Posted July 05, 2023 by kemze
... and here we meet again, part two of the Alpha 13 update.
Merka, and Sera. They became alive. Well, to be technical, they became real players for a moment as I controlled them but hid their nametag. So they looked like NPCs, but acted like a living person. Yet they were living according to the Kemoverse. Isn't that cool? The collective response was unforgettable: I placed Merka in the student rooms when absolutely no one was expecting it (I had been quiet about adding this feature to a new alpha) and everyone went dead silent as she was inspecting everyone's newly acquired room. And it seems that it left an impact: The image above this paragraph is of one of the players whose room got inspected by Merka. Later, Sera and Merka spoke a bit outside on campus in front of the group, and that was that.
Now, of course, this was only one spontaneous meetup with Merka and Sera, and the novelty of experiencing it for the first time will surely hold a special place in the memories of playing the game. But I can't help but feel that conducting live action roleplay through the game as npcs is an incredibly novel and fresh way to experience a story and that it warrants an extra thought. I mean, how many games actually does this as an official game feature? None, really. I've experienced some games, namely, theatrical plays in FFXIV - I remember attending a live event of A Stage Reborn, where players made use of in-game outfits, chat, and housing furniture to decorate a stage and putting on a live theatrical play. I'm also sure that there exists acting groups in VRChat that puts on performances. But as "official" NPCs or game content, or even considering/remembering player actions? That's rare.
There seems to always be a big distinction between "official" game content and "player" led content, presumably to avoid confusion when new players join in - but when I thought about the design of Kemoverse Online and what I wanted out of it, I intended to make the game feel like you mattered more than other games. And not just with a small cap on the server population, or unique rooms, or customizing your character - but I always wanted to play along with others in other roles than just the game owner and watch, remember, and include the things people do and make it canon. The sticky notes and sprays in the world goes along with this philosophy, too. The game population leaves traces in the world that can be there for a long time. You're not just a dumb observer, tasked to finish objectives, and spend in-game money. Not at all.
Picture this. An average MMO game wants you to log in and manage your character. You eye your currency, the next level goal, the next objective to fulfill. You walk around in the world as your character, but you know, deep inside, that most of your actions don't matter. You just do what you're told by the game to get to the next point and to get a reward. As a consequence, unless an NPC is written to be extremely annoying, persistent, or overly emotional, all of them are fairly forgettable. They're often just symbols that accomodates you, the main character, in the story. They are pawns that curls the storytelling ice for you - they set up the linear stage, push you through with clear goals, and let you have the reward. All written out on online guides and clear steps. With the amount of active players in an online game, it is an understandable model.
Not that there's anything inherently wrong with this system since some people just want to come home from work and zone off with easy objectives. That's okay. But surely there must be some online games that caters to social experiences. A huge part of being online is about being social. So where are those games? Actually, what does it mean for you to feel like an online game matters? Can online games have objectives and tasks to do that doesn't make it feel like a chore or a second job? Can online games even be made so that you feel like you actually matter as a player and not just playing in a setting with objectives in a sea of 1000 other main characters?
I think so, and I think that's my purpose as the lead developer here. My intention is not just to develop the game Kemoverse Online, but also create and evolve the story and involve the active players with it. Make it a story that lives out in real time and permanently etches the actions of players in to official cutscenes and NPC dialogs to reflect the value that you, as an active player, has contributed with. Many things have already happened in the game since the start of meetups last year, and I consider all of these things as canon - this is what me, and by extension, Merka and Sera hear through the grapevine. They can be alive just as much as I am alive.
And this is where the live action roleplay comes in, the peak of this concept - the mixture of real time gameplay and official canon storytelling - in an interactive meetup. It's not me or Lumi explaining what you should do, it's Merka explaining the world directly to you. It isn't a dumb, predictable NPC dialog that you can game around, but rather, there isn't anything to game. It's a social interaction between you, the player, and a living, non-AI NPC that can tell you all about the Kemoverse world, lore, or anything you're curious of. And you'll get a real answer back.
It basically mixes together the best parts of games: the online sociability of playing with others with the flexibility of games as a medium to manipulate, appear, and act in different ways.
In the very beginning, I planned to write regular quest-style cutscenes and scripted content, which is why I created the action scripter (which most people seem to be using for fish farming, it seems, hah). I've always had trouble with this kind of mode for telling stories since they take a big amount of effort and attention, so over time, I've considered doing lighter updates with smaller amounts of story in each piece, though, it gets fragmented and pretty confusing.
However, the idea of live acting lore-related content is much more appealing and compatible with how I work. Over the years, I've tried many mediums for telling stories - comics, text posts, etc - but none is as interesting as roleplaying (you know, I used to do it as a teenager!). Half-improv, half-knowledge based acting on the spot. It's almost like DMing NPC characters of a DnD session, but without the attached game mechanics - which, ever since trying DnD many years ago, the improv being the thing I was most fascinated by and dreamed of doing one day. So, I guess LAGR represents exactly that.
Now, a big challenge to this medium are the timezones, since not everyone can be online the same time as I can be online and play a storyline. So clearly, there needs to be some sort of compromise, and especially since I still want to have cutscenes in the game that you can progress by yourself. I'm thinking that there should be two types of npc events - one are the built-in npc lore events I spoke about in that one blog post, that progresses the main story - and another, new one, would be the "live" npc events that is held at a regular interval for lighter storyline and lore fluff.
From our experiences with weekly meetups, it seems that not everyone can attend every time, which is understandable - to resolve this, there could be a third actor that records the live lore event as a video to upload. For the built-in npc events, I would consider changing it to an on-demand storyline, with some lighter requirements to progress, more akin to traditional storytelling design in those generic mmo games. After all, I think it's helpful to have features similar to what people are used to in other games so they aren't turned off by having to re-learn basic systems.
And, well, I'm still thinking and designing all of this, thinking how to make it possible and real, because I strongly believe in bringing cool and new ways to play games and feel something different from them. And also because it would be really cool to make a game that feels like it matters. For you and for me.
Let's see where this evolves. Take care out there in the Kemoverse.