« Why You Should Not Watch The Superbowl | Main | Review : Director's Series, Vol. 1 - The Work of Director Spike Jonze on DVD »

Shared Gameplay Enviroments

I finally got my "Jake" Smackdown wrestler's strength to the point where I can compete with BBQ's wrestler and not get pinned at the first Fameasser. It is very cool about how you set up a small simulation on the Playstation memory card of your wrestlers, their personality, moves, abilities and accomplishments and you can interact with another game environment by transferring wrestler data between memory cards. It is like there is two shows and my show is sort of interacting with BBQ's data. He is the champion in the game and by getting my virtual pawn in this simulation up to par I will have a much better time when we go head to head next weekend. This is a very basic type of shared gameplay that hopefully we will be seeing more of in the future.

This is not exactly the same as an online multiplayer game like Quake or a massively multiplayer online RPG like Everquest but a lite bit of player data sharing that can enhance the single player experience. I think it would be quite cool if the data sharing would be more subtle on a Playstation Portable with it's WiFi wireless networking or the Internet networking features in the next generation of game hardware. It would be cool if you could have your friends game data shared with your gameplay experience automatically and transparently. Imagine you were playing a game where you had to set out an a series of missions on your own. If your friends performed badly in a related mission it would affect your game. Say there was this dragon that you were going to go take out but your friend tried but got toasted there so there is a charcoal stain where he died when you went there. Say if he left a treasure or magic item hidden and then emailed you about it and you could no pick it up. This would not be online in real time but the data would be in small chunks stored on a remote server that you would retrieve when you took your game online and your virtual worlds would sync. What about if there was a larger plot in a game where your joint success depended on each person doing their part in a non-asynchronous way? You would not all have to be online at the same time like a MMORPG but there would be some brief data sharing to link the virtual environments.

The best existing example of this is the Nintendo Gamecube game Animal Crossing. The game comes with a memory card that contains a virtual cartoon town. There is the ability to have four players in the same memory card but each user logs in and logs off like a shared UNIX account. The changes that one player makes affects the gameplay of the other. For example a player can take an axe and cut down a tree that another player planted and the other player will find their tree cut down when they start up their game. You can send messages and trade items with one another despite the fact that they are not playing at that given point by using a virtual mail system. It is a microcosm of a shared online environment. If you have another memory card with another Animal Crossing town file on it you can go and visit the other town on the other memory card. The non-playing characters will even go so far as to move and visit from one town to the other automatically. It has a online multiplayer experience but without having to actually getting other people to play the game simultaneously or online.

How about a sports game where if you injured a player that player would be still be out of commission when your friend started to play that game at his place? If one player got traded to a team the roster changes could be updated on all of the players data who you are sharing with. There is a lot of new possible gameplay options that Internet and other connectivity offers than what it is used for now in just strictly action game play.

I could just be nuts but I hope that connectivity brings more interaction between virtual environments that enhance the experience that playing the game alone can not deliver. Or it could just be an excuse to get people to buy networking cables or subscribe to another online game service.

Jake at February 2, 2004 Games

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.8bitjoystick.com/cgi-bin/mtype/mt-tb.cgi/517

Comments

Posted by: Forouzan at February 6, 2004 6:22 PM

Posted by: Forouzan at February 6, 2004 6:23 PM

Posted by: Azemaizan at February 21, 2004 8:13 PM

Posted by: Jake at February 21, 2004 8:20 PM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments:

type the word "joystick" below (required):