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.

Comments

Re:was there really a point to that?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

The point to this article is for everybody to put their "witty remark"-skills to test on /.

See it as a new game genre, using /. as playground.
Right now I'm a level 10 comment poster.

Virtual real estate will eat them all

[Julian Morrison]

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.