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Games Entertainment

The Wikification of Games 36

Posted by Zonk from the everybody-in-the-pool dept.
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.
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The Wikification of Games

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  • I'm really struggling to see the point to this "article" (if you can even call it that).

    anyone?
  • 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.
  • Zonk, the POINT of games is that people participate.
    • I'll bite. Most games DON'T involve player participation. The designers/developers create a game and hand it to the player, who can play it or not but ultimately can't really affect the way the game plays. There are games that buck this trend (Neverwinter Nights, Second Life, etc) but they've only recently come into vogue.
      • I'm talking about all games in general, not just computer games.

        You know, like soccer, basketball, tennis, hockey, golf, ping-pong, monopoly, poker, etc.

        • Well, you've still got the distinction wrong. You can't change the rules or environment for any of those games. You can decide to play basketball with tennis rackets, but you're then no longer playing "the game" and it certainly wouldn't fly in a professional league. This article is about actually changing the face of the game, where the developers don't neccesarily dictate the rules to play by.
          • The point of any game is to get people to play.

            Some games are solo, some games are 2 , some 10, some more, depending on how many peopl you've got on hand. The idea is that if there are 20 people in the room looking bored and itching to do something, you should not offer a tennis match with 18 viewers and 2 players, rather, you should all go outside and play soccer, 10 against 10.

            And, honetly, the rules be damned. It's all about having fun, and everybody participating and having fun.

  • You know something is wrong... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...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.
    • "Zonk has single-handedly killed the Games section. Not just maimed. Friggin' killed this section."

      This is (or was) the GAMES section. Please use proper terminology:

      Zonk has single-handedly gibbed the Games section. Not just ganked. Fraggin' gibbed this section.
  • Well I did. I predicted all those things. But like usual great minds are not appreciated in their time.
  • Surely someone will spot all the best bits and make a song/movie/book/website to end all songs/movies/books/websites?
  • Been fully explored in the .hack series.

  • Hm (Score:3, Informative)

    by Knara ( 9377 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:26PM (#13290365)
    I dunno if will develop any large new concepts until the endgame-plateau phenomenon is addressed in some way. I mean, granted, the companies' interest is in making money, and a straight level-based game is an easy way to do that. But, the problem as I see it is that MMO's attempt to create a persistant world with a build-in dead-end. Not only that, but the worlds are, admittedly to varying degrees, almost Calvinist in their construction. You will have to do such and such, eventually (well okay, not for sure, but if you're not gonna you basically sit at a very low level and it makes one wonder why you ever bought the game at all). In the real world (which of course is the model for persistant online worlds), the only thing assured is that you have to die (unless you really are a Calvinist...)

    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.

    • Re:Hm (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In Real Life that currency allows you to do other things, but in most games it just lets you buy better stuff.

      Ehh... so what in "Real Life" do you do with your money other than buy stuff or reinvest to make more money?

      • Re:Hm (Score:2)

        by Knara ( 9377 )
        Well, the steps toward it are hinted at in things like player housing and the like. Having money allows you to buy things that aren't just better armor, better weapons, more magical, etc. They allow you to obtain things and participate in processes that can potentialy make you or someone else's life better.
  • 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 the

  • Virtual real estate will eat them all (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Julian Morrison ( 5575 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @08:16PM (#13290993)
    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.
  • 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 w

    • The overlap between offline and online currencies will increase, and will again extend beyond the current MMORPGs.

      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

      • How long until someone opens a reality/virtual border duty-free shop?

        I doubt that will happen in that sense, as the analogy of borders won't scale. However, what you could have is a case of both vendors that do tax (say, like Sony's recent trading facility for it's games) and those that don't. (Ebay currently, IGN possibly) Thus, the ones that don't tax or that don't take a per-transaction cut will be analogous to real-world duty free shops, perhaps.

        For example, do these companies that sell virtual gold and

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