Loading... Gaming Genius Where Art Thou?

by John Hoskin on Jul 29, 2008

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Welcome to the 881st Edition of Loading...

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Daily Column

Loading... putting the 'Mo' in MMOG.

First, the Ten Ton Pulse, your finger on the beating heart of the MMOG industry.

If the Top 10 isn't enough, we also show the Top 20 and Top 50 lists as well, available to everyone on our homepage. (What is Pulse?)

Warhammer Online - 200 BPM World of Warcraft - 174 BPM Age of Conan - 79 BPM Stargate Worlds - 17 BPM Tabula Rasa - 15 BPM EVE Online - 14 BPM DC Universe Online - 14 BPM Lord of the Rings Online - 13 BPM EverQuest II - 10 BPM Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 10 BPM

Warhammer Online buoyed by its Comic Con coverage continues to hold the #1 spot in the Pulse, battling with World of Warcraft over the hearts and minds of the MMOG game community. WoW is also surging, lifted by its current deluge of Wrath of the Lich King coverage. Stargate Worlds and DC Universe Online both move up the charts as well on the strength of their video interviews filmed at Comic Con. The latest Ten Ton Hammer coverage from Comic Con includes a full 40-minute video (for Premium Members) of Paul Barnett's one man panel and a gameplay glimpse video from Stargate Worlds.

The comic industry has its share of genius. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) are excellent examples of genius. Eccentric genius perhaps in the case of Moore, but genius nonetheless.

Music has its genius, played by names such as Farmer, Byrd, Vivaldi, Bach, Brahms and Gershwin.

Art has its genius, framed by names such as Da Vinci, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Dali and Warhol.

Does today's game development environment guarantee that true invention, true innovation and perhaps even the rise of a game design genius will never come to pass?

Comics, sports, literature, science, they all have genius to call their own. Yet, computer gaming and more specifically massively multiplayer online gaming have yet to recognize such focused brilliance. Is this because they are relatively new forms of expression? Is this because genius is in essence a numbers game? The longer an industry exists, the more likely that genius will form within it, or be drawn to it?

Answer: Easy, it is a numbers game. The more people that share a love for a particular pastime the more likely that one of them will be an idiot savant capable of uber-human creation. That is just the way that nature works. Well, nature with respect to math at least.

More importantly, genius rarely flourishes in groups. Form a picture of any genius in your mind, and if you can't manage that, then think of Einstein, his wild hair spraying in all directions. Now imagine this genius, not doing what they do (or did) best, but instead sitting around all day debating their creations from 9-5 with lesser minds. What they accomplished would necessarily have been diminished, perhaps moderated, because that is what groups do, they moderate.

Most game development today is a group-think process. Designers come up with various ideas, bounce them off other designers, who bounce them off other designers until in the end, the pure idea is lost and some incestuous idea is created that in most cases is far worse than the original. Creativity by communal thought is a bad idea simply because it takes the creative portion away and replaces it with group-think. One person comes up with an idea and inevitably everyone else in the group focuses on it rather than on being creative. We've all sat through those sessions. It doesn't work. The charismatic personality in the lot will dominate the rest.

If that isn't enough, try this, get a group of people and tell them to come back to you in one week with an idea for a mob that will be in a new MMOG. They need to describe it physically and no more. In one week you will have exactly as many compelling unique mob descriptions as you had people in the group. Each person will come up with something that either makes you smile or think 'by the gods, that's brilliant!" They will all be different.

Now, put that same group in a room. Tell them that they have to come up with mobs that will be in a new MMOG. You will either end up with one mob or you will end up with many that are all similar. Genius hates company. It also usually inhabits the mind of a lunatic. Go back through history and look at the people who changed the way we guage art, music, etc. Inevitably they were raving loons. Fortunately for the game industry, we have raving loons in great abundance.

Will we see a gaming genius emerge. An idiot savant capable of making games that you can't put down. A massively multiplayer rainman? (Definately not collision detection... definately) A person that creates games that raise the bar and make us wonder why we played what came before? You tell me. Better yet, post a physical description of a mob that you would like to see in an upcoming MMOG. Maybe the genius is you?

I know you're thinking something. Share! The Loading Forums await you. Do you feel the need to contact me personally with naughty pictures or derogatory comments? Here's my E-mail.

[A big thanks to Phil Comeau for putting together the links and Real World News.]

13 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 289 in July! 1867 in
2008!

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