What is the fascination with survival MMOs? What exactly is it, and do we really need it?
The ongoing pre-alpha for Edengard, an announcement for Jurassic World Survivor, and the coverage surrounding Conan Exiles raises a question for me once again: Do we really need so much survival?
Just for fun, I typed “survival” into the search of the sales platform Steam and was rewarded with a staggering 2984 results. Some of the search results can be neglected. Personally, it wouldn’t be easy for me to play the “Train Simulator BR Standard Class 2MT Loco” add-on, but there’s hardly any talk of life-threatening survival.
But what are all these survival pixel masterpieces? Are we really always fighting for bare survival in search of warming fire and food? Steam offers us story gems like “Girl Amazon Survival.” Its description sparks our imagination: “Fight against bandits and zombies. Hunt animals, build the house.” Not necessarily a shining example of translation art “She woke up next to fallen with the plane.” I’ll save the €2.99 for this early access gem.
Maybe I should embark on unknown universes. Space Survival sounds interesting. Finally make a big step for mankind myself? Survive on alien planets? Why not? Unfortunately, Space Survival turns out to be a boring Asteroids clone after all.
For me, breath bars are the epitome of evil
How about diving? Subnautica is considered a fairly successful and acclaimed representative of the genre. Whether I enjoy the moist dream of every Franconian sport diver as much as some critics, I dare to doubt.
For me, breath bars are the epitome of evil. I have always hated them. An action that I would usually complete without any issues is complicated by time pressure. You jump into the nearest puddle to retrieve a treasure and inevitably see a breath bar indicating how much time is left until my character reaches the water corpse state. It makes searching for treasures less enjoyable for me. Cheers to meal! I guess that’s called negative reinforcement.
Speaking of meal, of course, this mechanic can be applied to various other resources, whether it be food or hydration, air or any other basic need of the character that can be represented in bar form. Is this already survival?
It still isn’t entirely clear to me what survival really means at its core. Personally, I initially considered it, in my admittedly superficial consideration, one of the least spectacular and uninspired game mechanics.
The compulsion to stay alive – Is it realistic?
A reason for me to ask some survival game players what personally attracts them to these games. If you take away all components like loot, crafting, exploration, construction, or combat that other games also offer without a “survival” sticker, what remains is the essence of the compulsion to stay alive, and the resulting sense of realism.
It seems to me that a survival game without artificially created scarcity of vital resources like air and food is often just a sandbox game.
So is it really the enforced reality that makes the difference? And isn’t reality precisely what makes us “escape” into the dream world of computer games?
Haven’t we been told this for years? Don’t we all want to hunt dragons, rescue maidens, build empires, and, to avoid overusing the fantasy cliché, wreak havoc as a gun-wielding cyborg in foreign galaxies? It’s not so easy in today’s society.
Is survival not too banal for fiction?
Fortunately, enough developers have taken our wishes into account and enabled this in digital worlds. Unrealistic with fire-breathing lizards, fictional universes, and without maiden scarcity. Why these fantastic playgrounds are now being forcibly pulled back into reality with the cheers of many players remains a mystery to me. Should I really have to worry about where the next bathroom is as a cyborg?
But that is, as I was informed, too short-sighted. Survival players also do not want just to wash digital underwear or pick berries. Having to survive alone on an island and deal with natives is, after all, also a dream world. Few people will likely get the chance to tame dinosaurs, and should something go terribly wrong, zombie apocalypses are not to be expected either.
Many survival games focus on exploring the game world. The task of survival provides only the drive and gives direction. Not rigid like so many quest lines in classic MMOs, where you’re sent from Pontius to Pilate. Quests that do not fit the played high-level hero character at all.
Quest design thus relies on intangible basic needs and gives the player comprehensible and relatable tasks. This makes it relatively easy for both players and developers.
This is commendable and perhaps also a sign of poverty at the same time. Commendable because players are tired of having to hit stones for orcs even at character level 99. Commendable because developers have recognized this dichotomy. But isn’t it a sign of poverty that developers have not managed to captivate us with more credible tasks and provide us with a sense, a drive, to explore their worlds other than the pure desire to survive?
The more I engage with the topic, the clearer it becomes to me that survival is not as revolutionarily new as we are led to believe on all fronts. It is often just a playground, a sandbox that has been given an additional drive to frolic in.
Survival drives us to discover the world, but also takes away the fun
What bothers me about many titles, however, is exactly this compulsion that is created to motivate me to explore the game world. In many MMOs, it’s up to me how I design my gaming experience, while in survival titles, a looming sword of Damocles always hangs over me. For me, this is not a gain.
I also dive for treasure chests without breath bars. The prerequisite is a fascinating and exciting world. Often the survival approach seems like a way to avoid effort. The quest design is omitted, for a story, it’s enough to have an initial scenario “She woke up next to fallen with the plane.” and the worlds in which you fight for your survival are often poorly detailed, if not downright boring.
No one is forcing me to play such games; however, the fascination with how many developers are currently jumping on the bandwagon remains. I sense an impending fiasco, as I ultimately do not believe that this mechanic can engage players long enough. And even if it does, I don’t think there will be enough players for all the announced titles. Titles may quickly cannibalize each other.
For me, the question of whether we really need so much survival remains unanswered. What do you think? Is it an enrichment for you? What excites you about it?
The post is from our reader “Erzkanzler.”
Survival MMOs are trending – Just like the “WoW” clones back then …
