If you're new to gaming, pop over to the Guardian, they set the framework for 2009 gaming as a whole. Moving to specifics, if you look at where science fiction MMOs (massive multiplayer online games) stand in a 2009 wrap-up, you find there are 3 big ones: Eve Online, Star Trek, and Star Wars. Hmmm.
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| Eve Online screenshot |
Over at Massively, Joe Blancato discusses why there are so few science fiction MMOs. For sci-fi MMOs, it's pretty much Eve Online and, err, whatever Blizzard is hiring for this month. Okay, there are smaller sci-fi online games lurking under the radar, but it's notable that the most thorough list out at SciFiMMORPG.com lists a cancelled game (Stargate) at slot #1.
Joe's reasons for fantasy dominating over sci-fi come down to: a) fantasy has a broader world, while sci-fi stories are each specific niches and b) sci-fi games tend to be too complex. A year ago, blogger TAGN set up a similar schema on why there is more fantasy than sci fi in games in general. He suggests fantasy a) has a longer history and b) doesn't get disproved like older sci-fi does.
My take? It boils down to science fiction's tendency to explore complex social interactions and economic power, while fantasy.lets you enter traditional story forms. Sci fi, at its best, extrapolates a future, while even good fantasy reinforces our existing beliefs about good and evil. So which would you want to game in-- a place you have to think, or something designed to mesh with epic storytelling in a seamless fashion?
Oh, and in fantasy you get to kill people and steal their stuff. That's very cathartic.
But by losing sci-fi, we lose a powerful entrance to the world of science.
Good science fiction sets an initial premise (that may not match reality), but then runs with it in a consistent manner. It's the world of 'what if'. Not 'what if dragons exist, so you'd have wizards, and warriors with swords who can beat everything, et cetera'. But simple things. "What if we had a faster than light drive-- how would space travel continue?" "What if we made true AI?" "What if they invented glass that slowed light so much it took hours for images to pass through?"
Now, I mentioned Star Wars and Star Trek, both of which have their own MMOs. But both of those universes are space opera, a sort of future fantasy world. They are brilliantly constructed, but do require you suspend belief on just about every issue. So do they count as sci-fi, able to inspire people into science, or are they just fantasy in space?
Turns out, it doesn't matter. As long as something cool with technology and muddled science is out there inspiring people to build towards a cooler future, I'm for it. So I think we need good sci-fi universes, not to enforce scientific thinking and realism, but just because way-out science fantasy is inspiring.
Alex, the Daytime Astronomer
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Read about my own private space venture in The Satellite Diaries
I did do a follow up post about the great potential for a science fiction MMO, which I see as how free it is from its history relative to fantasy, which has staggering weight of Tolkien, D&D, and the like forcing it into a set pattern. If I say "fantasy MMO" a lot of people will imagine very similar things. If I say "science fiction MMO" there isn't, I believe, a similar common idea, unless I throw in Star Trek/Wars. So there is room there for somebody to come up with something we don't expect and which won't get rejected out of hand because science fiction doesn't have as rigid a frame of reference.
Or something like that.
Anyway, I agree, science fiction is important to inspire. Ringworld was the gateway into science fiction for me, and while I did not end up in science, I at least ended up an engineer. I can help build the future if not discover it.