Gametrodon

I don’t like putting direct statements on this blog. First of all, they can be traced back to me, and second of all, big bold statements have a way of being wrong. Saying something “can’t be done” is the sort of thing some fans view as a challenge, and saying something can’t be done in video games is really just begging for it.

But I really wanted to open this rant with “Live service games and narrative progression are fundamentally incompatible.” I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to say that I think “Live service games and meaningful narrative progression are two things no one has managed to combine yet.” And I’m going to spend the rest of this rant talking about that.

Also, all the games I’m going to be using as examples? I like all these games. I have played a ton of them. I wish the thing I’m about to rant about didn’t get in the way of me liking them more.

(One of the many) Problems with Live Service Games

Usually when I rant about games designed as live service (that is to say a continually updated game), I tend to ranting about their monetization and progression systems. This is because an “always online” live game needs to generate revenue, and provide players things to work towards. Those two needs tend to lead to design decisions that don’t prioritize fun.

Today I’m going to ignore that, and talk about something else. Let’s define a few terms for the purpose of identifying my frustration. Here’s how I’m defining these terms for this writeup.

Live Service: Any game designed to be played repeatedly without narrative end. These games are often played in individual matches or games, with progression and interaction systems designed to turn the game into long form play experience. MMOs would be a classic example of this, but as I’m not into that genre, I’m going to be using Hunt: Showdown, Dead by Daylight, and Inkbound for my examples.

Narrative: The elements that make up the “reason for being” for the state of the game. They can be flavor, they can inform mechanics, they can be inconsequential, but they are still present. When I say narrative, I mean everything that forms the explanation for the game’s in-universe existence.

Progression: The advancement of the plot or the story toward a conclusion or resolution. I’m going to use the idea of Hero with A Thousand Faces, because it’s popular, well known, and I’m not a English major so I don’t have a better structure to model my issues.

Terminology Defined, Let’s Get Ranting

Live service is, to put it bluntly, designed to make a great big pile of money forever. It’s cheaper to make a single game and sell it over and over, than it is to make a new one. The most charitable analogy I can make is that it’s like a sports field, or a perhaps a playground. It is, in theory, a fun space to exist within, where a set of skills can be practiced and honed. But—critically—it does not have an ending.

You don’t beat a playground. You don’t “Win” all of soccer. And that’s fine. Lack of narrative structure and lack of payout is not the thing that annoys me here. I have never once played a game of Rocket League, and found myself wondering about the universe of Rocket League, its lore, and how they get those rockets on the cars.

But that’s because Rocket League has never tried to sell itself on some greater narrative to set up the context of the game. Neither did games like Quantum League, Split Gate, or multiplayer Halo.

But some games do have a much heavier narrative and story.

Example 1. Dead by Daylight

Unlike Rocket League, Dead by Daylight does have a “story.” Or at least it has “lore.” A mysterious being called the Entity pulls murderers and randos into an infinite regenerating set of trials in order to feed on their suffering. Each of the playable characters has a (tragic) backstory, and each of the killers has a (tragic) backstory. Over time, more and more information about the Entity’s realm has been added, more information about the killers and their crimes have been revealed, and more characters have been added. We’re left to wonder about the nature of the Entity, and if the survivors ever will truly escape.

Spoiler alert: No. No, they won’t. Because Dead by Daylight is going to run until one of two things happen.

1. The heat death of the universe.
2. It stops making enough money to be worth running.

Probably the second one. And when that happens, the game will be shut down, probably with a sort of last slow signoff.

Dead by Daylight will never do an update where the survivors turn and defeat the killers once and for all. There will be no meaningful plot explanation. The purpose of Dead by Daylight’s lore is support the gameplay, and purpose of the gameplay is to sell copies of the game and microtransaction skins. And because the gameplay succeeds at doing that, it will never change in a meaningful way.

In the case of Dead By Daylight, I find this moderately frustrating. I can observe all of the interesting story and lore, and know that it is ultimately pointless and will never have a meaningful payout.

Example 2. Hunt: Showdown

Hunt: Showdown uses a remarkably similar structure for its setup and lore. A mysterious entity is re-animating corpses and creatures in the Louisiana Bayou. Players take the role of hunters, competing to execute the more threatening of these supernatural creatures, and escape with the proof of their defeat, all in exchange for a big payout.

Again we see the same structures. In-world justification for why the monsters keep reforming. An elaborate and hinted at backstory for each character and creature. “Story” events that are used to introduce new characters and temporary mechanics.

And again I have to ask myself the same question every time I want to engage with this lore: when will the Bayou be purged of zombies? When will the characters experience consequences for their behavior?

Answer: Never! Not gonna happen. Because Hunt won’t run without the hunting. The loop will continue until the servers shut down.

