Character Growth Games 1

2006/01/21

Why do we need character levels in MMOGs? The main reason seems to be a belief that characters must "grow" in MMOGs. Level mechanisms are then implemented to achieve that goal.

But where's the evidence that all characters in MMOGs must somehow advance in power? It's a common belief, but are there good reasons why that belief is so commonly implemented? Or do most games only have it because most other games have it?

Character-growth games, with their emphasis on "high-end" content, send the message that you can't access the really fun content until you've maxed out your character's levels. This causes players to grind for XP in order to reach the highest level as quickly as possible. Instead of having fun playing a game, players must work to reach a point where they can (eventually) start having fun playing a game.

Does that sound like fun to you?

It doesn't sound very entertaining to me.

What if you didn't have to worry about how players levelled up because there were no levels? You could still have skills; you could even have different levels of particular skills -- they'd just all be learned during character creation. Instead of trying to find way to minimize grind time to level up as rapidly as possible, players would be free to spend their play time enjoying using the skills they gave their characters.

I like this approach because it's oriented more toward exploration than achievement. But the fact that I personally like it may not be the best measure of the value of an idea. So it's probably a good idea to think about the likely objections to designing a MMOG that's not wrapped around the idea of character growth.

Here are some of the problems I'd heard people perceive with the "no character growth" design, and my responses to those objections:

1. Players are used to progression-based games, and will reject a no-character-growth game as too different.

This one could be true of many who currently play MMOGs... but who says a game has to focus on attracting only current players?

I don't even know that the assertion in the objection is true. How do we know that enough players won't adopt a different kind of game to make that game viable? Remember that once upon a time there were no MMORPGs at all -- a lot of tabletop RPG players managed to make that transition. Personally, I suspect that the only people convinced that "players don't like change" are the publishers who want players to stay locked into genres that they (the publishers) think they have a big market share of.

Overall, I don't believe there's enough hard evidence on either side to decide this one. The best way to find out if this objection holds true or not is to test it with a few otherwise well-designed no-character-growth games and see how they do. If we build several of them and no one comes, then OK -- it's back to character growth games.

Until the next revolution in MMOGs, of course. :-)

2. Without levelling up to occupy their time, players will focus even more than they do now on burning through content, so a no-character-growth game will have to provide a lot more content.

This objection is probably valid. The only way I can answer is to say: OK -- so provide more content than the usual character-growth game. If you're going to have an exploration game (as opposed to a collectible/achievement-oriented character growth game), then there had better be plenty to explore.

Best bet: Create large worlds (if fantasy) or large galaxies (if SF), then manage the expansion rate by limiting the top travel speed and not resupplying characters who go too far beyond the current frontier (sort of like the old tabletop wargame concept of units losing quality when they go out of supply).

The problem of providing plenty of content is a real one, and I don't want to sound like I'm brushing it off. I'm not. But I do think it's a more manageable problem than some people think, as long as we're willing to do some hard thinking about what we mean by "content." If you think content only means loot and levelling up, then you might as well just make yet another character growth game. If you're willing to see content less as "stuff" and more as "experiences," then your game design options become a lot more open.

3. Not letting characters grow impedes the growth of the players who run those characters.

This is a concern that Richard Bartle in particular has expressed. One of Richard's beliefs is that players grow as real people by playing characters. Through the act of being someone else, they learn about themselves; as they learn, they grow. Through this process, players slowly become more like the characters they play, and their characters become more like their players. Eventually there's no real distinction between the two; for Richard, this player has completed his or her Hero's Journey. (This is my very brief restatement of Richard's position; if you're at all interested in it you must read Richard's book Designing Virtual Worlds to get this argument in his own words.)

To some people (probably those more interested in virtual worlds as games to be played than as places in which experiences can happen), this will sound like a silly argument. I don't agree; I think it's a dead serious argument. In the end, how we behave as human beings is the only thing that matters. The way that these game worlds help people engage in that process of becoming full humans makes them important, and makes this question of player-growth-through-character-growth worth considering respectfully.

That said, while Richard may be correct that players can grow by playing characters (and I believe they can), I'm not sure he'd agree that character growth is necessary for player growth. The key is not whether some arbitrary system for levelling up is implemented -- what matters is that players can have a wide range of experiences (through their characters) that illuminate their values. In that case, a game design that rewards players for engaging in different kinds of gameplay could be just as effective for helping players grow as persons as a game design that rewards players for scaling an artificially constructed ladder of character levels.

I'm not saying I think KOTOR should be used as a values education tool, but I do think it's a good example of how "character growth" can be about more than just gaining power, and can still be a lot of fun.