We’ve been talking for the past couple of Vague Patch Notes columns about the fact that MMOs are, as a genre, defined by having other people around that you cannot control. This isn’t really up for debate; it’s the entire premise of the game. But there’s a connected issue that comes with video games in general, and that means we get to talk about solipsism. Which is really interesting when it comes to video games in general!
Solipsism, as a concept, refers to a belief that you are alone in being a conscious, thinking entity. Everything and everyone else around you is not. There are no other sentient human beings who have wants, desires, and thoughts which are separate from yours; they are fundamentally imposters. You are the only actual mind, and everything else is potentially an illusion created by your mind or at least just a case of a bunch of non-thinking automated processes that imitate actual agency.
You may find yourself thinking upon reading about this concept that it’s the sort of idea that doesn’t pass basic psychological muster for anyone who’s over three years old, and in broad strokes that’s fair. The truth is that an actual uncritical and comprehensive belief in solipsism is pretty rare. More common are beliefs somewhere along the “main character syndrome” scale, like feeling there are some other people who do in fact have full autonomy but that the number is something less than everyone.
The actual psychological diagnosis of where this intersects with narcissism is for an entirely different discussion best reserved for someone who actually does psychology for a living, of course. But there’s something interesting the games industry can say about solipsism: When it comes to single-player games, it is actually correct. You are the only person with actual agency in the game world. Everyone else is a digital simulacrum without any actual ability to make choices.
If you play Grand Theft Auto V, you will interact with a large number of characters who have their own stated goals, personalities, dreams, and so forth. But they’re not real. They don’t actually have any goals. Heck, if you’re on a mission with an NPC who dies, you have to restart the mission because that isn’t how the game is supposed to happen.
But that isn’t the case for MMOs. Sure, some of the people you see in MMOs are pretend people. Thancred Waters is not real in Final Fantasy XIV, even though he’s written as the most Divorced Dad Who Forgot To Send You A Birthday Card So He’s Taking You Out To Dinner possible. But the other people you see running around in the city are real people. There is an actual human being behind the screen for each one. (Well, or a bot program for some of them, but that’s hardly the point.)
The interesting thing is that some players and some games condition you to look at the other people around you as if they aren’t real. And here’s where things start to get really weird.
I mentioned before that “MMOs are built on having people around” isn’t really up for debate, and I stand by that. As I’ve mentioned in prior columns on this theme, MMOs basically do not work without other people around. The design of areas, of gameplay, of quests, of everything relies upon other people being there. Not to say that you can’t solo large stretches of any game because you certainly can (FFXIV’s latest expansion allows you to solo your way through the entire story up until the very last trial if you so desire); it’s just that the game is built primarily to account for other people taking part.
But the solipsism problem comes up when an MMO treats the other people around you not as people who are doing their own thing (which may or may not overlap with things that you want to do) but as mechanics to achieve your goals. World of Warcraft has a bad habit of doing that, to use an obvious example; the people in your party are your competition for things you want, not your allies or friends. There are a lot of ways that game design can subtly reinforce the idea that you are the person whose needs, wants, and desires are real, or at least the only ones that actually matter.
It’s kind of insane when you think about it because you are literally sharing this space with other people. Why should you get priority over what everyone else wants? Why should anyone get priority?
“I’m a paying customer!” So are lots of other people, and you didn’t pay to get a vote in development; you paid a subscription fee for access, or you paid a one-time fee for an outfit or basic access or whatever. This is where the solipsism tends to start creeping back in. Because if you’re used to video games in the broad strokes, you’re used to the idea that this is my toy, and I get to decide how it gets played with. I can mod my single-player version of GTAV all I want and no one can stop me! It’s my toy, not yours!
But the online version? That’s everyone’s sandbox, and if I’m kicking down your sandcastles, I am the jerk.
There is a certain vein of very understandable thought that you should, in fact, do what’s best for you and advocate for it as an unalloyed good. As someone who really prefers to play a melee character to a ranged spellcaster in any game, there is a part of me that wants every game to make melee far more powerful than casting spells. In some games that is true, and in some games it isn’t, and in a single-player game I can modify things to make sure that my preferred playstyle is best if I really need it to be.
But the reality is that if I am playing an MMORPG, that isn’t my stance because it shouldn’t be. My hope is for some degree of parity because while I might be happy if my melee character is better than every ranged spellcaster at everything, that isn’t fair to the people who do want to play that. I may tease MOP’s Bree about playing Controllers and Defenders in City of Heroes, archetypes I do not enjoy as much, but outside of friendly banter, I should want those archetypes to be balanced to be useful, fun, and effective.
Why? Because I am not the only person in this game. If I get something that’s good for me but bad for Bree, then I lose a friend whom I like having in the game, and the game and its community are weaker for it. My desires are not the sole thing that the game should revolve around, which means that sometimes I should not only find myself getting outclassed by her particular picks but be thankful for it. (Her theoretical picks, I should note. We have both played a lot of melee. This is an allegory.)
But what if you don’t have a Bree in your MMORPG? What if you want to live to imitate a particular Simon & Garfunkel song off their second album, Sounds of Silence, and be completely separate from everyone? Well… you aren’t, and we’ll talk about that – along with empty cities, island living, and character failure – when we reconvene next week.
Sometimes you know exactly what’s going on with the MMO genre, and sometimes all you have are Vague Patch Notes informing you that something, somewhere, has probably been changed. Senior Reporter Eliot Lefebvre enjoys analyzing these sorts of notes and also vague elements of the genre as a whole. The potency of this analysis may be adjusted under certain circumstances.
