Shades of Gray is a massively multiplayer online role playing game for the PC set inan anarchic twenty-second century America where players explore the nature of good and evil through backstabbing, generosity, corruption, schemes and succor.


An Amoral Scenario


As you walk through the streets of New York City, you hear the whispers of the city dwellers. The city is abuzz with anger over the recent hike in prices of heating oil. You are Ezra Drubkin, an entrepreneur that’s directly responsible for the increase in prices. A few weeks ago, you created an alliance with three other people to share resources and fix your prices. You know that soon enough, the rest of the city will realize that you’re scamming them and start to revolt. You decide to get creative. You know that it’s only a matter of time before the local warlords start asking questions. You think about offering a local warlord a piece of the profits in return for protection, but you’re wary of anything that might lead to less money on your end.


You realize that you are better off cutting your losses and ending the scam. The best way to end the scam is to blame someone else. Of the four people involved, the weak link is Brando Nolis. Brando has never been a part of any of your schemes before, so you don’t feel that attached. You talk to your other cohorts, Ivana Stavin and Poughkeepsie McGee, and they concur. You know a bounty hunter, Butch Kapoodle, that is looking to make a name for himself. You think about selling him the information, but decide to call it a favor and pass on the tip for free. You know that Brando Nolis isn’t going to be happy about being set up, but you’re not too worried. He’ll spend some time in a detention camp and by the time he gets out you should be able to afford protection. You might even be able to convince him to work with you again; you’d just have to sell out someone else.



A Morally Righteous Scenario


You like this bar. The drinks keep flowing when you’re Butch Kapoodle. You’ve found that the best way to find bounties is to sit, drink, and listen. A man named Ezra Drubkin finds you at the bar. He tells you that a man, Brando Nolis, is responsible for the recent hike in prices for heating oil. You know that arresting this Nolis character will really put you in the limelight as you’ve heard a lot of people angrily discussing the recent price hikes. You thank Ezra for the tip and head off to find Brando Nolis.


You start asking around about the last known whereabouts of Brando Nolis. You find out that he was last seen only a few blocks away from where you are now. You jump on your motorcycle and head to Brando’s location. You find Brando talking to another character. When you pull your gun, he starts to run away. You set the gun to stun and run after him, firing shots. You hit him and he flails on the ground. You walk up and put him in restraints, feeling a sense of pride in taking another scumbag to the local warlord to be dealt with.


A Morally Ambiguous Scenario


The warlords were quick to judge you. They didn’t care that you were part of a larger group. You’ve been charged with conspiring to fix commodity prices. They just wanted a face to put on the crime so that the public feels good about the current governing force.


It’s your first time in a detention camp. You aren’t sure who sold you out, but you’re pretty sure it was Ezra Drubkins. He came up with the idea to fix prices after all, and if he doesn’t end up getting arrested, he must have set you up to cover his own ass.


This might be a blessing in disguise. You were already headed down the path of being a thief and by spending some time in a detainment camp you might be able to make some good connections. You make your way out to the yard to lift some weights and work on your strength. You meet a guy named Johnson Bigguns. He tells you that he has a job for you if you want it. You accept and find out that you’ll be helping smuggle supplies into the camp through one of the guards.


The work is mundane but you know it will pay off when you get released from prison. Johnson has a lot of loyal contacts on the outside that you’ll be able to tap into. Who knows, you might even befriend someone that will eventually overthrow the current warlords. First things first though, you decide that when you’re released, you’re going to exact revenge on Ezra Drubkins. You meet a guy named Holis Quando that is about to get released. You tell him to find Ezra and tell him that Brando Nolis says he better watch his back.



The Game


The impetus of Shades of Gray is to create a world in which players feel unrestricted in how they choose to play the game, whether full of spite or love for their fellow players. In order for this to happen, the platform must allow character growth to happen organically, with available options not always present. When a player chooses to do something inherently evil, they must feel like they’re making the world do something that it tries to prohibit.


The game is set in a dystopian future of America with no form of permanent government. After the collapse of the global economy in 2012, America turned
inward to focus on itself. A fascist wing in the Democratic Party took control of congress and began creating state owned companies for everything from
mortgages to office supplies. Finding creative ways to eliminate debt, the government began selling its large stockpile of missiles to China and India. The outrage caused by this debacle led to strengthened numbers of the Militia Movement in Montana. With growing support, the Militia Movement staged a
successful coup to topple the government. Fighting broke out into a civil war with three sides: the fascists, the free men, the communists. After fifty years of fighting, each faction had branched out into so many sub-factions that a cohesive movement was impossible.


