Excerpts from two separate posts in MMORPG!?!? thread:

quote: Excerpt 1: Actually, I think the best chance to beat [Verant at the MMORPG game] is to provide variations on the theme. MMO should become a distribution/interaction model, allowing for a variety of genres to apply it. We''d see MMO sports games (World Baseball is the first I''ve heard of), MMO action shooters, MMO FPS (kinda like current deathmatch/CTF/etc, but on a much larger scale; imagine an entire war being fought by nations of FPS infantry and gunners and medics and...), MMO RTS and RTT... As solinear said, the "genre" (and I use that word very loosely; paradigm is much more appropriate) is only going to grow. Heck, given enough time we might find MMO-Puzzle games... ... Excerpt 2: Hey, MMO-Puzzle! Imagine having an incredibly large structure to be reassembled, Testrisphear-esque, and you find parts and communicate with your teammates on where the part should go. T5: I found the green rubicon! T3: G12! G12! T1: Where''s the fscking yellow orb! T2: Yellow orb! Got it! T1: hup! T2: Catch! That''s an excerpt from a VoIP-enabled team puzzle game in which teams try to assemble various psuedo-sci-fi/fantasy machines in a race against the clock or against other teams. The machinery could them be used to gain strategic advantage in some "larger context."

So what do you think of MMO as a design/interaction/distribution paradigm? Theoretically, virtually any sort of game could be taken to massively multiplayer extents, so long as there were cooperative and competitive features (since the whole objective is social interaction and "conflict"). I find the idea fascinating and would like to see what derivations arise right here on these boards. [ GDNet Start Here | GDNet Search Tool | GDNet FAQ | MS RTFM [MSDN] | SGI STL Docs | Google! | Asking Smart Questions | Internet Acronyms ] Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Players build worlds while other players explore the worlds under construction: SimCity architects and politicians and road planners build and maintain the city as other players have free run of it, acting out their FPS desires and in general not doing the city planners any favors.

Players design and script vehicles, bots, whatever to interact in worlds built by others. The idea of bot design and level design are merged into simultaneous gameplaying roles.

Players let their machines play passive processing roles in large worlds: one player''s machine computes a tornado sweeping through a MMORPG world; another player''s machine computes flora and fauna in that world...

Wow! Those are some breakthrough ideas, bishop_pass, particularly the tornado and flora/fauna concepts. Imagine a functional ecosystem in which players could script and evolve a variety of species, possibly with predatory options and the need to develop defensive mechanisms... This could be a geek toy to finally supplant nethack in the lore!

I like the general trend of role-playing becoming both active (development of vehicles, bots, species...) and passive forms of interaction. I tip my hat to that.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

I always thought of MMO as an interactive medium rather than a game so any game could be turned into a MMOG. But we still have a long way to go before MMO-Puzzle become a monthly subscription based service rather than the free games you see offered on places like MSN zones.

Nice ideas about the tornado and flora/fauna but I think you''re missing something. If player''s own computer plays a passive processing role in large world. He could potentially cheat somehow; create a giant tornado and destory the cities that the other player''s built... hmm.

That wouldn''t be cheating (destroying the city) - at least, not if the game allowed it. That would be an integral part of the game, just as tornados do severe damage to our cities in real life. Of course, the specifics are up to the programmer, but some people (meteorologist, for example) might find such a simulation interesting.

Furthermore, I don''t think of these things in terms of expense. If the MMO-Puzzle developer writes server software along with the client software and sells/distributes them both, leaving end users to host their own puzzle worlds (much like current FPSes), the medium could be very successful. Frankly, I''m not as interested in the fiscal prospects of MMO. If I do develop any MMO games, all the costs will be upfront. I apply the same philosophy to the possibility of my developing any games, period: no "expansion packs" that add new "character classes and quests" but cost full package retail. I''ll release the tools and let the community do that for itself while I move on to other things.

Of course, that''s not to say the fiscal prospects are not a valid consideration. To each his own. I''d rather continue to explore the noosphere and open new conceptual country.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

quote: Original post by Mooglez
He could potentially cheat somehow; create a giant tornado and destory the cities that the other player''s built... hmm.

Wouldn''t there be limits on the size of the tornado allowed and the total absolute control the player might have over the tornado just as is the case with players playing people? I don''t envision a tornado destroying a city. I see one sweeping through a hamlet and causing a little bit of havoc, damage and terror amongst the hamlet and those players in that vicinity.

To the player playing the tornado, he is trying to control it in the same way one might wrestle and tame a wild animal. The player can only influence and guide it. From the perspective of players playing people and guarding against it or fleeing it, from their perspecitve, it is just nature running a little rampant as she ocassionally is known to do.

quote: Theoretically, virtually any sort of game could be taken to massively multiplayer extents, so long as there were cooperative and competitive features

One word: sports.

And don''t just take an existing sports game and make an online version of it, no, create a completely new experience, focused on online gaming. Take into consideration interface, speed, skill, connection, hardware, time, etc. Then create a game which lets players form teams and play other teams in a ranking system.

quote: Original post by Silvermyst
One word: sports.

You mean like this incredibly brilliant idea?

While I originally envisaged that game as a networked game, a lot of recent suggestions and ideas have made me rework it. The new concept is that there are several sports games (basketball, soccer, football, tennis, etc) in which players can be athletes, coaches, scouts and any other organizationally active role. One level up is a superstructure of franchise ownership, game attendance, ticket sales and all the business aspects of sports. The idea is then to unify all these games to create a complex socioeconomic structure in which consolidation, takeovers, management changes and so forth play as much a factor as quality of recruited players, etc. So the diehard sports gamer gets a deep social sports simulation while the sim-head/business strategy gamer gets a SimFranchise to play with.

Time to go update that thread...

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

That''s really cool. Imagine if you''re a ''player'' in one of these MMO sports games, and you get traded by someone who owns the team. Wow, in a way that would be a very interesting development...

I think that while MMO can be applied to any genre, I feel that it will evolve to a point that it doesn''t exactly look like what it is now. Right now, there is really no sort of moderation in MMO games. Essentially the players have free will to do whatever they please...and therein lies the rub. As Conrad pointed out in the Heart of Darkness, when man is put in a position with no authority and no centralization, he reverts to a barbarism.

Yes, you can eliminate some cheaters or some particularly obnoxious player killers, but in the end....who are the police and even more importantly who are the guiders of events? Some genres will not necessitate this, as the freedom of action is bound by the context of the rules....sports for example. But if its an RPG, or a FPS, or something in which limits of action and direction are not explicitly defined, I think it''s headed for trouble. Imagine what this forum would be like without moderators...or IRC. I think that eventually, the outlawness of MMO''s will have to place some kind of moderator or GM to put order. Otherwise MMO will be considered just a fancy IRC client , with no Ops to boot.

I personally don''t play MMO''s for that very reason. I honest to God think that some people are addicted to this style of gaming precisely because there are no limits. And when I mean addicted, I''m not talking potato chip style addiction, I''m talking spending 6+ hours a day playing kind of addiction. Hopefully other genre''s of MMO will come out that alleviate this. But there''s still one other concern. Since this is a service oriented paradigm, you have to shell out money to play after you buy the game. This means that not many people will pay more than one or two. And even if you are rich, the time investment required is rather obscene. I think that MMO is really just a bandwagon right now, and will need more time to evolve. But once it matures I think it will be an intriguing world with lots of different styles of gameplay to be offered