I’m still playing the game and not hating it, probably because it takes all of two minutes of my time. It’s fun and clever, even if it does have some bugs (like those mentioned in the comments here). Hardly the grave disappointment some commenters here seem to think it is. I mean, really, it’s just a mildly interactive ad, not an A-list game to get up in arms about.
One thing I especially like that I know many others won’t is that there’s relatively little guidance telling you what to do and what to expect. I understand that some find this frustrating. After all, if you’re hoping to win an iPhone, you want to make sure you’re doing everything right.
But I found enough information on the site and in the help files to figure out what to do. And really, it’s a lot more information than a real spy would have, so I’m willing to roll with it.
I did catch a glimpse of Bourne in a camera on the first day. On the second day, I wasn’t so lucky. I spent more than two minutes trying to determine if there was a hint in my correspondence with agent Godot about what the best camera locations would be—using Google Maps and Wikipedia, mostly—but in the end decided there wasn’t any. I placed one of my cameras on a subway entrance and another in the same spot as I had on the first day.
Unfortunately, neither spot worked. As I understand it, this means that I wasn’t entered in the drawing for an iPhone that day. We’ll see if I get luckier today.
From the narrative, it sounds as if we’re off to North Africa by the Straight of Gibraltar, tomorrow.
July 18th, 2007
World of Warcraft will definitely have built-in voice chat soon. Many other MMORPGs already have built-in voice chat. For games that don’t have it yet or won’t have it, most serious players use other voice chat programs. (This is not news.)
I don’t exactly fit a traditional gaming category. (And really, who does?) But I do like the storytelling, immersion, and roleplaying aspects of MMORPGs, for all that they’re virtually non-existent.
No voice chat tool I’ve seen really supports these things, but there’s no point in bemoaning the fact. Voice chat is too darn useful to gamers to leave out. All multiplayer online games will and should have it.
So my question is, how can people who are interested in immersive roleplaying continue to enjoy it while voice chat is inherent to the online games they enjoy? They could:
- Turn it off or ignore it
Which, of course, means deliberately crippling their game experience.
- Restrict RP to chat channels
Which means continuing to RP as they have in the past.
- Try to RP via voice
Which will interfere with people who wish to roleplay characters of of the other sex, will expose bad actors, and will upset the illusion of the gameworld. Of course, tabletop gamers are able to suspend their disbelief for these sorts of things, but one of the reasons RPers use WoW and other MMORPGs (which aren’t really a good vehicle for roleplaying) is because they can simulate some aspects of their character more easily than they could at the gaming table.
In the end, voice chat is another intrusion of reality into the illusion of the game world. Since UO, MMORPGs have become less and less simulations and more and more games. And I’m not really complaining about this. More people want games than want simulations that make you wait eight in-game hours to go shopping.
So perhaps the future of online gaming isn’t in the big MMORPGs with persistent worlds, but in bringing tabletop games online. I know of several products trying to do this (like Gametable), but I haven’t tried them yet.
And if some sequel to Neverwinter Nights makes campaign construction and game-mastering easier, that may be a solution too. I ran a campaign for about ten sessions. The story was good, and the roleplaying was good (and all text based). But preparing for sessions and actually running the game was almost impossible. But if something like that were easier and faster, I would eagerly give it a try.
Has anyone had experiences with non-MMORPG online roleplaying? What was your experience like?
July 18th, 2007