[MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?

[Amanda Walker]

On Jul 9, 2004, at 12:05 PM, Koster, Raph wrote:

> The single biggest difference I see right now other than graphics
> is the push on the part of graphical commercial game makers to
> make the games less like online worlds and more like limited
> multiplayer games, via instancing and massive streamlining of
> feature sets. This is something the text games could do, but never
> did to this degree, and whether it is the right direction is, I
> think, debatable (though no one doubts that some of the resultant
> games are fun).

It's also not an all or nothing thing.  I'm not so sure I'd say that
MMOs are going from virtual worlds to limited multiplayer games, so
much as creating limited multiplayer games *within* virtual worlds.
This, I think, is a fine development.  The virtual world provides
the context, but you avoid having to stand in line for hours waiting
for a rare spawn because there's only one.

it's not just developers that are doing this, either: players are as
well.  one of the more fun SWG sessions I've spent recently was
"casino night", where a guy in my guild decorated some player
housing as a casino, figured out how to play some chance-based games
with the tools available in SWG (*very* minimal), and set out a
bunch of invites.  There were maybe a couple dozen people present
over the course of the evening, but everyone raves about how much
fun it was.  I don't think it would have been nearly so much fun as
an isolated game: part of the fun was the SWG-provided context.

One of the things I've talked about before is the promise of virtual
worlds as gaming (and storytelling) contexts, rather than as "games"
per se.  I think that the move towards games-within-games is a sign
of this happening.

Amanda Walker
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev