There Inc - Propagating the Bad of Society? 43
An anonymous reader writes "A former beta tester has written up a negative, but interesting, review of the 'virtual world' MMO title There. While it mainly contains sarcastic remarks directed at the game mechanics (or lack there-of), near the end it also claims that There is 'a mirror of the shallowest possible view of American consumerist society.' It concludes by saying that There is missing anything that would classify it as a game, and that as a chat service it capitalizes on 'our society's tendency to believe that being attractive is a prerequisite for being accepted by others.' Should developers try to be aware of whether their game will reproduce negative trends already present in real life?" We recently ran a story on the official launch of There, a game that has its fans as well as its detractors.
Why is this even news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Forget the fact that the very first sentance uses a Hitler reference. He's certainly not the right person to write a review about There, or anything else for that matter.
For those who might actually be interested in what There is, it's a half-finished (if that) online community (metaverse? maybe). There are both social and gaming aspects, so it's not completely either one. If you don't like to interact with other people, you won't have fun. If all you like to do is play FPS or PRG games, it's not for you.
There is a place to meet people. It's a place to interact, through social, game, or contest activities. You can start or join clubs, race vehicles, hold classes, participate in trivia and quest contest. You can modify your 'avatar' appearance, and buy clothes designed by other players. Even the vehicles can be skinned and even modeled in some cases.
Even if you are not a social person, there is plenty to keep you busy for at least a few hours a week, and There plans to add more content over time. There will be yahoo-esque games such as cards planned in the near future.
I am not at all the target There member (I'm more of an RPG gamer), but I've still been playing since early in the beta, and I've yet to get bored. Any 'game' that can hold my attention for mroe than 9 months, especially one that's still in development, seems like a pretty well-made experiment.
Re:Why is this even news? (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny that they're charging $49.99 a year [there.com] to play a half-finished game. Even funnier is that you (and many other people) have bought into it.
But I guess that's the state of many [sony.com] online [sony.com] games [anarchy-online.com]...
MMORPG (Score:3, Insightful)
I've played There for several months in the beta, and continue to to this day. All of his points are valid, the land scape does not have copious ammounts of variation. People tend to all be beautiful.
But if you are an obnoxious troll who seeks only to berate the game and other people, you will be ignored and shunned in There. Just as you would in real life. I suspect that the author of this article didn't find any friends, and rather then tempting to right that in some way he got pissy and left the game.
Also, his credability-for my self-was lost when he called it an "MMORPG"
There are many things out there that can be considered an MMORPG, this is *not* one of them. There is no role playing here. I'm not castic a magic spell to slay a rat. I'm not using my space pistol to shoot a rat. I'm not swinging my sword to kill a rat. I'm conversing with a wide array of people in a digital world, that just happens to have buggies, bikes, boards, and so forth.