MMOs will be much harder to preserve than other types of games. EC already mentioned the lack of other players. They mentioned connectivity too, but with MMOs a substantial portion of critical game code lies on the game companies' servers. If the companies don't release that code to the public, would-be players will have to find or create server emulators. At that point preservation is probably compromised, because the results of emulation are unlikely to be 100% accurate.
Even if the code is preserved and can be run on future hardware, I think the time commitment that typical MMOs require will discourage people from checking them out most of them. I've read multiple accounts of MMO developers who haven't played many of the games that are out right now. Maybe WoW will have enough historical importance to encourage future devs to examine it, but other contemporary MMOs will likely just fall by the wayside.
Centuries from now, WoW would probably be the only MMO remembered from this era, if MMOs are remembered at all.
Quote:
"MMOs were a failing market niche, once represented by billion dollar giants such as World of Warcraft but slowly faltering due to a dying market. The end of the genre seemed inevitable, until the invention of the first true full sensory input apparatus. It is at this point that the end of human civilization truly began..."
|
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Centuries from now, WoW would probably be the only MMO remembered from this era, if MMOs are remembered at all.
|
Quote:
yeah. |
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Centuries from now, WoW would probably be the only MMO remembered from this era, if MMOs are remembered at all.
|
Even now, Nintendo, hundreds of games maybe even closer to thousand, but by the average gamer, only about maybe a dozen or so are remembered and even less for the casual player. And some people that wasnt around during that time, they may remember Super Mario Bros. and that was only about 2 decades and a half ago about?
Centuries is a long time. Not sure if many people remember any popular games(mre than likely pretty sure it wasnt video games) 100-300 years ago.
-Female Player-
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by mauk2
Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words.
"Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard.  Never change, E_L! |
Quote:
Heh. ERP must've became the shining standard.
|
Originally Posted by JKedan
"MMOs were a failing market niche, once represented by billion dollar giants such as World of Warcraft but slowly faltering due to a dying market. The end of the genre seemed inevitable, until the invention of the first true full sensory input apparatus. It is at this point that the end of human civilization truly began..."
|
Sadly, electronic gaming is a disposable medium. In my opinion, games have been moving toward the ability to allow the play to access a custom world of their choosing. Ultimately, we want a world we can walk into live in for a while and everything about it is suited to our particular entertainment.
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
Quote:
Sales seem to imply otherwise though. 'Linear' MMO's that tell you everything you're supposed to do have always fared better than sandbox ones that tell you to do whatever it is you want to do. The only exception to that is perhaps Second Life, but I can't even really classify that as a game. It's more like a vision of what we all thought the internet of the future would be back in the 90's. AND it was F2P when F2P was unheard of.
|
Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
Sadly, electronic gaming is a disposable medium. In my opinion, games have been moving toward the ability to allow the play to access a custom world of their choosing. Ultimately, we want a world we can walk into live in for a while and everything about it is suited to our particular entertainment.
|
Quote:
I have to disagree, what will end is how humans interact and our definition of a civilization. We customize everything in our lives, at some point we will customize our very lives themselves.
|
Originally Posted by JKedan
"MMOs were a failing market niche, once represented by billion dollar giants such as World of Warcraft but slowly faltering due to a dying market. The end of the genre seemed inevitable, until the invention of the first true full sensory input apparatus. It is at this point that the end of human civilization truly began..."
|
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
Quote:
You know, I hadn't even considered that. The porn industry would get a shot in the arm as well. Though maybe that would blur the lines between porn and prostitution...|
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Heh. ERP must've became the shining standard.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
I have to disagree, what will end is how humans interact and our definition of a civilization. We customize everything in our lives, at some point we will customize our very lives themselves.
|
If we did get a full sensory VR (for lack of a better term) apparatus, I think the positive effects on humanity would vastly outweigh the negatives. Would there be people who starved to death in their chairs, or who became VR addicts, or whatever? Sure. But the things we could do, and the advances we could make in so many critical areas...boggles the mind.
Quote:
If the game has enough gore, it will be remembered for centuries.
|
Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
Centuries is a long time. Not sure if many people remember any popular games(mre than likely pretty sure it wasnt video games) 100-300 years ago.
|
Quote:
I tend to agree with this, but fortunately there appears to be enough wiggle room in the market for both. And I'm not really sure that sandbox MMOs necessarily fail because they're sandbox, as much as because they are mismanaged. The famous case of SWG is a good example here. At the same time, again using a Star Wars MMO, TOR is probably the second most linear MMO on the market currently, only TSW seems to be more so in my experience, and it's not doing well.|
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Sales seem to imply otherwise though. 'Linear' MMO's that tell you everything you're supposed to do have always fared better than sandbox ones that tell you to do whatever it is you want to do. The only exception to that is perhaps Second Life, but I can't even really classify that as a game. It's more like a vision of what we all thought the internet of the future would be back in the 90's. AND it was F2P when F2P was unheard of.
|
On the flip side, EVE (though not to my personal tastes) is successful, long running and ever expanding while being about as sandbox as it gets. And while certainly no WoW in terms of subscribers, realistically what is?
Quote:
I could go further than that. Does anyone remember the glut of games available for the Atari 2600 back in its heyday? Most of them were really terrible, like "Tax Evaders". The whole library from Games by Apollo was pretty shoddy. Does anyone remember U.S. Game's "Name this game" contest? Does anyone remember what that game was or what name eventually won? Does anyone remember that 20th Century Fox made games for the Atari 2600 and that one of them was M*A*S*H, based on the TV series?|
Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
Even now, Nintendo, hundreds of games maybe even closer to thousand, but by the average gamer, only about maybe a dozen or so are remembered and even less for the casual player. And some people that wasnt around during that time, they may remember Super Mario Bros. and that was only about 2 decades and a half ago about?
|
Yeah, a lot of that cruft was rather forgettable. But... I still remember it, darnit!
