The Second Life of Fallout 4 & Rise of Solo Virtual Worlds

The Verge has a really interesting post on how Fallout 4 is becoming some gamers' second life:

Two days, nine hours, and 17 minutes — that’s how long I’ve spent playing Fallout 4, the post-apocalyptic role-playing video game, since its release on November 10. I know this because the game keeps track and tells me every time I start it up. That’s 57 hours and change — almost one and a half workweeks — since the game arrived on my doorstep, and an even larger percentage of my waking hours... The game posted a record number of players on the PC game service Steam, too, reaching about 470,000 concurrent players. Judging from the online conversation, I’m not the only player who’s become lost in the game. Some appear to have far surpassed me, putting in 100 hours or more before the end of November. I guess I’ve got some catching up to do.

That's roughly more people having a second life in Fallout 4 than having a second life in, well, Second Life. What's really interesting is that Fallout 4 is single-player, but the world is so deep and self-consistent, it enables a lot more room for consistent, ongoing roleplay:

To give you an idea of just how huge the game is, consider that the game’s lead designer — the person you might expect to have the fullest, most comprehensive knowledge of the game — said, prior to launch, that he had played 400 hours and was still discovering new things. The game features 110,000 lines of recorded dialogue (for comparison's sake, Apocalypse Now’s script had just 7,500). The game’s director, meanwhile, has described wandering through the map, finding something new, and wondering who built it.

The game boasts a vastness that approaches something like endlessness; it may be that no single human can ever fully experience all it has to offer.

Used to be, massively multiplayer experiences like World of Warcraft and Second Life seemed to offer the best and deepest variations among virtual worlds. But that was 10 years ago, and since then, 3D game engines have become more powerful, NPC scripts and interactions more in-depth, both allowing for more detail, richness, and emergence. As with Skyrim, developed on the same engine by the same studio, Fallout 4 challenges us to redefine our definition of a virtual world at its most ambitious. Especially when playing an MMO means the hell of other avatars -- griefing, miscommunication, general non-immersive cheesiness inherent to a multiplayer experience. Unsurprisingly, World of Warcraft and other multi-user worlds are waning while single-player worlds like Fallout 4 continue to grow more popular, and I expect we'll see that trend to continue.

Update, 2:35pm: Or to spin off a Yogi Berra saying, "No one goes to that virtual world anymore -- it's too crowded!"

Please share this post:

Tweet

 

Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

Stats like that are pretty common in MMOs.

And I'd wager that the people who are active in SL spend similar amounts of time logged into it.

It is true though that only one MMO has ever posted concurrency numbers even over 400,000, and it was NOT World of Warcraft but, I believe, Guild Wars 2. Though this was on its launch event...

I'm not surprised by these numbers though. I could likely find higher numbers looking at the 'concurrency' for any release of "Civilization" if we considered the people playing it at the same time on their computers around the world concurrent.

This doesn't make either a virtual world...

- I don't think concurrency is really relevant unless you have those people together in some sense.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I binge watched the "Jessica Jones" Marvel detective mini-series over the weekend. I logged a lot of hours on Netflix doing that.

I spent all that time inside of somebody else's designed fictional world experiencing the reality they had shaped.

But I did it on my own, no interaction with others.

I don't see how my watching TV is any different from someone playing a solo video game...

The "world" part is not about whether it is pixels or a screen... but about whether or not it is a shared experience.

[Arthur Scanlan]

The main difference between watching TV and playing a solo video game, to me, is the level of control. When you watch TV, your eyes go where they're put, and see the things the creator has wrought, in the order intended, and in the prescribed amount of time.

With a solo game, you're not an uninvolved observer. A solo game typically tries to make you feel like the main character in the story they're trying to tell. Depending on where the game is on the on-rails / open world spectrum, you typically decide what you want to see, how, and more or less at your own pace. (And in my case, that tends to be slowly and repeatedly, since I'm bad at most games.)

Like Zaphod Beeblebrox in Zarniwoop's artificial universe, the world of a solo game exists just for you to come to it. It begins when you start playing, everything comes to a halt when you take a lunch break, and when you tire of it, it goes away.

An MMO marches on whether you're there or not, and everybody is their own main character. It's more rewarding to play with friends and find new ones, but it also imposes constraints. For example, it's very hard to tell a story in which you're The Nerevarine of which the prophecies have whispered when there are fifty other nerevarines within a stone's throw.

[cyberserenity]

The problem with MMO is people. When you design stuff people are always the problem.

[zz bottom]

:) Btw Great tv show Jessica Jones:)

[Issa Heckroth]

Cyberserenity is right. You can design a beautiful, immersive world but you cant account for people. Just ask any SL RP admin. Policing the way people behave is a nightmare for them. I did it for nearly 3 years and I honestly think the experience left me more of a misanthrope than when I began.

Plus many people dont WANT to have their behavior policed or understand why the community demands it and cry fascist or some other slur at the drop of a hat.

When SL *and MMO culture* started out it was shiny and new and alluring. Now people realize what a massive pain in the ass it is to pull these experiences off with any level of immersion. These days I would much rather get lost in Skyrim or Fallout than deal with some douchebag running in and ruining my experience in any number of ways.

One thing I have noticed is this NEED by people to be the center. Lets call it the "Nerevarine Complex" as Arthurs example is very nice :) you can always find the person who wants to be the savior of the world, or the nemisis. Not many who want to be a farmer, or a weaver. Unless they can be a farmer and still be a sword wielding fireball hurling badass.

Game and experience designers know this and cater to it and I think this is making our entire game experience stale and repetitive. But you can isolate yourself from that feeling in Single player games and kid yourself that your having a totally unique experience. Thats harder to do in an MMO, where you can see with your own eyes all the people on roughly the same path as you.

[Issa Heckroth]

I would love to see a game come out where you are "the chosen one" like in 99% of all games ever released but you cant win. No matter what you do, you screw it up in the climactic final moments and evil wins. The world Ends. F*%k you. That would be truly refreshing :)

[At the drop of a hat]

In addition numerous individuals dont WANT to have their conduct policed or comprehend why the group requests it and cry rightist or some other slur at the drop of a hat.