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MMORPGs Will Change the Future

Posted by Zonk on from the all-your-orcs-are-belong-to-us dept.

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. "

17 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Old logic flaw. by Golias · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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."

    --

    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    1. Re:Old logic flaw. by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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.

      --
      If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
    2. Re:Old logic flaw. by Golias · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    3. Re:Old logic flaw. by vertinox · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
    4. Re:Old logic flaw. by vertinox · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

      If I told you in 10 years, that MMOGs have direct neural interfaces and that you could have sex with Hollywood movie star(s) of your choice (mind you depending on your expansion pack), would you still bet that nickel?

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
  2. Interconnected by Thyamine · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So will we reach a point when games will be able to interconnect with each other? Sort of Trans-Atlantic cabling built right into the game, possibly even allowing some type of interworld commerce?

    Having been an EverCrack addict, I can attest to the staying power these games and environments have. With in-game advertising becoming a more popular option, will this genre become the new WWW, so to speak? It would be interesting to see.

    --
    I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
  3. The population number in 2199.. by OmgTEHMATRICKS · · Score: 2, Funny

    Will be most of humanity. By that time, the happening new MMORPG will have been created by machines. The remaining humans not in the MMORPG will consist purely of hundreds of thousands of hackers who will attack the servers and free the minds of the billions of players trapped in the game.

  4. A better mou^h^h^h^h brain trap by tyroney · · Score: 2, Interesting
    We know people don't tend to play games or watch TV because they feel they have too much time on their hands. So mostly it amounts to more engrossing and thorough distraction.

    I'd say the biggest question is: from what?

  5. Leave it to Non-RTFA'ing /.ers.. by MBraynard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    to question the 'logic' of a comedy piece. PWOT is a comedy website. Admittedly some of it's stuff can be serious, but this article is clearly a joke. The charts are jokes. The headlines are jokes.

    1. Re:Leave it to Non-RTFA'ing /.ers.. by Ahnteis · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

  6. Re:'Cause all current growth trends... by swerk · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Baldrick, do you know what 'irony' is?"
    "Yeah, it's like goldy or bronzy only iron."

    Now granted, it wasn't irony, it was sarcasm, I just like quoting BlackAdder. But yes, two points, the bubble and recession was exactly my point. MMORPGs are currently growing, therefore they will be wildly, insanely successful. ...We've heard this rubbish before. :^)

  7. Matrix by Profcrab · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  8. There are 10 million MMORPG users in the world... by Gogo0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  9. OH NOES! by theantipop · · Score: 3, Funny

    At this rate, there will be more MMORPG players than there are humans in no time! Yet more proof of the existence of aliens!

  10. Sure... by brunes69 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:There are 10 million MMORPG users in the world. by badasscat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  12. It's a bit disturbing by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A friend of mine has logged over *85 Days* (over 2000 hours) of playtime in WOW. The game has been out for approximately 250 days. That averages out to about 8 hours per day, every day, for the last 250 days. Or, put another way: my friend has spent HALF his time (16 non-sleep hours in the day) playing WOW since release. That's 56 hours a week, more than a "full-time" job and in the same ballpark as many technology jobs.