How Multi-player Team Gaming will redefine the VR Experience
Last year a trailer was shown for Star Trek VR, a game where you and your crew of friends could take on different roles and responsibilities aboard a space ship. Now, Elite : Dangerous is updating their expansive game universe with that option as well. This introduces a new type of game narrative that promises incredibly advanced nonlinear storytelling–the type where acquiring skills from life could play a key role in success or failure. There will be a term to coin these games–maybe MDT (multi-player dynamic teams) or JBG (job-based gameplay). I’m not nearly popular enough to set a trend, but whatever it will be called, it will create opportunities that may help VR fulfill it’s entertainment promises.
Real-life Job Modeling
Today, games seem to be split into general audience, low learning curve that mimic conventions of the last few decades or exclusive, steep learning curves that reward genre jockeys and punishes everyone else. The emerging MDTs could appeal to everyone based on personality and experience. How does being a real-life mechanic effect your ability to fix a lunar rover? Or perhaps the more athletic among us could excel as knights whereas the engineers could literally build a siege engine that would work. This will bring up the moral dilemma of games where players cannot escape their real-life limitations vs games where no one has uniqueness because anyone could be anything. But with these challenges come richer rewards to the open-world platform, with long-term payout for sticking with your crew as well as knowledge with real-world implications. Already, there are many companies getting into the VR education game arena such as Unimersiv and Eon.
Unscripted Dynamics
Beyond hard trades and skills, there are many factors that could elevate the MDT experience. For one, vocal or even hand signal communication turns a button pushing challenge into a trial of coordination and cooperation. Leadership, patience and emotional intelligence get rewarded in a world with evolving social structures. Many of these same traits exist in gaming today, but not in so completely a package as VR that is capable of piping in body language and context.
Layered Stories
One of the most fascinating aspects of Westworld, once you get past the “violent desires meeting violent ends” was the idea that a single universe could have decades worth of rich, gratifying adventures that appeal to a general population, unlike many of the MMOs today. There will be campaigns for the lone outing, buddy adventure or all-out warfare. Those film and game companies trying to figure out what VR could be should be mindful that the killer game may have to be a giant world that is more complete than traditional ones today, not less.