Crash Course Games

MMORPGs (1x12)

:

So we ended the last episode with casual gaming and a more connected gaming community, but these connected communities started much before smartphones and Facebook. Today, we’re going to talk about MMORPGs - or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. These games, usually found on PCs, are often nicknamed “life-games” as they have no definitive ending. MMORPGs trace their histories back to early text-based games that were inspired by the the real life RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, which we’ll talk about in a future episode. And with the creation of the Internet, these games have slowly evolved to support shared gaming communities that have exploded in popularity and variety with games like EVE Online, World of Warcraft, and the upcoming No Man’s Sky. But these games and their communities aren’t just interesting to players, they’re also informing us about how civilizations and their economies work. And the economies in these games are actual economies that have real-world monetary value. MMORPGs represent a larger shift that was happening in the gaming community towards livable game worlds as players like never before were becoming a part of the games they were playing.