Quote:
Oh to be a fly on the wall in a thousands years when they excavate the ET landfill.
|
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
I could go further than that. Does anyone remember the glut of games available for the Atari 2600 back in its heyday? Most of them were really terrible, like "Tax Evaders". The whole library from Games by Apollo was pretty shoddy. Does anyone remember U.S. Game's "Name this game" contest? Does anyone remember what that game was or what name eventually won? Does anyone remember that 20th Century Fox made games for the Atari 2600 and that one of them was M*A*S*H, based on the TV series?
Yeah, a lot of that cruft was rather forgettable. But... I still remember it, darnit! |
Quote:
Going Under, but they went bankrupt before they got that finished.|
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Does anyone remember U.S. Game's "Name this game" contest? Does anyone remember what that game was or what name eventually won?
|
%20(U.S.%20Games).png)
Videogames will be forgotten because they don't add to society(imo they actually remove a large portion of the people who could have affected change, but thats another discussion..).
People who make games would have been traditional artists but they wanted to make money. Lets not put them on a pedestal like what they do is holy, you don't need to have played atari in order to make a CoH.
Quote:
And how do you define 'adding' to a society? So vegging out playing CoH is somehow worse than vegging out watching Jersey Shore?|
Originally Posted by Solo_One
Videogames will be forgotten because they don't add to society
|
Quote:
| People who make games would have been traditional artists but they wanted to make money. |
Quote:
HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Game makers were artist that opted for money instead of doing art? HAAHHAHAHAHAHAH! THATS SO FUNNY!!! |
Originally Posted by Solo_One
Videogames will be forgotten because they don't add to society(imo they actually remove a large portion of the people who could have affected change, but thats another discussion..).
People who make games would have been traditional artists but they wanted to make money. Lets not put them on a pedestal like what they do is holy, you don't need to have played atari in order to make a CoH. |
MAN!
If you only knew how much more money an artist gives up to make games by not pursuing a relaxed job at as a web designer, interior decorator, concept artist, animator, ... well basically ANY artistic career path BUT games...
Not to mention programmers that go working for banking, government or medical fields. The difference in money making is so large it's not even funny.
The only ones making money of games are the large corporations. People that make games rarely earn enough to justify working in that [gaming] industry instead of any other.
Quote:
This sort of thing was said about movies back when it was a new thing. The people who said that about movies back then were just as right about it as people who say that about video games now.|
Originally Posted by Solo_One
Videogames will be forgotten because they don't add to society(imo they actually remove a large portion of the people who could have affected change, but thats another discussion..).
|
If everyone took such critics seriously, civilization would have ended with the renaissance.
Quote:
We're all so spoiled by Wikipedia. How did we manage without it back then?
|
Originally Posted by Starsman
Going Under, but they went bankrupt before they got that finished.
|
And, oh yes: Anything that influences more than one person in a larger group of persons is most certainly "influencing society". If it's a source of inspiration in something that you make and then share, then it's most definitely an influence. To say otherwise is to either reveal your disingenuousness or ignorance.
Quote:
Googleing it up through geocites. |
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
We're all so spoiled by Wikipedia. How did we manage without it back then?
|
I know I seen that cart before, though, although never heard of that contest (growing in a Spanish speaking Caribbean island has its perks)
wouldnt say video games asa whole will be gone in a century or so, but even in the relative short time that movies been around, alot has changed on how movies are made and what kind of movies are made. Some subjects and movie types/acting methods/camera work that are "normal" in this time period would have been an unthinkable way to make a movie then.
I think the same will happen to video games. New types will be concieved of, ones that we cant fanthom at the moment while the style that is popular today will be considered old fashioned and drab by then. In a short time, we went from basically bouncing a ball back and forth, which at the time was the greatest thing out, to the 2d scoll and space like games of the upper screen scroll, to first person shooter like Doom in 91 about, to advanced AI and storylines line Halo 4 and open sandbox games like GTA, and then you have the MMOs, type of games that people can play together and dont have to be in the same room a feature about 2 decades ago was nearly unheard for a console game. Now talking about centuries, which is about 5 times the length of 2 decades, I think the landscape of gaming will be far different then what it is now and so will movies. O
One century ago, watching a movie in home wasnt even thought of. Then putting a movie on a small disk was thought to be a fad, now there is blueray, and now alot of people dont even buy disks anymore but just download movies over the internet, which when spoken about in 1992 time period would have caused people to get pegged crazy. 3d movies once a fad that almost faded into oblivion is common place now. Now they have those 3d tv that was a staple in sci-films now people can actually buy.
In the 80s, anyone that said soon games like Super Mario would be a thing of the past was pased off as doom sayers that didnt know what they are talking about. Now, look, no game maker that I know of make new console or computer games in that style anymore. And that was only about 20 odd years ago. Is it possible that MMOs will still be around, maybe but probably not in the style that we are playing now. But I doubt any of us will be around to see what the end of the next 100 years will bring.
-Female Player-
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by mauk2
Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words.
"Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L! |
Quote:
Thanks for posting that. Good food for thought.
|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 12 - Preserving games
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode...-is-ozymandias |
Be well, people of CoH.
Quote:
Most movies aren't art either imo, both "mediums" do too much of the thinking for you. Feel free to argue it further, it just seems insulting to art to call any videogame art, and I am a pretty hardcore gamer.
|
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
This sort of thing was said about movies back when it was a new thing. The people who said that about movies back then were just as right about it as people who say that about video games now.
If everyone took such critics seriously, civilization would have ended with the renaissance. |
Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 12 - Preserving games
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode...-is-ozymandias
.