When MMOs become fantasy novels, stats and all
I like fiction. I guarantee I am literate. But I spend most of my book time listening to”okay” literary, dream, and mystery novels on Audible. I pepper in non-fiction and classics, but nothing spends my Audible credits than pulp about private detectives, brain implants, and magic blades.
Couple months ago I’d finished or abandoned all of of my existing audiobooks, and decided to discover something new for the commute. On a whim, I typed in”cyberpunk” from the Audible search bar to find out if there is something I’ve missed. What I found wasn’t cyberpunk. It was this:
Survival Quest (The Way of the Shaman: Novel #1), by Vasily Mahanenko.
Here are
- The title Survival Quest. It is like calling a road trip film”Journey Drive”
- The word”Shaman”
- The obvious Combination of fantasy and sci-fi, which is a big nope from me
- How utterly egotistical and flavorless I can imagine the protagonist is, based on this depiction
If there’s one thing I’ve heard about books, you can and if judge them by their addresses. The judgements of the publication gives a great deal of advice on to you.
But the book didn’t have two things going for this:
- Over 500 reviews with close to a five star typical
- It is about a man who gets trapped in an MMO
So I purchased the book. And what changed for me.
Look, the thought of going inside a WoW-style MMO for a plot element in sci-fi isn’t brand new to me. I have a couple books in my Audible collection with this trope: Daemon, by Daniel Suarez; Halting State, by Charles Stross; and Willing Player One, by Ernest Cline. I also have a true paper copy of Neal Stephenson’s Reamde on a shelf somewhere, but who has time to read novels with eyeballs?
Grinding experience and gear
Survival Quest was distinct, though. It’s not a novel about the blurriness of virtual distinctions, or on shared experiences. It’s not even really”science fiction,” in the sense that it doesn’t appear to be posing any questions or what-if situations for an imaginative reader .
No, Survival Quest is all about what MMOs are in reality about: grinding expertise and gear. It is a book about the pleasure of leveling up.
Literally. The protagonist (egocentric and flavorless, as I supposed ), is imprisoned in a complete immersion VR capsule to serve his prison sentence in an MMO copper mine. He feels pain fully from each rat bite, and the fatigue of chipping away at mining nodes all day, but he also feels that an addictive euphoria when he levels up his character’s jewel-crafting skill.
MMOs are offered as fantasy adventures that were expansive to us, but they are really and truly about min-maxing. It’s true that you can turn your brain off for a time and follow some quest lines. Perhaps read the NPC dialog. But when it is time you pull open begin reading and your stat sheet. Video games hide the”dice rolls” that used to be so evident in tabletop RPGs, and it is the gamer’s job to rediscover the math behind their achievement and improve upon it.
Survival Quest is a terrible novel. Characters, sexism that is casual, and a plot to the progression of the character — far beyond the bend I let in any Frodo-inspired fantasy book. But it also includes things like this:
Damage obtained. Hit Points decreased by 5: 11 (weapon damage + power ) – 6 (armor). Total:
35 of 40.
And this:
Buff gained: Strength +1, Energy loss reduced by 50%. Duration – 12 hours.
How can I not love it? I blazed dedicating every moment . I then Purchased the sequel: The Kartoss Gambit. And then I had been out of yearly Audible credits, so I went and obtained AlterWorld by D.Rus on Kindle Unlimited.
D.Rus is actually credited with creating the”LitRPG” genre in his Amazon bio, but it’s hard to tell precisely. I have not found a definitive history everywhere. These MMO-in-book-form books are apparently popular in Russia, Japan, and Korea, and largely written by authors of those nationalities within their native languages — the versions I have of both Survival Quest and AlterWorld are passable English translations from Russian.
I have not completed AlterWorld yet, so I can’t speak to how genre setting it is, but it does have the most important part:
You have been hit by Messenger Gnoll! Damage lasted: 16 points. Life 44/60
You’ve been struck by Messenger Gnoll! Damage lasted: 12 points. Life 32/60
If I will extrapolate the whole LitRPG scene out of Survival Quest, I will say this: it is the best depiction I have ever seen of what I really want from an MMO, and exactly what I will never have. The fiction here is not the grand fantasy environment and storyline, it is the notion of a game where I am constantly leveling quicker than I thought I could, fulfilling challenges I think I can’t beat and then beating them, discovering hidden quests and talking to never-before-seen NPCs. Survival Quest is a dream about having a hyper-immersive MMO, with a multi-billion dollar funding, played by countless people all around the globe, being about me.
Last weekend I reactivated my’World of Warcraft’ accounts
I have given up on childish fantasies of finding the One True Sword, or ruining the Ring of Power — people are myths. But video games are actual. I have turned dollars into in-game stone, I have read the wikis, I’ve spent countless hours grinding, I’ve abandoned work and family responsibilities, and I have finally quit in frustration. All because I want to be a digital world’s hero. It’s not going to happen because of me. But that’s exactly what happens to the protagonist in each single chapter of LitRPG.
An MMO can not ever meet our power dreams, because we all would like to be god. And, if you subscribe to Kant’s categorical imperative, you will know that will never workout: if everybody’s The Hero of Azeroth, then nobody is.
This past weekend I reactivated my World of Warcraft accounts and rolled a brand new character. It is not a shaman. I am having a fantastic time.
