MMORPGs Will Change the Future

Franz Ferdinand writes "An article at PointlessWasteofTime discusses all the unexpected directions MMORPG technology will change the future. From the same gentleman who brought us the Gamer's Manifesto." From the article: "There are 10 million MMORPG users in the world and their population is doubling every two years. Hold your hand about three feet above your monitor. That's where the graph will be in 2010. It's an infection, it's a tsunami, it's a volcanic eruption. All at the same time, waiting, like a nest of plague-infested rats next to a ticking hydrogen bomb in an underwater volcano. Or something. What I'm trying to say is, it's The Next Big Thing. "

Comments

Old logic flaw.

[Golias]

"My dog was six inches tall last year."
"My dog is two feet tall this year."
"Based on this trend, my dog will be taller than my house in a few years."

Re:Old logic flaw.

[Shadow Wrought]

Old logic flaw.

My favorite example of this is projections in baseball. Usually you can count on someone hitting a couple homers in one of the opening day games and then he's projected to hit 324 during the course of the year;-)

With MMORPG, there is a certain audience that likes the games and will continue to pour money into them. Once that market is saturated, however, the numbers will plateau (same as in every other industry). There are many people, myself included, who don't really care for the genre and will not waste resources (be they time or money) on playing them. I'll bet any of you a shiny nickel that in ten years, the number of people like me (i.e., those who don't play MMORPGs) will still outnumber those who do.

Re:Old logic flaw.

[Golias]

Well, there's a lot of appeal to the idea of walking around in a virtual world with a stunningly handsome/beautiful avatar to represent you as you interact with people and do stuff.

The place where these games fall down is that the "stuff to do" still isn't really fun enough. The WoW missions seem like fun at first, but they all quickly blur into "travel 10 minutes to that place, engage in the same basic MMORPG combat system that goes all the way back to text-based level-grinding MUD's, then travel all the way back. When you do, you will get some meaningless rewards."

It's a time-sink, in the sense that dumping nickels into a video slot machine is a time-sink, but it's not really all that fun.

The day somebody comes up with an emersive, interactive, MMO which has a fun game or two braided into it, that person is going to become very wealthy.

The other problem is, most adults eventually reach the point where they realize that paying $20 a month to walk around and talk to people in a virtual world is kind of stupid when they can do that in the real world pretty much for free. You don't get to look like an elf (unless you are willing to undergo radical elective surgery), but otherwise you can meet just as many interesting people by joining a church choir, a co-rec sports team, a political party caucus or whatever.

Heck, go to sci-fi and anime cons, and you can meet people just as nerdy as you see in an MMORPG... and you can even make yourself look a little bit like an elf, if you really want to.

Re:Old logic flaw.

[vertinox]

You're dog is not a multi-organism entity.

The saying should be:

"There were 5 bacteria cells in this Petri-dish yesterday."
"There are 2500 bacteria cells in this Petri-dish right now."
"Tomorrow it is safe to say as long as I put enough food in the Petri-dish there will be 1,250,000 million bacteria cells."

Comparing things to a single organism which has DNA instructions to cease growing is a logic flaw in itself because if the number being compared is of things that are independent nature and have no set limit in growth beyond actually consumption of fuel and energy then that would be more correct.

Obviously, the number of MMOG subscribers are not restrained by DNA programming, but like all things is dependant of fuel and does have a limit, but that limit is more economic related.

Re:Leave it to Non-RTFA'ing /.ers..

[Ahnteis]

Slashdot
Satire for Nerds. Stuff that's not meant to be taken seriously?

Matrix

[Profcrab]

Sentient machines will not need to put us into sensory cocoons that recreate a world for us to interact in. I think we will end up doing that ourselves.

We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

There are 10 million MMORPG users in the world...

[Gogo0]

Exactly.

Users

Not to say that everyone who plays an MMORPG is addicted, but I have seen people get kicked out of college because they stopped going to classes in favor of EQ.

Those who arent addicted still get trapped -the need to level up and stay caught up with everyone else makes it more time-consuming than any other kind of game.

Sure...

[brunes69]

There are 10 million MMORPG users in the world and their population is doubling every two years. Hold your hand about three feet above your monitor. That's where the graph will be in 2010.

Yeah. Just like how we have over 20 billion people in the world now , and the DJA is climbing above 20,000.

You can't just take a current trend, and extrapolate it into infinity. It is total bollocks. For one, many *many* of those "10 million users" are the same people with accounts on more than one game. For another, the number of MMORPG gamers will reach a critical mass, once it reaches the number of people who don't like to spend over 10 hours a week on their home computer - you know, people who GO OUTSIDE.

Re:There are 10 million MMORPG users in the world.

[badasscat]

Exactly.

Users

And don't forget - 5 million of them are in Korea!

That's no joke. Growth rates in the rest of the world have been pretty low. Of course, cup-half-fullers will say that just means there's more growth potential in other countries. Half-empties like me will say it shows that not everybody is really interested in online gaming, even in advanced, internet-saturated nations.