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The Wikification of Games
This week's Escapist has an article discussing the future imperfect, which touches on some of the same issues (seriously, this time) that the farcical Pointless WasteofTime did this past weekend. From the article: "What is the future of the massively multiplayer game? And I think: More importantly, how long before that future gets here? I've been waiting for ages. Surely with all that soul searching and 'post-mortem analysis' the developers can't be far from that elusive next-gen ideal? Surely someone will spot all the best bits and make a game to end all games? Won't they? Ach, maybe it's hopeless. How can I really know? How can I predict what games are going to do in a year, let alone a couple of decades? Who could have predicted the rise in professional gaming, or the importance of mods, or the black-market virtual cash cultures, or the thronging game cafés of the Far East, where people can lose their lives in arguments over virtual items?" His ending argument is that gaming will tend towards the wiki mentality: Everyone participates.
I'm really struggling to see the point to this "article" (if you can even call it that).
anyone?
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
A completely predictable pre-scripted life (or game) where all the details are known ahead of time? Might be some folks' definition of Hell itself.
One would hope that the next generation of games does a trans-dimensional Immelman away from the best bits (and all the other bits, for that matter) of games currently in existence rather than simply condensing them down into a tasteless hash.
Yes, I do have ideas.
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Zonk, the POINT of games is that people participate.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Zonk just stop posting articles ok, just stop.
...when every reply is something negative about Zonk. Count mine among them. Zonk has single-handedly killed the Games section. Not just maimed. Friggin' killed this section.
Please, someone in management please either fire Zonk, convince him to quit or just flippin' replace him with someone with talent. The story selections suck, his reviews are benign and lack talent and he doesn't respond to feedback.
Gah, why am I even bothering writing this? No one has listened to our complaints for years.
Well I did. I predicted all those things. But like usual great minds are not appreciated in their time.
for great justice!
Look sally! Look at zonk die; die zonk die!
zonk just came in kicked my dog and raped my dad after writing this article. that cock in his ass must be LARGE
Surely someone will spot all the best bits and make a song/movie/book/website to end all songs/movies/books/websites?
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
Been fully explored in the .hack series.
I also think part of the problem is that in most MMO's these days, the only real goal is resource accumulation, be it currency or something that leads to currency. In Real Life that currency allows you to do other things, but in most games it just lets you buy better stuff.
And then beyond that (and perhaps most significantly), MMORPGs (aside from things like Joint Operations which obviously is just a very large combat sim), which are obviously the most popular of the current MMOs, place you in the role of attempting to live a seperate life from your own, without spending as much time as you do living a real life. So, the question remains, is there some sort of gaming paradigm that would facilitate that. I don't know if there is, beyond the sci-fi concept of "jacking in" to some massively complex digital system and leaving meatspace behind.
Everyone had high hopes for Escapist magazine, and it's been at least stimulating to read over the past month or so. This article is a low point.
Not only is it their second article about Second Life (no punnery meant) in the last few weeks, they trot out the same "Sandbox vs. Theme Park" theory of online gaming that we've been hearing for 10 years. On top of that- the navel gazing of this article comes to no satisfactory conclusion or new revelations on the subject.
But for all the anti-Zonk sentiments these days, at least there are fewer dupes than the beginning of Summer. The post-E3 Summer season is usually a dry spell for gaming, so I guess this is all we get.
I predict that the next big thing will be sub-games, set up in the context of larger "virtual real estate" systems eg: Second Life. The VRE acts as a convenient driver and gateway for both small (hobbyist) and large (commercially sublet) inner games. For a new game company, this could make excellent business sense. The software's done for you, there's a ready made in-game economy and customer base, all you need to do is dev the game-world and put a toll-gate at the door.
I am high on crack and Zonk just killed my buzz :(
Zonk, even in the lowly realm of editing pre-rolled stories you are hopeless. Nobody likes you Zonk, please leave.
My own predictions:-
1. What we now call MMORPGs are going to become fully-fledged virtual societies. Some will be themed along the lines of gaming; others won't be, and will in fact be merely stylised mirrors of places in the real world, where people work and do various other things.
2. The overlap between offline and online currencies will increase, and will again extend beyond the current MMORPGs.
3. The ultimate logical extension of this is that eventually, something similar to what we now call an MMORPG will be recognised as an entirely legitimate geopolitical entity, though for some reason I don't see that happening before 2020.
Basically, the Internet and online environments are going to increasingly supplement physical world existence...I don't think they will supplant offline life, but they will be a very real alternative for a lot of people.
My sources for this belief are such books as The Sovereign Individual, and also the belief systems espoused by such websites as Afterlife Knowledge.
Basically I believe that the Internet is going to become a fully fledged mechanical facsimile of astral space, but with some vestigial physical world elements.
Great... I can see the ads now. "Own a Super Widget 2010 today for the low price of just US$19.95, EQ2 133g, or WoW 200g!" How long until someone opens a reality/virtual border duty-free shop?
On a slightly more serious note, how long do you think it will be before virtual assets are legally treated as real assets for financial purposes? For example, do these companies that sell virtual gold and items have to pay taxes on their sales? If so, is their product considered a good or a service? If I review games for a living and I buy a virtual item to review, can I claim it as a business expense? If I resell it, do I have to claim the profit as business income? If I play an MMORPG in my free time, am I building wealth that I can later use for retirement?
You know what I think may become a somewhat major problem? Virtual identity theft. Right now, id theft is a problem because you could lose your physical world stuff. But as virtual marketplaces become more common and prevalent, I could see a big black market in stolen game account information. Or think about what havoc would be wreaked if somehow CmdrTaco's Slashdot account were compromised and someone started posting stuff as him. (Free gift subscriptions for everybody!!!)