I just had a thought, while writing the Mythos article. We all know where Mythos came from. Diablo II game play with a Warcraft art style. Diablo II came from Diablo, and Diablo was heavily influenced by the rogue-likes Moria and Angband, I think? Both those games were inspired by Hack, which was inspired by Rogue, which was heavily influenced by Temple of Apshai (I’m guessing), which took its inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons.
Now, World of Warcraft was inspired by the Warcraft RTS games, EverQuest, and Dark Age of Camelot. EverQuest took its inspiration from Toril MUD, which was based on other MUDs back to Diku, which was itself based on D&D and earlier MUDs which were inspired by Infocom’s Dungeon/Zork, which was inspired by Crowther and Woods’ Colossal Cave Adventure, which was based on real spelunking. Dark Age of Camelot took its inspiration EverQuest, so there’s some inbreeding going on there. Warcraft polished earlier RTS games, which draw heavily from those old Avalon-Hill war games, which likely got their start as variants of the board game Risk (total speculation for purposes of illustration only).
See where this is going? All these games take certain ideas — call them genes — and mix them up to form new games. What if we could, to push the analogy, sequence these genes, and directly diagram the rise and fall of genetic markers over the years. We would have a new handle on how to judge games. Point and click vs WASD? XP grind or quest grind? Group or solo preferred?
When someone says WAR is like WoW, we could say well, it’s 75% like WoW, 10% like DAoC (and since both games draw from EverQuest) can trace half its heritage all the way back to 1999. Now this 25% here, this was never in WoW, and there’s our difference.
And more importantly, we would be able to really focus on truly new and innovative ideas. “Whoa, in this game, your character loses levels if the player doesn’t log in. Is that new? Will it spread to other games?”
Virology and genetics can tell us a lot about gaming evolution, I’m guessing. Evolution? Yeah, I went there. I think we all can see these games are not a product of Intelligent Design… (Sigh. Devs, forgive me. I had to take the shot. You understand, don’t you?)
22 thoughts on “Sequencing MMO DNA”
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Let’s see, I’ve done some math here using your formulaic laws and determined the following:
-Gothic 3 is 40% Hell, 30% Feces, 20% Jim Henson, 9.9% Chewing on Tinfoil, and somewhere in the nature of 0.1% Gothic 2.
-Bioshock is 50% System Shock 2, 40% Jules Verne, and 10% of what they actually promised us.
-Fallout 3 will likely be an estimated 100% Oblivion with guns.
-Diablo 3 will likely be an estimated 50% Diablo 2, and 50% Awesome.
-Disciples 3 will likely be an estimated 40% Disciples 2, and 60% Heroes of Might and Magic.
I did not intentionally apply this math to the third installments of games, it just worked out that way. And yes, it’s creeping me out too!
Looking forward to EQ3 already …
Predicted: 60% WoW, 20% EQ2, 20% finished on release.
Want to talk about a complex DNA sequence, what about Spore?
20% Odell Lake
20% The Sims
20% Black and White
20% Civilization
20% Childhood Memories of Play-doh Sculpting
“20% Odell Lake
20% The Sims
20% Black and White
20% Civilization
20% Childhood Memories of Play-doh Sculpting”
Wait, I don’t remember being able to fashion 3D body parts in ANY of those games.
You must have had a remarkably abstract Play-Dough experience as a child… 🙂
What would be the use of sequencing the genes of an MMO? To determine relation and evolution, sure, but who really cares about that. But you could use it to see how alike a given MMO was. We all know the big-budget, triple-A titles, but there’s a lot of good stuff going on with indies and Asian imports. But there are so *many* of them, it’s hard to judge if it is the kind of game you might like without a lot of research. This could be that research. I can tell you that if you like Pokemon, you might like Stone Age 2; or if you like Pirates of the Burning Sea, you might like Florensia. Or if you like Rocky & Bullwinkle and Shrek, you might like Secondhand Lands. I can recommend these that’s because I get exposed to them through my job. Wouldn’t it be great to say, well, I like EQ2, WoW, EVE and Mythos, and don’t like FFXI and WoW. I don’t want a game where I have to group or that takes too much time. What can you recommend? And out would come an ordered list of games ranked by similarity to the games you like and different from the games you don’t like.
