1. Further Opportunities for the Player to self - create....
This is really the first idea that I generally tend to have each time I think about how the near future of MMO's might change, and of course this was a key element of what EverQuest Next said that it was going to sell us, had it ever been released. The way I envision it myself is that I can see a world where not only buildings can be erected by the players themselves, but also quests, books, spells, armor, weapons....
Under the current system we have, as far as I know, in almost any current MMO that is out, all of that is completely imposisble, and almost every single aspect of the game has been created for the player rather than by the player. For most people in this generation, or even the older generation that would have played the first MMO's that came out in the late 90's, this world that was entirely constructed by solely the developers wasn't interpreted as limiting or as problematic, since most early MMO players were coming from the world of the single player console games beforehand. These days of course, the entire idea has changed, one imagines, for many young people who have perhaps come of age playing nothing other than these online roleplaying games.
I, for instance, only had a very brief period with games that were single player, before switching permanently to MMORPG's. And if there is one thing that I know about the world of the online multiplayer game, it is that the players I have met have generally enjoyed crafting their own stories and their own "idea" , even, of what the lore in the game is et cetera. All of these little facts thus lead me to believe that the next step is going to be that these little player crafted ideas will get implemented in a serious way.....
2. An enforced Roleplay that will perhaps be necessary for success within the Game
I know, I know, to many players in this generation, this idea that RP'ing could one day be enforced sounds not only terrifying but perhaps downright ridiculous, however in my opinion, one of the main reasons that the MMORPG has somewhat failed in our own time is a direct result of the fact that many people logging on truly thought they were going to be entering into a sort of storybook world, and then were solely disappointed when they slowly realized that most players considered the game far more about statistics than they did about lore or stories, et cetera. This happened to me - this experience of the RP factor disintegrating in 9/10 situations -- in not just EverQuest or WoW but literally every MMO I ever logged onto. And for me as an individual, it absolutely changed my enjoyment of the game,especially because, as a storyteller, I entered it with high hopes of really extensive and in depth roleplaying....
Therefore, in the future I personally can't see this aversion to roleplaying lasting. I am convinced that RP'ing is going to somehow wind up becoming the norm in the future, I just can't quite see how. One of the reasons I believe it so strongly, however, is because I do think that the newer generations of people , each time they log online, have been gradually becoming more and more creative almost as a rule. The internet fuels creativity in more ways than one, as well as in more formats than just the world of the RP video game. The rise of things like YouTube, blogs like this, story telling websites, poetry websites, DeviantArt, Tumblr --- in my opinion, all of these various engines have contributed to the "commoner" of today being significantly more creative than the commoner of yesterday.
Again, the original generation of 20 somethings and 30 somethings that first logged onto Everquest in the late 1990's were mostly all people for whom the Internet -- and posting your own art on it etc--was a very new thing. Obviously there have always been artists around in the world, but there haven't always been a wide array of amateur artists in serious contact with each other. Looking backwards at stories of how hard it once was, for instance, to find other people to play a pre-internet board game like Dungeons and Dragons with you, in your own hometown or even your own city, is a prime example of this fact. Creativity is becoming less and less shamed, in my opinion, as a result of the internet, because there are so many people on here that you can almost always find an audience to enjoy you no matter what you're creating. This leads to a piqued interest which I therefore think rather naturally leads to people being less averse to things that once seemed "silly" or "ridiculous" like RP'ing. In other words, people aren't as ashamed of beings nerds as they once were anymore --- and they'll be even less ashamed of it 10-15 or 20 years down the road....
3. The games are going to connect in a major way to real world economies
This is probably one of the biggest facts and is what is going to really get people logging on in droves once it truly happens. As of right now, I again can't quite see how it will function, but my basic idea is that not just a few people are going to make money with these games, but literally legions of them. In fact, as ridiculous as it might sound to some, I can envision whole geographical areas where most people will be people who work "insde" a certain game just like in our own time we have whole areas where almost everyone works at a certain hospital or factory.....
