• 26Jun 06

  The Repeal of Online Appeal

  For my first post, I am going to explain my mantra for gaming: play with yourself often, all day long, in multiple sessions.

  I'm still talking about video games, yes.  I hope that the world is finally shifting away from the online-gasm that everybody was so excited about two years ago at E3.  They have come to realize, like myself, that online content is only as good as your competitors.  Anybody burned more than a couple times when they were automatically logged off Mario Kart DS when the other competitor started to lose and turned off their system?

  This lack of social maturity can be seen everywhere in the online universe.  It's not that it can't work in the same way as the offline world, it's that there is such anonymous appeal that most of us don't have to let it work in the same way.  Why build trust in someone when you may never meet them in real life?  When a "break-up" can come simply with an ignore button?  When you can hire an anonymous player killer assassin to get your revenge?

  I hope content creators wise up and realize that the content is only as good as the people creating it - and if you let the immature online world create the social interaction part of the world - then it is just a whole bunch of graphics and physics.

  My biggest complaint, specifically, is Blizzard abandoning all RTS expansions in favor of WoW mods.  Good business decision, yes.  Good for gamers? No.

  I started playing games when I was a kid as a way to escape real life.  Escapism as entertainment - just like books, just like TV, just like storytelling around a campfire.  Games that resemble the offline world online are anything but that.

  • Posted Jun 26, 2006 10:21 am PT
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