Mechwarrior is an IP that could be simply awesome as a scifi MMO.
hmmmm mecha ...
theres a hell of a lot of mecha based anime out there, some of it is awesome, some is a bit meh, but theres a lot of IP resourcing available to a dev studio that dared to be brave
a good mech based sci-fi mmorpg would be gaming heaven
There is a mech game in development called Perpetuum, but I hope you like Eve because they ripped it off everywhere they could.
Why is Ryzom never mentioned in all these sci-fi postings? It is, in my opinion, one of the best (and most underrated) mmorpgs out there.
Because the author was given a piece to write about SCIFI mmos, so he wrote general info known to everyone about well known SCIFI mmos. article is crap, writer - to the guilliotine.
For the love of God please please stop repeating the "million accounts" spin. I've said it before and I'll say it again.. MMORPG.com's unannounced and not ever going to be made MMO is 17% more popular that STO is because MMORPG.com has 1.17 million accounts created.
If every MMO out there tried to report the number of "accounts created" as their "customer base" how many MMOs that haven't even been released have 1 million + loyal customers like STO has? SW:ToR prolly has way more than a million people signed up for a chance to get into their beta and to read their forums... I mean seriously... What about WoW? How many "accounts created" do they have? 50 million over 5 years and all those trials and people that left. I mean they're still "accounts created".
This 1 million "accounts" number is pure spin put out by Cryptic. All it means is accounts on their official site (accounts for applying to beta, readying the forums, Del Taco 48 hour Trials, etc). This is not the number of current subscriptions or the number of people who activated a CD key. I don't know why MMORPG.com writers are stillthrowing this number around, like it has any meaning, when they of all people should know its a pure spin number. I'm sorry to jump all over the author of this post but come on. Take some pride in your work... Reporting this number as being important is basically lying to your readers.
STO could have been the greatest new Sci-Fi MMO if they has done it right. Here's what I would have liked:
- take the basic structure of E&B.
- add a great economic system like they have in Eve.
- create a mission system where the captain actually has a variety of choices instead of linear game play where crew members tell the captain what to do next. The choices should include different branches other than just killing any opponents. One of the choices should have a high chance of failure so that a player can experience how leadership decisions are important.
Maybe they can still fix STO, but it will take a lot of work.
Mechwarrior is an IP that could be simply awesome as a scifi MMO.
hmmmm mecha ...
theres a hell of a lot of mecha based anime out there, some of it is awesome, some is a bit meh, but theres a lot of IP resourcing available to a dev studio that dared to be brave
a good mech based sci-fi mmorpg would be gaming heaven
I agree wholeheartedly with this statement, a Mecha MMO, if done right, would be nerdgasmic! As for the Secret world i believe it does blend elements of sci-fi in it like the lovecraft books; If I recall correctly the blending of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy was coined by him as "wierd fiction".
Over a million accounts have been created thus far for the game
Wrong, wrong, wrong. This statement has been debunked over and over and over again. The "1 million accounts" thing that Atari made an announcement for was shown to be 1 million Cryptic games accounts. This means that any account for Champions Online was counted in that number because accounts for both STO and CO's websites are linked (I used my STO account to sign up for the CO free trial,) and this means that any old person who made an account on STO's website (or multiple accounts) is counted in that number.
Truthfully we simply don't know what STO's official numbers really are for subscribers. So far it hasn't entered the top 20 on XFire, which is something one would definitely expect from a game with 1 million subscribers.
In regards to AO: I meant to say that the OGRE engine was dropped, and switched to Dreamworld. The quote about it being on indefinite hold was from an early draft and I never remembered to take it out. It's no excuse, but getting everything I need to say about so many games in under a certain amount of words winds up with me missing some things or misstating others.
As for the STO thing, I did say 1 million accounts, though I should have said on the website and not "for the game." Whether that's perpetuating the fact that it's merely accounts and not units sold is another thing, but it's no small milestone regardless.
As always, I'm actually thankful I can count on you lot to call me out when I fumble a little. Please proceed with eviscerating me (sarcasm)... be gentle. :P
-Bill
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
You know what? I really appreciated this site a helluva lot better when it was just MMO News, reviews and previews. Not so much now that it's glutted with these "articles" and opinion pieces. Beginning to wonder why I keep coming here.
You know what? This site is a helluva lot more interesting than every other news blog that just regurgitates the same damn story. Articles like this give us something else to read and discuss. Don't like it? Well, you're in luck because there are a million other generic MMO sites out there you can visit.
