I'm going to kick off the pulpit with a fairly broad topic. On the WinSEQ thread, there was a fairly intricate debate about the future of gaming, but it was partially lost in some of the other topics going on in that thread, and I thought it deserved it's own topic.

In that thread, I postulated that gaming as we know it is going to change, before we see another phenomenon such as EverQuest.

I'm going to briefly recap some of my observations in the other thread. If you would like the whole effect, you can visit it here http://seq.sourceforge.net/showthrea...5&pagenumber=2 .

EverQuest represents a paradigm shift in gaming, and specifically online gaming, which is a subset of general gaming. As I stated, I don't believe EverQuest itself is at fault for this, but it just happened to be in the right place at the right time. If Verant/EQ hadn't done it, another game would have.

I'm talking about the fact that there will never be another game like EverQuest, until we reach the next step of gaming, and that is real life, real time RPGs... Holodecks, or something to mimic real life as real as... life itself. IE - virtually indisinguishable from reality. The problem we are facing now is that computer graphics are very good. Are they real? No, of course not, but FMV in games has shown us that graphics that are too real actually detract from the game play experience. There needs to be an element of unreality in a game visually, or it's too unsettling or ridiculous for even the most avid gamer.

So that leaves us with an almost real, 2D world that we stare through our 15 - 25" window to another world. 3D monitors aren't the solution, although they may provide some interesting takes on current gaming design. Even with a 3D monitor, it's still a little mini world we are looking in on from the outside, the same as it's been since TV was first invented. The next step in that evolution is to put us INSIDE that mini world, so we are looking out and around and actually become part of it. In the meantime though, we are going to have to suffer through our limited senses of sight and sound... perhaps a bit of touch if you have a vibrating mouse or joystick or something. There's no sense of smell... you can't smell the decaying bodies in a dungeon. You cant' smell the dirt and leaves around you in forest. Sound is even trickier... yes, we have 5.1 DD sound, but I have yet to find a computer game that lives up to reality. In fact, I have only found a couple DVD's that even get close to Good, Quality sound. Sound is one of the most neglected aspects of gaming (and movies) and it's a real shame. A good sound track (I'm not talking about music) can make a medicore game into something stellar. So little attention is paid to sound, it's sickening, it's all about visual. Auditory stimulus is at leave 50% if not more of any current gaming experience, or at least it should be. I think part of the problem here is that most users have little tinny speakers for their computer, and thus wouldn't be able to take advantage of quality sound in a game anyway. But I'm digressing -- my point is that we are engaging only 2, maybe 3 of our five senses when we play games.

In the early days of radio, we engaged one, hearing. Then TV came along and we engaged two. We've engaged two for the past 50 years, and are only now starting to engage a third, touch. Those first three are the easiest, because they are the least sensetive sense we possess. To engage our other two, taste and smell is going to require vast new technologies, and is part of the reason we won't be seeing ground breaking new games anytime soon.

EverQuest was unique because it filled a gap, that of continuity. UO (And some of the lesser known games like M59, etc...) tried to fill this gap, but it was too shallow to do a very good job. EverQuest filled this niche nicely, with it's massive time sinks and volume of players... and having effects be lasting, simply because of the time investment in each character. Unlike UO, if you did something bad, chances are you wern't going to restart your character and macro it up in a couple days to the same level. EQ provided accountability in some limited fashions.

Immediate future games (Shadowbane, etc...) are going to build off of the lessons learned in EQ, but any EQ player will be able to pick up DAoC, AC, AC2, SB, etc... and feel right at home within a couple days. Can you say that when you first picked up EQ? I was an avid FPS player, as well as an avid UO player... but it took me a long, long time as those things go, to get a handle on EQ and feel totally confident. That's because it was a paradigm shift in progress. I couldn't save the game at a safe point. If I ran away from a monster, there's no guarentee it would still be there when I got back. There were lots of little things and some major things that made EQ different, and all the games coming out now are just more of the same stuff... dressed up a little nicer, with more manners, etc... but still the same.

I can't envision anything different at this point. What more can you do? Well, Raistlin had some thoughts from the other thread, and here they are. I'll respond to them below.

