No Labels

As is usually the way of things in this hobby, after a period of calm, everything seems to be happening at once. Or maybe it's not. I think I need to clarify what I mean by "this hobby".

Until now, when I've tossed that term around, it's been with the understanding that everyone reading would pretty much know what I meant, without having to think about it all that much. It was a fair assumption; Inventory Full began quite specifically as an mmorpg blog, arising out of my already decade-long involvement, loose though as it was, with the mmo blogosphere.

We all knew what we meant by mmos back then - persistent worlds in which we met and adventured with friends and strangers. As time went on, though, some of us began to feel the need to differentiate between "MMOs" and "MMORPGs" because there seemed to be an increasing tendency to gather all kinds of games and experiences under the mmo umbrella, some of which didn't always seem to belong there.

A few years back, I took to using the acronym "mmorpg" exclusively to describe the games I was interested in, sometimes appending qualifiers like "DIKU-MUD" or "EQ/WoW style" to make things even clearer.

It was a losing battle, for reasons explained in two posts I read yesterday, one by Azuriel, the other by Wilhelm. Azuriel is talking specifically about his growing appreciation of what makes a game compelling to him, personally, while Wilhelm is focused more on the state of the genre per se, but both of them place their observations in a historical context from which it's clear the old certainties no longer apply.

It seems to me that there's no longer much agreement anywhere about what either of the acronyms, MMO or MMORPG, mean. Taking each, letter by letter, it's hard to argue in favor of any of the component parts any more, other than the O for "Online". 

We never did really agree on what we meant by "Massively". Now, with so many games enjoying truly massive populations, all online in the same game at the same time, receiving updates and seeing their worlds change, yet playing on dedicated, personal servers, the word means less than it ever did. When you combine that with "Multiple", the proliferation of small, separate servers all running Valheim or Minecraft simultaneously could easily be interpreted as having moved the meaning of the phrase closer to its linguistic value than further away.

As for "RPG", that's a concept as malleable as any poppet-maker's wax. For a very long time it's been increasingly hard to find any games that don't use mechanics rooted in old-school table-top role-playing - except for the actual pretending to be someone other than yourself part, of course. No-one does that any more.

For a good, long while I struggled against all of this, trying to hold the line even as the line became increasingly hard to see, let alone define. Hence all the maneuvering around terminology mentioned above. Something about the mmorpg genre and my relationship with it felt so connected to my sense of self, it seemed vitally important to preserve its integrity, in language and discussion at least, if not in my actual playstyle.

But now, guess what? I don't think I care any more. The strange, gnawing need I felt to be in a shared environment along with hundreds or thousands of strangers and the concommitant hollowness I felt when exploring imaginary worlds in which I was the only living being has been dissipating for a while now. I think perhaps it may finally have evaporated.

I don't even feel the lack of the handful of other players Wilhelm still considers necessary to bring a virtual world alive. While I agree their presence would add much to the experience, I no longer feel their absence invalidates or even diminishes the value of exploring or home-making alone. 

And, yes, I think I have Valheim to thank - or blame - for changing my mind. Not because it was the first to offer the possibility but because, for me, it was the first to reveal it. Or maybe that's post hoc rationalization. I could trawl back through my own gaming history as represented on this blog to try and establish a timeline but, y'know, I don't think I will. 

This isn't about what happened to make me feel this way. It's about how I feel. And I feel good. 

I feel liberated. I feel really not all that different to how I felt all those years ago, when I discovered EverQuest and with it a whole, new way of playing video games. It was a wonderful discovery that became a beautiful obsession but like all obsessions it ran the risk of blinding me to other possibilities. I'm happy to have that blindfold lifted.

All of which brings me back to where I began: this hobby. As Azuriel and Wilhelm suggest, in their varying fashion, it's changing, growing, spreading. Mutating, perhaps we should say.

This morning I downloaded a new version of Chimeraland, through Steam this time. I've already played for over an hour and absolutely loved it. No doubt posts will follow. 

Chimeraland describes itself on Steam as "an open-world sandbox RPG". It's clearly an mmorpg under the old definition and also clearly a survival game under the tenets of that genre. I wonder why it doesn't want us to know?

Ikonei Island is definitely not an mmo. Maybe. Probably. I don't know! 

I like it, whatever it is. I was annoyed when I had to stop playing because of the game-breaking bug I encountered after half an hour's play. 

I liked it enough to buy an XBox-style controller for my PC just to play it.  Even though, as I said, I got on well enough with the keyboard controls, everyone else seemed to think it was a different experience entirely with a controller. A much better one.

Okay, that wasn't the only reason I bought the controller. I wanted to buy something from the Prime sale so it was an excuse to indulge myself. And it seemed like the right time to give the controller a go. I have never used one before, nor wanted to, but increasingly I'm finding the games I want to play are optimized for that means of control, with keyboard/mouse a second-rate afterthought.

The controller worked, perfectly and instantly, straight out of the box. It's comfortable and intuitive to use and Ikonei Island, already fun, now feels even more compelling to play. It's not an mmo, let alone an mmorpg, but given the way I've been playing those kinds of games this last decade, I'm not sure that makes much difference. Subjectively, it feels like more of the same, which is what I've been saying I wanted for years.

As if two new games in two days wasn't enough, I had to have a third. Well, almost. 

Yesterday I saw this news item on MassivelyOP. I registered for Noah's Heart a few weeks back so I would have thought I'd have gotten an email, since I'm in one of the eight Early Access territories. 

I didn't, though, so I went to the website instead and tried to download the game, only to find I couldn't. It took me awhile but eventually Twitter told me the soft launch is for IOS and Android only. PC players have to wait another couple of weeks for the full, global reveal.

Is Noah's Heart an mmo? An mmorpg? A survival game? All of the above? 

Pass. Whatever it is, I was interested enough to try and download it for my Kindle Fire. Naturally, that aging dinosaur doesn't meet the specs. Neither does my phone, which I couldn't have used anyway, thanks to the flickering screen. 

And so time marches on. The games change, the genres change and apparently I'm fine with that, now, but the operating systems and platforms change too, about which I'm a little less sanguine. More and more often I'm beginning to run up against technical specifications my devices, including the PC, can't meet. 

It used only to be games and genres that didn't much interest me. Mmos and mmorpgs seemed bulletproof. By definition, they needed to make themselves available to the broadest range of players, else how could they be truly "massive"? Average gear was good enough, out of game as well as inside.

Those days are over, it seems. I guess I'd better get some new kit if I want to keep up with the pace. I'd really hate to be locked out of Nightingale when it soft launches later this year...

... and no, I don't know how to label that one, either!