It’s now the year 2100 and local warlords provide the only semblance of law andorder. Technology hasn’t been lost but it’s hard to come by. Food is scarce and most people opt to hunt or farm rather than buy it from merchants. Some people choose to pool their resources, but everyone knows that in the end, you’ve only got yourself.



Initial Character Creation, Choosing a Path


When a player logs into Shades of Gray for the first time, they create their basic avatar. They aren’t given an option to choose a particular class. Everyone is on equal footing when they enter the realm.


Upon entering the realm, they can seek out a career. Non Player Characters (NPCs) offer a variety of options including (but not limited to) bounty hunters, merchants, miners, politicians, entertainers, and doctors. A player can continue to work at these jobs and increase their skills, but they are not prohibited from changing careers at any point in the game. As players progress, they too can offer career paths for new characters.


Above all else, the character needs to survive. The longer a player goes without food, the weaker they become until they eventually die. Without money or weapons, a character will initially have to hunt small animals they can kill with their bare hands, such as rats and squirrels. If money is not an issue, the character can buy food from a merchant.



Morality and Credibility Levels


Based on their interaction in the realm, characters lose or gain morality. As their morality increases or decreases, new options of interaction become available. A newbie wouldn’t be able to strangle someone, but for a seasoned criminal that’s mixed with murderers and learned how to, the option would be available. On the opposite end, a righteous character would be able to endorse another character to raise their credibility, while a newbie could not.


Credibility of characters is determined by other players. When a character is wronged by someone, they can air their grievances with everyone in the city. As word spreads of loyal or disloyal acts amongst the populace, the character’s credibility is affected. Each person that talks affects the credibility of a character, but the weight given to their chatter is adjusted based on their own morality level. This is important when it comes to forming alliances with other players, as an untrustworthy character is less desirable. It also gives characters an incentive to be good as they have more control of public opinion. However, the system would not stop someone from creating two characters, one good and one bad. The good character could endorse the bad person, and allow the bad person to get away with a lot more villainy. This would allow for a high level corruption in the system.



Living, Dying and Being Detained


In a world where someone might kill another character in order to silence them, it’s crucial that they cannot just pop right back into the game. At the same time, permanent death is not possible for a person paying a monthly fee. Therefore, when a character dies, they are reincarnated on another server with a new name. Each server is a different city. The player retains whatever they have accumulated throughout the game, but they won’t be able to seek revenge right away. Killing another player is a very risky endeavor. Just as in reality, a person would be wise to cover their tracks and not commit the act in public. Known murderers create missions for bounty hunters. While the bounty hunters usually need the character alive to collect a bounty, they need not be for a murderer. When a bounty hunter catches a wanted character, they are sent to a detainment camp.


Depending on the crime and how the local warlord feels, their time in detainment could be short or long. The detainment camp is segregated from the
rest of the city. Only the warlords and their guards have access to both the city and the camp. Being sent to the detainment camp is much like visiting an underworld. A player gains access to a population of people that has done something someone considers wrong. While they are locked up, they lose whatever possessions they had on them at the time of being captured. If enough people are locked up, a player could stage a rebellion and possibly break out or even overthrow the local warlord.



Player Characters versus Non Player Characters


Non player characters in guiding roles play an important role in setting up the initial city life but ultimately become less needed as the game progresses. As players progress, they will be able to create jobs for other characters that are essentially quests. The players will be constructing the world that they live in. A warlord might have 20 guards, with half of them being non human. If one of the NPCs dies, they’re gone for good. It is up to the warlord if a new guard is even needed. Computer controlled characters also act as witnesses for the rumor mill. If conversations are conducted near them, they parrot what they’ve heard. If someone is murdered and they are in the vicinity, they might let a bounty hunter know about it.


The most important of NPCs are the animals. The animals can be hunted for food, used for clothing and equipment, or sold for money. They are the only part of the game that is regenerated automatically.