And quoting this I would have to say Ratt, that I completely disagree with your VERY WELL WRITTEN post about the future of gaming. I do not see the future of "Gaming" changing. I don't believe we need a holodeck to have a good game. What I am hearing however is a bunch of people who have been swindled into believeing that EQ is the best it can get. A bunch swindled into believing that the "Endgame" as you put it is the ONLY place to be. And in EQ it is. However, i'm going to ask you Ratt (and everyone reading this post) to go back to your last session of AD&D (now D&D). What level were you? 30s? 20s? even 10s? More likely you were between 1 and 10. And what character number was this for you? 20? 50? In all the time you've played the ORIGINAL RPGs did you ever get tired of progressing from level 1 to 10? Did you ever dread "starting over?" You talk of the initial levels you went through being like going through the Army. Jesus, what kind of massichists are we here? Gaming has always been and will always be about having fun. About doing something interesting. The problem with EQ is that interesting is defined as "getting together with 30 of your guild mates and attacking mega bad-ass mobs for phat leut." And thus the piss poor planing on Verant's part is revealed. The low end game is work because ITS NOT FUN. In reality, the beginning game is nothing more than YET ANOTHER timesink, it's the ULTIMATE timesink, it's the amount of time you have to spend before you can start having fun. There is NOTHING to do besides level. Why else is it described as "churning", "grinding", etc.?

We don't need holodecks, we don't need flashy uber graphics. All the flashy graphics in the world won't correct what you're feeling Ratt, or what the rest of us are feeling. We need to have fun. We need to have something to do. Verant created a game with HUNDREDS of possibilities in the character creation process, then did what every other RPG has done to date...gave everyone the same goal and only one way to meet that goal.

Contrast this with your table top RPG days under a good GM.

It'll only take one company with foresight. One company with brains. One company that thinks outside the very very small box that are RPGs today to blow this wide open. One company with enough sense to treat characters in an online world the same as we treat people in the real world and to treat the online world the same as we treat the real world to give you a game that will play and act like an RPG, not a pre-written storybook who's first 200 pages are given over to describing the castle the players start in.

I lament the fact that I don't have the money or the technical know how to build this game, but I wait with eger anticipation for that one company with vision to wake up and realize that entertaining the RPG masses is NOT rocket Science.

The face of gaming hasn't changed, you just realized that the game you were being fed as the here all end all be all of RPGs is in fact almost as bad as the rest of them out there.
He brings up some very good points... but the fundamental flaw in this is the fact that gaming and fun to me are not necessarily the same things to you. I actually only played D&D a few times... I was a bigger fan of GammaWorld, Albedo and Battletech But the principals were the same. The problem is, though, I thrive on competition. I want to be the best as I compete against others. Some people have called me a showman, and it's true. But that may not be why YOU play a game. To me, though, a game is about competition and winning. If there's no goal, there's no reason to play, for me.

So without a fundamentally different medium to play in, the games coming out now are just EQ clones with some tweaks here and there. I've been there, done that, don't need to do it again. I've won at EQ (as much as anyone can win) ... I know I could do it again in another game if I wanted to, but I've already proven to myself that I can DO that. What I haven't proven is if I can really BE that class... by waving my arms, jumping around, memorizing spells, pulling that 100lb bow, twisting, turning, etc...

That's why I say that the next step is a holodeck type device. Everything is is just more of the same old stuff. I already addressed the "low end game" part, but to summarize... does it suck? Yep. Sucks big time, but the problem is, if everyone could be in the endgame, then there's no sense of accomplishment. No sense of having overcome something that not *everyone* else can also overcome. The low end game is needed to give the end game meaning. I honestly don't know how that can really be overcome... you have to have things that people don't WANT to do as a rite of passage into the things people want to do, otherwise, everyone will naturally gravitate to doing what they want to do, every day, all day. It's the same with rich people... they are not signifigantly happier than poor people, each class of people report the same general level of happiness. Why? It's because it's the struggle of moving forward that's fulfilling, not actually being there. That's why the low end drugery is needed to make the end game what it is.

Now, when the game turns to something physical, such as lifting that 100lb sword, or memorzing arcane spells that you must speak, complex hand movements, the pain of pushing yourself to real, physical limits, that will provide a new gaming experience. When I can feel the soft ground, or rough cavern walls under my finger tips, and I can feel the hot breath and sharp fangs of that wolf trying to rip out my throat, that will be the test I measure myself against others. When I can feel the searing heat and smell the rotting meat from the dragons breath, just before it fries me to a cinder through excrutiating pain... then I will know that I am able to go beyond what "just anyone" can do, because I can endure those hardships to develop my skills and overcome the obsticals.

That is what EQ provided, because it hadn't been done before... but now that it's been done, all the games after it won't provide something so fundamentally new, and that will be their downfall, in so much as they, individually, will never be as popular and fanatical as the EQ fan base was at it's peak. There may be stepwise refinements along our path to a true virtual reality, some providing a flurry of new activity and wonder, a spark, but it won't have the lasting power that EQ has enjoyed, because it's not really new... just dressed up, tired old ideas.

Bring on the pain... beat me, whip me... make me work for the next gaming goal.