Here is an excellent article that discusses the future of online gaming. I find it to be an honest assessment of some of the real problems that will haunt games in the future, if designers do not market their games properly.

I am curious to read other people's opinions about the article. I found it to be dead right.

TopMudSites.

Interesting article, and one that seems pretty dead on from what I've seen. There's one thing that really struck me as true, on the second page: most people playing these are men, and most of the games have the same kind of envorinment. To liken it to the mud world, it's like logging into mud after mud only to find they're all stock <insert favorite codebase here> with a disgruntled ex-player of another mud running them.

I think they need to broaden the worlds they create, and open them up to entice more people in. In a way that's an advantage the mud world has, worlds can be changed and added onto much easier than a graphical game can be. Tired of your players logging in and seeing Midgaard everytime? Create a new hometown. Zap all the areas and create your own world. Yes, it takes time, but it's cheaper than developing that massive multiplayer graphical game someone else has done.

I would say that article was a fair representation of the whole MMOPRG crowd. Compared to computer games in general it is still rather young so it is not surprising they are thinking in a sort of herd mentality.

I am not so sure I agree with the post just before mine, while MU*s do continue to evolve, and new features are added, real originality is still pretty rare. One of the things that is hindering the graphic 'big boys' is the leveling up and whole quest for points concepts, and those are still mainstream in MU* as well. We do have the whole MUSH RP realms as balance of course.

The only real danger to the graphic pay to play places is the possibility that a game would do just well enough to keep it alive, but never generate any real revenue. With a normal computer game you can just stop supporting it and let it die quietly. If you have to tell a bunch of active players their World is about to vanish you face a lot more yelling. Along with that comes less support from the public for your next attempt to put a World online.

I think the real saviors of these games will be new tools that will let indivduals create graphic games. Without any tech limitations I believe there is a lot of talent out there just waiting for the right medium to come along. With the way tech limits are dropping we should be seeing better and better tools appearing.

One final thought about the article, did it amaze anyone else that in 2002 game designers would still be saying things like 'we are adding features that should appeal to women'. When you are looking at needing a large group to make something a success should the design not start reasonably balanced?


A.T
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Here is another article. Though not as informative as the previous one, it shows how prevalent these games are becoming.