If you have to market and make a big deal about the lore in your game then you’re doing something wrong. Lore by itself, without a frame of reference, will never be a unique selling proposition. You can release all the novellas you want, tell people how you have this glorious archive of rich history surrounding the world you’ve created, and spam the MMO news sites for months and it will all mean nothing without something to connect that lore to great gameplay.
Look at WildStar’s Loremageddon or whatever they’re calling this marketing push. Why should I care? Why should that story EVER matter to me? I have absolutely no connection to any of it, nor do the rest of the players in this industry. The game already flopped. Lore isn’t bringing anyone back. Had this been pushed before launch it wouldn’t have made any difference.
EverQuest has a fascinating and rich foundation of lore. None of that mattered pre-launch for EQ 1, but it mattered a lot for EQ 2. The original EverQuest connected players to the world through the experience of playing the game and was able to present the lore to the players in a way that actually became meaningful. The lore mattered because the game was good enough to get the players to feel like they were living it. We’re kind of back to square one with EverQuest Next though as a new generation of MMO gamers try and discover what the world of EverQuest is all about. Lore is only there to bring in the old school players like myself — and funny enough we’re scrutinizing the heck out of it.
Warcraft is another example. Without the critically acclaimed success of the RTS games, Warcraft would have been nothing more than some orcs and humans. Blizzard had already told a glorious story through a series of amazing games, and that meant they could push WoW’s lore and story far more. Fast forward 10 years and they were able to push story so hard pre-launch of WoD because the story had been building up for a decade around a game that people enjoy playing.
Lore sells itself when it is presented well within a game that is ‘good enough.’ Lore becomes a powerful, moving experience that will create emotional bonds between players and virtual worlds. It is a necessity. It is not, however, something to put at the forefront of a new IP without incredible support from the rest of the game.
Wild-star was marketed as a quirky space sci-fi comedy, and it simply wasn’t. They flip-flopped so much on tone that it was jarring. One zone your helping rescue cubed pigs for the space wallmart, the next your questing through half-lifes Ravenholm. You went into Wild-star with the idea that the games tone would be bright and fun but you’re thrown in to this world of everyone dying or conquering each other. Then you have the races. Some were fun, some were serious, its like they looked at WoW and said, you know what makes WoW fun? Their Easter eggs. Lets market the game with all those funny bits, and then the lore writers were trying to make this epic serious sci-fi game and everyone forgot to tell them till 5 months from the deadline and all the “funny” bits were slap-dashed into the story line.
Game companies should realize by now that trying to make a better WoW is only going to result in failure. Why? because WoW has 10 years of polish, a well established player base, and it will incorporate all of your game’s defining features into its next/future expansion. Sure you can out innovate WoW but they are borg of MMORPGs their uniqueness will be assimilated and as a hole make them stronger. Wow’s next expansion will have version of player housing. They will steal liberally from WildStar and reap the rewards of a game that failed.
Very much agree with this. When it comes to MMOs, the way I see it is you either have a pre-existing IP (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, DC Universe, Your Own Previous MMO etc etc), in which case the lore that already exists and almost everyone interested in your game will already have made up their mind about it, or you don’t, in which case you’re going to need an awful lot more than some lore about stuff no-one ever heard of to generate traction.
Once players are invested in your game because they find it fun, then the lore can really begin to firm up loyalty and longevity. I don’t think it works the other way around. Has it ever?
I’m trying hard to think if I’ve ever played a game in which I cared about the lore at all. I never bothered with the campaigns in any RTS I’ve played and going into WoW was more about looking for an alternative to EQ. Once I was playing WoW I still didn’t care about the lore. I tried playing an old FF game a few years back and stopped when I couldn’t be bothered to play it anymore because the game play was boring compared to pong and the story completely forgettable. I think lore is very important to some players but if you build an enjoyable game the lore is just wall paper. The only time lore becomes essential is when the game just sucks or you are making a game based on an existing IP, where you need to stick to the lore.
What’s odd to me is I’m a huge fiction reader so I clearly love stories and yet I don’t pay any attention to the “lore” in these games. And yes I played EQ at launch and raided the Planes and a few other areas. I know the names of some gods. I think I even had the sword of Cazic Thule. I loved the sword. Didn’t really care why Cazic was hanging around in that dungeon for me to kill. It’s odd.
Players Relationships with each other is more important than any lore. In fact it is the lore that matters or should. Course when games are designed to be solo’d it means less. No wonder every game is a 3 monther.
@Baba black sheep, I would suspect that the seeming contradiction between loving to read fiction and not paying attention to lore in video games is because the lore and writing in general is usually atrocious. Even when the writing is comparatively good it is usually horrible.
It’s the other way around. 🙂
You meant to say a game is meaningless without the Lore.
In WildStar’s case, you care because those are characters and races you interact with if you play the game, and gives you context for their actions and reactions to things.
It’s the most important thing in the world, honestly.