The Barbarians At The MMOG Gates 78
simoniker writes "Areae president Raph Koster is perhaps best known as a designer of Ultima Online and the previous CCO of Sony Online Entertainment, and in an in-depth Gamasutra interview, he discusses his views on 'game grammar', the uniting of MMOs and online worlds, and the software patent problem. In particular, he's been talking about the 'barbarians at the gates' for hardcore MMO makers: 'Even the creation of the MUD in the first place was that. It was the Internet-based reaction to the stuff that had existed on the microcomputers and the Plato network and all of that. All of a sudden, "Oh, wait! We can put a text MUD on Arpanet!" And it was like, "Whoa!" and it spread like wildfire, and all of a sudden, all of that other stuff went away. So it's really possible for that stuff to be happening now with microtransactions, with portals versus traditional publishers, with digital distribution publishers versus traditional publishers, and with MMOs from MTV versus MMOs from Sony or EA or NCSoft.'"
*Ahnold Scream* (Score:3, Interesting)
Please stop (Score:2, Interesting)
Every time someone talks about some evolution of something we have now they go and mention MTV.
MTV provides nothing but attention whore PR.
Please stop mentioning them in your next-gen-extreme-thing PR.
-ts
Re:Meh. (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because your online experience was apparently a bad one, don't assume that all people who play MMOs are "complete dicks or immature little twats". The comment is narrow minded and naive, and the fact that you even said this shows an immature attitude.
There is something to be said for a group of people who can combine together to down difficult raid bosses and contribute to one another's rise in abilities or overall economic power. Organization is a mature trait, and is explored greatly in an MMO.
Further, having anywhere from 2000 to 30,000 users on a server at any one time either interacting directly with one another or indirectly passing each other by adds an atmosphere to a world that no single player game EVER can. There is something to be said about playing against unscripted rivals, or better yet, knowing you were defeated or you won over another human being rather than a computer.
So in reply to your statement, I suspect YOU are the one that is anti social, and the one that can't deal with others. Apparently you cannot even deal with a virtual social climate, one that matters less and affects you less, than a real one does.
Anonymous Coward
Re:Please stop (Score:2, Interesting)
MTV might have been the new Playboy.
But we have The Hills.
"LC is wearing an American Eagle headband; $40."
arghh, why the *FSCK* does that have to be somewhere in my mind?!?!
Purge!!!
Re:Future of Single-Player (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:STFU Koster, you still owe us for SWG (Score:3, Interesting)
So, does uninstalling the game kill the AI? Is that amoral?
I don't expect that this will be an issue in anything but the very distant future...
Re:STFU Koster, you still owe us for SWG (Score:3, Interesting)
As to its consent, it's the same consent any human player gives when entering the PvP areas (or else, seeing as it's the AI's job to play these characters, it's the same consent that, say, a Renfaire jouster gives to be knocked off his horse for the amusement of the crowd, or a LARP NPC player gives to be defeated by the paid guests.