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Africa, The MMOG

Posted by Zonk on from the travel-from-the-comfort-of-your-own-home dept.

Via Joystiq, an MTV Games story about a MMOG that attempts to encompass Africa in a game. From the article: "Less reserved, Adam Ghetti, the teenage creative director at Rapid Reality, the company actually creating the game, said he hopes the game will right some wrongs. 'The white American board developers of the large MMO development companies out there right now don't honestly have the right background and knowledge on the continent of Africa and its lore, mythology and rich history, and quite honestly neither did I,' said Ghetti, who is white. 'They just don't teach it over here.' The game is designed, in part, to change that."

7 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by The-Bus · · Score: 4, Funny

    It better run on Ubuntu!

    --

    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

  2. This does not sound good... by Stormwatch · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "The average cycle on MMOs is two to four years," he said. "We can turn out the same content, better graphics, better gameplay in eight months to a year." He said games from his company, including "Africa," will have graphics that surpass the current industry gold standard of the Unreal Engine 3. When he talks about the ability for every computer-controlled character in "Africa" to react uniquely to each human-controlled character, he scoffs at prospective doubters. "They say it's impossible. Maybe if we were doing it in the archaic way everyone else tries to do it."
    Uh-huh. Yeah, sure. Whenever anyone makes such wild claims, you can be certain that they will blow it. This game will be either full of bugs or delayed for years.
    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  3. Africa by Alex+P+Keaton+in+da · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think one of the issues that we (Americans) have is that you normally hear of "Africa." It is the only continent that is mentioned as a country (aside from the obvious Australia which is a country, or Anarctica, which has no countries). I don't think people(in general) realize that Africa is made up of distinct countries with distinct cultures.
    Then again, many of my country men can't name 10 state capitals in the US... so maybe understanding other cultures is too much...

    --
    And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
  4. Jilting at windmills by Locke2005 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    1) Africa is a big place with hundreds of different languages and cultures. No single artwork could possible "encompass Africa", it can only try to present a small representative sample.

    2) The designer of the game claims both that it will have state of the art graphics and that it will run on low-end computers. Sorry, but you can't do both at the same time! Also, much of the gameplay that works great when you're on the same Ethernet segment as the server is virtually unplayable when you're on a dial-up on a different continent than the server.

    In general, you can't be all things to all people; you need to pick your battles and focus on doing just a few things, but doing them well.

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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  6. Re:What's the... point? by the+grace+of+R'hllor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think *you* are the point of making a game like this.

    Africa is a friggin' continent, for god's sake, several times larger than the US, with a lot (!!) more history. I am assuming you are from the US, here, for reasons that should be obvious. If, all over Africa, there were nothing other than millions starving to death or dying of AIDS, if everyone were killing everyone else, it would be a complete wasteland within the decade. And it's not. Mythology might be heavily animal-based, but so it is with American Indians. Not surprising, when you're living among so damn many of them.

    As for your jibe concerning LOTR, there's a difference to fantasy in an imaginary world, like LOTR, Krull or Star Wars, and fantasy based on mythology, like American Gods, Chronicles of Narnia or even The Iliad. Fantasy has many levels. If you look at Neil Gaiman's books, they tend to be about our world, with legends and mythology made flesh. Something like that would work well in 'the cradle of humanity'.

    The execution of the whole deal would be tricky, though, you're right. It's too easy to fall into triteness, rather than actual interesting cultural exchange.

  7. I wish the author well by Jakuta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Africa, from an inside flavor. This will be interesting to see and i for one am going to be expectant of the views presented. Will this be of the time of Egypt? Will it cover the Congo and Llukumi existance and history of the west coast? The Ethiopia, Swahili and Zulu nations of the east coast? There are a number of pantheons and diverse cultural histories to be represented either correctly or fictitiously. Perhaps crickets are not all that would be heard and maybe you might learn something about Africa from the game, unlike LOTR which was not set in europe....