Scripting Language


To allow as dynamic a world as possible, a scripting language would be developed to let players customize their actions and behavior. Players would be given full control over the movement and speech of their character as to allow unique interactions amongst players. Deep in the API, undocumented features would be present that allowed players to do bad things. For example, a player might figure out a way to taint a water supply or become extra stealthy. Both of these actions would give the player an advantage over a more powerful character. As these features are discovered and published by other users, certain ones might be turned off while others would stay on and even more would be added. The goal would be to make users work a little harder than just clicking a button so that when they perform whatever action they have scripted, it feels a bit less programmatic and their immersion a bit more intense. A player that goes through the trouble of figuring out with undocumented features how to taint the water supply of a rival alliance in order to take control of a territory should feel a lot more satisfaction than a player that clicks a button to do the same thing.


As the game progressed, more robust user content could be added but with precautions to keep the visual aesthetic of the game. In game creation tools, much like those of Little Big Planet, would let users create objects that were made up of many individual pieces. The only difference would be that in order to get materials to build, the player would have to find them in the realm. The scripting language could be used to give actions to the objects. Materials would have different values assigned to them as far as how powerful, protective, or helpful they were. This would allow a base cost to be set, but ultimately it would be up to the players themselves as to its real worth.



Not Your Typical Quest


Besides initial job offerings, most quests for players are created by the other players. The quest creating player will offer a reward for completing a certain task, whether it be killing a certain animal, harvesting vegetables, assassination, mining or getting other characters on board for some plot. For private matters, like assassination a certain morality level or trust defined by an alliance might be required. The game for some people might only involve manipulating other players to do their bidding. For others, it might be all about hunting animals. Ultimately, the way the game unfolds is up to the player.



Newbies versus Veterans


The only defining difference from a newbie and a player that has been around awhile is the accumulation of credibility, skills, wealth and goods. A player gains experience at certain skills, but they never level up. A warlord might be really good at killing people, but it only increases the probability that he will win in a fight. It doesn’t mean that a lesser character can’t get lucky and overthrow the current warlord. A warlord might have excellent fighting skills, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t susceptible to being poisoned. This keeps veterans of the game on their toes and allows the hierarchy in the game to constantly change.



Alliances, Not Necessarily Guilds


To allow degrees of trust and betrayal, Shades of Gray uses alliances. Alliances can be created to accomplish a task or for a long term goal. The creator of the alliance is allowed to dissolve the alliance at anytime or set an end point, such as a certain amount of money attained or a particular goal achieved. When a character is in an alliance, they have the ability to share money and equipment in a vault. This allows them to pool their resources. A group could decide to create an alliance that resembled a union in order to force the owner of a mining operation to raise their payments to workers. Players that find a group of constantly reliable characters might want to create an alliance that has a definite hierarchical structure in order to bring law and order into a territory. A character can be part of multiple alliances. A character could easily join two alliances and steal from one alliance while giving to another. The only thing stopping them would be fear of revenge on behalf of the looted alliance. There is no way to see who is part of what alliance unless that alliance chooses to advertise their affiliations.



The Importance of Strategy


The typical MMORPG of today, such as World of Warcraft or City of Heroes focuses on leveling up achieved by a grind. Your character has to be at a certain level to play certain missions. The missions revolve around a start and finish point as determined by the realm. If a mission is failed, the mission can be played again. When players engage in combat against each other, it’s merely a matchup of character skill sets. This routine can get boring.


By incorporating long term game strategies into an ever changing world, Shades of Gray provides a rich and dynamic experience for the player. One day, a player might be aligned with a warlord and enjoy the spoils of being at the top. The next day that could all change. With the real death of characters, the game is certain to provide a constant power struggle. This power struggle will push players to explore alliances and think about every move their character makes. It’s a refreshing change to traditional game play, where do-overs create a repetitive environment. The system will never be learned in entirety because the players are playing against each other rather than the system. No artificial intelligence is going to beat that.



Social Implications of a Moral Based System


If there is a path in game player types that ultimately leads to socializing, Shades of Gray will be an interesting case study. A game that seeks destructive behavior will most likely become a hostile environment for social people. The players that want to seek refuge from greed and corruption will undoubtedly group together and most likely choose a moral path that pulls them away from the underworld of the game. These morally righteous players may start to feel a sense of duty to eliminate the bad characters from the game. Will an alliance amongst honorable people be enough to ward off evil? Will the evil characters overtake the good, turning the entire world into a place where even the best intentioned players are a bit amoral? Either way, the results will be interesting and should push the genre of MMORPGs into a new mode of play.