Kill 10 skeletons. That is my quest. Or task as some would say, vehemently explaining that “quest” indicates a journey and adventure with greater stature, akin to seeking the Holy Grail or El Dorado. And that a task is nothing but a basic series of actions that you perform, such as getting gas for your car or shopping for groceries. But no matter what you call it, this style of offering has become common among MMOs and recently has started gaining a foothold in single player games as well.

Kill 10 skeletons. Why only 10? Why not 11 or 9? Why not 20? There are usually far more than 10 out there waiting for me to bash, hack or burn to death (except that they are already dead… but that’s a whole other question which I won’t go into here!). Wouldn’t the NPC be much happier if I killed 20 instead of the 10 he or she asked me to?

Kill 10 skeletons. Why? Because the quest-giver told me to; because he promised me experience and riches and that family heirloom he’s been hoarding all of these years. A family heirloom, likely, that he can’t wait to give to the first (but not last) hero to rid him of the accursed undead!

Does the NPC ever get upset that I sell or throw away that family heirloom when I am sick of it? Come to think of it, there were more skeletons when I ran past the same house a few days later. I thought I killed 20 of them? At the time, that was all that was in the field. Or was it? Maybe some were hiding over the hill, or behind one of the trees. Or maybe the NPC himself (or herself, or itself) has them stored in the basement, along with an unlimited number of “family heirlooms” to give to other unwitting heroes such as myself who just happen by.

What is my point, you ask? It’s a simple question that has been in my mind for a while. t I see it discussed, but never answered. Why have quests of this type become so prevalent? And what can be done to alter this trend, to encourage the use of alternative types of quests? After all, kill X and collect Y are not the only types of quests available to game designers.

Why have these quests become such a common occurrence in games? First, they are easy to create. With the rise of the mega-game, the MMO that costs tens of millions of dollars to create and tens of thousands of man-hours, but also requires a mechanism to keep the players satisfied until they reach the “end-game”, you run into a need for a lot of content. How do you populate a large world (galaxy, etc) with enough content to keep a player going for months?

The answer, of course, is to give them quests/tasks - something to give them some sense of reward-for-effort, a pat on the back for a basic accomplishment. The kill-task has grown in use out of a need for a massive amount of “things” for players to do, but with a limited budget of time and money. Go kill 10 skeletons. Simple enough. Little dialogue is required, just a brief explanation of why you should kill the skeletons, and what reward you shall receive.

Simple is the key. They are simple to create, simple to execute and complete, and simple to balance. All of the factors are known and easy to compare. How difficult is quest A (kill 10 skeletons) compared to quest B (kill 10 spiders)? Well, it comes down to a comparison of the difficulties of the two types of mobs. Is quest A better than quest B? Simple enough to determine, compare the rewards in relation to the difficulty. It is easy deductions such as this that have driven the rise of kill and collection tasks. There is no need for extensive play-testing, create the quest, make sure it works, and run with it. Maybe later you can tweak the reward, but it’s easy to create, test and balance. Your 15 minutes are up, move on to the next quest!

Content - The buzzword of the new millennia when it comes to MMOs. “We’ve got more content than game X!” You hear it all the time. Players want more content; game developers (and especially marketing) claim their game has more content; they’re adding more content with each patch; and yet what is content? Anything in the game for players to do is basically content.

So why am I bringing it up? Because it is more than a simple buzzword. It has become associated with quests and so it has been caught by the cost-cutting and time-saving demons! More content while cutting costs. How is this achieved? By making quests simpler, easier to create, easier to test, and easier to balance.

While I do not dispute the fact that reducing costs is a worthy goal (and a necessary one at times) and that making game systems that are easy to test and balance is also a worthy goal; I take issue with the lack of effort put into quests and the stories that supposedly go with them, as well as the premise that I have heard far too often that quests/story are not as important as other parts. That they are simply icing.

Surely in our efforts to cut costs and save time, we can also find ways to make quests more interesting for our players? Give them something that requires a bit more effort than killing 10 skeletons? Something that engages the player, where the story itself and the activity of questing is as much a reward as the reward offered for completion of the quest. Well, I have some ideas.

First, explore the other types of quests. There are many more types of quests than we often see expressed in MMOs. Kill, collect and fed-ex are the three most popular and we see them everywhere! But there are many others such as escort, defend, survive, build, and infiltrate (though this is by no means all). Why not make use of them? Mix it up, give players something to talk about, something to enjoy.

Two quest types that are often overlooked, but can be very entertaining, are “infiltrate” and “survive”. Infiltration quests involve the player attempting to sneak into a location without being caught by guards or what-have-you. These quests are often very challenging and contrary to what most players are used to. After all, killing everyone on the way in could hardly be called “infiltration”. Survival quests, on the other hand, though sometimes used in games are seen at a very low frequency. In this type, players must survive waves of attackers of usually increasing difficulty.

