The MMO genre is social by nature, but the way we socialize during the game has evolved at a pace faster than these games: 20 years ago it was common to use TeamSpeak to coordinate in a WoW raid—and it was a perfect service for that task—but now it’s more usual to have Discord running in the background regardless of what we are doing. While some clans still compete for dominance on a server, many others are just there to facilitate inviting friends to your group without any underlying ambition.
Of course, this infrastructure still works and is practical because developers take great pains to keep it up to date; but it could perhaps be even better if someone considered completely new ideas. This is where Star Citizen comes into play. I don’t want to preach that Chris Roberts’ MMO is going to revolutionize the gaming world, but at least I believe it has the potential to “shake things up” a bit.
Recently, CitizenCon 2954 took place in Manchester where Cloud Imperium presented their latest developments in the exceptionally ambitious space navigation simulator. During the event, a panel titled “A social universe” was presented, showcasing new features for the mobiGlas menu that includes your friends list, among other things, and other organizational updates.
Social Innovations in Star Citizen
The segment covers many small ideas, such as a menu that allows you to see where each friend is and what they are doing. For example, if there are multiple people in your group, a sub-menu is created that explains who is in which ship, and even what seat (gunner, copilot, etc.) they occupy. Similarly, the chat will allow you to link not only objects or missions from the API, but also players and even physical locations on the map; clicking on these links opens the map so you can plot an optimized automatic route.
The new system is functional, but also aware of how friend groups operate.
They even have a fairly elaborate guides system: when you have a question, you can publicly ask it using a beacon that only reaches other players with proven experience in those areas, and they can offer you help. You can see the ratings of these potential guides, accept the mentorship of whoever you want, and contact that person until the situation is resolved, after which the expert in the subject receives a certain in-game reputation reward.
Personally, what interests me the most are the orgs (organizations) that are the equivalent of clans in other MMOs. They already existed in Star Citizen, but now they look much more complete and are included in an in-game menu: they have events, identifiers for allies and enemies, and many more functions. An important detail is that you can join up to six of them at once, so you can be part of multiple different friend groups; although you can only represent one for progression and your labeling in the world.
This is only concerning the interface and menus. Unique features of the armors that affect how you interact with the world around you have also been detailed—not just arbitrary mathematical values—and their relationship with professions: nothing prevents a player-run organization from becoming a weapon manufacturer for other large groups with their own agendas and economies. The million-dollar question is, “will all of this really come to fruition?”
The studio’s history tells us that this is somewhat relative. The big promises of previous years have been fulfilled to a greater or lesser extent, although the more ambitious ones evolve and mutate into other different initiatives or come with some limitation. That’s normal in the world of video game development: what happens with this title is that no one seems to hit the brakes because they don’t need to. But apart from what they ultimately achieve, what we are trying to assess here is the way they are addressing the situation.
Moving the MMO genre forward
Respond to their own needs, not just conventions
This panel from CitizenCon 2954, as you can imagine, has been inspiring to me. It’s not that any of this is extraordinarily transformative: they are improvements on systems that other similar games and applications have been using for decades. But in terms of philosophy, it does serve as a wake-up call to all competitors. Why? Because here they have designed social functions around the specific needs of the game, and the result feels more logical and tailored to what you are trying to do.
Sending a private message to someone saying “see you in Area 18” is commonplace in Star Citizen, so being able to send a physical location through chat makes a lot of sense for this game. And if it’s one of those games that doesn’t have a clear linear progression through dungeon crawling like a traditional MMORPG, but rather has many different paths that often require a third party explanation, then it’s best to make it easy for you (and why not, transferred to the game universe through the fantasy of a guide) then better for everyone.
The idea I get from this panel is that of a game that doesn’t adhere to any dogma: CIG has a goal for Star Citizen, they observe how it’s played, and offer functions as best they can to support that style of play. It will have its pros and cons, but it can’t be said that they are conforming: they are innovations for their own specific interests. Just for that, the game is headed towards a more unique, interesting, and fresh identity. This doesn’t mean the rest are doing it wrong, but these have the opportunity to grow in other directions that they may not have known existed because they weren’t so obvious.
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