Quests 148
Aeonite writes "Quests have always been a part of fantasy gaming; from the earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons to World of Warcraft's myriad quest lines, quests have given players purpose beyond button-pressing and mindless grinding. Jeff Howard's Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narrative is an exploration of such quests in both literary and gaming contexts, comparing and contrasting their appearances in each medium and striving to bring the two worlds closer together by imbuing game quests with more meaning." Read below for the rest of Michael's review
In his preface, Howard first attempts to define quests, both in his own terms and with respect to the likes of Campbell and Frye. In short, a narrative quest is a "journey to attain a meaningful goal," such as one might find in The Odyssey, The Faerie Queene, or The Quest for the Holy Grail. Such quests are romantic, archetypal, and laden with meaning and purpose. On the contrary, a game quest is in Howard's words "an activity in which players must overcome challenges to reach a goal." The disparity in the language used here is clear, especially when Howard goes on to clarify game quests as being "about action that is meaningful to a player on the level of ideas..." Narrative quests are about meaningful goals; game quests are about meaningful action. Howard quotes Auden as saying that "the search for a lost button is not a quest," but is this not exactly the sort of quest we find in MMOs like WOW? Time-filling quests to give the player some sort of activity, to provide "meaningful play" in the absence of meaningful goals.
| Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives | |
| author | Jeff Howard |
| pages | 248 |
| publisher | A.K. Peters Ltd |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | Michael Fiegel |
| ISBN | 978-1-56881-347-9 |
| summary | A comparison of quests in both literature and gaming |
This inherent problem with quests in games is further touched upon in the introduction to the book, which explains that its own goal is to prove quests out as a bridge between games and narratives. "[I]nteractivity is a prerequisite of enactment but is not sufficient to produce it...," says Howard. "[E]nactment requires active, goal-directed effort, often in the form of balancing long-term and short-term goals." Campbell, Frye, Auden and Propp are all consulted and cited here, exploring their own takes on quests in terms of their place in the heroic monomyth, medieval romance, subjective personal experience, and a "sequence of defined transformations," respectively. However, the most enlightening point comes after an exploration of the history of quest games (from D&D through WOW) where, quoting Tronstad, the author explains that "the paradox of questing is that as soon as meaning is reached, the quest stops functioning as quest." The profusion of more-or-less meaningless quests in MMORPGs "causes the 'main quest' to disappear" according to Howard, who cites the "bleak scenario" of WOW as not being conducive to meaningful gameplay.
Given that challenge, the main portion of the book serves as a sort of lesson plan towards the creation of better, more meaningful quests in modern games. In Chapter 1, "Introduction to Quest Design," Howard asserts that designing meaningful action is key, and ample examples of symbolism and spiritual analogy tied to the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are offered. The following chapters each cover a different element of quest design, more or less aligned along the same breakdowns as one might find in a MUD codebase: w(or)ld, mob(ile), obj(ect) and the like. Each one is broken up into two sections: theory, and practice, the former covering Howard's thoughts on the topic, and the latter delving into practical examples of how to create that quest element using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset.
Chapter 2 covers the "Spaces of the Quest," providing a sort of primer on level design and world design, from dungeons and labyrinths to dreamlike allegorical spaces. Chapter 3 then focuses on "Characters," both NPC and PC alike, including a discussion of encounters, dialog trees, archetypes and some minor venom spat Fable-wards due to the presence in that game of characters literally named Mentor and Hero; perhaps worth mentioning in Fable's defense is that both Hero (of Hero and Leander fame) and Mentor (Odysseus' sagacious friend) are both legitimate names derived from Greek myth. But I digress.
Chapter 4 explores "Objects," specifically those quest items that players seek out and gather on their quests. "[T]he drive to acquire objects in Everquest challenges literary understandings of games because players do not seek to interpret these objects," Wesp is quoted as saying here. The assumption seems to be that quests should strive to contain objects laden with meaning and symbolism, whether they be "rods of eight parts" that one must piece together or symbolic tattoos such as those found in Planescape: Torment. Certainly, many MMOs could learn a few lessons from this chapter, being as so many have players running around collecting feces, offal and skins. Indeed, the quests that send them off to do such things are explored in Chapter 5, "Challenges." Here Howard covers fetch/collect quests, kill quests, escort quests and the like, providing a somewhat awkward apology for kill quest proliferation by trying to compare kill grinding in games like WOW with the intense violence practiced by Odysseus. Of course, Odysseus was never sent on a quest to kill 12 Cyclopes to collect their eyes for a healing potion; once again, the difference between meaningful action and meaningful goals rears its ugly head. Indeed, Howard provides a somewhat telling example of an attempt to rectify this disparity in his scripting example, wherein he has King Arthur bestowing Gawain several keys to use on various chests so Gawain can open them in sequence to find objects hidden inside each which will help him on his quest. Surely there are examples of this sort of rote quest sequencing to be found in folklore and mythology; Russian mythology in particular is full of things done in threes. Yet one cannot help but feel that it makes the whole thing somewhat less epic in the retelling when a knight of the Round Table is reduced to playing puzzle games.
