[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Spore and MMOs

[Ren Reynolds]

On 27 Aug 2007, at 18:22, Michael Chui wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> So, I've been at PAX the last two days and today, there was a panel
> entitled "Future of MMOs". Great. Reasonably good stuff, though  
> nothing really got my attention more than the casual and regular
> mentions of, "Well, EVE does this..." I got up to ask a question,
> didn't get the chance to toss it out, and realized that MUD-Dev
> might be interested.
>
> What I wanted to pose was this:
>
> Will Wright and Spore have a decidedly advantageous position. Everyone
> is expecting miracles and wonders etc. One thing I want to focus on,
> however, is his coinage of "massively single-player": the idea that  
> you are affected and effect everyone else who plays, but the game
> remains single-player in its essence. Spore implements this by
> uploading your creations to a central server and pushing it back out
> to people to be controlled by AI. And I wonder... will we start seeing
> ports of this concept to more traditional genres, like the Strategy,
> the FPS, the RPG?
>
> My thoughts:
>
> I see two paths for this. One is the "truly single-player"  
> approach. In this case, you'd be doing what Spore is doing:
> making stuff, uploading it to a server for inclusion into
> others' games and that'd be the end of your contribution.
>
> The other is a kind of PBEM/Hotseat Civilization-type of approach,
> wherein there are periodic updates of changes. For instance,  
> consider a game of Battlefield played across a couple dozen
> sessions of Counterstrike, each session involving different groups
> of related and allied persons. You'd have specific missions:
> essentially, "Capture this point." and the outcome would be saved
> and the next group to play would have to deal with it thusly.

I think it's an all-of-the-above and then some.

The Web 2.0 thang has generated an expectation, or assumed  
expectation, of connectedness.

We have that at a very fat level on things like SL where people can  
create stuff, to a lesser level on MMOs (thought I've been banging on  
for a while that op-in social network stuff is really needed), meta-
stuff with Playahead, Rupture etc.

Then at the other end we have a set of experience that are connected  
in some way. At the very lowest level are things like Xbox gamertags.  
Slightly higher there are things like Animal Crossing where objects  
and ID's can be moved around into semi-autonomous universes.

In the middle I guess there is the Metaverse model of sharing things  
across discrete worlds.

So I guess we are going to see other games playing with the range of  
modes the in different ways enable people to form communities or at  
the very lest feel connected in some way.

ren