Much paper-based blood has no doubt been spilled over a question Richard Bartle posted on Terra Nova today. Why are MMOs largely composed within the fantasy genre? It can’t all be because of Tolkien, can it? And, by the way, Bartle offers this as proof that the most MMOs are, in fact, fantasies.

Fantasy games make up the big purple chunkA few answers provided by Terra Nova readers state that Western mythology is fantastical, and specifically of the Tolkien-esque knights, ladies, and dragons variety. This sounds true, but as Bartle points out - Western mythos also includes Greek and Roman mythology. Others state that fantasy-based MMOs have done well, and therefore, more of them are made. The rich keep getting richer. That sounds more true than the pull of native mythology, to me.

But I think that the root of the issue is the player’s physical understanding of the world. Fantasy relies on the metaphor of magic to be believable and science fiction relies on the process of technology to be believable. And it’s not even necessarily true that “magic” is some cure-all for the Oopsthatmakesnosense Syndrome. Magical universes need to be constructed using rules, and those rules need to be consistent.I think that the appeal of fantasy has an enormous amount to do with the metaphor of magic - and is not necessarily popular because *someone* doesn’t have a realistic physics engine. Sci-fi depends, unlike real technology, on the player having an understanding of why or how something new in the world works in order for its impact to be believable. And I say “new” because no one quibbles about the unlikelihood of Luke’s X-wing entering the atmosphere at a safe angle given its design, because an X-wing is basically a car and we understand that cars move. But in a sci-fi VW, if you were to send players to get xorphic acid for their ray gun, then you better have modeled in a top-loading vial on the ray gun for this acid to go into or have some other suitable excuse. This is especially true in books, tbh, but I think that the same scrutiny applies to VWs.

Magic, on the other hand, is largely what ppl use to explain technology to themselves. I think that ppl in general actually understand magic in a way that they don’t understand technology. Magic is about the end result, technology is about the process. And in a virtual world you often just want your players to accept the parameters you’ve laid down because, well, you need them to get past your fiction and get into the gameplay. Or get deeply into the fiction if there is no gameplay.So if your players are focused on the process of the world and not on its end result, then they are less likely to be immersed, and less likely to stick around. Players who stick around increase the profitability of the IP for which they came and stayed. I think that is when the exponential growth of fantasy worlds can be in part accounted for by the “some have been successful, more will be made” logic.

Merci Hammon posted this up on Monday, 17 December, 2007 at 17:55 and filed it under Uncategorized. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.