Star Trek online ended up to be a very fun casual game. Mind you - casual. If you stick your nose in it 20 hours a day as long as you can go - you will regret you did it.
Good article Bill! I'm a sci-fi guy that's had to play fantasy MMOs for years and years because of the mistakes made with the sci-fi ones. So it's good to see someone spotlighting the genre, as it's probably a much bigger market than fantasy, just going by the amount of Sci-Fi in the entertainment industry vs the amount of fantasy work.
Special thanks for mentioning Planetside! While it will never again be the game it once was, it was still the most fun I've ever had in a decade of MMOs. Roll that puppy back to before Core Combat, fix the bugs, tune up the graphics, movement and UI to 2010 standards, and it'd be a home run hit that would rival a top FPS game in sales.
This was a pretty good read, is there any Sci-fi mmo underdogs that are free to play? I heard about the sci fi sequel to runescape called mechscape or something similar but I don't think that ever took form. In all honesty though an MMO or just another pc GAME in general for the mech genre would be great, I haven't seen any in the recent years which is pretty stupid because of how many people love the mech genre. Something like ZOE for the ps2 or maybe closer to Virtual On would be a great type of mmo if done correctly.
The tradition of SF is to make you think about what if? Fantasy removes you from reality all together. For a MMO SF becomes more like Fantasy dropping the thinking, strapping on the laser gun. SF in MMO's is pretty much like Fantasy, I can't see any differance between them apart from the graphics.
Solo games like FO3 show how you can create a world that reflects ours but comments on it, rather than ones just tailored to work well with a blaster.
What I want more than anything from sci-fi in general today, not just MMOs, is for them to stop omitting technology that is emerging today. It's infuriating to deal with sci-fi being produced today riddled with force fields, artificial gravity, fusion drives, warp drives and warpgates/stargates/jumpgates, yet utterly lacking nanorobotics or genengineering—or treating them like still-emergent technologies, or being filled with problems these technologies could easily prevent or fix, et cetera. Argh!
Start from modern-day science, look at what's developing and what scenarios are likely to unfold from emergent technologies, choose one scenario and then add a sci-fi wildcard if you have to: an alien race, a strange new substance that allows FTL travel and 'psionic' powers—whatever ignites your lightsaber. Just don't skip over the near future so easily to jump to another typical Star Wars future with spaceships and 'lasers'. Read the work of futurists. Follow a path from here to somewhere reachable from here, for fuck's sake. In all likelihood, we will spread through the galaxy without spacecraft.
The probable futures are so much more interesting than any popular sci-fi. It's sad to see them neglected.
Favorites: EQ, EVE | Playing: None. Mostly VR and strategy | Anticipating: CU, Pantheon
What I want more than anything from sci-fi in general today, not just MMOs, is for them to stop omitting technology that is emerging today. It's infuriating to deal with sci-fi being produced today riddled with force fields, artificial gravity, fusion drives, warp drives and warpgates/stargates/jumpgates, yet utterly lacking nanorobotics or genengineering—or treating them like still-emergent technologies, or being filled with problems these technologies could easily prevent or fix, et cetera. Argh! Start from modern-day science, look at what's developing and what scenarios are likely to unfold from emergent technologies, choose one scenario and then add a sci-fi wildcard if you have to: an alien race, a strange new substance that allows FTL travel and 'psionic' powers—whatever ignites your lightsaber. Just don't skip over the near future so easily to jump to another typical Star Wars future with spaceships and 'lasers'. Read the work of futurists. Follow a path from here to somewhere reachable from here, for fuck's sake. In all likelihood, we will spread through the galaxy without spacecraft. The probable futures are so much more interesting than any popular sci-fi. It's sad to see them neglected.
What I want more than anything from sci-fi in general today, not just MMOs, is for them to stop omitting technology that is emerging today. It's infuriating to deal with sci-fi being produced today riddled with force fields, artificial gravity, fusion drives, warp drives and warpgates/stargates/jumpgates, yet utterly lacking nanorobotics or genengineering—or treating them like still-emergent technologies, or being filled with problems these technologies could easily prevent or fix, et cetera. Argh! Start from modern-day science, look at what's developing and what scenarios are likely to unfold from emergent technologies, choose one scenario and then add a sci-fi wildcard if you have to: an alien race, a strange new substance that allows FTL travel and 'psionic' powers—whatever ignites your lightsaber. Just don't skip over the near future so easily to jump to another typical Star Wars future with spaceships and 'lasers'. Read the work of futurists. Follow a path from here to somewhere reachable from here, for fuck's sake. In all likelihood, we will spread through the galaxy without spacecraft. The probable futures are so much more interesting than any popular sci-fi. It's sad to see them neglected.
