originally posted at https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/734687...
mmo rp is kind of fundamentally not so different from RPing in any messaging program, something we’ve been doing since the days of IRC. the story you co-create is primarily driven by what’s written in the text box. no matter how well made the emote animations are, they are not communicative enough to really tell a complex story, so you always fall back to prose. your character’s voice will be limited to a handful of nonverbal expressions - a laugh, mm-hm, uh-huh. you are constantly having to reinterpret bits of game jank as you construct your mental version of the ‘real story’. and yet
these visual aids do make a really substantial difference in how you experience it i think. to honestly a kind of surprising degree. of course having a character design on screen helps avoid writing tons of descriptive prose - but there’s also a lot that can be done with simple movement through space, like a character positioning themselves besides another, retreating to sulk, getting up to dance.
like in visual novels and manga, you have essentially a set of codified, symbolic expressions - but in FFXIV, every race has its own set of very charming and polished animations for nearly every emote, which adds a huge amount of info in how you interpret that character (and slot them into the otaku database). a roegadyn will by default be loud and brash, a viera refined and dreamy, a lala mischievous and childlike. a mi’qote is a cat. since all of these are chosen by the player, they act as a strong signal of what your character’s deal is - their body language comes across even if it’s not like the actual scene fully acted out.
and what’s fascinating to me is that even when i know what the player looks like irl, i still find myself responding to their game embodiment in how i think about them, i don’t picture them irl… but also, having the embodiment helps me get into character. I have two alts, and with each one i feel drawn to a different style of roleplay. just like a list of prompts in a ttrpg sourcebook, the embodiment you’ve chosen gives you something to bounce off when you’re improvising.
roleplaying is very similar to improv comedy, and many of the same analysis concepts - ‘offers’, ‘yes, and’ - apply. we’re essentially improvising a digital puppet show. building up an RP venue and customising our model is a way of laying out props to help that process roll smoothly.
i often dream about an mmo animation system that would be less janky - more control over camera placement, better handling of interactions between player characters and characters with their environment, more ability to plan out timing and blocking and so on - essentially trending towards multiplayer source filmmaker.
the problem is that such a system would probably have way too much cognitive overhead to be usable in real time improv. i think what something like ffxiv shows is that even very simple elements - besides the emotes, your character looks towards your target and moves their lips when you talk, you can adjust their expression and there’s animation hooks all over the place line chairs you can sit on - can actually be a very expressive palette and people are pretty good at filtering out the jank when they want to create a story together.
indeed, it becomes a skill - knowing what animations you have, how to reinterpret them, how to line yourself up with other players. and in the end you don’t remember the time spent shuffling forwards and typing /hug again and again, or standing up and sitting down repeatedly until it lines up right. you remember the cute sight of your character sitting beside your friend, looking fondly at each other.
there’s also another angle which is like… i find real life ‘going out’ very difficult - usually hitting a point of information overload very quickly in a pub environment, and while music is easier to manage than a wall of conversation, i never really learned how to interact with strangers at a club, concert, convention. I’m not good with alcohol. when i try to a pub, i usually end up retreating into myself and ducking out. in mmos, though… i find prose much more easy to be expressive in, and the limits of the animation system kind of level the playing field a bit in terms of The Autism when it comes to body language and the like.
still, sometimes it feels like a very sad existence - i rely on this simulacrum, pretending i am being intimate and social with people i can’t touch through a computer program that draws triangles. everything in an mmo is muted, blunted by the medium - which makes it ‘safe’, but also tinges it with a loneliness that can’t really be broken. but for now, i guess the simulacrum is all I’ve got, you know? and i can appreciate how it’s put together, all the effort that has gone in from devs and players alike to realise this alternative channel for connection.
but yeah. i guess it comes back to this again… there’s a reason my online ‘face’ is a low poly approximation of an animal!
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