For MMORPGs, Context Matters

Today's MMORPGs just don't cut it anymore.

Players just don't get "in-character", and I believe this is largely because the game mechanics don't require them to. Even more puzzlingly, most games even incentivize against making choices in the context of the game world. Now I'm not saying that all games need to have only role-playing servers. That's not what I'm getting at here. What I am saying, is that developers shouldn't be calling their games "RPGs" if they don't give a shit about context. Context matters to RPGs, and it really matters to long-term MMORPGs. If players don't base their decisions as if their character is living and participating in a living, breathing virtual world than they're never going to be able to relate and attach to that character. Even if they somehow do get attached to that character (maybe because of the aesthetics) they're still not going to feel invested in your alternate reality if their character can't make any impactful or meaningful choices that connect them with the world.

After all, why go to all the trouble to simulate a virtual world with different biomes, a working economy, and realistic social structures if you're not going to incentivize your players to make decisions within the context of that virtual world? Maybe that's why so many current and recently created "MMORPG" titles feels like hollow shells to the majority of players.

In fact, I would even suggest that because of the hollow nature of these games and the dire lack of immersion, players don't ever really invest themselves in a meaningful way. They never actually get into the game. They're just observers of these massive multi-million dollar virtual worlds. Nobody truly becomes a resident these days. So it shouldn't surprise developers why people leave their games so easily. When you have no real immersion or even worse, when you're actively incentivizing players to trivialize the context of your virtual world... how are they ever going to invest themselves in it?

If players aren't investing their time, they're definitely not going to invest their money in a product.

Player agency and consequence are essential ingredients to incentivizing players to think and act "in-character", even if they're not consciously intending to role-play. As a result, the actions of those players will reinforce the "reality" of the virtual world for other players and create a natural system of immersion enhancement that will build upon itself. This will work regardless of whether your players are intentionally choosing to role-play in your game or not. It's all about the mechanics and incentives.

If developers reward players for making choices that actually fit the context of the world around them and of their character itself (or that character's history), then a game will naturally immerse players - and by that effect, give them more ways to relate, attach, and stick around.

On the other hand, if the rewards and incentives for a player are not tied to the context of the world at all - how can a player's choices (and therefore a character's actions) ever truly feel organic to a virtual world except by pure chance? Ignoring any and all context of the world when designing the systems that players can exercise agency in is the most efficient way of disconnecting players from your game's "reality" - however virtual, artificial, or stylized as it may be. Which at that point, there really is no reason at all to try and simulate a virtual world anymore.

You'd be surprised how many games out there calling themselves MMORPGs are built around significant core systems that have nothing to do with the context of their worlds.

Developers have gotten so focused on creating mechanics, gameplay, and worlds that people will like or find addictive that they haven't even bothered to think if any of these things actually make sense in the context of their game. In the rush to make games as accessible as possible, studios are investing millions of dollars into the creation of systems and aesthetics that no longer encourage players to treat their games like living, breathing digital worlds.

Today we, as players, are making the majority of our MMORPG decisions based on what gear we want to equip or what end-game achievement we want to conquer that we never give the context of any decisions made between A and B a passing thought. Who cares if our Paladin character is brutally slaughtering innocent "neutral" people or creatures by the dozens without any sense of remorse or consequence? If it's going to get us to that next level, that next piece of "epic" loot, or that one achievement we've been working at for weeks, no harm no foul - right?

The majority of MMO"RPG"s today are actively incentivizing and rewarding players to ignore the context of their virtual worlds, and yet the developers, designers, investors, and other people making money off of these games start scratching their heads when hundreds of thousands of committed players suddenly stop showing up.

No, isn't because something new and shiny has come out elsewhere; it's because they've given us no way to engrain ourselves in those worlds. We're not attached to our characters (because we've never made any real, meaningful choices with them), so we have no connection with them. Even if we have somehow made a connection and attachment with our characters, if we've never had the opportunity to connect those characters with the larger virtual world around them - we're probably not much more invested in the game itself.

If our characters don't actually fit in a world's context or have a real, immersive role to fill within it, what reason do we really have to stay? Why should we keep paying a subscription? Why should we keep spending a few bucks here or there on micro-transactions? If developers are counting on us hanging around to play these kinds of games with friends, then they're a fool - because our friends are equally un-immersed and disconnected from these pitiful worlds. Mechanics are the investment standard, they are the reward setter, and as a result are the determining factor of whether players will relate to a simulated environment, economy, or social community.

It's not the players fault that we're not invested enough in a game to keep investing in it financially - it's the designers fault for not rewarding contextual decision making. It's the developer's fault for not creating the immersion necessary to build that attachment to these worlds as little digital dimensions in space where we can meet up and adventure (or trade, or craft, or insert-playstyle-here) with our friends. We're not going to stick around and give people our hard-earned money if we have no mechanical incentive to consider these game worlds as a home away from home. Most games just haven't given us a reason to prefer their virtual space over any other.

Very few MMORPGs do anything right these days - and by effect, just don't matter to me.

If they can start to bring back context, bring back consequence (and actually support it with mechanics and reward systems), people will not only come play those games, they'll actually have a way to truly invest themselves. After that, spending money to support our investment will just come naturally.