223!?

For those of you that are on my Facebook, you've probably noticed that I've been referencing Dr. Seuss a good bit, lately. Mostly, it's because I've been re-visiting his works, and I've got to say that the man is a genius.

"The Cat in the Hat" was a children's book in which Dr. Seuss wrote using a minimal list of only 223 words. He is quoted as saying that it took him nine months to complete due to the difficulty involved with such a small vocabulary. However, "The Cat in the Hat" is now perhaps the most famous children's book ever written, long since eclipsing the benign exploits of Dick and Jane. The brilliance of the book comes directly from how little Dr. Seuss had to work from. A true genius is not the one facing down infinity and plucking down nuggets from its vastness. A true genius is the one who solves every day problems without the every day tools by which they are normally solved.

I bought a programming book. Two of them, actually. It's been a while. In fact, it's been so long, Java has jumped beyond the 5.0 that I bought the book for. I've gotta say, it's getting harder and harder to fake this whole "programmer" thing. Generics. Enums. Autoboxing. Static imports. Annotations. For/in loops. I'm pretty sure that they just make this stuff up as they go.

It's cool stuff, though. It makes Java more abstract and interesting. That C++ stuff is sometimes a load of ugly junk that offends my very soul. Java is beautiful. And nowhere is that more obvious than the scene graph-based Java 3D. Suddenly, 3D starts making sense when you stop talking about vertices and start talking from the top down.

But why bother learning Java 3D? I mean, the closest I've ever come to finishing a game - ever - is a crappy little survival horror Resident Evil clone that I understand the engine of which was written in three days. Total.

I had nothing to do with it, however. I was the sound guy. Why learn a new skill set when I should literally have more than enough skills to already do something unique and interesting?

I mean, if "The Cat in the Hat" can be written in 223 words, I should be able to do something new, original, and exciting with mere text.

At first, you'd write it off as absurd - text games are as old as computers and every programmer from here to eternity starts with text. To think that one could come up with something new and unique after all that is the most supreme form of arrogance!

And yet... we've been writing books for thousands of years, and the "Cat in the Hat" managed to create the perfect first reader - a good story, interesting characters, humor, and all within the limited lexicon of a first-grader.

It can be done.

So, the idea is to limit the vocabulary. Well, at least abstractly. Video games have a vocabulary of gameplay devices which tend to define and sometimes dominate. A genre can sometimes be defined entirely within the limits of a few set conceits. What happens when you take away those conceits?

Can you make an RPG without experience points? Can you make one without money? Can you make an online game without cliques? Can you tell a story without a climax?

If you reduce yourself to 223 words, what book would you write?

The basic issue that I take with RPG's is that you start at level one, and you gradually get more powerful. This conceit merely exists to dole out the content at a measured pace. You can't instantly kill the final boss because you aren't level one hundred yet, and when you are, you don't need to conern yourself with fighting those level one guys that you wasted early on. However, what essentially happens is inflation.

As you become more powerful, so do the enemies. A level seven player versus a level seven enemy is no different than a level twenty player versus a level twenty enemy. Maybe there are a few more tricks, but the relative balance remains the same.

Let's dump that crap. No levels. No accumulated advancement.

Players secretly hate each other. This is because they are fiercely competitive and can only trust a small group of other players - usually their guild or whatever clique they manage to cling on to. The problem with this is that online games tend to become clique versus clique - you are whatever you're grouped with. A common enemy means that you work together. None of this leading you to a secluded area, killing you, and stealing your stuff. You work together towards a common good.

But what of the players, like myself, that choose not to enter into a clique? They are exploited and generally treated like second-class citizens. IF I hear one more person tell me that the only way to enjoy a specific MMORPG is to join a guild, I'm going to have to beat them severely about the head and face. With a rotten trout.

So, let's dump the clique stuff. No guilds. Not even combat parties. We don't need gameplay-enforced trust; without experience points or money, there's nothing left to protect.

Money angers me. People are always so willing to offend to get even the slightest advantage. I've seen people haggling with the Web comic folks at Otakon! Does saving a dollar or two really justify the loss of respect and trust that you receive in return? In Star Wars: Galaxies, someone was trying to sell something and the buyer demanded that they throw in a free gift of significant value to go with it.

I don't trust money. People lose sight of the true goal when the temporary goal of accumulating currency takes over.

Respect? Value? Honor? Trust? Honesty?

It doesn't mean anything when money is on the line, and the irritates me.

Thus, currency has to go. No more screwing over your fellow man for pocket change. The idea of experience points is kind of like a currency you can't lose. You just gain it, and when you hit the mark, something happens. You just keep building and building, always moving forward. You only control the speed.

Even if you dump levels, there's still this innate draw towards experience. Killing needs to get you something. There's nearly no risk, and the best way to excel is simply to sit down and grind over and over again in the best min-max tradition.

Let's dump experience points. Let's see if advancement can't be something a little more significant.

Better yet, to avoid the whole min-max thing, let's see if we can't make advancement unique for each player! You can't min-max something that you can't predict. This whole monster-monster-monster-boss thing gets to me, too. If you can determine where the monsters are and where they re-appear, you just camp spawn points. If you do the same quests, you can tell everyone how to do them. Let's axe all that stuff. Let's make a player in his 90th hour float in the same boat as a player in his 10th minute.

I've systematically removed many of the conceits of most major MMORPGs, like one would do any other termite or roach. I've taken just about everything you expect to be there, and I've punched the delete key. So, now what? We've got to build a game around what we don't have. If you don't have any experience points or money, what's the goal? How do you advance? IF you don't have guilds or combat parties, how will players communicate with each other? When limited to linear text output, how do you convey complex information? Heck, what's the point? Where's the long-term appeal?

I assure you that all this stuff is but one solution to a series of problems. Even if you remove them, that doesn't mean that there aren't other solutions out there. You just gotta think.