On MMOs, And Why I Play Them Then Forget Them

I've never been good at sticking with playing MMORPGs. I've tried tons. WoW, LoTRO, Rift, WildStar, The Old Republic, Star Trek Online...but I never stick with them, no matter how much I keep trying. And, yet, I keep trying. Something keeps compelling me.

When I was 6 or 7 I found Gemstone 3 on Prodigy. Gemstone 3 was a MUD, the text-based precursor to MMOs. I was enthralled. I was always a nerdy kid, I loved the Chronicles of Prydain and The Hobbit, and I took to the opportunity to explore a fantasy world with other people like a fish to water. Simutronics, the creator of the game, at one point was creating a game called Archmage, which was supposed to be a graphical version of their MUDs. The idea was mindboggling, that you could have that many people playing the same game and actually see the world instead of reading it. It never came to fruition, though, and my video game interests turned console-ward with Final Fantasy 3 and Earthbound spurring the charge, though I always maintained a love of MUDs.

Fast forward a decade and a half and I'm on WoW. Initially, I get the same thrill as those old days. So many people to talk to. So many places to explore.

Unfortunately, something began to creep around the corners of my mind. I wasn't competing with the other players directly, like PvP so often does even (especially?) in MUDs. I was competing to beat the game first. Suddenly it just snapped from exploring to a rich world full of interesting people to "I'm playing a video game that I have to deal with other people in." People who troll and harass you. People who you have to rely on to complete tasks but we're merely playing a game together.

It killed the magic. It was just a game. A game with a win condition. Sure, the win condition was updated every so often, but then I thought back to the MUDs I loved. There was never a win condition. There was no such thing as "endgame". You made what you wanted out of the game. You decided what your character's journey was, the life you wanted to live, and you strove for it. In that sense, you were always exploring new territory. You were always reading new stories and you weren't playing a game with people, you were genuine collaborators, doing something new and special every time.

From beginning to end, every character has pretty much the same story in any MMO. Best case scenario, you're devoting huge amounts of time in your life to be one of the first ones to finish the story. There's no magic there, there's just achievement chasing.

But I keep chasing that thrill of exploring a new world. And I keep running into the same game. The same goals. The same disappointment.

NERDERY DO NOT PASS

Don't even bother reading this. This is me being an incredibly huge nerd and getting video game nerdery out of my head. Basically, these are the Zelda games I wish existed and oh my god why am I even posting these.

The Mommening of Games?

Last year, Pixar released a seminal work in their oeurve and, honestly, Disney's oeurve. They released Brave, a film with a female main character who had a realistic and healthy, if difficult, relationship with her mother. Compare this to the entire line of Disney princess movies and you'll find that to be an incredibly rare thing. Of them, only Mulan, Aurora, and Rapunzel have living biological mothers, and of those, only Mulan's is even a little be relevant (though not very). Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Snow White, meanwhile, all have stepmothers, each of whom is the villain of the movie. Mulan, Ariel, Tiana, Belle, Jasmine, and Pocahontas all have extremely relevant fathers, though.

This isn't about Disney princesses, though. That's a well worn path of analysis both in gender ideas portrayed in the princesses and in their inevitable love interests (which Merida from Brave doesn't have! Yay!) This is about video games. A few years ago, Stephen Totilo of Kotaku posted a great article on "The Daddening of Video Games". It's a fascinating phenomenon where the industry has successfully created relationships that tie the player to the game closer. It's not as fraught with choice and problems as the love interest path that Bioware pushes and fails at so often and it provides a constant goal for the player- keep this person safe, no matter what. One of 2012's best games, and one of the best narratives in video games, The Walking Dead hangs its hat entirely on this conceit, tossing you into a protective relationship between the main character and a little girl found hiding in a treehouse after her babysitter got a taste for flesh. It's a fabulous game and shockingly well done most of the time.

It's almost impossible to find a shot
that doesn't include her cleavage

It took Disney until Little Mermaid for a princess to have a meaningful relationship with a parent. It took 23 years after that for that parent to be her mother. I think video games can do better. I think video games can have a real Brave. But mothers are few and far between in video games (often killed as a matter of plot for RPGs) and even rarer still do they have relationships with daughters. Mass Effect has a couple of mother/daughter pairings in Matiarch Benezia/Liara and Samara/Morinth but...let's just say those relationships don't end well. Particularly disappointing that neither of these relationships is healthy by any stretch of the word since the Asari are an all-female species and they couldn't even work in a decent connection there. Of course, that was a decision made for the "Wooo! Boobs!" factor, but still. More thought could've been put in it.




Other mothers I've thought of in video games:

• Mother - Maria (kind mother to the villain)
• Chrono Trigger- Crono's mother(minor character, possibly dies as a matter of plot)
• FF7- Jenova(alien hellbeast that attempts to consume all living things)
• FF9- Queen Brahne(Megalomaniacal stepmother who attempts to kill her stepdaughter to conquer the world)
• Bioshock 2- Sofia Lamb (megalomaniacal 'collectivist' who kidnaps little girls and plots to...do...something? The plot sucks, okay?)
• Binding of Isaac- Isaac's mother (locks protagonist in her basement where he has to fight endless fetuses...fetii? fetapodes?)
• Silent Hill 4- The Apartment (It's an apartment.)
• Metroid- Mother Brain (It's a brain.)

So yeah. Pickings are slim.  The only one I could come up with who was really good example and interesting was Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum from Bioshock 1. Sure, her 'daughters' are genetically mutated immortal automatons made out of little girls, whose purpose is to suck DNA out of corpses...but...she's still interesting! And has a mother-ish relationship. With daughter-ish things. It's complicated.





In the Daddening of games, main characters were allowed to have families and real relationships with them. Main characters were allowed to be fathers. In the list of mothers, not one is a main character. I can't think of a single protagonist in any game who is, in fact, a mother. Of course, female protagonists are few as it is and, when they do exist, they tend to be lone wolves who don't need no man or family(see: Samus Aran, Lara Croft, Bayonetta, etc.).  And, as an aside, Samus, the most basic and beloved female protagonist in gaming history (aside from Ms. Pac-Man I guess) eventually does get some sort of familial relationship: she gets to have retconned daddy issues. Yaaaaay.

I'm not saying video games should've done better (though, I mean, I could). I just think they can do better from now on. Expand your goddamned horizons for characters. Even that far. Far enough to encompass a relationship that most people have. Is that so difficult?