There's A Big World In Here

Article written for Gaminglives.com

http://www.gaminglives.com/2010/07/07/theres-a-big-world-in-here/

There's A Big World In Here

I have, like most of you, been playing video games all my life. I love them; the same escape that you can find in a book or a movie but so much more immersive, the teaming up with your friends to overcome challenges in co-op or putting your game face on and taking your friends out. The main draw to gaming for me has always been community because, let’s face it, playing video games can be a pretty lonely passion. The ability to battle it out online with your friends or work with them is fantastic and that’s the main reason I’m always drawn the Massively Multiplayer Online game or MMO, because you know we love our acronyms.

As you know, there are quite a few types of gamer: the casual gamer who is happy playing some Wii sports to pass the time or the odd flash game on a website, or the hardcore gamer that would happily spend the rest of their lives pwning n00bs in Counter Strike or MW2. There is even the achievement hunter now who will sink shamelessly to the very depths of the gaming toilet to find their latest score of points.

I’m part of another group; a group I would describe as the Social Gamer or maybe the MMO gamer. Social gamer sounds catchier though, so we will go with that. The type of gamer who is happiest in their little virtual world killing three hundred bears and only getting four bear pelts to give to some guy who is going to make a new hat, and the type who loves nothing more than roaming game worlds with friends or clans or guilds hunting for the most elusive treasure. We are the gamers who, if computers had never been invented, would probably still be playing D&D with a pen and paper. Sure, social gamers may not be the coolest, but they are the most passionate about the games that they play. You will find not find a more dedicated community than the one based around an MMO. If your first thought when buying a new game is “who else is buying this?” then you’re probably a social gamer too.

Of course there are pros and cons to becoming a social gamer. A major advantage when playing this type of game is the updated content that is usually provided regularly to keep the player base happy and entertained. This is something that a lot of console game developers currently do in order to make sure you keep playing Mass Effect 2 or Bad Company 2 with the release of DLC, and this additional content keeps the player from drifting to any other game. A drawback to this is having to pay a monthly subscription to most MMOs. This fee usually covers server cost, the cost of building new content and any updates or fixes that might be needed but many people are still put off for this and rightly so in some cases, after all, why should you pay for something you’ve already bought? I guess it works the same way as Xbox live. Sure you bought a console for £200 or whatever, but now you want additional content and the ability to play with your friends which is extra. With an MMO you’re buying a fantastic game with the promise that, if you subscribe, the game will continue to improve and evolve. They are constantly evolving and being improved (and sometimes broken) right up to, and after, they are released to the public, with the developers often using feedback from the community to develop ideas for new features and game content. This, I feel, is also unique to the MMO genre, with content in the game often being suggested by the people who play the game. You don’t often see that in console games.

There are some MMOs out there that have huge player bases. I can’t write an article about the genre without mentioning World of Warcraft, or WoW,a game so successful that it would probably take World War 3 to take it down. Personally I’m not a player, or a big fan, but I respect the game and its success as it has brought millions of gamers into the genre and that is only a good thing. Those millions drive the industry to produce bigger and better massively multiplayer games in an attempt to draw them away form World of Warcraft. Millions of pounds put into games in the hopes that they will become the WoW killer, something that helps create unique and fun games, but never really puts a dent in World of Warcraft.

There are also some risks involved in being a social gamer, especially when you’re dealing with MMORPGs. Let’s face it, games can be pretty immersive, so when you’re battling the Locust as Marcus Fenix or taking down the Covenant as Master Chief, you are pretty involved in that story and that world. Now imagine you have made the character yourself, it probably looks like you, and you have spent two hundred hours in a game building the character up… some people can get pretty hooked. They are the kind of people who maybe should be locked up and not allowed to play computer games.

With E3 just finishing recently, we were shown a number of new MMOs that will be out soon. Games like Star Wars The Old Republic, DC Universe Online and LEGO Universe that continue to innovate within the genre. For example The Old Republic becoming the first every fully voiced MMO, an unheard of move in gaming; hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue the player used to have to read through now played out as interactive cinematic. DC Universe Online’s control scheme and customisation options may prove to be the most deep and immersive ever seen in a video game, while LEGO Online is looking to improve the way the player views content in games, allowing the player to build their own LEGO items and buildings.

That’s why I love MMOs and social gaming; they are little worlds to escape into and, with the advances in the genre, those worlds are getting so much bigger and better. I’m off to find my Staff of Pwning +1…