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The Daily Grind: Where are all the sports MMOs?
With the advent of the college football bowl season and NFL playoffs, it's likely that you know someone caught up in the hysteria that surrounds a favored sports team in the thick of a championship chase. You may even be a sports fan yourself, and you also may have wondered -- as we did -- about the discernible lack of sports-based games across the MMO landscape. MMOs and sports would seem to be a match made in heaven. After all, fantasy football is a huge pastime for millions of people, and a box-score-reading sports geek is one of the few folks on earth who could give a stat-parsing MMO min-maxer a run for his number-crunching money. Aside from the occasional F2P game or a beta that few are aware of, MMO sports titles are rarer than a mythical national championship. Today's Daily Grind asks: Where are all the sports MMOs? Would you play one? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
NFL Rush Zone: Is it a MMOG?
Whoa, wait a minute. Exactly why am I covering this on Massively? This looks like an overrated cartoon avatar enabled chat room with a few mini-games thrown into the mix. Oh look, it is -- but what makes it stand out from the crowd is that the game has an area for each NFL team (visual chat rooms), mini-games, customizable avatars! Oh snap, that's not all but players can "collect Gameballs, meet Rusherz, and check out cartoons in the theater." Lolz, I can't wait guys. Looking at the graphics leads me to believe NFL Rush Zone totally ripped off the graphics from World of Warcraft. I kid, but seriously this is for the kids because I'm having a hard time imagining the typical 25 year old beer-guzzling NFL fanatic playing this and meeting their favorite Rusherz. ("Learn 2 pass the ball nub, I am the Law Giver!") I recently wrote about the Virtual World Boom and how these types of games will become more popular than traditional MMORPGS. The problem with calling this a Virtual World is that web games like NFL Rush Zone that employ avatar chat rooms with some mini-games, more advanced than their predecessors which were called avatar chat rooms in their heyday, will diminish what a MMOG / Virtual World really is if they get lumped into the same category. I don't think it's fair that these types of "webby games" are getting labeled as Virtual Worlds, maybe Virtual Spaces and yes, there is a difference. If we label NFL Rush Zone a Virtual World we might as well label MySpace one and every other chat room. Should NFL Rush Zone be classified as a Virtual World or should we write-it-off and never talk about this particular web game ever again? I vote for the latter. [via: Virtual World News]