Sounds like you wan't to take a few seconds to look at Earthrise then, as Earthrise is actually dealing with stuff like nanobots, gentics etc.
Sorry folks! In regards to AO: I meant to say that the OGRE engine was dropped, and switched to Dreamworld. The quote about it being on indefinite hold was from an early draft and I never remembered to take it out. It's no excuse, but getting everything I need to say about so many games in under a certain amount of words winds up with me missing some things or misstating others. As for the STO thing, I did say 1 million accounts, though I should have said on the website and not "for the game." Whether that's perpetuating the fact that it's merely accounts and not units sold is another thing, but it's no small milestone regardless. As always, I'm actually thankful I can count on you lot to call me out when I fumble a little. Please proceed with eviscerating me (sarcasm)... be gentle. :P -Bill
Fail.
Colin Cragg CPO - World of Horsecraft AB www.starstable.com
The major problem I have having with both Sci Fi games and Superhero games is repetitiveness. Cyrtic Studios is very guilty of this both the Star Trek and Champions game is highly repetitive. For some reason these type of games does not have the same "engaging" content that their fantasy orient sister games do. This makes for a very boring game.
The major problem I have having with both Sci Fi games and Superhero games is repetitiveness. Cyrtic Studios is very guilty of this both the Star Trek and Champions game is highly repetitive. For some reason these type of games does not have the same "engaging" content that their fantasy orient sister games do. This makes for a very boring game.
The problem with that is the developer not the genre. Cryptic for instance seems to develop at a very basic level. The games run and are functional, but there's very little depth to them. CoH/Champions/STO all have that problem. Mind you every single fantasy mmo I've ever played has devolved into repetition (I'll admit I missed UO). EQ, DAoC, LOTRO, WoW all of them are by definition repetitive. Some of them however have more content and more depth to their repetitiveness than other games such as those by Cryptic. Its an endemic problem with the theme park model of most mmo's.
Sorry folks! In regards to AO: I meant to say that the OGRE engine was dropped, and switched to Dreamworld. The quote about it being on indefinite hold was from an early draft and I never remembered to take it out. It's no excuse, but getting everything I need to say about so many games in under a certain amount of words winds up with me missing some things or misstating others. As for the STO thing, I did say 1 million accounts, though I should have said on the website and not "for the game." Whether that's perpetuating the fact that it's merely accounts and not units sold is another thing, but it's no small milestone regardless. As always, I'm actually thankful I can count on you lot to call me out when I fumble a little. Please proceed with eviscerating me (sarcasm)... be gentle. :P -Bill
So, people correct your errors, why don't you then update your published article. This is the Internet, after all, not a printed media where you can't undo your failures.. From your article it's pretty obvious you don't really know what you're writing about in the first place, so why even bother when you don't give a damn? We don't need more rumor mongers, plenty of them around already.
What I want more than anything from sci-fi in general today, not just MMOs, is for them to stop omitting technology that is emerging today. It's infuriating to deal with sci-fi being produced today riddled with force fields, artificial gravity, fusion drives, warp drives and warpgates/stargates/jumpgates, yet utterly lacking nanorobotics or genengineering—or treating them like still-emergent technologies, or being filled with problems these technologies could easily prevent or fix, et cetera. Argh! Start from modern-day science, look at what's developing and what scenarios are likely to unfold from emergent technologies, choose one scenario and then add a sci-fi wildcard if you have to: an alien race, a strange new substance that allows FTL travel and 'psionic' powers—whatever ignites your lightsaber. Just don't skip over the near future so easily to jump to another typical Star Wars future with spaceships and 'lasers'. Read the work of futurists. Follow a path from here to somewhere reachable from here, for fuck's sake. In all likelihood, we will spread through the galaxy without spacecraft. The probable futures are so much more interesting than any popular sci-fi. It's sad to see them neglected.
Don't read much sci-fi, do ya?
Doesn't look like it, check out some Tricia Sullivan, or even some of Margaret Atwood's sci-fi stuff. You'd be surprised, Saerein, to find that your broad brush-strokes are ignoring the writers who have been doing just what you suggest for the past decade or so.