One aspect of games that is often overlooked, particularly in MMOs, is the use of puzzles. Puzzles, from riddles to mini-games, have become the exception rather than the rule in modern online gaming. Rather than using puzzles as part of the story, we fall back upon the tried-and-true method of kill everything and you’ll make it through.

If you must do a kill quest, why not add some variety to it? What if you return to the NPC after only killing 8? Will he respond and ridicule you? Or maybe give you a lesser reward? What if you return after killing 20? Will he denounce you, praise you, or perhaps attack you? Branching quests creates variety and forces players to make choices.

Another aspect that is often overlooked or done poorly is the story arc. And for clarification, a story arc of “kill 10 skeletons, kill 10 greater skeletons, kill the skeleton boss” is not a story arc. That is simple laziness. I’m talking about a story that engages the player and evokes an emotional response. Yes, this would require actual writing which is another aspect that is often passed over in the rush to save costs and time. Not that game designers are bad writers, but most are not practiced enough with writing dramatic stories that can create any sort of connection with the player.

Back to the story arc. If I am to spend my time saving the princess or rooting out some traitor of the kingdom, why am I not rewarded with more than some fancy item for it? No fame, no glory, no princess for my own, just some experience, maybe some coin, and a fancy item or two. Sure, those are great, but in a few levels what is my accomplishment worth now? Next to nothing because the items mean little to me and I traded or junked or sold them.

Why do NPCs often forget what I did for them? Why don’t they thank me for my efforts on their behalf? Or ask how I like the family heirloom they gave me? Why are NPCs often silent with nothing to say until they have need of my services? In many games, they don’t even say hello. These simple features can go a long way to helping the player feel that they are part of the game-world, that the game-world feels “alive” and that they have had an impact on it. A simple “thank you for helping me” from the NPC can have quite an effect and can be built upon later to create more variety for the player. Recognition and fame is something to be coveted and treasured and rarely squandered.

What if the NPC gave the player choices? Do this OR that, the reward is different. Or perhaps it’s the same but the experience (not to be confused with game-related XP for gaining levels) is different. Go kill 10 skeletons or if you really want to, track down the source of the skeletons and rid me of them. It’s the player’s choice, but one is harder while the other is the easy way out. Let the player decide.

It’s easy enough to sit here and talk about what should be done as I have been doing. But game development is not done in a vacuum and all things are not equal. Some types of quests serve the overall design goals better than others which I have not taken into account while writing this. My concern is with the growing number of this type of quest at the expense of story and variety, and at the rise of kill tasks/quests because money can be saved or because it was done in a rush in the last six months of production or because management (read: marketing) promised X number of quests in the game.

The type of quests should be determined early and should support the goals and design of the game. If a multitude of kill tasks achieves that goal then great, but the designers should also make sure they sit down and really evaluate their choices. Does having a lot of kill tasks really achieve the goals of the game? Would the design of the game be better served by having more types of quests than a basic few? Would having story arcs, branching quests, more variety and depth for the game world really severely impact the game itself or would it improve the game?

There is no magic blueprint for game development. It is an art more than a science and there are a million different ways to do it and a million ways to accomplish each goal. So why have we settled upon a few basic ways? Why do we choose the same types of quests over and over for different games, both from the developer and the player point of view?

They are familiar. Familiar to create as well as to play. They are easy. And because we are so familiar with them, we can make them (and play through them) quickly and efficiently without putting a whole lot of thought or effort into them. It is perhaps a symptom of the industry as a whole, this lack of innovation, a lack of thinking, of falling back upon the basics, the easy way of doing things, the safe way, which has led us to this point.

What solutions are there? How can we approach this and create positive change within the industry? A complex question with no easy answers. But I believe it begins with knowledge and with courage. Designers need to have the courage to admit that they aren’t always the best at everything they do, that they sometimes need to ask for help. That there is room to learn from their mistakes and to re-evaluate their beliefs in how certain parts of games should be made. These beliefs are often based on misconceptions or assumptions and challenging those assumptions is what helps us all become better designers and developers.

Writing in particular is an area that many designers need help with, though just as many are loathe to admit this is true. Many designers are not good writers, yet many are given projects involving a significant amount of writing. And the quests and story arcs suffer in quality because of it. The first step to improve the writing of games is to admit that sometimes you need real writers to help you out.

Designers also need to be familiar with all of the different types of quests as well as their strengths and weaknesses so that they can make informed decisions about which quests will work best in a particular situation. When creating quests, determining the goal and the best methods for achieving those goals will help the designer in creating better quests, more varied quests, and more depth and entertainment for the player.

Good quests and good stories should be the rule, not the exception within MMOs and gaming. The overall goal is entertainment and our job, as designers, is to come up with ways of entertaining people. But instead, all too often, we fall back upon the familiar in our haste to meet deadlines and milestones. What is often forgotten is that game development is a creative process, not just a formulaic one. There is no one size fits all and so we should not accept one quest fits all.

By fighting for extra time, entering the development process with an open mind, and doing our homework (in terms of planning and questioning our assumptions) we will be able to succeed in making better games with more innovation and variety.