New Media Reader 649-733

1991: Cardboard Computers published.
1991: The Lessons of Lucasfilms Habitat published.
1991: Seeing and Writing published.
1991: You Say you want a Revolution? published.
1992: The End of Books published.
1993: Timeframes published.

These excerpts in the book tended to focus more and more on the nature of design in new media, and the implications of creating technologies for participants. Cardboard Computers discussed the importance of creating mock ups and testing technology through user participation, in order to better improve interfaces and human-computer interaction. The end of books offered an interesting insight on what hypertext and the web might mean to older media, and how the overarching medium of text expression could be used and adapted to a hypertext based world. Most interesting to me, however, was the essay about Lucasfilms' Habitat, the earliest massively multi player online game. Having played a couple of massively multiplayer games myself, I was unaware of how early the concept began, and just how complex its beginnings were. I always find that massively multiplayer experiences either suffer from being too much of a game or too little. For instance, I felt that World of Warcraft, while requiring that users work together to accomplish tasks and meet goals, the experience is still ultimately one of playing within a game space, as opposed to living in a virtual environment. Players cannot build things or affect the world of the game in any significant manner. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Second Life, which is not a game, but a pure virtual space, completely defined and constructed by its inhabitants. Because of its complete lack of narrative and game-like goals (most people seem to be in Second Life to make some cash), I found exploring Second Life akin to flying around a large, boring, virtual shopping mall. Very few online experiences have successfully provided I dynamic, malleable world in which an interesting communal game experience can also be had. Habitat is so fascinating because it seems that the development team dealt with similar issues, and the online world actually evolved certain simplistic forms of government based on user consensus and encouragement by the development team. In the realm of Massively Multi player games, World of Warcraft still reigns supreme, and all others are compared to it, and most recent MMO's all appear as failing to be World of Warcraft. I believe the next true evolutionary step for Massively Multi player entertainment will be an online space that can achieve a world that is truly dynamic and user, affected, yet also provide interesting, game-like interactions, challenges and narratives.