Heck, if that stuff's not on your radar, read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash - isn't that practically canonical by now? It more or less predicted Second Life (among other things), but I'm still waiting for the day a ninja pizza delivery guy shows up at my house....
There is an entire sub-genre of sci-fi called "mundane" (horrible label that) that caters to what you're looking for - no aliens, no space travel, just purely speculative fiction based on emergent tech.
I think the column is really good. The present Sci-fi MMMO's are not that good. They are not having any real attention from the audience, and that is why the games don't stand a chance. The gamers are voting for more fantasy games and maybe the new view of the historical games. And the great hit of the Super Heroes mode. I believe there is a matter of time. The sci-fi games require a more fan apreciation. Like Star Wars galaxies or Star Trek Online, a life-time fan of SW or ST, would definitely go and play this great games, but the more conservative audience won't play them. So the games of that area, are basically sealed off to a limited group of gamers/fans.
Xsyon looks just far far too ambitious, the scope they are proposing is simply staggering, & ultimately completely not to be taken at face value, I just do not believe that what they say the game will do will make it in for release, & to get in will take decades.
What I want more than anything from sci-fi in general today, not just MMOs, is for them to stop omitting technology that is emerging today. It's infuriating to deal with sci-fi being produced today riddled with force fields, artificial gravity, fusion drives, warp drives and warpgates/stargates/jumpgates, yet utterly lacking nanorobotics or genengineering—or treating them like still-emergent technologies, or being filled with problems these technologies could easily prevent or fix, et cetera. Argh! Start from modern-day science, look at what's developing and what scenarios are likely to unfold from emergent technologies, choose one scenario and then add a sci-fi wildcard if you have to: an alien race, a strange new substance that allows FTL travel and 'psionic' powers—whatever ignites your lightsaber. Just don't skip over the near future so easily to jump to another typical Star Wars future with spaceships and 'lasers'. Read the work of futurists. Follow a path from here to somewhere reachable from here, for fuck's sake. In all likelihood, we will spread through the galaxy without spacecraft. The probable futures are so much more interesting than any popular sci-fi. It's sad to see them neglected.
Don't read much sci-fi, do ya?
Doesn't look like it, check out some Tricia Sullivan, or even some of Margaret Atwood's sci-fi stuff. You'd be surprised, Saerein, to find that your broad brush-strokes are ignoring the writers who have been doing just what you suggest for the past decade or so.
Heck, if that stuff's not on your radar, read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash - isn't that practically canonical by now? It more or less predicted Second Life (among other things), but I'm still waiting for the day a ninja pizza delivery guy shows up at my house....
There is an entire sub-genre of sci-fi called "mundane" (horrible label that) that caters to what you're looking for - no aliens, no space travel, just purely speculative fiction based on emergent tech.
Margaret Atwood does not write science-fiction... She writes speculative fiction (sorry, little literature in-joke there.)
Yes, my point exactly. I just finished reading a few compilations of sci-fi short stories (and "Oryx and Crake" and "Year of the Flood") so Saerain's post seemed really weird to me.
Comments
hmmmm mecha ...
theres a hell of a lot of mecha based anime out there, some of it is awesome, some is a bit meh, but theres a lot of IP resourcing available to a dev studio that dared to be brave
a good mech based sci-fi mmorpg would be gaming heaven
There is a mech game in development called Perpetuum, but I hope you like Eve because they ripped it off everywhere they could.
Because the author was given a piece to write about SCIFI mmos, so he wrote general info known to everyone about well known SCIFI mmos. article is crap, writer - to the guilliotine.
For the love of God please please stop repeating the "million accounts" spin. I've said it before and I'll say it again.. MMORPG.com's unannounced and not ever going to be made MMO is 17% more popular that STO is because MMORPG.com has 1.17 million accounts created.
If every MMO out there tried to report the number of "accounts created" as their "customer base" how many MMOs that haven't even been released have 1 million + loyal customers like STO has? SW:ToR prolly has way more than a million people signed up for a chance to get into their beta and to read their forums... I mean seriously... What about WoW? How many "accounts created" do they have? 50 million over 5 years and all those trials and people that left. I mean they're still "accounts created".
This 1 million "accounts" number is pure spin put out by Cryptic. All it means is accounts on their official site (accounts for applying to beta, readying the forums, Del Taco 48 hour Trials, etc). This is not the number of current subscriptions or the number of people who activated a CD key. I don't know why MMORPG.com writers are stillthrowing this number around, like it has any meaning, when they of all people should know its a pure spin number. I'm sorry to jump all over the author of this post but come on. Take some pride in your work... Reporting this number as being important is basically lying to your readers.
