MMOG as 21st Century Fiction

Lisbeth Klastrup has a great article in Game Studies entitled The Worldness of Everquest: Exploring 21st Century Fiction. She study MMOG from the perspective that MMOG is a entertaining fictional "text" like novels and films. I quote below interesting excerpts below.

On whether MMOG can be considered as fiction, she says (brackets [] added):

" ...one could argue that our understanding of the ontology of the [MMOG] world is that we know it is a fiction and by entering the world we as players become part of the fictional discourse ourselves, while we are at the same time well aware that what goes on inside it is indeed a social reality and that this reality, as T.L Taylor has aptly pointed out in Play Between Worlds (Taylor 2006), often is, or will be, closely interwoven with our social world outside the fiction. An analysis of an online world should therefore also include an exploration of the interplay between the fictionality and sociality and how these two aspects of experience inform each other. "

I am thinking how about players who see MMOG as another window where bring into their real life engagements and decisions that they make in the game world are intertwined with real life agenda. Would the ontology of the MMOG world is still a fiction? I am just curious.

Kalstrup does not see MMOG as a narrative which is understood as the presentation of a series of events. She says:

" ...in the case of gameworlds, though stories about the world exist, told in companion manuals and official and fan-based websites, the online world is more than a mental construct (a world projected by a story), it is unique in that it presents an actualised version of an imaginary universe. Contrary to earlier forms of fiction, the way we make sense of gameworlds in general follows not from what we are told (what is being presented to us), but from how we experience gameplay and the architecture of the world itself, the way we are forced to act in certain ways as players, the way we simulate that we live in this world. In other words, it is neither a case of of showing or telling but of acting out. This is not to say that players do not have the experience of taking part in an unfolding story. In fact, online worlds are unique because they enable the unfolding of many stories at the same time, not the least through the design of completable quests with a story-like structure "

I agree that "we are forced to act in certain ways as players" and very often such incident happens because of how the game is designed and other times, because of the gameplay of other players like grief play. However, Brett Staebell in The Espapist (A Griefer's Life for Me) proves how grief play has potential to enhance game play experience of other players. So while gameworlds affords many stories unfolding at the same, these stories also cut into each other.

Klastrup also sees gameworld in MMOG as reflective lab where actions in the gameworld reflect players' "a mediated understanding of what a world is or should look like". She explains (bold added):

" ...the simulated online world, the description of it (the back stories and the stories introducing new expansions) as well as the myriad player-generated stories about the world, functions much in the same way as the presentation of fictional universes in "analogue" storytelling: they are frameworks of interpretation which allows us to judge whether events in the world are, for instance, "moral" or "immoral", "good" or "bad" according to the "world rules", the designated morals of that particular world. This ties well in with Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith & Tosca’s observation that, in general, the function of the fictional world in relation to games is to "prompt players to imagine that their actions take place within a meaningful frame" (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith & Tosca 2008: 171) "

Klastrup notices there is what she calls "seamless oscillation between taking part in the fictional discourse and stepping outside it" of players' behaviour in MMOG gameworld. This is part of their wholeness or immersion experience in the gameworld, and it does not "dilute" their experience.

Another interesting excerpt is when Klastrup hypothesizes (bold added):

" A hypothesis would be that what players come to think of as memorable experiences could be especially those experiences which marked the transition from one stage of knowledge to another. The continuous presence of players helps keep the fiction of the world alive; when their experiences are communicated to other players either in-world or on out-of-world websites, they themselves create and become part of the many "texts" which enable the collective and ongoing (re)creation of the world. "

Klastrup identifies three stages of experience and knowledge players go through in MMOG. The first stage is "getting to know the world", the second stage is "interacting with the world", and the third stage is "to perform in the world". About the final stage, she again hypothesizes (bold added):

" Thus, an interesting hypothesis is that this final stage of one’s life in a gameworld is also characterised by the emergence of player-told stories which emphasise and commiserate the important social events in a player’s or a guild’s ongoing history. "

With regard to Klastrup hypothesis, I would like to add commentary and share interesting insights from my interviews with players with regard to fan-fiction and guild's ongoing history. To prevent from making this post too long, I will do that in a separate post.