Growing the next gen MMO from the current MMO

The strength of starting Dynamic and the real challenge of making the next gen MMO, (it’s not the digital part.)

A MMO is an online society, a society of human in cyberspace, and therefore it has to be treated as a society. The MMO of the future is not something that a MMO no matter how good can be at launch day. It is something that is grown, and evolves into the finished product. 

One has to start with a mainly static world and than gradually make it more dynamic, and this has to be done because you are not creating a game, but a complete society, a digital world inhabited by humans. A society needs a set amount of time to be created, for leaders to emerge and be created, and for groups and hierarchies to be created. 

Eve online is a great example of this and I am going to use it a lot now a a example, they started of rather static and has been making the game more and more dynamic, and I would bet on that Eve online dominating the MMO genre in the future. I think this because one cannot create a human society in minutes, there needs to be a significant amount of time for people to organise themselves in the game. And no matter how many millions blizzard have to use, Eve Online got something they don’t have and that is a complex human society. You can’t buy that. 

Eve online has been growing its huge back stabbing, treacherous, power-hungry community for ages now, and they have create something very valuable indeed. They are at a special moment now and have a world of possibilities in front of them. 

The standard static MMOs can be made rather quickly more dynamic, but their users will not adapt that quickly, as I have said it takes a lot of time to create a society from nothing. 

The developer of Eve online has said that they are implementing the ability for players to do things in eve in a browser, or on their mobile phone. This might not sound as so much, but the road then to make people have the ability play Eve online singlehandedly on their mobile phone, or in their browser is short. Why is that big? Well eve got 300000 people playing eve and if you make these people playing the game through their mobile phone and browser, affect the Eve online universe you will have 300 000 people marketing the Eve online mobile version for free. 

Not only that, if someone creates a casual mini game like Facebooks mafia wars or my farm and makes the game affect the Eve universe somewhat. What the Eve dev now got is possible chance to tap into the casual market while having a good foundation in the hardcore. The first MMO dev to get soccer moms to play their MMO through the Wii or mobile phone is the ones who will succeed the most. 

The hardcore players and the casual players each bring something to what they interact with, just like our society is interesting because it got all sorts of people. A game with all sorts of people will be more “interesting” because all these people spices up the experience in all sorts of ways. 

I know of the developers of Eve online plans of the game Dust and I think it is a brilliant choice if not a bit too early. 

Ps: Dear eventual reader hope you don’t think reading this was a waste of your time.

And if you did not like it I would greatly appreciate any feedback