So…What Might A Next-Gen Browser Game Look Like?
In the comments to a recent article about Richard Garriott and social gaming, the general tone of the replies was…not paricularly favourable to the idea of browser-based social/casual gaming. Some compared it to a bubble; some admitted to using FarmVille as the standard by which they defined social gaming.
And to be fair, FarmVille has dominated the social/browser-based scene for quite some time. Even EA Phenomic’s take on social gaming, Lord of Ultima, didn’t stray too far from the Zynga formula.
But this isn’t FarmVille:
A Mystical Land, screenshot courtesy of Sergorn Dragon
Inside Social Games describes A Mystical Land thusly:
The game is a full-fledged MMO that features combat, crafting professions and quests, feats, achievements, badges and collections. The gameplay is targeted toward a casual player, as if often the case with browser-based MMOs due to the limitations of the platform. A Mystical Land, however, is one of very few full 3D games on Facebook and it has more in common with classic MMOs than it does with the modern casual browser-based MMOs.
…
The feel of the game is reminiscent of an earlier time in MMOs, mainly due to the simple but pretty graphics, non-player character dialogue and combat. Like those older MMOs, players spend most of the game in a single area where monsters respawn so that players can kill them over and over again for XP. If a particular creature is required for a bounty or completion of a quest, players wait their turn to kill it, which is a contrast to modern MMOs that create instances for each player so there isnít competition for the monster.
They also note an important difference between A Mystical Land and other similar games that have gone before:
Other classic-style MMOs on Facebook have struggled in the past to connect with players on a massive scale. Most of these have been isometric top-down games similar to Garriottís 1997 MMO, Ultima Online, where 2D avatars move about in a 3D landscape for what we think of as a ì2.5Dî experience. Sacred Seasons 2 and City of Eternals are examples of this kind of Facebook MMO. MilMo, on the other hand, is a cross between traditional social game and traditional MMO with full 3D artwork; however, it also suffers from limited appeal as its targeted at children.
As I said previously, regular readers of Aiera will no doubt have noticed that Iíve been quite open in voicing my belief that social games are a field in which there will be explosive growth (both in terms of the number of games available and the quality/engagingness of these games) in coming years. Here’s your first great example.
As Iíve said before, itís like playing games on a mobile phone. My first mobile was a primitive little Samsung flip phone, with some version of Solitaire and a primitive little driving game installed on it. And these were, admittedly, terrible games, and very poorly implemented. Now, though? Iíve got Infinity Blade (an Unreal Engine 3-powered game) on my iPhone.
Thatís exactly the sort of revolution thatís about to take place in the social gaming space. You can see it right here, in a game like this.
Also: It’s worth noting that A Mystical Land uses the Portalarium player as its online play technology (the game itself was built with the Unity engine).
Think about that for a moment. This, right here, is a keen demonstration of just what the Portalarium player is capable of bringing to gamers. That certainly makes the idea of Richard Garriott’s New Britannia seem more promising, doesn’t it? Especially since Portalarium just secured $3.6 million in total funding to bring its first “premium” game to the social gaming space within the next few months.
Sergorn Dragon has been playing through the game (he sent me the above screenshot, in fact), and speaks very highly of it, describing it as nothing short of “revolutionary”. His only complaint is the lack of a true full-screen option; he’s spoken highly of the gameplay and features.
But just as importantly…he’s tried it. It’s free to play, and I would encourage everyone to stick their noses into the game — even for just fifteen minutes — before offering an opinion on it. If you come away still convinced that social games are a passing fad, hey…that’s cool. But at least you’ll be doing so from an informed standpoint.
Well playing through the game might be an overstatement, since I played for about an hour and I’m still in the tutorial area… but it’s fun actually.
It’s accessible and easy to get into… and arguably it probably doesn’t have the complexity of big hardcore MMOs. But the important point is that it doesn’t feel like a “social game” or a “casual game”. It feels like real MMO game. Now granted, one needs to enjoy MMOs… but it feels revolutionnary because of how it works – all you need to do is click on a button on facebook or directly at the game’s website.
And you play. After the initial instalation of the Portalarium plugin which takes a few minutes, it then loads very quickly, as much as any of those silly Zinga games. And it feels… unlike any other game I’ve seen on social network. I mean it’s full fledged 3D world, it has interactivity, NPCs to talk to, quests to do, monsters to kill.
And yeah playing it just basically drove away all of the skepticism I had about Richard Garriot’s Portalarium venture because it proves he’s right: you can bring “true” games into social network and browser and in way that makes it accessible both to gamers and casual players – indeed I can very much pictures people who’d never got into MMOs just trying out a game like A Mystical Land and feel enthralled by it.
And if that’s what we can already see in “first generation” Portalatirum games, I can’t even begin to wonder what future games (and notably Lord British’s New Britannia) will bring on the table.
