It's slow going at Apocalypso towers at the moment. The artist says he has drawings, the gameplay guy says he has skill trees, me, I've been learning Blender for no good reason, and reading about C++ without actually trying to code in it. Love theory, hate practice.
And I've been doing something I can't talk about for reasons I can't tell you. An NDA is an NDA. So let's talk instead about how Fallen Earth has cut the rug from under us.
Our scenario: it is 2161 and civilisation on Earth has collapsed following a deadly pandemic and a nuclear war. A hundred years on, small tribes and factions are fighting for survival in a harsh environment &c &c.
Fallen Earth's scenario: it is 2156 and civilisation on Earth has collapsed following a deadly pandemic and a nuclear war. A hundred years on, small tribes and factions... yeah, you get the picture.
We knew we were leaning a little too heavily on Fallout , that given the demand for a Fallout MMO and current social concerns we probably wouldn't be the only ones in an apocalyptic frame of mind, and that our story wasn't shatteringly original. I'm glad this happened at the drawing board stage, but it's still a little... irksome.
I've been turning over ways to differentiate our world further from Fallen Earth. We have a different setting (ours is in Britain), and different gameplay (no levelling, less FPS-y combat), and some rogue elements such as the Spires that are, I hope, not much like anything else. But it's not enough. /sigh
Showing posts with label MMOG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MMOG. Show all posts
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
So said Einstein.
To be honest, I'm not terribly interested in whether our default reality is real or illusion, at least not for the purposes of this blog. I am interested in the shared realities deliberately created for us, purposeful illusions that hope to be persistent, known as MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games).
I'm a keen player of games, and for the past 4+ years I've been playing Dark Age of Camelot. My time there has come to an end, possibly temporarily, possibly permanent. As I explained over at Zora's Corner, this has been an upsetting process, and I am grieving for the loss of a major part of my life.
People often say things like 'It's just a game' and talk about games and 'real life' as being completely seperate things. But a game can become part of one's life, and if reality is what we can agree exists, as has also been claimed by philosophers, an MMORPG is lent its reality by the people playing it. If a couple of thousand people are sharing a virtual world, spending hours every week acting in it, forming and breaking relationships in it, it is real, if only in the sense that it has a real and sometimes profound effect on the lives of those playing it.
To be honest, I'm not terribly interested in whether our default reality is real or illusion, at least not for the purposes of this blog. I am interested in the shared realities deliberately created for us, purposeful illusions that hope to be persistent, known as MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games).
I'm a keen player of games, and for the past 4+ years I've been playing Dark Age of Camelot. My time there has come to an end, possibly temporarily, possibly permanent. As I explained over at Zora's Corner, this has been an upsetting process, and I am grieving for the loss of a major part of my life.
People often say things like 'It's just a game' and talk about games and 'real life' as being completely seperate things. But a game can become part of one's life, and if reality is what we can agree exists, as has also been claimed by philosophers, an MMORPG is lent its reality by the people playing it. If a couple of thousand people are sharing a virtual world, spending hours every week acting in it, forming and breaking relationships in it, it is real, if only in the sense that it has a real and sometimes profound effect on the lives of those playing it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