MMO genes are the data that would drive such a system. Combine that with use recommendations and it would be a sure winner.
Even innovations end up being derived from some previous game.
I’m betting there’s a very good book to be written in tracing back all gaming via the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon… er separation.
Well, there’s the obvious relations — sequels and the such. And then the indirect ones, like how loot is distributed, or the mean time to max level. If you changed the graphics, it would be clear that Mythos and World of Warcraft have almost nothing in common — one came from roguelikes, the other from text adventures. But both have taken genes from the other, blurring them somewhat. And sometimes that cross-pollination doesn’t work. Forcing text adventure tropes onto a roguelike ends up like a game I wrote just after college, which combined a roguelike backend with real time monsters — but the interface was via text (like, go north, take sword, etc). It was a disaster. Some things take so much glue to stick together that it’s not worth the result.
Diablo was heavily influenced by …. Guantlet.
[…]As Richard Bartle would put it, I already played Diablo and it was called Gauntlet.[…]
“[The idea for Diablo] was modified over and over until it solidified when [Dave Brevik] was in college and got hooked on … Moria/Angband.”
I definitely agree that Diablo definitely has some Gauntlet-like elements — hoards of identical creeps coming at you from all sides, food/health potions, and so on, but Gauntlet was clearly itself modeled after roguelikes. Diablo had random dungeon levels where Gauntlet’s were designed like puzzles. Also, Gauntlet didn’t have levels or stats; your character didn’t change no matter how long you played. Diablo = Roguelike + Gauntlet’s swarms of monsters? Could be… but you could say it took inspiration from Berzerk, an earlier game where you pounded robots of ever-increasing power as you tried to find your way through a maze. Though that was clearly based on a very early mainframe/TTY game called by many, many names — I first heard it called Robots.
See? All these games are related from way, way back.
Just to muddy the waters further, an interesting and somewhat long account of the history of RPGs which conveniently stops at 1999 can be found here:
http://ptgptb.org/0001/history1.html
Oh, cool! Thanks!!
Hmm…I got lost in the WAR is 75% WoW, 10% DAoC, 25% new…so this game will be 110% upon release? Was that a sales pitch? lol
“We are going to give a 110%”
But, that mysterious 25% leaves a lot of questions. My fear is it will get what every other game gets from the hardcore MMO hater.
“You say this is new, but it has been done before…it is kinda like this..”
All new games get this…Tabula Rasa, LOTRO, AoC. Everyone said “Well, it has something new, but it has been done before..”
Personally, I have no issue with DNA cross gene therapy. I liked it before, so why should I not like it now, since it has been upgraded with vanilla ice cream and PIE!
Sure, I think it would be valuable. But I think it would be most valuable to navigate the flood of indie or Asian import MMOs. If you could say, give me the Asian MMO most like WoW but free-to-play, it could say hmmm… character classes, levels, lots of quests, fast leveling, with some formalized PvP, raiding, and a highly stylized art style, and it could spit out the top dozen or so. Instead of going to Massively or MMORPG.com and going through all their MMOs trying to guess from the name which would be best.
Far from giving haters ammunition, I think it would promote lesser-known MMOs without the marketing budget of Blizzard or EA. You like AoC, would you like Lineage II? This could tell you.
Pandora.com uses the exact same system for music recommendations, btw.
I love the idea of being able to see which game evolved from which games. I know in Mathematics there is a project where they have mapped who used whos theory to make there own theory and stuff like that. And it would be total cool to do that, but everyone would say something different or won’t agree. And then the developers would never tell where they got ideas.
