game story. We love to criticize game companies for not creating a better plotline; we're hasty to judge when stories fall short of our expectations. But with online games, we have the chance to do it better if we try. In an online game, the players themselves are offered the opportunity of being the story creators-- as well as the vicarious participants, giving them a unique chance to look at life closely in the directions they would like to grow and explore, but in a safe environment of fiction which both cushions them from the full blows dealt by reality and also frees their capacity for exploration by letting them be other people they are not in the real world. In short, online games can let you use your imagination to explore issues, but uniquely among forms of fiction they can let you explore what you want to explore. This only if players take advantage of the interaction to create story instead of just laughing off attempts at player-generated story in favor of leveling up. Unfortunately, it looks like that won't be happening.
And so my beleaguered roommate has just about given up on playing FFXI. There's nothing to do; she can't get anyone to participate in creating a plot with her; and her story-building idea just baffled the other players. Activity besides leveling up? Now why would anyone want to do something like that? I guess in the future she'll stick to single-player games and her own imaginative elaborations. Maybe she'll get into fanfiction...
-Catherine Rain ("Raincrystal")
Former RPGamer Editorials Assistant
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