Blog Update
You know, working to learn Java, and all of the intricacies of game design, it's definitely not something I have the patience for. Especially considering most games are successful if they have a rather large company behind them. I'm not saying this is true for all games, Indie games are a proof of that.
I'm just saying, I can talk about wanting a MMORPG centered around roleplaying all I want, and I can obviously attempt to create a game, but honestly, it's a waste of time. I'm more of a writer, to be honest. I write stories, and I love sharing stories, which is why I have always had a rather large interest in roleplaying. Sharing a story among other people, regardless of who they really are, or where they're from, just for the roleplay, you can be the Knight and Healer, on a quest, and nothing else matters.
Roleplaying is a great escape from reality from me. Often times, reality isn't all that great, to be honest. We get sick, we get saddled with work, life can be complex. Not saying a roleplay cannot be the same, I have characters with fairly complex pasts. Honestly though, roleplaying has diminished as a past time over recent years, moreso taken over by ERPers (Erotic Roleplayers), who are usually only after one thing, and that is slightly depressing.
So what now?
This blog will more or less serve as a place for my ideas, still, though, less ideas about a perfect roleplaying-centric game. More so just a commentary on online gaming, roleplaying, and communities in general. I have noticed a steep decline in any sort of rational thought, or attempt at any sort of intelligence, the meme-friends of the internet who enjoy their mindless garbage. This blog will definitely report on any roleplaying communities, and give an evaluation of such. Plus if other roleplayers ever read what I write, it may give them hope, not to give up, or something.
Lately, I've been playing Mabinogi, still. The game is fun, yet, I find myself with nothing to do, considering the roleplaying community has withered into nothing, I find myself more often taking the Phyllo approach to the game. (Phyllo is a character from .hack//roots). He often would assist newbies to the game, giving all sorts of advice to anyone at all. Most often, I'll just sit in town, and speak with people who come seeking my advice. It is pretty calming, I even get to remain in character, though not many people seem to notice. Restarting an active roleplaying community in that game would be quite amazing..
..Yet, the game does have a roleplaying guild that is a bit of a 'problem'. I'll talk about that in another blog post though, where I evaluate Mabinogi on it's roleplayability.
See ya, Space Cowboy.
The problem, dear, lies in the fact we completely lack the tools a corporation or game company has. I'm not talking about the human resources (that can be achieved relatively easy) but the main technological part.
ReplyDeleteSince the very beginning of the personal computer age, gamemaking has been perhaps the hardest task at the hands of the programmers because it is always pushing the boundaries of the hardware to the limit. Is worthy to remember that, at the time of the original Donkey Kong, special hardware had to be developed only to make the games to work, and the same was still applied until very recently during the era of SuperNES and SEGA. And, is exactly right there, where the difference in between the garage genius and the corporate zombie lies: a garage genius shits ideas like he was on intellectual diarrea, but can't do anything about it because he has no means to take it fruition; the corporate zombie HAS the means but no idea at all.
This have been a common problem since the early era of Nintendo. Nevertheless, as systems advanced, the gaming companies noticed that, with how computers were evolving, soon, almost everybody would be able to compile games if good editors were to become a widespread fad (and THERE was such a time... short... but it happened back in 1984). This posed a mayor threat to the monopoly of game-producing companies so they, instead, resorted to not only develope far more technologically demanding games, but games that couldn't work without very specific hardwares, which were their own "secret formulas". It is there that the console war begins as, rather than fighting each other, the gaming companies were actually "fighting against the enduser to keep it at bay of taking the market from their hands". The gap in between them and us is no coincidence: is intentional.
At first such was simple: the required hardware was too expensive and complex to be made in a garage. Nevertheless, now we have computers than can easily "outsmart" those used back then to design our (now basical) SNES games, for example. So, how do companies "protect" themselves from such a problem? Code. Simple and easy: they develope the games on a coded language that is meant for anything but to make things easy for the system or computer where they run; it is designed to NOT allow the enduser to LEARN how the game was made.
In the end, you will see that every indy game out there is made with CUSTOM programs designed entirely and solely for that game, because true tools to make and design games that would aim for real commercial success simply do not exist: the companies keep it as their most beloved secret.
That's why I gave up on that avenue (for now), and resorted entirely to something I could edit, reshape, mesh, and shape at my will without the need of becoming a corporate zombie, and sometimes that means going back to the roots, with books... and papers.