FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
How Persistent Worlds Differ from Ordinary Games
Part of the appeal of computer games is the environment in which the player finds herself: a fantasy world where magic really works or behind enemy lines in World War II. Another part is the role the gamer will play in the game: detective or pilot or knight-errant. Yet another is the gameplay itself, the nature of the challenges the player faces and the actions she may take to overcome them. And, of course, there is the goal of the game, its victory condition: to halt the enemy invasion or find the magic ring. The victory is usually the conclusion of a story that the player experiences and contributes to.
Persistent worlds offer some of these things but not all of them, and there are significant differences between the kinds of experiences that persistent worlds offer and those that conventional games offer.
Because persistent worlds have so many players, and because they are intended to continue indefinitely, the traditional narrative arc of a single-player game doesn't apply. Persistent worlds may offer storylike quests, but they always return to the world eventually; you can't have a once-and-for-all ending in the sense that a story does.
The setting of a persistent world consists of the environment itself and the overall conditions of life there. It can be a dangerous place or a safe one, a rich place or a poor one, a place of tyranny or a place of democracy. You can challenge players to respond to problems in the world as it is or to problems that you introduce, whether slowly or suddenly.
The goal is a quest or errand that the player undertakes as an individual or with others. Goals can be small-scale (eliminate the pack of wild dogs that has been marauding through the sheep flocks) or large-scale (everyone in the town gets together to rebuild the defenses in anticipation of an invasion). Most persistent worlds offer large numbers of quests from which players may choose.
As a designer, you probably want players to feel as if they are the first ones ever to undertake a particular quest, or to explore an area of the game world. Ordinary computer games allow you to evoke that feeling, because the game world is created fresh when the player starts up the game program. In a persistent world, on the other hand, only those who logged in on its first day of operation are the first to experience a quest or explore a new area. Furthermore, those who went before will always tell those who arrive later what to expect. In short, it's impossible to keep anything secret about a persistent world. As soon as a few players know it, they'll tell the other players.
Chapter 7, "Storytelling and Narrative," introduced the emergent narrative: stories that emerge from the core mechanics of a game. In a persistent world, stories emerge not so much from the core mechanics as from interactions among the players. The best emergent stories (those that make the player feel as if he's participating in a story created by a great writer) occur in purely role-playing environments with almost no gamelike elements. In effect, the story experience in a persistent world comes about when the players are excellent role-players: good at acting and improvisational theater. As a designer, you cannot force good stories to emerge; it depends too much on the imagination and talent of the participants.
