Or it could be that I have been fiending for a Shadowrun MMO since I started playing EQ back in 98

Long time no post! Dec 24th!

Most Science Fiction is just Fantasy with spaceships and technobabble. There’s a big difference between throwing future-people into a crazy situation and having them use advanced scientific possibilities to get out of it, versus pulling out the Star Trek equivalent of, “Well Robin, those sharks look formidable, but luckily I happen to be carrying a can of Bat Shark Repellent!”

Horror movie though it was, I tend to consider the first Alien movie to be MUCH truer science fiction than the vast majority of “sci fi” that comes to mind. People in a ship with tools, bulky space suits, an android…but without replicators and time travel and the ability to heal any wound with the wave of a metallic rod that looks and acts oddly like a magic wand.

Pick your favorite sci-fi universe. Got it? Okay, find the fantasy archetypes. Star Wars: beyond the classic Princess captured by Evil rescued by the Prince who doesn’t know he’s a Prince, we have the Evil King Who Must Be Overthrown. Dune: while these are largely political and environmental, there’s that Spice thing without which the whole storyline would not exist, and which smacks heavily of magic. Star Trek: if you can’t find the fantasy archetypes in there, you ain’t looking! Battlestar Glactica: the underlying lore comes from an ancient myth - the Lost Tribe of Israel.

Do we need dragons and castles to have fantasy? Are the “universal” archetypes that underlie fantasy so pervasive that we cannot have sci-fi without them?

Time to re-read some Asimov and Clarke….

One of the problems with SciFi games is that almost all MMORPG’s are stuck with the Tank/Healer/DPS core mechanic. So people still view scifi games as just a fantasy game in space, I don’t think that will change until someone comes up with something that is different but still works. Plus there has to be some kind of “magic” system, otherwise people would find just shooting stuff boring.

I am hoping for a good scifi game to come out, Gamma World was the first Role playing game I played and still have fond memories of it. I think someone is eventually going to have to try something outside the box and hopefully they will hit on something fun to play.

This is a well written and articulated post.

/wave teh Scotteh

EA own the right though, and EA isn’t really in to MMO’S. Though now that they have Mythic, ya i guess there a chance in the future they might make one.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the secret to the genius of Scott Hartsman.

By advancing theories that would take years of controlled conditions to test, he ensures that he cannot be disproven. I mean, how can you raise a statistically relevant group of children with no exposure to fantasy whatsoever, then years later introduce them to the genre to see how they respond to it?

I bow to you, sir. I bow to you.

HOWEVER, the “new hotness,” so to speak, is Harry Potter. Fantasy in a modern age. I’m beyond-shocked that there isn’t an official HP MMORPG/Sandbox in development already (or even unofficial, if you don’t count text MUDs). That said, this is the defining setting for fantasy-lovers of a new generation. Will the influences of new literature change the stock genre of games 10 years from now?

I also believe that a company who runs/funds fantasy-based MMOs probably knows its first genre better than anything else and would be glad to publish a Transformers game online if only it had the nuances of the first genre going for it. But you wouldn’t have a Transformers game, would you? You’d have a yet another fantasy game - with Transformers in it. Yet…you’d have a game.

I don’t think it’s unlikely, particularly if our children’s stories also start to involve technology more. If this is the case then those of us designing games who do NOT have the same familiar childhood memories of technology, may in the years to come find an increasing gap between what they feel is appealing and what their younger audience may find appealing. Something that designers may need to keep consciously in mind in the coming decades.