STO could have been the greatest new Sci-Fi MMO if they has done it right. Here's what I would have liked:
- take the basic structure of E&B.
- add a great economic system like they have in Eve.
- create a mission system where the captain actually has a variety of choices instead of linear game play where crew members tell the captain what to do next. The choices should include different branches other than just killing any opponents. One of the choices should have a high chance of failure so that a player can experience how leadership decisions are important.
Maybe they can still fix STO, but it will take a lot of work.
hmmmm mecha ...
theres a hell of a lot of mecha based anime out there, some of it is awesome, some is a bit meh, but theres a lot of IP resourcing available to a dev studio that dared to be brave
a good mech based sci-fi mmorpg would be gaming heaven
I agree wholeheartedly with this statement, a Mecha MMO, if done right, would be nerdgasmic! As for the Secret world i believe it does blend elements of sci-fi in it like the lovecraft books; If I recall correctly the blending of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy was coined by him as "wierd fiction".
Let's hope that Masthead Studios get Earthrise properly done, so we get finally something worth playing.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. This statement has been debunked over and over and over again. The "1 million accounts" thing that Atari made an announcement for was shown to be 1 million Cryptic games accounts. This means that any account for Champions Online was counted in that number because accounts for both STO and CO's websites are linked (I used my STO account to sign up for the CO free trial,) and this means that any old person who made an account on STO's website (or multiple accounts) is counted in that number.
Truthfully we simply don't know what STO's official numbers really are for subscribers. So far it hasn't entered the top 20 on XFire, which is something one would definitely expect from a game with 1 million subscribers.
Sorry folks!
In regards to AO: I meant to say that the OGRE engine was dropped, and switched to Dreamworld. The quote about it being on indefinite hold was from an early draft and I never remembered to take it out. It's no excuse, but getting everything I need to say about so many games in under a certain amount of words winds up with me missing some things or misstating others.
As for the STO thing, I did say 1 million accounts, though I should have said on the website and not "for the game." Whether that's perpetuating the fact that it's merely accounts and not units sold is another thing, but it's no small milestone regardless.
As always, I'm actually thankful I can count on you lot to call me out when I fumble a little. Please proceed with eviscerating me (sarcasm)... be gentle. :P
-Bill
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
You know what? This site is a helluva lot more interesting than every other news blog that just regurgitates the same damn story. Articles like this give us something else to read and discuss. Don't like it? Well, you're in luck because there are a million other generic MMO sites out there you can visit.
Star Trek online ended up to be a very fun casual game. Mind you - casual. If you stick your nose in it 20 hours a day as long as you can go - you will regret you did it.
Good article Bill! I'm a sci-fi guy that's had to play fantasy MMOs for years and years because of the mistakes made with the sci-fi ones. So it's good to see someone spotlighting the genre, as it's probably a much bigger market than fantasy, just going by the amount of Sci-Fi in the entertainment industry vs the amount of fantasy work.
Special thanks for mentioning Planetside! While it will never again be the game it once was, it was still the most fun I've ever had in a decade of MMOs. Roll that puppy back to before Core Combat, fix the bugs, tune up the graphics, movement and UI to 2010 standards, and it'd be a home run hit that would rival a top FPS game in sales.
A man can dream....
This was a pretty good read, is there any Sci-fi mmo underdogs that are free to play? I heard about the sci fi sequel to runescape called mechscape or something similar but I don't think that ever took form. In all honesty though an MMO or just another pc GAME in general for the mech genre would be great, I haven't seen any in the recent years which is pretty stupid because of how many people love the mech genre. Something like ZOE for the ps2 or maybe closer to Virtual On would be a great type of mmo if done correctly.
The tradition of SF is to make you think about what if? Fantasy removes you from reality all together. For a MMO SF becomes more like Fantasy dropping the thinking, strapping on the laser gun. SF in MMO's is pretty much like Fantasy, I can't see any differance between them apart from the graphics.
Solo games like FO3 show how you can create a world that reflects ours but comments on it, rather than ones just tailored to work well with a blaster.
What I want more than anything from sci-fi in general today, not just MMOs, is for them to stop omitting technology that is emerging today. It's infuriating to deal with sci-fi being produced today riddled with force fields, artificial gravity, fusion drives, warp drives and warpgates/stargates/jumpgates, yet utterly lacking nanorobotics or genengineering—or treating them like still-emergent technologies, or being filled with problems these technologies could easily prevent or fix, et cetera. Argh!
