A Game I Don’t Have To Play
I don’t have time to keep up with many games. Between reviewing about one a week for the Onion and occasionally playing one for the sake of curiosity, there’s no time to work through the new Zelda or Metroid Prime just for the fun of it. I have friends who are getting back into World of Warcraft - getting into it hard - and I can’t join them. Or keep up with Halo 3. Or anything else.
So imagine my excitement when I started playing Skyrates, which I discovered courtesy of the inimitable Rock Paper Shotgun. You’re a cute, furry animal who flies planes between a series of islands floating in the sky. You have two main jobs: trading goods from cities where supply is high to other cities where it’s scarce; and fighting pirates, in frustrating two-dimensional dogfights. The longer you play, the more you can upgrade your ship, extend your flights and master the entire world map. Like any other online game.
Except in Skyrates, all the action happens while you’re offline. The game’s designed for “sporadic play.” When you start flying from one city to another, it takes a couple hours in real time to reach your destination – and while you can spend the time chatting with other players or maybe looking for pirates, you’re really supposed to log in for a few minutes, set up your next flights and trades, and leave. The game supports multiple platforms, so for example, you can play via the Flash client and get updates via AIM whenever you’re attacked by pirates. A mobile version wouldn’t be hard to set up: the game’s still in Beta, so the sky’s the limit.
Sure, it’s a simple game. But it raises two questions:
- Why should hours spent in the game grant you experience – and as a result, unlock new parts of the game for you? Why doesn’t World of Warcraft have a mode where you can send your avatar into the woods to kill stuff all day, while you go off and live your life?
- And the corrolary: What the hell is your World of Warcraft avatar doing when you’re not logged in?
Sitting on their fat ass, that’s what. It seems like the ability to level and make progress without actually sitting at a computer mindlessly grinding through the same damn kills for hours, would appeal to people like me, who are actually glad that Portal didn’t take 30 hours to finish.
And yet at the same time, the experience is more persuasive. In Warcraft, when you’re not logged in, the world forgets all about you. Maybe your friends and guildmates are running around, but you have no contact with the world; you literally cease to exist. By contrast, in Skyrates, my avatar (a bear named Pungent McGillicuddy) is working all day, whether I’m watching him or not. Sometimes he even checks in with me. The world keeps turning, the cash keeps rolling in, whether I’m paying attention or not. This may not be as compelling as a run through the Scarlet Monestary – but in my mind? It’s far more “immersive.”
(Note to self: try out some more of these “passively-multiplayer online games,” such as Jessica Price’s beloved Travian, or the ingenious Chore Wars.)
UPDATE: Be sure to check out the Skyrates developers blog for insight into the game.
Hehhhhhh, Travian is deceptive. Once your resources get higher, you need to be online more frequently to use them, or you lose them.
I’m curious as to whether they have any demographic information for who plays Skyrates (I’m addicted). I’d assume Travian is the norm: mainly adolescent males, but Skyrates, as it’s a trading game rather than a war game, might be a little more interesting.
And I owe you an email, but I haven’t had time to write it. Yesterday I was about to, but there was a water ballet team outside my window…
Jessica Price
October 24, 2007 at 12:17 am
For a truly passive gaming experience, don’t miss Progress Quest, an RPG in which everything is automated, to the point that you can’t actually play the game:
http://www.progressquest.com/
Johnny
October 24, 2007 at 1:33 am
[...] a rant on automated online games that communicate with you. level grinding happens automatically, you’re alerted if you’re attacked by pirates. (tags: media games design playability) [...]
links for 2007-10-24 « Chatquah and Galoshes
October 24, 2007 at 10:19 am
Dude. Eve Online.
Dustin
October 24, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Eve Online looks intriguing, from the few times I’ve checked it out – but does it have an “autopilot” mode? I understood you had to spend hours mining for ore just to get a decent ship.
Progress Quest is genius.
And Jessica, enjoy that water ballet team! How’s the cafeteria at the Olympic training compound, anyway … ?
savetherobot
October 24, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Glad you enjoyed it Chris and thank you for the positive comments!
) who just don’t have time to play games for hours and hours on end any more.
We’ve tried very hard to make a game for people just like you (pretty much people like us
As for demographic we’ve had a very large range from 5 years old to over 60 and a large percentage of female gamers. On average, players seem to be in their late 20’s – 30’s with a healthy mix of younger folk as well.
Hope you all enjoy the game if you have a chance to check it out, Thanks!
Chuck
October 24, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Hey Chuck, any idea what percentage of the audience is female?
Chris: the cafeteria has tiny, tiny tea/coffee cups, which means we have to get up every 5 minutes to refill, but considering that we can’t sit still anyway, and if we try to, the Boss sends the Pandzilla robot after us, it’s probably for the best.
Jessica Price
October 24, 2007 at 11:55 pm
I’m certain than when my WoW night elf is not being watched, she drinks whiskey and reads lit blogs. Oooh, and I thought I saw a tattoo poking out of her collar the other day. Some orc did it, probably.
Agatha Christ-Almighty
October 25, 2007 at 11:13 am
[...] has covered it in detail, and if you’re interested in this sort of thing, you should read his review. It’s basically Tradewinds with planes, but it’s massively multiplayer. However, it [...]
Information Overload » The Human Factor
November 3, 2007 at 2:15 am
Agatha: That could be a great feature to add to a game, where the longer you go without playing it, the more your character abuses herself. If you haven’t played in a month, by the time you come back she’s a binge-drinking heroin addict. Also explains the account deletion. “Dude, you were inactive for 90 days, and your character lost the will to live…”
I’m sure there are a few games like this already, but I’m not thinking about another competitive PvP game, where other players are sabatoging you.
SoMuchEuropeSoLittleP
December 20, 2007 at 11:28 am