Both of the examples so far annoy me, but they don’t actively hurt my enjoyment of the game itself. Instead, they just make me less willing to engage with something I would otherwise enjoy: the lore and worldbuilding. I know that the mysteries will never be fully solved, so any effort I spend to engage with it will never pay off.

The third example is a bit different.

Example 3. Inkbound

I haven’t done a writeup on Inkbound yet, despite having played 30 hours of it. So yeah, I like Inkbound. I really like Inkbound.

In those 30 hours of Inkbound, I have killed and seen every single enemy or challenge that exists in the game. This is fine, because Inkbound spices it up by providing a truly ridiculous number of unlockables, quests, and challenges.

And it’s those quests that are starting to frustrate me. The game implies that part of the reward of the quests is learning more lore about the world, how it got to the state it’s in, and how it will get out.

Except, again, because this is an unfinished live service game, I am incredibly skeptical that I’m ever going to see that payoff. Instead, everything is starting to feel like I’m being run around for no particular reason, with no real payoff at the end. I’m starting to get annoyed that all of the information I collect may not ultimately serve any real purpose in the greater structure of the game’s narrative.

What makes Inkbound different from the above two is that the implied story progression isn’t a meta-narrative. In theory, it is the actual story that I as a player am contributing to, and progressing. But as a somewhat savvy player, I am beginning to feel that it’s unending busywork designed to fit the structure of the live service game.

Also, before someone says “Well, it’s a roguelike, they can’t have a meaningful and compelling story because the nature of the game requires a constant reset of progress, and looping structure,” I would like to gesture Hades. So I’m pretty confident roguelikes can have a strong narrative.

Conclusions and Takeaway

Having written all this down, I think I might actually have two different sets of problems. One is the frustration of eternally incomplete lore.

The best example of that might be Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch. Games where gameplay doesn’t advance or impact plot or story in the slightest, but they still have worlds I find simultaneously fascinating and recognize as utterly subservient to a structure of perpetual revenue that will never offer the conclusion I might want.

The lore and tone for these games is eternally captivating and enthralling. But it’s like being hooked by an endless fishing line. There will always be more mysteries, more questions, more information, right up until there isn’t, and the game shuts down.

My second problem is that of pointless lore progression as a reward. I didn’t care that Inkbound’s story wasn’t progressing until I was told that I could progress it. That I could make a difference. That I could defeat villains and advance the plot. I didn’t care that I couldn’t slay the spire until I was given that sisyphian task.

I resent being told that I should take a world and story seriously, that I should care at all about what happens, when the creators clearly don’t have any intention of doing so.

Finally

I’m not saying all live service games do this. I’m not saying that doing this sort of thing is some inherent failure of a game. But after seeing it across a large number of games over the years, it makes me wary of caring or investing myself in the start of a story that might not ever be planned to have an end.

I remember a time when Penny Arcade had interesting hot takes. Or maybe good hot takes. Jerry Holkins will always be a better writer than me, but I think I might be able to make some points better than him, so let me scream a few things into the void.

Let’s not bury the lede: If you buy Diablo, you’re enabling a bloated corpse of a company helmed by an incredible asshole to keep making money doing all the shit that seems to be ruining this industry.

First, Holkins implies “Nothing can harm Bobby.” This is an interesting take, and is like saying “The Ancient Old One is ever living and undying.” Maybe that’s true! Maybe it’s just what his priests say to keep people from trying to oust him. I think it’s more likely that he’ll be invulnerable until he isn’t. Also, the idea that we’ll be rid of him when the merger goes through seems a bit unlikely. Or at a bare minimum, it’ll be a while.

Next Holkinds says that Diablo 4 is good. Which is like. Sure. Yes. I think we all knew that. I think their $666 MILLION in sales in the last two weeks might be an indicator of something.

But this isn’t fucking insulin. It’s not food. This is a luxury product. It is literally the easiest thing to opt out of engaging with. I’d get why people might have a hard time not buying it if it was Soylent Green, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here. This is a video game.

Finally, there’s this idea that not buying the game is somehow punishing people who worked on it, which is, frankly, fucking fascinating. There’s something called a salary, and it’s what you get paid when you do work. I think most of the people who actually made Diablo 4 got their money.

They’re not the ones who are going to be enriched by the cash shop, battlepass, or extra premium editions. When it’s time to pay out corporate bonuses, the lion’s share of that money will be going into the pockets of an enormous jerk.

Here’s the reality of it: a lot of people want to play Diablo 4 because it’s a fun game, and because they have nostalgia for the franchise. It’s also a game made by a company with a culture of harassment, abuse, and union busting. You’re allowed to decide you don’t care all that much.

But don’t fucking act like buying Diablo somehow helps out those poor souls who made it. Don’t act like there was no other option.

I have 5000 hours of PoE. I loved Diablo 3. I’m not touching D4. You want to play Diablo because it’ll be fun, and you don’t really give a shit about all the awful shit, and how miserable Blizzard is?

Fine. Don’t pretend it’s something else though.