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With the likes of the Internet - so ingrained in our lives that a day without it would be unimaginable - and the time-apocalypse that is World of Warcraft - so ingrained in our daily lives that a day without it would be unimaginable - I feel like asking a question. Do people still pen and paper role-play?

Most of us at the Big Spaceship grew up as geeks - when others were rolling down their car windows to whistle at chicks, we were rolling twenties. As the years passed and the responsibilities piled up, we waved a sad so long to our character sheets, our dice, and our experience (but not our experiences). Around this time, the computer and video game industry was on a slow rise from its early 80’s collapse, and by the 90’s another type of RPG captured the gamer masses: the MMO.

The new wave of gamers have grown up in the world of polygons and computer-generated cutscenes. The only kind of sprite these gamers know is the soft drink. Their RPGs are of the Final kind and WoW grind. “When I was your age, we had to role-play with pen and paper, usually in my parent’s basement. Characters were created longhand, damage calculated without the use of your fancy counting machines.” About the only thing that has remained the same is the Cheetos.

Now since I don’t hang around high schools - which would be weird and just plain sad - I’m assuming teenagers who play MMOs have no time, or even a need for pen and paper role-playing, and if they also play non-video games, then I’d also assume they’d be playing something like Magic The Gathering. For me, trying to setup a good-sized role-playing outing was its own adventure; rounding up people, finding a place big enough to support not only them but also the numerous tools needed to play (dice, character sheets, guide/source tomes, snacks). Not exactly a portable setup like Magic, where all you need is your deck and an attitude (”I’m gonna bury you.” “But you can’t because they changed bury to destroy.”). MMOs can be seen as a streamlined version of pen and paper role-playing, since they remove the clutter and provide the visual fantasy world instead of having the world exist only in the mind of the players. So it’s more than just convenience that makes MMOs the “better” choice. They provide everything pen and paper does except for three things: the physical presence of “the party”, the creativity of the GM, and the source material for the particular universe they are playing in (D&D, Rifts). For someone who grew up playing both videogames and pen and paper role-playing, the latter will always trump the former. Part of it is nostalgia, but more importantly and less selfishly, MMOs don’t come close to providing the wealth of source material pen and paper have. Storylines are much richer and GM-created adventures are only bounded by their imagination.

Will I ever get back into pen and paper role-playing? Most likely not. Will I start playing MMOs? Most likely not. What will I do then? I guess I will continue to be mildly entertained and tortured by single-player games.

Does anyone else feel the same way? Do you think I’m talking nonsense and should be dragged into an alley and get beaten up? Do you have any fond memories of rolling up a character and arguing with the GM that your sixth sense spell is always activated and that you should have seen that attack coming?

The Masters of Doom

Mike lent me the book Masters of Doom last week. I devoured it…to say the least. Gaming’s deep history makes me excited for some of our upcoming projects that include their own games. Like lots of other industries, it’s about taking little building blocks from previous games and arranging them in new ways to create the newest and latest hit. Maybe even adding something brand new - a new engine, a new narrative structure, a new way of interacting with other players…

Will Wright, designer of The Sims and Spore, acknowledges game history while boldly plunging forward in his talk at The New Yorker’s conference 2012: Stories from the Near Future. I loved when he said that he wants to make games so that “people can make more and more creative things with less effort.” Definitely check it out.

“Who doesn’t like Skittles?”

I totally agree! Skittles releases a limited edition Skittles “gift” on Facebook. Scarcity increases demand.

30 Days of Night Multiplayer Game

Big Spaceship has launched their newest online multiplayer game 30 Days of Night, based on the upcoming movie starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, and Danny Huston. With character designs by Ben Templesmith (co-creater and artist of the graphic novel) and 5 different maps to choose from, players take control of either Humans or Vampires, and fight for 30 days. Can you survive the darkness? Will you feast for the winter? You decide.

Now that we have PR speak out of the way, let’s do some more “shine the light on me” in less glaring tones. Like our previous game, Spider-Man 3, we went for a real-time approach, making the player control a team of either humies or vamps. It’s a one player vs. one player setup, but depending on what Day you’re on, you have control of up to 4 chars. It makes for some pretty hectic moments since while controlling one char, you also have to be aware of the rest of your team. Sure you might think you’re feeding a lead salad to that stationary vamp, but if you look closely, your opponent is going gobble-town on your other chars.

And also: one of the human characters has a flashlight as his main weapon, which can not only do absolutely zero damage to humans but can also destroy a truck. If that doesn’t convince you to play, then you are definitely not spending enough time playing video games.

Advertising and Online Games

Gamers have made it clear that advertising is OK if it is contextual and non-intrusive. Links here, here and here. In fact, it may even be making brands “cool.” And there are scads of articles about what in-game advertising means to video games:
Some Dos and Don’ts, an overview and even a thesis.

For me, a question arises: does all this data hold up in online games? Or how about branded games? Many online games already carry a marketing message and are played for free. Is it more challenging to create immersive experiences that are brought to you by Brand X and then you see Brand X peppered liberally throughout the game? Or is that acceptable? What are the limits of immersion, suspension of disbelief and acceptance that your favorite online game is, in fact, an advertisement?

Advertising is equally afloat in MMOs (massively multiplayer online worlds). While the number of active users or subscribers is relatively small in Second Life (500,000 active users) as compared to World of Warcraft (8.5 million subscribers), we’ve been hearing endlessly about the colonization of brands within Second Life. Why not the focus elsewhere? Somewhere the numbers suggest a brand may reach a larger audience? And now that brands are shuttering their Second Life presences, will they be willing to try again with other MMOs?

UPDATE: From Ilya Vedrashko’s blog. When are advertisers going to jump on this opportunity?