io9
What if everything you did online was part of a game? A company named Gamelayers is built on the idea of a PMOG, Passively Multiplayer Online Game. The idea is that everything you do while surfing earns experience points, and the play experience seamless overlays your online life. I was struck by this idea of the internet as a connected ludoverse, so I talked to Merci Victoria Grace, Chief Creative Officer/Lead Game Designer of Gamelayers. The other principal is ur-blogger Justin Hall who, full disclosure, once put me up in his converted garage for three months.
In Merci's words:
PMOG is an asynchronous, peripheral game that transforms the Firefox browser into an MMO head up display and invites the player to engage in warfare, socializing, and annotation on the world wide web through html.OK, but what does that mean for you, the game-player? We interviewed Merci to get the downlow.
Is PMOG the future? Is the Internet going to become a vast multiplayer game?
The internet is already a vast multiplayer game, PMOG just makes that obvious and tangible. There are player types (Wikipedia nannies versus forum griefers), there's social cuing based on a the presentation of self online (avatars, profiles on social networking sites), When I designed PMOG I approached the problem of making an MMO in a browser by first realizing that the internet is already a place. It's an environment with its own architecture, languages, and customs. The gameplay and story flowed from that decision.
What kind of story did you devise to overlay/explain/narratize the internet in PMOG? It looks pretty steampunk - is that the genre? Any plans to evolve the story over time?
When I began designing PMOG, I started with the environment of the internet. It struck me that the internet is this kind of awful urban sprawl. Buildings (websites) go up in a matter of days with no building codes or aesthetic oversight. There's no organizing principle apart from the most basic rules of the world - html operates like gravity. If it loads, I guess it's okay. There is no government building roads and schools, keeping the streets lit at night, putting on parades, or punishing criminals. But despite this lawlessness there are some highly functioning and beautiful structures, there's magic and technology living side-by-side. That concert of magic and tech speaks well through steampunk. Additionally, I took a lot of Victorian literature in college. And aesthetically, I'm tired of everything being fantasy or flat anime-esque children. Over the course of the time that PMOG runs I'll continue to develop the story and the world, eventually adding non-player characters and more advanced interactions.
You can sign up for the PMOG beta. If you were PMOGing, you would already have earned experience for reading this post.
Comments
sounds like fun until it turns into a big corporation driven game where "Being A Consumer Is Fun"
I like the idea behined it, and his description of internet spraw is spot-on.
But it practice I'll bet it's as dull and lifeless as second life.
@EDread83: Yeah, you mean like Facebook did?
@Seth L: I'll let you know. It took me about 4 minutes to track down someone with an invite.
@Annalee Newitz: yeah thats one of the downsides of a capitalist community everything turns into a way to make money. I never wasted my time on facebook and begrudgingly set up a myspace page because i had a girlfriend that made me do it. Hopefully this game works out and even if they do sneak ads in make them discreet. Dont offer me points for buying crap. I'll visit pages and post comments just dont dupe me into buying stuff.
I don't understand. I mean, I think I kind of understand...but I definitely don't understand.
I've read this over a couple times and I still don't get what it really does?
@JoeyTheHobo:
Please do!
Reminds me of WebWars, from Eve Online. In a purely superficial sense of course. Both include firefox plug-ins, both involve transforming the internet into a game, both are in beta.
The internet is not a game.
@joemono: Tell that to Myspace users, Racking up thousands friends like they mean something. Tell that to people who like to get into the "Week in Comments" at Kotaku... *cough*
@Ghede:
Jalopnik has gone downhill since they started comment of the day.
The quality of discussion is substandard.
Please don't do that here?
@Seth L:
I meant that towards the editors.
@Ghede: There are certainly aspects of the internet that can be looked upon as being game-like. Myspace is a good example because people truly do compete to out-friend others. But that doens't make the "internet" a game.
Maybe I don't quite understand what is meant by "The internet is already a vast multiplayer game". Because I think it's nonsense.
I'm not going to pretend to truly know what a "game" is (I'm no philosopher), so I'll just paraphrase Potter Stewart and say that while I think a game is probably difficult to define, I know one when I see one. The internet is not a game.
Also, thank you io9 for helping me learn that the person I've always known as "that supreme court guy who said that thing about porn" is named Potter Stewart.
Gawker just called us nerds and stole our lunch money:
[gawker.com]
The game they talk about does sound more fun though.
@Seth L: I don't understand their game either.
Dang, I totally suggested that like 3 years ago at the first BarCamp. 8-P
Have you heard of Progress Quest?
It's been around for about 5 years now.
Add me to the 'this is too ridiculously Meta' demographic.
@Seth L:
What, simulated internet vandalism? I find it passe.
-Kle.
like i don't waste enough time on the internet already. now i have to be on every waking moment of the day, racking up points by checking my gmail? wouldn't it be super-easy to 'cheat' in any number of ways?
i'm with the luddites on this one.. this is the kind of crap people will point to when they complain about how we're becoming unhealthy zombies. hell, it could replace video game consoles as a scapegoat for fat kids.
I've always thought that technorati and blog stats were a kind of mporpg.
I know when I hit 62,000 page views in one day on my blog I was expected a gratz.
and like most mporpg's the end game isn't that fun.
Hey I know I'm late to this, I just wanted to say that there are three co-founders at GameLayers. Duncan Gough is the third, he's the CTO and he built PMOG. :)
hehe... I'm playing PMOG right now and a mission led to this article...
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