Emergent Future

So, I haven't written nearly as much as I wanted to do, or expected to do. Of course, there is a reason for that – I've been busy as hell. Class and studying has taken up a massive amount of time since I've gotten here, what with doing two weeks worth of studying per day – definitely an intensive language course. Regardless, I've been learning a lot and I have been enjoying my time here as well.
 

As promised, here are the images I've taken since I arrived in Japan. I remembered I had a Flickr account that I hadn't used and decided to throw these up over there.

My camera isn't the best, admittedly, but it gets the job done. I'll add more pictures over there as time goes on - and I'll be sure to make note of it over here too. So keep checking back.

My latest column is up on the WarCry Network. This one is about emergent gaming - as the title says. Effectively, I can sum up the basic point of t his column rather quickly: Players have a tendency to do things in your game that you did not necessarily design gameplay systems for. Whether that is creating a bank, or hosting cliff diving events, players will find many ways of entertaining themselves in your game. This isn't a bad thing. This doesn't mean that your gameplay systems have failed in some ways, and people hate them, so they are doing something else. However, you need to be aware of what players are doing for fun, and start to acknowledge that. Highlight player events like these, encourage players to partake in this emergent gaming.

Why? Because its fun. Because it brings players together. Because it provides your game with neat events. Because its free content that you don't have to directly build. 

This column felt like a fairly 'duh' statement to me when I wrote it. Yet, then I thought about how many games I've played where the community team actually did anything like that. Suffice to say, the number could have been much higher. 

There have been several projects in development that are trying to hybridize both the web and gaming. Metaplace is one of those - and well, so are the thousands of flash games out there too - but there are others out there bringing games to the web in other interesting ways as well. One of those games is a low profile MMORTS known as Dreamlords . This game features a 3D game client that allows players to control units and lead them into battle like a normal RTS game (although a fairly cut down one), but it also allows players to control their lands, structures, and units via a web interface somewhat similar to other browser-based strategy games.

This concept allows someone to enjoy the 3D client when they want, and are able to, dig into the main part of the game. However, if they aren't at their computer, or they only have a few minutes to spare, a player could easily log into the web client to issue a few build orders.

This is far from the only game, much less type of game, that could benefit from intigrating a bit more web into the game.