Neat idea, but they should definitely be done with small, private servers. Big, public servers would just be turned into a greif-fest.

The_Antihippy

I'll never get that 2:46 of my life back again.

avconsumer

I'm pretty sure that should read "even so" not "even still". Yes I know, correcting people on the internet is like running in the... But I can't help myself. Every time I read that construction it makes me wince.

slight

Mr. Steenburg is talking at Staffordshire University's MMOG Conference in June:- [www.fcet.staffs.ac.uk]

I know because I booked him ;)

Wormella

It's kind of absurd that folk are critiquing the gameplay possibilities, when to the best of my knowledge, no information has been released about the machanisms of play. What does the player do? Will there be collaborative activities? Is combat allowed or encouraged? Will there be 'enemies' or 'mobs' at all?

For all we know right now, gameplay could be entirely based on creativity, community, or some other mechanism as original as the games look. Perhaps games are broken into sessions, and it's only the world that's persistent. Whatever the mechanism, its silly to try to assess it's probability of succeeding, in the absence of more concrete information about what on earth Steenberg is trying to achieve.

dbspin

You often find such worlds/environments are beautiful... until another creative force enters the scene. Perhaps a player who runs off and finds a treetoken, then plants a load of them outside your village entrance, or in someway makes the world ridiculous and 'less beautiful'.

Without controls the thing turns into Second Life.

I like the idea of tiny servers - lets face it most guilds in WoW care little for the other players/guilds/actions/events around them. I know from the success of private servers for such games that there in an inherent appeal about having more control in how you spend your time in the worlds.

I think the reason scripted worlds work where other 'art' ones fail simply rests on the fact that 99% of people turn into idiots given the ability to show off in a stupid manner - i.e. the generation of 1000 trees into a formation that looks like a giant penis. Or something.

In addition, most players don't have the ability/time to set up and add content to world that others will find interesting/entertaining. When you add to that most visitors to the game will far rather experience a story than build it, i'm not sure each world just won't be kinda empty. Even D&D has rulesets/storylines/character bases to work from, while being totally open ended with what you can do with them. I think it needs more than just the creation of basic elements to become more than a glorified collective art submission.

Don't get me wrong, I think this has immense potential, but it needs to be 'locked down' in the design far more. The creation of a dungeon on server A that gets a rep. for being impossible because it generated 400 dragons is one area to look into. A town on server X that has a giant monkey terrorising villagers because they don't feed it bananas ever day...

Perhaps a look at Animal Crossing - you have all you ever need for the games content in your own town (SERVER) but can visit others and participate to a degree.

Wow what a load of mind wandering written spam - gotta stop coming here in my free moments :P

RogueSquid

give me an updated daggerfall and I'm happy.

Elrinth

The game looks amazing! I've been looking into it for awhile.

Although i will say..

that guy, Eskil Steenberg,
sounds like Steve Carrol to me.

Maybe i've been watching to much of the office..but i swear- the sound almost identical.

PenitentPenguin

I've been drooling over this game for what seems like years, and proberbly has been years. It's not gonna be thousands of players, more just you and a small selection of friends who you explore with. He describes it on his site as a 'not so massively' multiplayer online game.

Check out the site at [www.quelsolaar.com]

Also, if you like this look into Lila Dreams at [liladreams.creatrixgames.com]

VoodooCream

[mmofps.blogspot.com]

ragfragger

[blogspot.mmofps.com]

ragfragger

A lot of people are thinking of this in the "thousands of players"-terms, but didn't he say he was aiming for a smaller scope? Anyway, this looks lovely. I'm going to play it, and pay if neccesary.

Yin

@joelface: "Speaking of which, most people suck enough driving a car on land, i dont think flying cars will become viable until they can drive themselves."

Thats a topic for an entirely different day my friend.

Balance_In_Life (PSN)

yah, its so out-there... i wonder just how well it can be pulled off.... to have a procedurally based MMO... made my one person.

its a cool idea, a lot of potential in this kind of area in the future, but as nice as this game looks, i think it may end up just being a pipe-dream for now.

sort of like flying cars... sure its cool.. and people have sort of demonstrated its kinda possible.. but... its certainly not going to be a reality any time soon.

speaking of which, most people suck enough driving a car on land, i dont think flying cars will become viable until they can drive themselves.

joelface

I love his idea but after say... a year? If you play this game and run into a city are you going to see thousands of statues right outside? Also, you have like what maybe a hundred towns? So the first hundred that complete these quest are gonna be cool but the thousands after that are screwed?

Yeah very cool in theory but it may not be able to be done.

Balance_In_Life (PSN)

This actually looks really really beautiful, but I can't help but wonder what's going to draw normal MMO-players (Thinking of WoW audience here) into this? It's like what happened to Okami, possibly my favourite PS2 game, amazing graphics, innovative gameplay, inspiring story - except no-one played it.

Aurom

Eskil Steenberg sounds like a funny man! can barely see the actual game but this does look like it has potential

excel_excel

@Eskil: Very VERY impressive for a one man show! How the hell are you doing this all by yourself? ... maybe you need someone for a little audio on the side? eh? Amiright? ^_^

djgeki

That man needs a marketing team.

Dexor

Weird and wonderful Kotaku...

I tried to contact Kotaku at GDC for a show and tell, but with no success, and then you sneak up and keep posting about it. Some day we will do it properly, until then thanks and keep it up. And thanks to everyone who took time to write some kind comments.

Eskil Steenberg

Eskil

i`d hit that

richard733

His idea of a digital director is good, because you can't get a good sense of action without a certain camera angler or set of events. But that means you have to script your event, if what the director is doing is going to be relevant. However with a procedural director that can judge and situation and add dynamic camera angles or events can run real-time, and scripted events wouldn't be needed, making for a unique experience every time. I'm surprised to see this not being used in singleplayer games, let alone an mmo.

GrimaceXL

@Eskil: Fantasic stuff! keep it up and don't let anyone tell you it can't be done.

TokeYo

I'm fascinated by this game's concept. It would be pretty great to nail down some system where the users created their own content and built on to the world as they went. Maybe the most involved players would automatically become "moderators" or take on a GM-type role, and could be voted in or out of that status depending on how well the majority thought they were doing. Imagine if you had hundreds of players who had proven themselves at level design and quest creation, so the story and gameplay went on forever.

It would take a huge load of work to set everything up initially, but once you got the ball rolling, you'd essentially have a game with no ending and infinite, quality content. You could do away with grinding and raiding for gear and actually allow the players to take on thought-provoking and interesting missions every time they logged in, either for 30 minutes or an all-Saturday gaming session.

unmarkedone

@Balance_In_Life (PSN):

in my defense, it was very late when i wrote that. lol.

joelface

Very awesome stuff, and a great showing for what he created all by himself. I especially love his concept of user-built content becoming the story and history of the in-game world, and how that would create this substantial connection between players.

I just wish he'd stop saying "y'know...y'know...y'know".

Twilightred

You know, this, you know, video, y'know, is y'know kinda y'know not really, y'know showing much, y'know?

Cafekafe