Chapter 6 of the book closes out the lesson plan with "Quests and Pedagogy," an example of how Howard used The Crying of Lot 49 with his own students to explore the nature of quests in a video game setting. This rather short chapter is followed by a Conclusion, summarizing what's come before, and then several lengthy Appendices: a guide to the Aurora Toolset; an excerpt from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and an excerpt from The Faerie Queene. An excellent Works Cited page (nearly as long as Chapter 6) and an adequate index close out the book. In total, the book weighs in at 248 pages, although 46 pages of that is introduction (15 more if you count Chapter 1) and over 80 pages is composed of conclusion, appendices and endmatter. Thus, about half of the book is either introduction or conclusion, frontmatter or endmatter, and this makes the book feel somewhat imbalanced, taking a long time to introduce and then back up the topic while spending not enough time (in my opinion) actually working through it. Howard's writing style is excellent and the subject matter worthy; I wish he had spent more time in his book's Act 2; perhaps he would have been able to extend his ideas even further than he does, striving not only to infuse quests with meaningful activity but with meaningful goals as well. Too much of game quest design is derived from the Latin origin of the word quest (which Howard tells us comes from questare, which means " to seek,") and not enough on the purpose of the quest, which is to have a heroic journey with a "Happily Ever After" at the end. Yet MMOs almost by definition require that many millions of players walk the exact same heroic path; would the epic tale of King Arthur be so epic if his round table had 10 million chairs, with ten million knights forever searching for their own copy of the Grail?
"Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest," says King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail."
"Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he will be very keen," replies a French soldier. "Uh, he's already got one, you see."
Therein lies the problem: he's already got one, and so does everyone else. Because everyone has done the quest, and furthermore everyone wants to keep grinding for the +2 grail, which will no doubt be available in the next expansion, or perhaps in the Player's Handbook IV, or as an exclusive Dragon Magazine feature, available to subscribers of D&D Insider. Many (if not most) fantasy games can never have meaningful, magical quests where you get the vorpal sword and slay the Jabberwock and save the world, because their Sisyphean stories can never truly end; the Horde will always be at war with the Alliance, and the ring will never, ever make it to that volcano, and there will always be another supplement or sequel, another dungeon to raid, another hamlet of Hommlet to rescue. One telling Neverwinter Nights module is called Infinite Dungeons; the solitary hero has turned into the solitaire hero, ever grinding away. Sure, Odysseus had his wandering Odyssey as he searched for home, and Galahad took years to quest for the Holy Grail, but in each case they eventually found what they were looking for. Unfortunately, right now much of the game industry seems to generally be following the example of King Pellinore, endlessly pursuing his Questing Beast.
What Howard attempts to do with Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives is truly worthwhile, and I look forward to the dialog his book will inspire. He would have us re-examine the game quest in terms of the narrative quest, and apply those lessons to gaming. The book is well worth a read, both as a lesson plan for making the activity of questing more meaningful, as well as a first step towards giving games that rely heavily on quests — especially MMOS — more meaningful goals. If the game industry can pull that off, it will be an impressive feat, worthy of Sir Galahad himself. If not... well, there's always another 12 wolf pelts to collect.
You can purchase Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Re:Are Quests in MMOGs doable? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought of that a long time ago. Like most player-submitted ideas for MMOs, it sounds great at first, but has some difficult to pass problems. The problem in this case is that most players will never touch these items. As they realize how difficult it is to get them, they will give up, and move on to other things. Of course, if your game is good in other ways, then maybe the "other things" they move onto is the regular dime a dozen MMO quests. MMOs are different from single player CRPGs. In a CRPG, if there is only one item, that is OK, because there is only one adventurer.
Re:Are Quests in MMOGs doable? (Score:5, Insightful)
The big problem here is that people play these games primarily so that they get to be the hero. If they wanted to be nobodies in a big world of people who are more interested in more important things, then they could just go out into the real world. The aim of MMORPGs, I suspect, is to try to make each player feel like he or she is THE hero in a bigger world.
Of course, you quickly run into the old paradox: In a world where everyone is special, no one is.
Re:Are Quests in MMOGs doable? (Score:1, Insightful)
"You would get small uprisings with people trying to take over the guild and people moving around rouge style stealing items."
ROGUE. The world is ROGUE. People do not move over the world in the style of a *colour*. I bet you talking about player's "loosing" lives too, don't you?
Seriously, why has the internet, as a whole, lost the ability to spell the words "rogue" and "lose"?
(This is horrendously off-topic, and probably flamebait, so posting AC)
Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
In epic quest stories, the quest is about what the journey makes the person on it.
In a game it's about phat loot.
Re:Are Quests in MMOGs doable? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem of low-level or casual players not being able to attain the really big items can easily be compensated for by creating quests for them that are related to it, quests with their own unique (or semi-unique) rewards.
