The lights are on
I've been a proponent of MAG ever since the GI feature back in 2008. I put a ton of time in on the public beta, and I even wrote an entire blog about Sony's advertising strategy. I gave the game an 8.75 when at the time it was buggy enough to not deserve anything close to that score. So it was surprising when I realized a few days ago that I hadn't played in months. My brothers were out of the house, and I had a couple hours to myself, so I figured I'd jump back in. 6-7 hours and 10 levels later I was remembering why I loved this game so much.
For us in the Northern Hemisphere, the arrival of June means one thing: SUMMER!!! I just got released from school yesterday, so the next couple months, when not working part time, are going to be full of hanging out by the beach/pool. Of course, when not swimming, I enjoy a good book. Not including my mandatory AP stuff, here's what I'm reading this summer.
It's been confirmed that former Infinity Ward developers Jason West and Vince Zampella will be working on a brand new IP at their new studio under EA Partners (Link). They will not be working on the Medal of Honor or Battlefield franchises as was previously rumored. So, the question in my mind is: What will they be working on for their debut game? My opinion may shock you, but it makes sense when you take a look at it.
There have been a ton of "Here's my idea for a game" blog posts lately. Some have been great, others, not so much. Anyway, these inspired me to blog about a game idea I've been thinking about for a while. Imagine a game where you could explore the entire planet. Yes, the entire planet that we call home. Earth. Every town, city, and country (with some oceans and desert thrown in there for good measure). I know you're thinking "Whoa, B-Money, that's not possible this gen or maybe even next gen. Do you have any idea how much memory that would take up? Physical discs could never hold that much." Yeah, you're probably right about that. This game would probably be at least a petabyte (1000 terabytes, which is 1000 gigabytes, so a PB is essentially 1,000,000 GB). No one in the tech world has even thought about a petabyte disc, and if they ever exist, it wouldn't be for another 20-30 years. Here's my solution to that: cloud computing. The base game is put onto a Bluray disc (40-50 GB), and not only does the disc hold the base game, it also acts as a key to get access to the rest of the world. The rest of the world is placed on servers, and you use a world map within the game to go to whatever location you want. Pretty simple. To offset the financial burden of server upkeep, make the game an MMO with PvE co-op a priority. The main caveat to all this is that Internet connections would have to improve to make this a reality. 5-10 minute loads per location would kill this game. That's why this is more of a next gen game idea. American Internet connections will likely have improved by then to Japanese levels, and this game will be physically possible.