Gaming Massively

Monday, March 31, 2008

define: game

Warning: Philosophy ahead.

OK - you were warned. There's an article up over on the New York Times about new 3D chat rooms with avatars, etc. WoW is explicitly mentioned in the article. But of course, in an online chat room there's no game.

But there are avatars. And a virtual world.

How many of the rules of the game have to be set down by the developers before it's a 'massive game' instead of a 'virtual world' or whatever the term of the month is? Because if the answer is nearly zero, these chat rooms, like Second Life, will qualify.

That said, I've never thought second life was a game. Or at least not a fun one. It has crafting. It has player housing. In fact, if they could open up some kind of facebook API it could even have minigames.

And let's be fair: why do you keep going back to your massive game of choice? Is it for the PvE? Maybe sometimes, but I honestly think the split is more often on the side of the social aspects of massive games. So what happens if you start with social, rather than with game? At what point does it become a MMORPG from the other side? Everyone is role playing in an online environment. The only question is the word 'game'.

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Friday, January 11, 2008

19th Century MMO?

My wife and I were discussing why there aren't more MMOs based on 'real-life'. She suggested, for example, a game based on the Napoleonic wars. As we discussed it, it became clear that many of the game elements World of Warcraft introduced could work very well for a game based in history (or in the present day). Because time is more or less fixed, you could run things through a little bit at a time (the armies are here, etc.) You could even stage 'events' where the actual battles would take place (since really, the war was a whole lot of maneuvering and very few days of pitched battles).

We also discussed how interesting the social side of a game set in this milieu could be - with a bajillion readers of romance novels and/or period pieces, why not have the game set in the upper class social world of the 19th century. The key statistic, then, would be your reputation, rather than health or stamina (although stamina could be used for, for example, the ballroom or the drinking hall). Levelling would include such traits as promotion within the government. You could grind rep with particularly influential people. Etc. It fits very well using the basic mechanics already well established in other games. And the audience, interestingly, is completely new - which either means great success, or great failure....

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Tuesday, October 9, 2007

this could be good... or bad...

MMORPGdot linked to a Warhammer Herald note that the WAR beta will be closing for a while, to revamp the game. This is probably good news - do some major rehauling, and not have to worry about the beta people while you do it. At the same time, there is some concern in my mind about how messed up things must be to need to shut the system down altogether - it seems like, in a beta, you can jerk almost anything around. It could be a community management thing - you could build up a lot of ill will during an overhaul if you keep screwing with core elements. In the note, they say they close the beta periodically, and perhaps this really is just SOP.

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