Blizzard is not one lone writer churning out creative works and hobbled by his/her crazed fans. What you have with the advent of MMOs is a genre or art form (if you will) that COULD NOT EXIST without a multitude of players. It is, in effect, shaped by the people who play it. They become part of the art form. Stephen King could write books and store them in his closet and they could be found long after his death. In fact, in some of the stories he has written the writer character (who is clearly based on him) does just that - often enough to make me wonder how often he's stored away a novel for a rainy day to stave off his publishers when his creative well runs temporarily dry. Emily Dickinson wrote poems considered beautiful and classic but which were only found after her death. Sometimes I worry too much interaction and need for feedback is killing me as a writer, in fact.
MMO's are not novels. MMO's are not plays. They aren't paintings. They are more than just twitch games. They are more than just tabletop RPGs. They are something new and different and terribly, terribly compelling. The little anthropologist person who's lived in my head my entire life sits back and watches, cooly, as some of these absurd situations I get myself in play out, and my emotional reactions, and other people's emotional reactions, and wonders just why anyone can get so worked up over it, but everyone does. Lioke I said to you in the car the other night, there's something here the psychologists and the art field and everyone who dismisses these as "silly games for geeks" is missing. Something very huge is going on here. I'm not always sure its entirely healthy. I'll be damned if I can fully explain it. There's no way how I can explain trying out this game in Wrath beta and walking into Crystalsong forest for the first time and beginning to cry because I'm touched by the beauty of it. It is embarassing even to say that. But its very real. It frightens me a little. Maybe more than a little.
I drifted a bit there but - beyond just the interactive universe itself - its the interactions between players themselves that make the Blizzard universe alive and meaningful. Example - like the whole Internet Dragons post said - they made these dragons you can kill, right? Some are so hard they take weeks or months of planning and a concerted, group effort of up to 40 people working together as a team to defeat. Without those people, dedicated to working together to do things like this in game, it's just pretty pictures on a computer screen. Those people are then an integral part of this "product". this goes beyond just mere consumers. With a book, you buy the book, you read it, a sort of passive observation. Same with a movie. With a console game you play single player, you interact with it at home in a limited sort of way. But this is a new and different animal.
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Blizzard is not one lone writer churning out creative works and hobbled by his/her crazed fans. What you have with the advent of MMOs is a genre or art form (if you will) that COULD NOT EXIST without a multitude of players. It is, in effect, shaped by the people who play it. They become part of the art form. Stephen King could write books and store them in his closet and they could be found long after his death. In fact, in some of the stories he has written the writer character (who is clearly based on him) does just that - often enough to make me wonder how often he's stored away a novel for a rainy day to stave off his publishers when his creative well runs temporarily dry. Emily Dickinson wrote poems considered beautiful and classic but which were only found after her death. Sometimes I worry too much interaction and need for feedback is killing me as a writer, in fact.
MMO's are not novels. MMO's are not plays. They aren't paintings. They are more than just twitch games. They are more than just tabletop RPGs. They are something new and different and terribly, terribly compelling. The little anthropologist person who's lived in my head my entire life sits back and watches, cooly, as some of these absurd situations I get myself in play out, and my emotional reactions, and other people's emotional reactions, and wonders just why anyone can get so worked up over it, but everyone does. Lioke I said to you in the car the other night, there's something here the psychologists and the art field and everyone who dismisses these as "silly games for geeks" is missing. Something very huge is going on here. I'm not always sure its entirely healthy. I'll be damned if I can fully explain it. There's no way how I can explain trying out this game in Wrath beta and walking into Crystalsong forest for the first time and beginning to cry because I'm touched by the beauty of it. It is embarassing even to say that. But its very real. It frightens me a little. Maybe more than a little.
I drifted a bit there but - beyond just the interactive universe itself - its the interactions between players themselves that make the Blizzard universe alive and meaningful. Example - like the whole Internet Dragons post said - they made these dragons you can kill, right? Some are so hard they take weeks or months of planning and a concerted, group effort of up to 40 people working together as a team to defeat. Without those people, dedicated to working together to do things like this in game, it's just pretty pictures on a computer screen. Those people are then an integral part of this "product". this goes beyond just mere consumers. With a book, you buy the book, you read it, a sort of passive observation. Same with a movie. With a console game you play single player, you interact with it at home in a limited sort of way. But this is a new and different animal.
It will be interesting to see where it goes.