It’s an old cliche at this point to mention the future hasn’t lived up to Neal Stephenson (not to mention William Gibson). Insert your own flying car joke here. But where’s the innovation in gaming?
We’re constantly reminded how our lives are innundated with social media – talking heads are telling us how it’s going to be the downfall of society; it causes car accidents, unplanned pregnancies and obesity.
But why isn’t it being applied to gaming? I can understand how some fantasy games have a hard time imagining a way to interact (Appocalypse aside), but there are plenty of sci-fi MOGs out there that could take such great advantage of something as simple as texting, let alone entire apps. Hell, even the fantasy games can come up with some fun stuff to do – opt-in to receive threatening texts from the Lich King!
I hate to even bring it up, but if I were LARPing in this day and age, I don’t think my iPhone would ever have a full charge, because there’d be a constant barrage of texts, videos, emails and maybe – MAYBE – a phone call or three draining the battery constantly.
I’m probably delusional. I mean, more than normal. But if I were el jefe of a game, never mind making it cross-platform. It would be cross-media. The game would exist on every medium you can imagine.
And some you can’t.
Seriously – why aren’t games sending postcards? Get crazy! The post office is hurting anyway, drop a few hundred/thousand/million postcards with treasure map puzzle/riddles on them to your subscribers, Blizzard! EVE Online is all about thinking outside the box – why not a postcard campaign against some figures in the game, accusing them of a conspiracy or some such rubbish? Introduce some crazy plot threads, make the majority of it take place OUTSIDE the game, then tie it together in some huge in-game event!
It just seems there’s so much out there that nobody’s taking advantage of. I don’t have time to play ANY game right now – but I can IM like a mofo!
Let’s get crazy.