Easily be compensated? Don't be ridiculous. The problem is that you can't easily create anything unique. The entire point of games in terms of economics (ALL GAMES) not just MMOGs, is that you develop a small amount of content to be played hopefully by several hundred thousand or million players.
To give casual players quests with their own unique or semi-unique rewards would turn that upside down... you'd be writing quests and designing items with the intention that only single or at least a small fraction of the players could use it. Since a given player will only play a small fraction of the quests you have to develop 10s of thousands of quests. Meanwhile the cost to develop your game goes WAY up, while players are PISSed because the quests they had available to them weren't as good as what their fellow players had.
but I could envision a game where a half-dozen high-level guilds all fight to collect a set of relics that will . Those guilds could sponsor, hire, or intimidate other, smaller guilds into fighting proxy wars and doing various other things for them.
Oh whee how fun for the casual player that would be! Lets log in and be some one eleses bitch. Lets mule their stuff around, and become their grunts and their farmers. Yeah that's real fulfilling and fun. I know I can't wait to farm 1000 units of tin and 2000 orc scalps and 4000 small stones so that your 'top' guild can build a catapult in its pointless never ending dick waving contest against some other 'top' guild.
I hate to burst your bubble, but nobody wants to play THAT game except the people at the top, the people who think they can get to the top, and the lunatic fringe whose dream in these games is to run a flower shop, or be a tailor.
Most "casuals" are exactly like hard core players except for the time invested per week. They want the good items, they want to see the end game. They are frustrated that the progress is stupidly slow (which is designed to keep hard core players from racing through it. They are frustrated that the end-game is blocked to them because you simply have to start scheduling life around the game to participate in raids, and they simply won't or can't do that. But its what they WANT.
What would casual players REALLY want from an MMO? That the hardcore players somehow weren't in it.
That way they would be able to be in the top guilds. They would be able to make discoveries. The designers could remove the most egregious of time-sinks because the casuals aren't going to race through it anyway. The designers could do the end game so that it could be played by pick-up groups instead of scheduled guild raids. That they'd get their money's worth since they weren't subsidizing piles of content they'll never be able to see and subsizing the bandwidth hardcore players use.
I'm not sure HOW to best accomplish this, but that's what casual players really want. They want to play in a world DESIGNED to let them play as casuals, competing and adventuring with other casuals.
Nobody really wants to be a casual in a hard core game, and suggesting that a hard core game would be 'teh awesome' for casuals if the hard core players could sponsor and intimidate them into doing their menial shit represents a complete and total failure to 'get it'.
the reason that rpg's are popular with geeks (Score:0, Insightful)
is that they are gay , pointless wastes of time designed to give the player some sort of means to think they have a purpose in life when in fact they have none. Keep 'em dumb, keep 'em distracted while you destroy the real world around 'em.
Re:Are Quests in MMOGs doable? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats simple. All you have to do put a limit on how much time a player can spend log'd in.
I've often thought that might be workable. Its actually how the old BBS games used to work, since phone lines were limited, you had to restrict people to a limited set of time just to let people play. It worked very well, and everyone could compete effectively... even if they -gasp- had a job or life.
This will never happen though
Agreed. Sadly.
as hardcore gammers tend to be the most loyal and spend the most money. So executives will keep trying to please everyone
That is an interesting assumption. I'm not sure its actually true.
1) Perhaps casuals are less loyal because the games are designed to punish us for being casuals. The ridiculous hard-core time sinks and blocked unaccessible raid-only content, being relagated to scavenging the hardcore leavings from the auction house because that's the most "efficient" way to gear up ... etc... all weighs heavily against us, and ruin the fun, and burns us out and bores us.
2) Perhaps casuals in a game designed for them, would be every bit as loyal as a hard core, because the challenges and timesinks were appropriate.
3) Hardcores may spend "more money", but the casuals are more profitable. The guy who logs in 10 hours a month pays the same $15/mo as a hard core, but uses a tiny fraction of the content and bandwidth that a hardcore does. He's also far less likely to raise a massive stink about some perceived class or weapon imbalance he's perceived.
4) Casuals vastly outnumber the hardcores. I remember reading the statistics for everquest once that they published in a newsletter. The number of active (meaning paid) accounts that were multiple years old that didn't have a character past 50th level or higher was shocking. The number of paid multiple year accounts that didn't have a single character "flagged" or "keyed" for various high level zones was staggering. Something like 95% of accounts had never been to the top end Luclin Zone (Vex Thal), or visited Tier 2 planes in Planes of Power. (They later relaxed the requirements to get in... I'm not sure exactly.) The significant majority of players didn't have their "Epic 1.0" item, and this was at a point, YEARS after they were introduced, but were still considered 'good' to 'very good' for most classes and a desireable status symbol even if you'd gotten something better. (and really only a hardcore had much shot of having something much better in most cases) at the time.
Overall most of the players had at least one high level player, and spent the vast majority of their time mucking around in the pre-endgame content of the most recent expansion or two.
Everquest was clearly not designed for the majority of its players. WoW I'm confident isn't either, although I've never seen numbers to back it up.