There's going to be a Michael Jackson MMO

[Lance]

http://www.planetmichael.com/

hahaha... ha...... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I think this sums up my thoughts:

http://cdn.cad-comic.com/comics/1405647092c21951bf2ue82c45760.gif

[Steph]

Whaaa. Ahahaha. I loved that drawing.

But are they seriously ... a Michael Jackson MMO ... ?

What?

[Jason]

:hmpf:

I shouldn't be surprised/appalled by this, but I am. Never underestimate the lengths hangers on and 'interested parties' will go to in order to drag every last penny out of a deceased star's name. This is the same estate that forced Popcap games to remove the thinly veiled (but entirely harmless and affectionate) Michael Jackson zombie from Plants Vs Zombies just a few months ago.

[Archangel]

... Yep, so this is almost certainly a game that's going to flop. The only gamers likely to buy it are ones that love Michael Jackson, which is already probably too few to make a profit. And then, of course, there's the issue that the entire concept for the game is daft, and the game itself is quite likely to be more than a little bad.

It's times like these I really must shed a tear for the state of the world.

[MyNameDidntFit]

But, seriously, what would you do it it?

[Archangel]

Write music? Play music? Abduct small children?

I honestly do not know.

[Diachron]

Hah! Aye I saw this in --of all places!-- an MMORPG website. :rofl:

Let me see if I can play Devil's Advocate on this one (one of my favorite roles :D)

I'm going to take a guess and say it's going to be like Second Life / Playstation Home / Project Entropia where you don't really play, as much as you hang out and create spaces to hang out.

And I don't think it'll be a pay service, which means it will be subsidized by ad clicks and/or micro-transactions (and most certainly a "premium" account with some kind of perk system).

In a weird crazy way, I get it. Not "I'm gonna go in there" get it, but more of a "this kinda thing is inevitable" get it.

If you've ever spent time in Second Life, there's a strange sense of inevitability about the whole thing. It's equal parts brilliance and lunacy.

Here's another way to put it.. look at all this around us right now-- I mean this forum we're on right now. If you had to explain how a forum works to someone 50 years ago, you'd get alot of blank stares. Not the concept of a forum- that's easy to grasp-- it's like a village bulletin board. But merge that bulletin board with the then-unheard-of concept of global networks, and few would go along with the thought experiment.

But as gaming's virtual worlds collide with the intertube's growing social networks, you get an offspring that is equal parts virtual space and community.

So instead of the Mature Gamers Forum, we log into the Mature Gamers Island.. we stop at our virtual home before teleporting to the town square.. maybe Lance has a movie scheduled to begin at the "local" movie house. Maybe Jason just added a race track down at the empty lot. Either way, you can still chat with everyone in the chat room as you walk about.

This isn't a stretch-- it's happening now in astonishing detail (very astonishing detail ;)), but it's the dark horse of social networking. But as more users cut their teeth virtually "hanging out" on CoD, Halo, L4D, FIFA, etc.. it's not much of a transition to merge that model with Facebook and forums.

So the question is.. how are we going to be interacting in 5 years... 10?... 15? My guess is it won't be on something as prosaic as "just" a forum, and I think gaming holds a lot of clues to future media.

Now, does that mean Planet Michael isn't going to be..... quirky? :p Hah, most assuredly not! But strip all that away and look at the model.. we'll be seeing more of it in the future.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Strangely, I don't come on forums to play dress-ups, walk around virtual space or create buildings... I go on forums to chat with people that I simply cannot chat with in any other fashion. Or to chat only with a certain group of people who are interested in a certain topic.

So while Second Life and it's daemonic ilk are popular and they do indeed have their own future, I would argue fervently that it is not one that melds with that of the forum -- that of the chatroom, certainly, and that of the IM, to an extent, but not the forum.

[Archangel]

And besides that, the internet has already allowed thousands to destroy and/or bastardise (No I will not change you to use a goddamn 'z', you damn American spellcheck dictionary) the English language. Forums like ours here are the only holdouts. Can you imagine how bad the world's English will be if forums and IMs get replaced by video games!? Those things have the worst kind of English!

[MyNameDidntFit]

(No I will not change you to use a goddamn 'z', you damn American spellcheck dictionary)

'sif not have English English dictionary add-on.

[Diachron]

Heh-- well I did say I do like to play Devil's Advocate. :evil: :cool:

I personally think Planet Michael will be six shades of crazy. I also think very interesting things are stirring on the boundaries of collaborative and interactive mediums.

And that's the most interesting part about the future. No one really knows. :D

[MyNameDidntFit]

I understand the Devil's Advocate thing entirely -- I do it perpetually ;)

I see where you're coming from and, yeah, communicative mediums in virtual space are going to undergo a lot of changes, but there are some things that are simply most efficient outside of a tangible world -- like forums -- and as such I can't see any real incentive for them to move over to any sort of Second Life-esque medium outside of crappy gimmicks.

[Diachron]

Here's one of my favorite stories.

In the 80's and early 90's, friends started asking me the question "I think I'm going to get a computer. What should I get?"

So I'd go down the list of options, but would leave the most arcane component for last. "You may also want to consider a modem."

"A modem? What's that?"

"A modem," I'd explain, "allows you to connect to computer networks over your phone line. You can do things like leave messages on a BBS, download files, and even play games." (This was pre-Internet, when private BBS's and services like Prodigy, The Source, and CompuServe were the rage.)

"So let me get this straight-- I plug in my... PHONE? Into my computer? And do what? Leave messages to strangers? Let's just stick to the computer. Now about printers--"

And so it went. Modems were hard sells. It was preposterous. Why on earth would sane, rational people choose to leave messages on a computer network? It was a ridiculous gimmick, after all. So I figured a demonstration would help-- I mean, if people SAW it in action, then surely an epiphany would follow, no?

Well, no.

And so the years rolled on. FidoNet linked BBS's, MUDs offered glimpses into the promise of multiplayer gaming, and the hitherto UNIX prompt of the early internet got a face lift by way of a strange new language called HTML.

I won't belabor the obvious vector of this story. But I will linger a moment on the punchline: The question, which was always "What computer do I get" suddenly morphed into "How do I get online?"

And that's the dominant question to this day.

So I have no doubt whatsoever that you perceive virtual worlds to be preposterous or a collection of crappy gimmicks. Heck, I won't even bother to ask how much time you've spent in any of them.

Instead, I'll close with one of my favorite quotes, from a fellow ironically called Ashleigh Brilliant.

It may be later than you think, or it may earlier than you can possibly imagine.

:cool:

[MyNameDidntFit]

Virtual worlds in the vein of Second Life are not preposterous by any means, nor did I say they are -- this is not to say I do not dislike them, as I do. I simply believe that the medium of a virtual, interactive world is not suited to the community model of an internet forum. Say I come back to your example of Mature Gamers' Island, the only thing we gain from this is a frivolous instant messaging service, cheap gimmicks (Jason, I'm looking at your race track) and some scenery. The current model of the forum is infinitely more efficient to use than any recognisable version of the current iteration of virtual worlds could possibly be for the purpose of countless topics of discussion involving numbers of people going into the thousands -- all of whom are in different time zones and are, as such, on at varying times -- in the larger example.

Why, oh why, would I want to go through the arduous and arbitrary task of walking an avatar from my 'house' and to the discussion I want to find? I honestly cannot think of a reason.

Now, if you were to tell me that the future of the instant messaging service was headed the way of virtual worlds I would nod politely and mutter resignedly under my breath about how utterly pointless I consider such an 'advancement'. That is to say that I would agree. However, I also believe that in the future of the IM service there will always be a simple, text-based medium in which communication may take place.