City of Factions

I’ve been thinking more about what I wrote on City of Heroes and about what, exactly, I’m looking for from the game, what I think it should be doing.

City of Heroes is starting out at square one with heroes, and then adding villains in an expansion. This is groovy. But “hero/villain” as a binary moral category for superheroes hasn’t ever really worked; it elides too much of the range of moral categories that the denizens of superhero comic books have occupied and do occupy.

A few years ago, I taught a class called the Rhetoric of Superheroes, which built on the theory that superheroes and supervillains are, individually, deployed as distinct arguments: each character, as a symbol of morality, presents a position on what is and what should (or should not) be. Superman in the ’30s is not just a “hero” but a progressive social activist. The X-Men are not just “heroes” but an symbolized argument about discrimination, diversity, and change. Catwoman changes from villain to outlaw hero as popular understandings of gender relations change. And so on.

And that’s assuming that the heroes or villains as arguments are being suggested as moral absolutes, which in practice is rare. With the possible exception of the post-Congressional hearings, early Comics Code days of the ’50s, there have always been superheroes and villains who explicitly don’t fit the simple definitions: Spider-Man was initially in it for the money. Sub-Mariner helped us out in WWII but tried to take over New York several times after that. The Hulk has, over the years, been a petty criminal, a horndog, a reckless destroyer of property, a lunatic and a tyrant.

A translation of this genre into a persistent world game should not assume that the antagonistic positions in-game are a two-sided slam-dunk. It’s telling that superheroes fight each other an awful lot in comic books.

This is all speculation: CoH doesn’t have PvP, and the expansion is just a press release at this point. None of this is really relevant to the game as it plays right now. But I think it will become so, as the game grows and players are offered structured choices for moral positioning. The genre connections the game explicitly makes indicate thematic connections between the game and superhero comic books, and I think that players will, consciously or unconsciously, expect in-game mechanisms to replicate their imaginings of superhero comic books in the game. This requires structuring “superheroes” and “supervillains” as they function in that genre, not just as they are perceived from a position outside it.

This continuum of moral positions is going to enter into CoH regardless of how the rule system is structured. There’s already a neo-Confederate super-team in the game, for Pete’s sake; the player base have left moral absolutes way behind. But it would be, I think, a very good thing for the game if there were rule structures to accommodate this continuum within the game.

So how do you do it? Let’s get out of the genre analysis and talk about rules. PvP should not operate on binaries in the game: on/off, hero/villain. There should be a range of factions and of positions within a faction. Once again, this is something that I think SWG does well: there’s the Rebellion and the Empire, of course, but these two uber-factions are followed by many, many smaller factions: your faction position with regards to Jabba’s Army isn’t related to your position with regards to the Empire.

In addition, you have the option of being overt or covert as a Rebel or Imperial: full-on, open PvP or a less dangerous, but also less morally absolute “closeted” position. This analysis of SWG PvP makes an interesting argument against the covert/overt system. While I like several of the ideas, and am open to the idea of changes in the covert/overt system, I’d hate to see it done away with. This quote is telling:

Covert players and overt players do not understand each other very well. Coverts think all the overts are gankers who just like ruining people’s days. Overts think the coverts are mealy-mouthed wusses who are scared to really take sides. A typical overt complaint is that the overt was getting killed by a clump of Rebels while a covert fellow Imperial stood by and did nothing.

I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing; on the contrary, I think it’s good. This shows that SWG has implemented a system of moral compromises, and that social dynamics have grown from this system. Covert and overt members of the same faction shouldn’t get along seamlessly. They have made different choices in the game; those choices map to moral positions; those moral positions are in conflict. As long as this is, on some level, socially understood as part of the gameplay, that’s fun stuff to me.

A great City of Heroes/Villains can and should present many faction choices rather than just one. It can and should allow a player some freedom to define her character’s moral position in relationship to the world, even if that position is “thief with a heart of gold” or “damaged criminal-killing vigilante.” It can and should attempt to translate the core of the superhero genre rather than just its trappings.

It can start with a design question: how do you, in game rules, create a morality system in CoH that might approximate the range of moral positions occupied in Watchmen? In Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come? In nearly any Lee and Kirby/Lee and Ditko Marvel comic from the 1960′s? Go.