FOR THE RECORD. I have less faith in your buddy Barnett’s ultima game than Richard Garriott’s sure to be masterpiece rpg. Although I won’t like either, RG’s game will be the social/casual rpg that all other social/casual rpgs look up to.
Books.
Covers.
Something like that.
Also: How do you know you won’t like either? Have you tried either? Has anyone? What about this game? It’s free…did you install the player and have a go at it?
Or are you opining from a position of stark ignorance?
I gotta wonder why you have such faith in Garriott’s success. Not that I disagree his endeavour could work (and I certainly hope it does) but his latest gaming endeavours were very much commercial failures.
I saw this game a long while ago when it wasn’t quite ready and all they had were some development videos; it looked great back then though, and just from looking at the pictures above it looks the same, so I expect it’s really cool. Thanks for the heads up, I’ll have to try it out.
As a decade long Ultima Online player I recently read this news and wanted to see what AML might be capable of offering future games that RG’s company was working on..
I spent the majority of Memorial Day Weekend playing here in the US and was pretty amazed at the difference between this and the previous games I’ve played via Facebook. It beats the hell out of the Zynga, scrollable ‘one-screen’ games where progression is measured in the amount of spam that your digital rolodex of acquaintances click on.
Anyway, there are some balancing issues with it, and from what I’ve read ‘dead zones’ in terms of activities to engage it at later levels, but overall I would say they are off to an extraordinary start considering it is free and in beta. I’m sure my fascination will wear off over time due to current lack of in-game event moderators and its mediocre fictional backdrop, but hopefully by that point Mr. Garriott will have his New Britannia game running.
Dang looks decent but I dont like MMO’s…..time to break open my old Ultima V box again.
Long time lurker and first time poster here. I want to comment to say that I don’t really see the difference between this and an MMO. Richard Garriott describes social gaming as the 3rd era of gaming, but this looks exactly like his self described 2nd era of gaming (MMOs).
The distinguishing factors for social gaming thus far have been light style of play that you can play little bits here and there even if you only have 5 minutes, time-delayed, albeit limited, interactions with others (send gifts, visit their space, trade etc) so that you don’t have to be online the same time they are, and of course the viral aspect of it, post to your feed, tell your friends, recruit people etc.
I’m not seeing any of that here. It seems to be just an MMO in window mode.
In some respects, yes.
But let’s imagine a hypothetical. I don’t think it can be done with A Mystical Land, but what if the Portalarium player were updated at some point to support multiple platforms, including Android and iOS devices (which I don’t believe it currently does). Then imagine any game — single player or MMO — realized inside that player.
Suddenly, you have a game that you carry with you everywhere; gaming isn’t something you just do in front of your PC anymore, nor are you limited to playing a particularly engaging title in front of just one PC. Suddenly, the game is where you are, wherever you are, and so is your saved progress in it, regardless of which device or internet connection you’re using to access it.
That’s the revolution that social gaming can be, and is what I suspect Garriott and others want to see the medium driven toward.
I think this is very much the thing Garriott is aiming at down the road.
As a matter of fact, he has posted that he is also looking for iOS, Android, and generally mobile developper for his next project. This says a lot. I’m pretty sure the plan down the road is for the Portalarium player to be compatible with mobile OS.
Admittedly that’s a big step forward for MMOs and I suppose for gaming in general, but I still don’t see the social part. It’s basically a multi-platform MMO.
Also, I’m not sure an MMO style game is well suited to be played on the go since they are notorious time sinks that require huge investments of long continuous play sessions.
The Facebook social games are sort of the opposite of that. People tend to play them in very short sessions when they have a few minutes and are bored etc.
In the time it takes to log in, get yourself situated, meet up with people and get where you want to go in an MMO you could already have finished planting some crops or collecting rent from buildings in a Facebook game. Not that I think doing those things is especially engaging, but the Facebook games have the advantage of simplicity and easy in, easy out.
I’ll wait and see what the final product looks like and how it plays but I am skeptical. Tabula Rasa was hyped up but ended up being neither especially revolutionary nor successful.
For those of us who enjoyed the old Ultima games I just think this is a completely different experience. I personally don’t care for MMOs and find something like The Witcher 2 to be a much more natural evolution of what Richard Garriott and others started in the 80s and 90s than any MMOs.
What most people tend to forget is that Richard Garriott always wanted to bring multiplayer capacity to his games.
Back when Martian Dreams was released, I read an interview in a computer magazine were RG stated that his dreams was to create an ultima title in wich you and your friend could play as the Avatar and his Companions in true cooperative mode.And that was 20 years ago, in 1991…
So it’s no surprise to me that he’s so fond of the MMO/Social games
All I can say is, it looks like it has some atmosphere. And whatever RG comes out with will be better than what DAoC guys can come up with.
It’s possible that you are right.
That said, I think that Dark Age of Camelot is likely to be remembered as a more innovative and engaging MMORPG than Tabula Rasa, and I think it’s also possible that the folks at Mythic might actually turn out the superior Ultima product. Time alone will tell.