The Comic Book Guy: The Lone Superhero and the MMO Game

[RadarX]

The world of superheroes is not only exciting but filled with larger than life characters and adventures. Are the worlds of these individuals larger enough to support an entire MMO game? This is the question we tackle this week and not only do we point out a few of the challenges, but make a number of suggestions that would work.

The narratives in comic books are complex, dense, and filled with more story lines than your favorite soap opera. While on par with most fantasy series, are they deep enough for an entire MMO game to be built around them? If you look at games like Lord of the Rings Online or Warhammer Online and the simple answer might be a hesitant “yes,” but the difference between these two mediums is considerable. If you included all the characters in an entire universe like DC Universe Online there is plenty of material to work with, but could you really use individual characters or standalone stories? We're going to look at a few challenges that using specific character IP's will present followed by specific examples that could make a successful game.

Read on for this weeks Comic Book Guy.

[Combover]

Hey Comic Book Guy. Interesting read, just wanted to make some comments:

If you included all the characters in an entire universe like DC Universe Online there is plenty of material to work with, but could you really use individual characters or standalone stories?

I see your point about comics usually centering around one or two heroes but think there is plenty of room for us all to be the star. Look at EQ, each player had the chance to interact with the gods and kill them or do their quests. We didn't believe that every citizen was a hero like that. The game just focused on the important people.

In a Batman MMO game no one would want to play Alfred the Butler or random Gotham City police officer number 224. There must be an entire world of interesting character types that players could take the role of and many comic IP's don't provide that.

This helped CoH in some ways. Nobody got to play Batman and EVERYBODY got to play Batman. I think DCUO is going to get it right. No one gets to play Batman but everybody can meet Batman and help him (or try to stop him). It should work out a little like LOTRO. Nobody gets to be Gandalf etc.

why not have an X-Men Academy?

Sign me up!

Thanks for the article and keep them coming!

[RadarX]

Thanks for the comments Combover. I agree with you completely that you can't allow players to play the big names, my thinking was that if your focus is too narrow and the big name is removed, you don't have much left. Batman, Superman, Flash, the Punisher...none of these would work alone. DC Universe Online with many characters or even a Marvel MMO most certainly would.

Keep in mind also though that games like LOtRO are extensively deep pieces of literature. Comic book media stories are only offered in bits in pieces by comparison. I'll grant you very old titles like Batman might provide enough, but the newer ones (1980 and up) things might run a little dry. At the end of the day it's absolutely up to the creative minds of people who come up with all this.

I spent a lot of time trying to come up with workable scenarios and there were quite a few so it's far from impossible. Some of the ones I didn't mention were Teen Titans and Justice League that have mass media appeal. What I found really interesting as I thought about it, was Marvel has fewer options thanks to the Civil War which "simplified" their portfolio of hero teams.

[Sardu]

I'd definitely play a Mutant Academy game ala what you'd described with the X-Men. Even from that brief synopsis of what the setting might consist of, I can see a lot of potential there. Especially if you selected certain points in the X-Men time-line - I'm thinking around issue 200ish of Uncanny X-Men.

There's lots of opportunities there with the New Mutants cross-overs or even some Alpha Flight thrown in for our friends up north. In the meantime, Phoenix was doing her phoenix thing, and Kurt decided it was a good idea to scamper off to England with Beast for some wacky Excalibur adventures.

Mind you all of those things would be more about providing a solid setting to play in - players themselves would be students still learning how to use their powers, with opportunities cropping up that would allow them to join the bad guys if they wanted etc.

But beyond that, I agree - it would be really hard to pull off an MMO if the focus were on a single hero setting. For example, I'd love to see a Marshal Law game, but it would be just as hard to pull off as a Batman-centric title for a lot of the same reasons. Plus, ML had a very short run so there's a lot less lore to draw from.

Out of curiosity, do you think that kind of focused content might work for an expansion once a broader setting is already established (as with DC Universe)?

[RadarX]

Originally Posted by Sardu

Out of curiosity, do you think that kind of focused content might work for an expansion once a broader setting is already established (as with DC Universe)?

Sir I give you props for admitting to have read Marshal Law...hehe Marshal Law.

I'd agree completely about Xmen crossover but I'd look to the "cooler" groups like members of the old XForce or even the Avengers. Puck and Sasquatch just make me giggle.

As for the focused content being expansions? I have to look at this one of two ways. As a comic book fan I could totally see them holding back some characters and introducing them later even in conjunction with well known story lines. Maybe an entire storyline to banish Myyzptlk from Metropolis. From a business perspective though you'd want to use all your big names as a draw so you couldn't hold back any major characters. Will players get excited over a Lobo expansion? I dunno.

I can only dream...

[Thunderradish]

A problem I could foresee with the Green Lantern Corps as a background is that the ring empowers the wielder to create any object or force, with the only limitation that it cannot interact with the color yellow. Apart from that, if staying with the lore, there would be no limitations save the imagination of the wielder. I think that would be almost impossible to model in a game (A ring that can become anything from a big, green fist to a key lime pie, yum)--I suppose that the ring of a GLC MMO would have to be given specific powers at the beginning and one would have to gain additional specific powers through experience.

[RadarX]

You make a valid point but this is where you could put planets and cultures into play. You could break down the abilities this way I think. They'd all have the ability to create certain things like a wall, but maybe only humans could make swords and giant fly swatters. Beings from elsewhere wouldn't know what a fly swatter was so would make other things.

Your other option might be to make the additional corps. Maybe you could choose different colors. Just give them all different abilities. The Red corps could have angry powers that let them leech power and health. Maybe the blues could have healing. It isn't perfect I'll grant you, but the variety I think is there.