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Blurred Lines (MMORPGFPSBA… WUT?)

Gaming > Latest news > Blurred Lines (MMORPGFPSBA… WUT?)

In games, we kind of need to pigeon hole, if only to make some sense of a thing before diving in. However, unlike film or television... games are historically harder to define.

Multiplayer online battle arenas, role-playing games and first-person shooters are adapting fast to attract massively more players. Take Destiny, for example… what the heck is it anyway?

In games, we kind of need to pigeon hole, if only to make some sense of a thing before diving in. However, unlike film or television where categories include Sci-Fi, Drama, Thriller, Horror and Kids (which ought to have helpful groups of its own like Superheroes, Dinosaurs, Robots and Eggs), games are historically harder to define. There’s no equivalent of Folk, Funk, Classical or Metal as with music to generalise style either. The best we’ve had are Action, Strategy, RPG, beat-’em-up, shoot-’em-up and odd-but-makes-sense ‘Platformer’ (jumping on/off ledges). Then there was Casual: Yes or No?

The most successful games are simply fun and involving, sentiments that apply to everything from Flappy Bird to Final Fantasy. Because of this, the creative minds behind the best-selling examples are always looking to other popular and relevant ideas to boost their own. As with other entertainment, it’s the hook that’s most important, and in games the element that it’s closest to is a catchy rhythm.

It could be a role-playing-game but Japanese style, a JRPG. It could be a Strategy game played in Real Time, an RTS. We’ve had Solo or Multiplayer for the longest time, but after everything headed online there’s now Massively Multiplayer experiences too, but even these can take place in shared worlds or persistent worlds – the latter always remembering the footprints you made, houses you built, etc.

Eventually though it gets ridiculous, and very quickly hilariously old-fashioned. Almost everything is Online now. Almost everything has EXP. You could even say that any invitation to become something other than yourself sitting on the sofa is role-playing – whether it’s World of Warcraft or Call of Duty.

The importance of online alongside the wide-scale adoption of EXP (Experience Points) has become the killer combination. It’s no longer about scenarios we remember that ideally we want more of, but a status that we long to be remembered for. The Destiny campaign “Become Legend” sums this up perfectly, though it’s something WoW and CoD players have been aspiring to for many years. We’ve gone from being happy with three initials on a Leaderboard to grand titles such as Scarab Lord, the latter among the rarest titles ever obtained in World of Warcraft by a dedicated few.

There are a couple of things about Destiny’s success that made it hard to define, and therefore difficult to judge when it came to the reviews. Critics became bogged down in the delivery of the story, when in fact it was the player’s story being endlessly told. The game was broken down into its various components to arrive at an average score summing it all up, rather than seeing this balance of instantly attainable versus endlessly (it seems) unattainable, or dreams that you hope come true.

The team responsible for Destiny, Bungie, has said that not even they knew what Destiny would become until thousands of players began to make use of it. The one thing they did, significantly, guard against was the wrong categorisation, to prevent misguided expectation. They still say that Destiny is not an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) opportunity but a Shared World Shooter – guys shooting at things alongside other guys in the same areas. So… like Call of Duty, right?!

Of course Destiny means more than that to its 20 million registered players, and its success has been owing to the studio truly empathising with its community rather than improvising as they go along. The core, irresistible gunplay is the one thing that remains consistent, around which the ideas to expand can freely flow. In the recent add-on The Taken King, Destiny’s multiplayer mode Crucible gained a sport-inspired variant called Rift, plus there are more puzzle-oriented co-operative Strikes.

So, you see, owing to its combat-oriented roster of events you could probably classify Destiny as a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA), but this applies to another breed of games that include the awesome League of Legends and Smite which Destiny is seriously nothing like. With this in mind, you can appreciate why Bungie and increasingly more studios are avoiding classification, instead inviting players to form communities based on common interest. Studios such as Blizzard whose MOBA-like Heroes of the Storm is nothing of the sort either; according to them it’s a “hero brawler” apparently.

It’s getting mightily confusing out there, but in a wonderful way. Something of this and a piece of that can lead to long-awaited blockbusters such as Fallout 4 that has evolved from its role-playing origins into an immersive first- or third-person quest. The SPECIAL system (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck) has served the Fallout series from turn-based RPG in Fallout and Fallout 2, through tactical combat in Fallout Tactics, to action-oriented open world in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. We’ve even had the free-to-play simulation Fallout Shelter, which beat Candy Crush Saga to the top of the iTunes charts in its first week, and outpaced it in earnings.

It’s a mash-up world we’re living in, and arguably the only people left struggling with it are the critics that want the first say. But the last word in games like Destiny, Heroes of the Storm and Fallout 4 will always be with communities that are hungry for new experiences and freedom to share directly with the studios that create them. During the Virgin Media Gaming Hexathlon at EGX 2015 you’ll witness some of the finest examples of games that choose not to play by old rules, but are hugely enjoyable because of it. You’re able to meet and greet fellow fans to celebrate what’s now and what might be.

Games may never be as easy to put into one basket as we’ve grown accustomed to in other forms of mainstream entertainment. But, here’s to not knowing what the heck to expect from our favourite worlds from this point onward.

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