The general trend in PC land is going online. More games have multiplayer modes, or go MMO. Should this trend go on ? can all games be transformed into online games, and is this a positive thing ?

It’s not a new thing, with now broadband internet is everywhere, some developers started focusing on multiplayer more then singleplayer. An example of this was the start of the battlefield-series, who clearly had multiplayer in the core of their design. Off course there have been multiplayer orientated games before (Quake3) and even MMO’s, but online really started to gain weight at let’s say 2003. Then WoW opened the road for the broad public to play online-only games, and in recent times we have seen a stream of (often Free To Play) MMO games.

With this movement going on, games that traditionally focused on single player also have to adapt to the new online credo, and work out a multiplayer formula for their games. However I have the impression that in these days multiplayer is often to focused around a few games (CoD in FPS, Warcraft 3 in RTS, WoW in MMO) and it scares developers to put effort into their multiplayer options: “who’s going to play that anywa

Because of processes of globalization and advancement in geographic research, the earth seems to get smaller. One consequence of this is that there is less and less territory to explore, and almost all land had been explored by somebody at some point in history. The final blow was delivered by Google earth, mapping out everything that could be hidden from the eye. I’ve already discussed this process in my paper Geographic demystification and the death of the explorer (Ghys, 2008).

Now let’s talk about games ;)

Exploring has always been an important aspect of MMORPG’s. You use you avatar you explore the new world ‘that awaits you’, you keep hunting new frontiers, chasing the horizon for adventure. Seeking the unknown, looking in caves, jungles, deserts for treasure. All of this in a new world, different from the real one that’s being watched by Google earth. To put it short: MMORPG’s offer you a world to explore for yourself, an experience of exploration.

There are 2 important factors for this:

The way the world that can be explored looks. There must be interesting places, just to name a few things: waterfalls, open deserts, woods, far sights

Real Money Trading is an old problem, but there has been little improvement over the years.

It STILL is not clear if RMT is legally forbidden, and if it is worth banning it. Unlike piracy, RMT breaks the game rules in the first place, not the law. This results in RMT using clients getting banned, NOT the companies selling it (those same companies that run illegal gold farms in low wage countries). I’m not going to question the status of RMT here, or if it should be allowed or not. I’m siding with developers here for the sake of the argument that RMT is not favorable.      How could it come this far that the years old problem is still around ?

In the first place, because the industry is not cooperating. Unlike piracy, there is no clear stance about RMT in computer business.     

Google plays a big role in this, advertising RMT on a large numbers of gaming sites, including websites that have a respected position in gamer culture like www.clanbase.com. I was shocked the see that clanbase advertised gold selling services. And there are not the only ones.

What we need is a CLEAR STATEMENT from all partners involved, this

For all the talk about violent videogames, reporters often end their debates with “but there are also educational games” to have a happy ending. In the worst case a poor movie of some beta version of an unknown educational game is shown, with some kids commenting it “can be fun to learn”. That’s very nice to protect the image of the game industry, but you and me know that what the press labels as ‘educational games’ are often very poor low-budget productions. But How could we make educational games more interesting ?

First off all, not all educational games are bad. I remember some decent ‘educational games’ that I played as a kid. Games that learned me about the solar system and games that spammed me with math questions, while my little submarine dodged bubbles and angry fish. I learned a thing or two from these games, but soon as I got my hands on a ‘real’ game, I never looked back.

Let us take a closer look at our current concept of Educational Games. The first thing we notice is that almost all educational games are made with a very young public in mind. This resembles the general view most people have about videogames: something for the kids. This false notion already troubles