Start from modern-day science, look at what's developing and what scenarios are likely to unfold from emergent technologies, choose one scenario and then add a sci-fi wildcard if you have to: an alien race, a strange new substance that allows FTL travel and 'psionic' powers—whatever ignites your lightsaber. Just don't skip over the near future so easily to jump to another typical Star Wars future with spaceships and 'lasers'. Read the work of futurists. Follow a path from here to somewhere reachable from here, for fuck's sake. In all likelihood, we will spread through the galaxy without spacecraft.
The probable futures are so much more interesting than any popular sci-fi. It's sad to see them neglected.
Don't read much sci-fi, do ya?
Sounds like you wan't to take a few seconds to look at Earthrise then, as Earthrise is actually dealing with stuff like nanobots, gentics etc.
Great lore to be found there about all this.
Fail.
Colin Cragg
CPO - World of Horsecraft AB
www.starstable.com
The major problem I have having with both Sci Fi games and Superhero games is repetitiveness. Cyrtic Studios is very guilty of this both the Star Trek and Champions game is highly repetitive. For some reason these type of games does not have the same "engaging" content that their fantasy orient sister games do. This makes for a very boring game.
The problem with that is the developer not the genre. Cryptic for instance seems to develop at a very basic level. The games run and are functional, but there's very little depth to them. CoH/Champions/STO all have that problem. Mind you every single fantasy mmo I've ever played has devolved into repetition (I'll admit I missed UO). EQ, DAoC, LOTRO, WoW all of them are by definition repetitive. Some of them however have more content and more depth to their repetitiveness than other games such as those by Cryptic. Its an endemic problem with the theme park model of most mmo's.
So, people correct your errors, why don't you then update your published article. This is the Internet, after all, not a printed media where you can't undo your failures.. From your article it's pretty obvious you don't really know what you're writing about in the first place, so why even bother when you don't give a damn? We don't need more rumor mongers, plenty of them around already.
Don't read much sci-fi, do ya?
Doesn't look like it, check out some Tricia Sullivan, or even some of Margaret Atwood's sci-fi stuff. You'd be surprised, Saerein, to find that your broad brush-strokes are ignoring the writers who have been doing just what you suggest for the past decade or so.
Heck, if that stuff's not on your radar, read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash - isn't that practically canonical by now? It more or less predicted Second Life (among other things), but I'm still waiting for the day a ninja pizza delivery guy shows up at my house....
There is an entire sub-genre of sci-fi called "mundane" (horrible label that) that caters to what you're looking for - no aliens, no space travel, just purely speculative fiction based on emergent tech.
I think the column is really good. The present Sci-fi MMMO's are not that good. They are not having any real attention from the audience, and that is why the games don't stand a chance. The gamers are voting for more fantasy games and maybe the new view of the historical games. And the great hit of the Super Heroes mode. I believe there is a matter of time. The sci-fi games require a more fan apreciation. Like Star Wars galaxies or Star Trek Online, a life-time fan of SW or ST, would definitely go and play this great games, but the more conservative audience won't play them. So the games of that area, are basically sealed off to a limited group of gamers/fans.
Xsyon looks just far far too ambitious, the scope they are proposing is simply staggering, & ultimately completely not to be taken at face value, I just do not believe that what they say the game will do will make it in for release, & to get in will take decades.
Too good to be true, yes I think so.
Don't read much sci-fi, do ya?
Doesn't look like it, check out some Tricia Sullivan, or even some of Margaret Atwood's sci-fi stuff. You'd be surprised, Saerein, to find that your broad brush-strokes are ignoring the writers who have been doing just what you suggest for the past decade or so.
Heck, if that stuff's not on your radar, read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash - isn't that practically canonical by now? It more or less predicted Second Life (among other things), but I'm still waiting for the day a ninja pizza delivery guy shows up at my house....
There is an entire sub-genre of sci-fi called "mundane" (horrible label that) that caters to what you're looking for - no aliens, no space travel, just purely speculative fiction based on emergent tech.
Margaret Atwood does not write science-fiction... She writes speculative fiction (sorry, little literature in-joke there.)
Yes, my point exactly. I just finished reading a few compilations of sci-fi short stories (and "Oryx and Crake" and "Year of the Flood") so Saerain's post seemed really weird to me.
All hail Macr.. err.. Means