Specifically, when asked if he had his hands in any MMO-based titles, Nolan Bushnell took a notedly-long pause before responding "Yes." When asked to clarify, Bushnell stated that it's unavoidable that social and massively-multiplayer games have become important, but "as compelling as World of Warcraft is, it too shall find that there are other ways to play a game."
A cryptic comment to be sure. Our buddies at Massively point out that Bushnell has a history in creating social spaces, with franchises like the Chuck E. Cheese arcades and more recently uWink. But can this sort of expertise translate effectively to the cutthroat world of MMO development?
[Via Massively]
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(Page 1) Reader Comments
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I'm gonna go dough farming!
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I wonder if there'd be user-created content in a Pong MMO.
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As you can see people can be doing this until the next millenium.
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Planetside: MMOFPS
Puzzle Pirates: MMO-Puzzle
Dofus: MMO-strategy
BOTS: MMO-Arcade
Neopets: MMO-Casual/Grab-bag
Other not-so-wild possibilities:
MMO-Pinball
MMO-Sim/Construction (Lego seems to be heading towards this, along with Spore, to an extent)
MMO-Board Game
MMO-Party (similar to MMO-Arcade)
MMO-Adventure (more in line with 4-Swords than Myst)
Fact is, MMO is not even a genre. It's just a classification of games based on the number of players, and that's it. You don't expect people to invent new numbers.
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All you fool's that waste money on MMO's are suckers!
That is all.
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think of how WoW tookd the concepts from EQ and changed them,to a more fun,simple and friendly desing.
now if he ,or anyone else ,brings something fresh to the table that be awsome for the industry....
seriously,MMO are still big on time requirement and constant dedication,unlike easier pick and play FPS or ...PONG.
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OR AS I SEE IT:
think of how wow took the concepts from EQ and dumbed them down for the masses to create an even more inane level grind.
Nolan Bushnell did create Computer Space, though, widely considered the first arcade game.
Read this, it's a fantastic book.
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-History-Video-Games-Pokemon/dp/0761536434/ref=pd_sim_b_img_2
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I'll give you Al Alcorn as Pong's designer and programmer, although arguably the production of Pong as an arcade unit (and phenomenon) must be at least partly credited to Bushnell.
And Computer Space *is* arguably the first arcade game, although it performed abysmally in the market, and was highly derivative of SpaceWar!, which itself is widely considered the first video game ever (and most definitely the first open source, community-developed project).
As long as we're doing book recommendations:
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Up-Japanese-Video-Games-World/dp/0744004241/ref=pd_sim_b_img_1
Kohler's book is fairly underrated. Though brief (especially in relation to Kent's behemoth), it gives a fairly insightful look into the culture of video games, particularly focusing on western influences (like the advent of storyline in arcade games, which hit its first peak with the then-revolutionary intro sequence of Donkey Kong). Good stuff.
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It was a cooperative experiment game of sorts...wonder if I can find it.
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It takes the average location of each player's paddle.
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