Look beyond the diku

July 28, 2006 on 2:03 pm | In General Gaming, Innovation

There's a certain core group of genre veterans that define the genre itself by extensions of EQ and UO. They therefore deem "success" as those who have extended upon EQ. Every so often someone in that core group reminds them that EQ itself was based on even older conventions. This core group is, in many ways, the web of sites and people that either extend directly from Lumthemad, or were inspired by the type of conversations that happened and therefore have a similar feel and tone.

Occasionally, games like Space Cowboy and Habbo Hotel will become know to this core group, and some will play them. But the core, I feel, looks for similarity and differences only at the experiential level, and by comparison to EQ and UO. 

But then there's the rest of the world.

There's a lot of whacky stuff going on. General Mills has a big online game (Millsberry). General Mills, mainstay of all-things-traditional. Post cereals does too (Postopia). There's Neopets, which with 25 million accounts basically trumps any online game. Sure there's no graphical-client, not even a Club Penguin/Habbo/Bang Howdy!/Gaia Flash-based one. Just a whole bunch of web pages and activities/mini-games within. With an economy, and community, and trade (including Malls), and so on.

Some say these are "under the radar". That is true, from the specific point of view of folks who've talked about this genre from one, maybe two, perspectives. But to me, the sheer money behind them and the reach they have as a result make the core games "under the radar".

This is why I continually bang on the notion that WoW has raised the bar. They. Have. Not. Nobody is going to spend 60-80mil on a single game sold on CD with a monthly fee. As they have done in the past, they have entered a genre and delivered a pre-eminant testament to the past. And by doing so, hasten the demise of a specific way of thinking.

Does that mean everyone raiding AQ40 is going to hit Millsberry next? No. What it means is that evaluating this genre is more than just saying "it's like EQ, it's not like EQ" and involves way many more than the people already here.

Occasionally a luminary will say something like "look to Korea".

To them I'd say "look outside the subscription fee". The changes are already here.