Steenburg Shares the Love of MMOs
By Shawn on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 6:33 PM PST In Computer, Game Companies, Game Platforms, Games
Eskil Steenberg, a Swedish indie game developer, is single handed developing a program that will create MMOs. The software he calls Love uses procedural game design to create a cooperative sci-fi adventure for up to 50 people where the game generates the content, not the programer.
“It’s a change for a multiplayer game to allow you to really have an impact on the world,” says Steenberg. “With other MMOs, if you kill a dragon, it doesn’t mean the dragon is gone. It just means that you killed him, and other people get to kill him afterward. It’s not like the whole world says, ‘Oh, the dragon’s gone. Now we can live a free and happy life, and that guy’s the hero because he did it.’ That’s the game I want to do.”
As I’ve said before, my biggest criticism of MMOs is that players have no lasting impact on the world. You may slay the ultimate boss or save the village from the invading hordes, but this content will reset as if you had never been there. If Steenburg succeeds with this smaller model and can apply the science to a large scale MMO, he’ll have a massive hit on his hands.
via 1up
This would be a great change for MMORPGS. However wouldnt everyone want a chance at killing the “dragon” and if its dead then people lose out on that chance.
@LightAce: Unfortunately that is a problem, the design managability of creating unique experiences in MMOs is one of those hurdles that we currently can’t overcome. The game engines can’t quite handle creating spontaneous quest strings or scenarios so many games deal with this by using instanced encounters for the big things.
That’s how games like Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings Online can manage a scripted storyline with a progression better than say WoW does. They have a different focus and may not have the population of WoW but for players in search of epic story they accomplish that far better than other games in the arena.
And why should every player get the chance to experience the same thing? I guess I don’t subscribe to the equal opportunity concept when it comes to challenge. Think about building a community where people could be the ONE team that killed Onyxia and then other later players would see the aftereffect and could be left cleaning up the mess of the power ecology in the dragon’s wake.
It’s great theory at this point, and maybe someday we’ll get technology that can generate this form of MMO content at some point.. neural AI networks and such are still in their infancy when it comes to deductive and extrapolative content creation but one day it could be managed I believe.. we’re just not there yet and mostly because we’re as a rule obsessed with the presentation of games, not the game theory and gameplay at this stage.