The games are going to get not just economically tied to us, you see, but also culturally tied to us, too, in the same way that many families right now are "culturally' tied to a baseball team like the Red Sox or the Pittsburgh Pirates. A childs father will make his lliving playing the future EverQuest as some sort of "master" of the game, and naturally the child will log on and follow in his lead...perhaps inheriting his character and the specific business the father ran inside the game, in much the same way that would happen with a real world business in our own time...
Naturally, this will all also mean that massive inequalities will, in fact, exist within the game world, but in truth, if you look at it, this has already been the case since the beginning of the MMO's anyways. The only difference is that, right now, getting very far in an MMO , or getting helped along quickly by an already high level friend, doesn't mean all that much -- since the game does not connect to reality. In the future, however, when it starts to connect to reality and mean a profit in reality, the inequaity inside the game will perhaps be the source of much debate. I suppose I can even envision a scenario where violence could break out even in reality, over something that will be done in the game world. I.e. the game company nerfs a certain class, like they do now, and the next thing you know a revolt is in order....the building of the game company where the servers are all situated being attacked, et cetera et cetera. Hacking of course will be very big .....
4. Beyond the economy connection, there will also be, I think, a "celebrity" aspect to the games
This was a new idea for me when I first had it and it didn't occur to me until recently when I actually first heard of the Twitch site, which I wrote about previously. In my opinion, there are going to be enormous celebrities who are indeed going to get very famous for being exceptionally good at these games, just like we have celebrities now who get famous for being exceptionally good at doing something like the guitar or writing.
In our own time, the truth is that, sadly, most of the very good MMORPG players basically go totally unrecognized. This is obviously because they're participating in what is essentially a brand new "art form" that very few people understand or are interested in, or of course have no time to be bothered with.
In some respect, they are almost like musicians, but ones who play an incredibly rare and misunderstood, not much loved instrument.
These players who are exceptionally good at the games are often, of course,celebrated within the game itself, but their glory ceases to exist outside of it. In the future, I predict this will come to an end. : They'll be famous in the game and outside of the game. They will get endorsements. They will tour. They will be the hosts of perhaps massive events inside the game. They will be on television. They will write books about how they managed to get so far et cetera. Their greatest feats in the game will be filmed and archived for people to watch at their leisure. Just like the celebrities of today they will be obsessed over, and so, too, will their character -- whatever that character is. In our own time, a child goes to the mall and buys a poster of a ball player to put above their bed. In the future, they'll put a poster of the famous player made character above it...
If you don't believe this is possible, and sounds absurd, then my suggestion to you is to head backwards in time a little bit and come to the realization that, 200 years ago, the idea that bands of men playing guitars would be as famous as they are now, or people throwing baseballs, would have been considered absolutely ridiculous. Nobody 200 years ago could have ever imagined that people who sang relatively simple little songs on a guitar would wind up one day becoming people who live like kings and even do things like effect politics . So too shall it be with video games: people will, i assure you, become famous for being very good at them. They will be considered "cultural heros".....
5. The strange style of clothing and architecture ,, of the most popular games, I wholeheartedly believe and am convinced, will begin to leak out, gradually, into reality.
This one is pretty much connected to the old famous idea that "life mimics art", and in my opinion itis already happening to a degree. Currently, it should be well known, many people in our culture, and especially the culture of 60s-90s, were often very intensely mimicking the characters they met in their films. I cannot tell you, for example, growing up in an Italian-American neighborhood, just how many kids I met in high school, and even still theses days as an adult, who were more or less obsessively mimicking the various characters in famous films like Scarface and Goodfellas.
In addition to that, many of them also mimicked, who else, but the famous musicians or rappers of our own time, some so much so that they basically became clones. It is a well known fact that musicians dont just sell records, they also sell sneakers, baseball hats, hoodies, jeans, et cetera. Again, so it shall be with the famous gamer characters: the roleplaying is going to get so intense, I think, that like anything else, it will start leaking out backwards into reality. If one finds this preposterous, one just has to think: How many people, in the 1960s, before fantasy movies were at all popular, for example, really went out and bought medieval articles of clothing like a cloak, or a long robe, or a tunic? One imagines hardly anyone did such a thing, since all of that clothing ,in the 50s was more or less totally forgotten.
