It's starting to feel like MMOs were just a product of the times we lived in, rather than a separate genre of game. In ~2004 I remember at least four MMOs: Asheron's Call, Planetside, World of Warcraft, and Dark Age of Camelot. It seems like only WoW survived, and nowadays I'm not sure the experience resembles the original anymore. Oh, and then there's EVE-Online, Runescape, Ultima Online...
Nowadays it's mostly Roblox and Fortnite. I saw some 11yo's socialize the other week. One asked the other hey, do you play fortnight? And they swapped contact info that way.
What's the genre of Roblox / Fortnite? Live service games? It would be interesting to have a separate term for them the way we had for "MMOs".
MMOs were also fun from a technical standpoint. One of my big challenges to myself was to make an MMO. I learned a lot about networking that way. When I was 13 I even ended up on the phone with a local business trying to negotiate a dedicated 10 Mbit link. He correctly told me to just wait, that 10 Mbit won't seem so crucial in a few years.
Then there were the MUDs. I'm not sure if it's correct to call them MUDs, but Gemstone and Underlight spring to mind. Underlight especially was a charming little game where you were expected to roleplay in-character whenever you were online. Meaning, no discussion about the real world. It was very addictive for a socially awkward 6th grader to just vanish into this new world.
I wonder what kind of new genres of games people will be talking about in a couple decades. It's tempting to think there's something like "the MMO" that's yet to be discovered, just like the arena shooter was.
swozey•17m ago
I think they're daily grindfests now. I hear about people logging in just to do their "dailies" and thats about it. Everything new is instances, which don't capture the MMO village feel at all for me. I miss UO but I'm sure they clunky interface would drive me crazy today.
jameskilton•16m ago
In a lot of ways, World of Wacraft survived because it perfected the genre, and in doing so, kind of killed it. Final Fantasy 14 is successful because it copied a lot of WoW's patterns.
Today, though, it's really hard to sell a game that requires such substantial amounts of time to progress. Lobby games, team shooters, battle royales are popular today because you can sign in, play, and be done in your time with no requirements or expectations. Also, trying to make a successful "live service" game (recurring revenue via subscriptions or microtransactions) is nigh impossible because you're fighting against the biggest hurdle of all: making a game good and interesting enough to convince entire friend groups to switch together.
It's no longer "hey this game looks cool lets give it a try" it's "why would I play that game when I've already got X hours in this and I play with my friends?"
sillysaurusx•44m ago
Nowadays it's mostly Roblox and Fortnite. I saw some 11yo's socialize the other week. One asked the other hey, do you play fortnight? And they swapped contact info that way.
What's the genre of Roblox / Fortnite? Live service games? It would be interesting to have a separate term for them the way we had for "MMOs".
MMOs were also fun from a technical standpoint. One of my big challenges to myself was to make an MMO. I learned a lot about networking that way. When I was 13 I even ended up on the phone with a local business trying to negotiate a dedicated 10 Mbit link. He correctly told me to just wait, that 10 Mbit won't seem so crucial in a few years.
Then there were the MUDs. I'm not sure if it's correct to call them MUDs, but Gemstone and Underlight spring to mind. Underlight especially was a charming little game where you were expected to roleplay in-character whenever you were online. Meaning, no discussion about the real world. It was very addictive for a socially awkward 6th grader to just vanish into this new world.
I wonder what kind of new genres of games people will be talking about in a couple decades. It's tempting to think there's something like "the MMO" that's yet to be discovered, just like the arena shooter was.
swozey•17m ago
jameskilton•16m ago
Today, though, it's really hard to sell a game that requires such substantial amounts of time to progress. Lobby games, team shooters, battle royales are popular today because you can sign in, play, and be done in your time with no requirements or expectations. Also, trying to make a successful "live service" game (recurring revenue via subscriptions or microtransactions) is nigh impossible because you're fighting against the biggest hurdle of all: making a game good and interesting enough to convince entire friend groups to switch together.
It's no longer "hey this game looks cool lets give it a try" it's "why would I play that game when I've already got X hours in this and I play with my friends?"