With the number of gamers playing online, why donāt more video games tap into that millions-person collective to achieve something interesting, socially grand or just fun?
Turns out that sometimes they do.
While efforts like Sonyās Folding@Home project, which uses the collective processing power of unplayed Playstation 3ās to research and better understand disease, have been around for years, it wasnāt until recently that console games have started playing around with this idea of collective gaming.
Earlier this month, Battlefield 1943 stormed onto the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. In the first-person shooter, gamers go online to fight it out in World War IIās Pacific. While the gameās premise of World War II battle offered little unique to the genre, there was a twist.
https://lastchance.cc/battlefield-1943-review-battling-in-the-pacific-5316704%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
It took just five days on the Xbox 360.
Van Dyke used an Excel spread sheet and his knowledge of such games to track how long he thought it would take. He came up with three weeks, not five days.
Van Dyke thinks that the Playstation 3 version of the new map, which has to be unlocked separately, will likely hit early next week.
By all accounts the experiment, dubbed a community challenge, was a success. A success not just in terms of tracking the popularity of their game, but in helping to define and build a community among those gamers.
āIām a big advocate of the community,ā he said. āI think (ideas like this) could blur the definition of massively multiplayer online games in particular areas, and build up that community relationship In games like this.ā
And the success of this communal achievement has Van Dyke, at least, thinking about including these sort of group efforts in future games.
āI will be working on (upcoming shooter) Bad Company 2, so itās definitely something we would consider in that game,ā he said. āBut we are not going to shove it into something else because it was successful for 1943, we want to use it diligently.ā
Battlefield isnāt the only, or the first console game to tap into communal efforts.
The Playstaton 3ās Noby Noby Boy, released earlier this year, tracked all playersā efforts in the game, reporting them to a database. The worldwide points were then used to unlock new areas in the game for everyone. It took players months to unlock just two of the gameās extra levels.
https://lastchance.cc/noby-noby-boy-sets-foot-on-mars-5268675%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Lempel points to the PS3ās virtual world of Home as an example of how community and building community has become an increasingly important part of console gaming.
āOne of the biggest goals for us is bringing the community together,ā he said. āBringing another level of entertainment to the community.ā
Home was recently host to a form of alternative reality game, something that wasnāt fully explained to gamers, but expected them to figure out the clues, the mystery, themselves. By the time the game wrapped up this month, 3.2 million people had visited it and it had 460,000 players.
https://lastchance.cc/playstation-homes-xi-comes-to-a-close-5287151%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Giving a gamer control of the environment in which they play, allowing them to unlock secrets, explore spaces, create new ideas, will inevitably change the nature of this form of entertainment. Perhaps eventually turning the concept of the artist and the audience on its head.
Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.
