history-of-mmos
Latest
Video series chronicles the evolution of MUDs to MMOs
If you're looking for a reasonably short video primer on the history of MMOs, look no further than a series of clips recently uploaded to YouTube. According to some genre heavyweights, though, you shouldn't take all the info presented at face value. Former sandbox (and current social games) developer Raph Koster weighs in on the clips at his personal blog, and he offers up a laundry list of "oddities, errors, and omissions." MUD pioneer Richard Bartle shows up in Koster's comment thread, and he's even more direct. "I wonder why so few of those who make this kind of documentary actually ask the people they're talking about whether what they're saying about them is factually correct? It's not like we're dead or anything," Bartle muses. Why watch the vids, then? Mainly for the exposure to pre-2004 MMORPGs, according to Koster. The clips are "worth a look, even if only to get a rare glimpse of actual video footage from some of the older games that many folks today don't even know existed," he says. Check out all three installments after the break.
Namaste Entertainment charts the history of MMOs [Updated]
It's one thing to have a vague sense of what MMOs came out when, but it's another thing entirely to see a huge chunk of history plotted out in one comprehensive chart. It's also dang cool to see. During her research into user-generated content in MMOs for Storybricks, Namaste Entertainment's Kelly Heckman built a giant graphic to get a handle on how games developed over the years. She not only plotted them by year released, but also lumped them in with their respective genres and showed which games inspired others. The end result gives the viewer a bird's eye view of the industry as it's grown in the past decade and a half. "It turned out so well we made the movie with it and plan to release the source so anyone can make a movie with it," Heckman said. You can walk through this giant infographic in the gallery below, and make sure to hit the jump to watch the accompanying video that makes use of the chart. [Update: Here's a direct link to a much bigger version of the infographic.] %Gallery-130322%