These days, however, more and more people, as a result of being exposed to this medieval style fashion through games and fantasy films, are naturally starting to want to wear it themselves....and so what do they do but go out and buy it? Sure, as it stands right now, they're mostly only able to wear the "strange" outfits at events like Comic Con and in their own house ...but in the future, as this starts to leak more and more and get more mainstream, it will gradually become more socially acceptable , I am convinced, to run out in a cloak to do normal , everyday things. I also think that it will become more popular for themed restaurants which revolve entirely around the fantasy worlds to pop up, and many of these places, who knows, might just require a dress code of being "in character". For example, in our own time, we have places like Texas Steakhouse ,Chili's, The Outback Steakhouse, and Olive Garden...all of them curated in their own way to represent small pockets of real world cultures in places where said cultures do not actually exist outside the doors of the restaurant.
It will thus, I imagine, be the same with the fantasy worlds: In towns or cities where one game is massively popular , restaurants,cafes, bars, clothing stores, and so forth wll all pop up in homage to the game and whatever its particular lore is. The people who work at them will ,of course, dress like the characters of whatever the popular game may or may not be....
6. This one has more or less already been said, but could perhaps use some emphasis: Art work connected to the game lore will begin to be taken very seriously out here in reality..
Ask people in our own time how they feel about the vast majority of films that have been clearly inspired by video games and the response that you'll most often get is that they are "terrible" and that they do not 'work". Films based off of game franchises like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Pokemon, Mortal Kombat .and even the most recent Warcraft (the first film based off an MMO) are typically considered pretty low on the totem pole of the film world, not just for film critics, but also even for actual video game enthusiasts themselves.
As far as I see it, this is mostly just a cultural bias of our own time period, since most of these "fantasy" plots are still relatively new for people, typically enjoyed enormously by children, and not quite understood. The prejudice against fantasy stories exists particularly in the world of literature, where writers like RA Salvatore (who writes about dark elves) are mostly just considered people writing for a childish audience. The same is mostly even still said about JRR Tolkien, the father of fantasy. Its just not taken seriously right now. This, of course, will not always be the case, especially as we continue to see the immersion levels and the interest in the fantasy games rise. As should be obvious, the people who will be attempting to seriously roleplay and get as deeply into the game as possible will , most naturally, want some good immersion "guidebooks" to help them along the way. These guidebooks will obviously be films and famous novels set in the games world...
My prediction is thus that, just like many Texans in our own time have probably read or at least heard of an author like Larry McMurtry, or just like most Italians in Rome have heard of someone like Pier Paolo Pasolini, so too shall players of particular games congregate all around certain authors. Right now, there are books and films that "co-exist" parallel to all of the fantasy games (i.e. Lord of the Rings and the writings of Salvatore co-exist with Everquest) but it is basically not an official existence, the lore is only loosely ocnnected, and beyond that, the books that actually do connect to Everquest or Warcraft itself are essentially considered the lowest of the low, not on most readers or gamers radars. I've been occassionally logging into EQ for almost 20 years now, since I was a very little boy not even yet 10 years old, and I have never met a single player, more or less, who is willing to discuss the lore in depth...nor have I met anyone who has read any of the few, obscure accompanying novels (myself included). I would imagine the situation is more or less similar with WoW.
I personally can't see this sort of disinterest surviving.... just like I can't see the lack of interest for RP surviving. I essentially am of the opinion that Lord of the Rings was/is just the beginning when it comes to 'serious' literature taking this fantasy twist, and I have felt for some time now that these stories are going to be taken more and more seriously by "high end" critics as time goes on. In fact it's incredible to me that they still, more or less, are not, even all these years after the success of LOTR; but I suppose one has to keep in mind the fact that LOTR wasn't truly mainstream in any real way until the movies come out. Hence it's the fact that, right now, these stories are basically a niche interest and they seem to be specifically tied to just a few English speaking regions of the world.
/end
No comments:
Post a Comment