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Massively Single-Player Gaming?
Massively is running an article discussing the trend in recent MMOs to enable and encourage solo play. Where the genre's early offerings, like Everquest and Ultima Online, were heavily dependent on finding other people to interact with, it's common for today's games to allow players to experience most of the content by themselves. Quoting:
"It is human nature to want to be the center of attention or at least feel like the hero on some level. It's also not too far of a stretch to call members of our species generally selfish. How can you really deliver this experience if you force your players to ask for help all the time? I think this was simply a natural progression of the genre in trying to appeal to our natural traits. ... Finally, I believe it all comes down to the mighty dollar. Audiences grew and so followed the market and competition. Suddenly, you couldn't make MMOs on the cheap anymore (though a stalwart few still try). Not only are game studios focused on appealing to the solo casual gamer to maximize earnings, they also want to build in artificial time sinks to make players stick around."
Its a myth like unicorns or a republican with a soul.
There are many levels of time people put into games. How exactly do you definite 'casual'? If you look at it from the MMO perspective (wow for example) do you count a casual gamer as someone who doesnt raid? how about someone who only spends time in the game for raiding and not much else? What about if the non-raider spends more time in game than the raider, which one is casual?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I disagree. MMOs should be like sex, you need at least 5 people to participate.
So, like Fallout 3 or Oblivion? or just like playing Guild Wars on an European server?
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.