What might work is getting a group of people from the industry/blog/ stuff like that having them sit down and vote and could be a somewhat accurate MMO evolution chart.
@Tipa
I sure do wish a matching system COULD work. Pick my favorite titles and see comparisons.
Or better yet, let me mix and match gameplay to make my own game.
I just went back to Guild Wars again, and bought the last edition cheaply, and I STILL love that game. Now, if I could have the combat system, and gorgeous visuals of GW, add in gameplay mechanics and “carrot on a stick” gameplay of EQ2, throw in a dash of AoC’s realtime combat, and mix in their visual quality.
Who am I kidding, I will never see that game. Every dev picks something they like about previous MMO’s, and then try to “upgrade” it.
Guess we have to accept what THEY think is good for us, and hope that game keeps us.
But there are hundreds of MMOs out there. We in North America make bunches both big and small, the devs in Japan, China and especially Korea come out with BUNCHES, and Europe is really coming into their own. Each one of these hundreds of MMOs has a different mix of features. How do you KNOW the game you want isn’t out there? You don’t!
By the way, you should take a look at The Chronicles of Spellborn. A card-based combat system (deck building is even more involved than in GW), innovative setting and art style, lots of quests, and “targetless” combat like AoC. Coming out this fall. I’ve written a lot about it over on Massively.
@Tipa
You have picked the perfect example of why I say “pick something from an MMO the dev likes…” analogy.
Chronicles…
I think the combat looks to be awesome, visual landscapes like LOTRO
And UGLY people!
I like my people to look semi -realistic.
Maybe this is why Mythos which seems quite fun, never grabbed me. Maybe it is why WoW does not bring me back in.
And you state there are 100’s of MMO’s. But, if I have to pay 50+ bucks to try each…no thanks.
The trial system does not work, as the limitations of MMO’s and having those really good” tutorial” areas (LOTRO, AoC) does not show what will happen in the rest of the game. Bad gameplay!
As to the overseas titles. EVERY SINGLE one copies the other…period. I have played Silkroad, Cabal Online, Perfect World, Requiem. Visually different with some unique features, and all equal pure GRIND!
But, I always am willing to keep looking, I have yet to give up. And until I find my next one, I will stick with the oldies but goodies for a bit.
Yeah, the vast majority of the Asian games are cookie-cutter. You really have to buy into their business model — they are a grind to force you to buy extra-XP potions and stuff. If you don’t accept the fact that you are expected to buy your way through the game, you just won’t enjoy them.
Of course, there’s that instant backlash that forms the main difference between Western and Eastern MMOs. Western — subscription and no RMT. Asian — No subscription, but RMT everywhere. But with the option to pay nothing, ever. Play an Asian MMO with the expectation that the $50 you would have spent on the box for a Western MMo will be sunk instead into buying xp potions and decent gear and you will have a different experience. That’s their business model. With RMT, you get good stuff without having to camp, level without having to grind, and can finish a game at the pace you choose. They make the gameplay without RMT so unpleasant that you will pay to get to the good bits faster.
Once you have gotten over the hump of accepting RMT, you can appreciate the games better for their differences and their community (which will, again, be largely Asian, but in my experience playing with Japanese gamers in FFXI Online, some of the best, friendliest and most intense gamers in the world).
Millions of gamers play these MMOs. Every single one of them has other things to do, and other games to play. When someone releases a game in the West that has a million players in the East, can we really flatly say it’s not worth our time to give it a look?
That said, there are a lot of games out there, and codifying those differences is what I aim to try to do — not just for Asian MMOs, but for all of them. MMORPG.com tracks 250+ MMOs (though the MMO-ness of some of their titles is iffy). Somewhere among those 250 — and more every month — is the perfect game for someone. Finding it is the problem.
And btw there are Asian games which are very similar to Western games. Just as we have Western games that are similar to Eastern ones.