I've been thinking lately about my writing and how i want to start to establish myself.
And i decided to break it big and try to write my own book.
And I think i have a great idea.
Now, as everyone knows, MMOs are the big thing now. 11.5 million are playing WoW. That's more people than some countries populations. I play WoW. And the whole aspect of the MMO is to create a seperate world from our own.
So, why not write a book about how far the MMO phenomenon can go?
Now several ideas have crossed my mind about how the premise of the book can run, mostly based off of my own predictions for how the online community in gaming will expand in the future.
1) The World is consumed by the game.
As the popularity with gaming and multiplayer gaming grows, it makes you think that soon everyone will be a gamer. If that's so, then what would stop people from simply living inside the game. The whole world could be consumed by a single game and all of mankind would become nothing more than avatars.
This idea would be similar to the Matrix, but without evil machines or Keanu Reeves... which would probably be for the best.
2) The game becomes seperate from the rest of the world.
As anyone that plays WoW or any other MMO will tell you, playing the game takes a great deal of time. So much so that ordinary human interaction is push aside for simply chatting across the internet. Humans are social creatures, but as we gain more technology, we become more aloof from each other physically. We instead create social systems across our communication systems, there by removing quality personal interaction for quantity inpersonal interaction.
What I'm getting at is that what if the players of the game become ostracized from the rest of human society and in turn form a collected group. This could arise to conflict very easily.
3) The game and the world merge
MMOs affect the world economy. And I don't mean just by actaul game sales. Both Ultima Online and Second Life players have created businesses within the games. Some people have even made livings by it. And of course we all know about the gold farmers in WoW.
Now, think if the game becoems apart of society. People go to work by simply logging into the game. Mechanics can work on vehicles from the comfort of their homes through connecting with the game. Manual labor jobs become as easy as hitting a button on your keyboard.
As good as this seems, think about the flip side. With a dependance on the internet, or some other kind of communication system, it would leave people open to crime even more than in real life. Criminals could log into the game and rob a bank by simply transferring funds into their own accounts while keeping the action completely hidden. Even wars could be fought in the game.
This seems like a very plausible future.
so anyone got any opinions? This is just a gisp on how the background of the book would work, but the story itself is still being formulated.
