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Uncreative Name, Potentially Interesting Game |
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Since I've gotten myself back to the United States, I've been keeping myself busy by getting reacquainted with the country (everyone is speaking English here! It's so weird!), setting up my new 1TB media server and getting it to interface with my PlayStation 3, and getting myself reacquainted with the PS3 as well. While doing so, I was looking through a few of the E3 videos Sony popped up on the PlayStation Network, where they announced a new game coming out. Its also a game with the least creative title ever. MAG, or Massive Action Game. I mean, honestly? What kind of a name is that? But, I digress, as that's hardly why I'm mentioning it.
What is actually interesting about this game is that it will offer 256 people to play together at one time. The gameplay seems centered on players joining up together in squads of 8 people to fight against other players (presumably groups of squads vs. other groups of squads). These are numbers that well surpass any other FPS console game on the market and only a handful of PC FPS games have such numbers. While I'm not that much of a FPS fan, news like this is still interesting all the same.
What we have is a game that is using a huge number of players as its gimmick. While that is far from original in the modern day with MMOs being quite popular, it is interesting to see this concept spreading itself out in different ways from the norm. Besides, a 100+ vs 100+ battle in PlanetSide was a heck of a lot of fun, I wouldn't mind that again, with a new take on it. I'm not quite so sure that this is going to be a persistent world or anything of the sort. Yet, I don't believe that persistence is entirely a necessary for something like this.
It does certainly lend to the idea that the popularity of MMOs is affecting both marketing and design choices. I'm sure that's a big reason why a game such as is being created. With the success of MMOs, its pretty easy to make the connection that people enjoy playing a game with an awful lot of other people. Yet, I'm willing to say that this is a rather natural evolution in gaming as well - although I'm sure an awful lot of marketing went into the idea because of the current popularity of MMOs. Plenty of online gaming seems to put quite a bit of focus on gaining larger and larger numbers of players into a single game, and that has been true for quite a while. Two person multiplayer? Four person? Eight? Sixteen? Thirty-Two? Sixty-Four? Then we skipped a step somewhere and ended up with 256. I do find it interesting is that a leap is happening on consoles.
What do I expect out of this game? Basically, a Team/Squad-based multiplayer FPS. It will have an awful lot more people than usual, but I expect essentially that. Does that mean that this game isn't particularly impressive? Well... It is an FPS in an age where FPSs are extremely common, but no. It will be interesting to see what having that many players in such an environment together will lead to.
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