No More Heroes...

With so many people playing MMO's, there is a trend that is returning to video games. In olden times, characters in video games fit nicely into pre-set molds that determined the overall outcome of the character's design and abilities. An example of this would be Cecil (Final Fantasy IV). Eventually there came a new model where the player would determine the growth and direction of a character like in KOTOR (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) or Final Fantasy VIII. This provided designers with new freedoms in terms of mechanics and story development. Today, this has evolved into whole new genre of games called MMORPG's. These types of games concentrate on giving the player seemingly complete freedom to develop their character as they see fit. At first this seemed like the greatest thing since sliced Jewish Rye. Eventually a disturbing trend began to emerge: generic character development within the distinctive set types (i.e. warrior, wizard, archer, barbarian, etc.). All characters started to fall within these categories, and the once percieved individuality began to fade. Even Fable (single player adventure/RPG) lacked true freedom for chacter development; every character eventually ends up with all the same abilities and looks relatively the same.

The Bartle test in somewhat misleading. Dispite seemingly differing results, the characters developed by most gamers end up being stale and generic, often comforming to the previously mentioned character types. Since no characters stand out anymore, what is there to define a true hero? This test is telling me that dispite the player's tendancies and intentions, there are no more heroes. Every character is cut from the same cloth and the molds are well worn. What hope is there for the future of MMO's or even games in general?

A Virtual World for Creative Professionals

Big Idea: A virtual world for creative professionals to network, collaborate, and share work.

Target Audience: Designers, digital artists, and even programmers of any professional age.

Purpose: To allow creative professionals a new and innovative way to network and collaborate with their respective industries and colleagues and get feedback on their work without fear of loosing control of their intellectual property all within a virtual world.

Lacuna: Maintaining a high level of professionalism and decency without restricting the creativity of the users. Allowing anyone to join, but make certain that "griefers" are not tolerated or promoted.

---

About:
Users will be able to "rent" space in the form of sandboxes, apartments, lofts, or full studios. The users will be able to create content within the world or upload their work to show it off. One big selling point is the fact that almost any data format would be compatible with this virtual world. Users can display their content for all to see, or just colleagues. Other users who view the work can then rate it and leave feedback (similar to YouTube). The highest rated content will be displayed in "museums" (not literally a museum, but rather a space for displaying the work) as sort of hall of fame for all users to see, given the approval of the creator.

Because of the vast compatibility with many varying formats, this world would be an ideal location for collaborative work among industry professionals. Rooms, auditoriums, or stadiums can be reserved for collaboration or performances.

Example:
Several game designers can meet within a presentation room as their avatars, sit down, and both chat and talk about the current project. Once in the meeting the perspective would switch to first person for a more immersive experience. A PowerPoint presentation can be displaying on a screen. Concept images can be be floating on one wall, and when clicked, expand in size and display feedback. 3D models can be rotating in space in the center of the table in a scaled-down view. The user can set his or her personal display for multiple views within multiple windows if needed.

Important Note:
It would be assumed that the target audience would own or have access to higher-end technology because of the nature of their work. Therefore, the technical requirements for this virtual world would be much higher than most already on the market. This would allow for higher resolution images, models, animations, audio and the like.

Virtual World Idea -- The Metaverse

Big Idea: An open source, free virtual world that is designed to grow and evolve at the will of the users.

Target Audience: Male & female: Developers: 18 - 24, General users: 18 - 35.

Purpose: The Metaverse is blank slate for people to build upon as they see fit. Some users will take on the roll of designer/developer, and others will merely participate in this virtual world using the tools built by those that create. This virtual world will evolve, build-up, break-down, and reflect the people that exist within it.

Lacuna: The design of this world is minimal, but programming and developing is a whole different issue. Creating an engine that is compatible with multiple programming languages and 3D modeling softwares would be ideal, but difficult to bring to fruition. Also, releasing the product as open source, while maintaining a decent level of functionality will be challenging.

---

In Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash," there is a virtual world called The Metaverse. It's a fully immersive 3D virtual world that has replaced the internet. Think of it as being like Second Life, but on steroids and acid.

I believe this would be an excellent candidate for creating a new and successful virtual world. People have tried to emulate this formula in the past with lackluster results. I believe that others have failed because of one simple fact: The Metaverse is completely user driven. In this virtual world, it is the user that creates all content and manages it, but like the real world, is subject to the basic rules of the Metaverse. Think of these like the laws of physics in the real world. These laws include:

1. "no build" highways/roads.
2. no-clipping in vehicles on highways.
3. users define rules for own property.
4. death booting/temporary ban.
5. no weapons of mass destruction.

Beyond these basic rules, the users possess complete freedom within the Metaverse.

Imagine a virtual planet that is completely blank, except for the highways that run along the lines of longitude and latitude. The Equator would be the primary road for transportation with user designed vehicles. Because there are no restrictions of physics, vehicles can be programmed to go any speed, allowing for fast travel throughout the vast world.

There would be no restraints on user content. Anything can be built in The Metaverse in any proportion (within reason and ability). Skyscrapers can reach hundreds of miles high, vehicles can travel many times the speed of sound, avatars can look like anything (not creepy and distorted like Second-Life). The style and scale of the user's designs would completely depend on their computer's ability and thier abilities with design and programming.

For those users who find designing and programming their own content a little discouraging, there would be basic construction sets that people can download to be able to build their own avatars, vehicles, objects, and structures. Since it would all be open source, users would eventually build their own construction sets, thus eliminating the need for content to be constantly built by the admins.

"Snow Crash"

Trust me... go out and get "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. It's a science fiction about virtual worlds, conspiracy, and hacking. This book has had a definite influence on game design and the progression of virtual world design since it was published in 1992. If anyone is interested in checking it out, here is the Wikipedia page.