The term “Meta” is synonymous with the Big Picture nowadays. It represents an idea within an idea, or two ideas connected by an interesting line of thought. It ties things that may not have been previously related, or dials back the scope to a degree that a larger network becomes the focus. I’ve been playing video games for a “reasonable” amount of time, thinking I’ve seen everything the industry has to throw at me, every trick in the book. But I came across an idea that blew my mind.
The actual video I watched is negligible, since I slogged through about 10 minutes of fluff to get to the good stuff, but the idea stays the same. Millions of people play some type of game, whether it is an online community-driven game, or a squad-based shooter; some play character-statistic RPGs, or various portable hand-helds. There are arcade shooters and fighting games, Bejeweled-esque puzzle games on every platform. The elderly are even known to get down with some Wii-Bowling, keep their facilities honed with portable games, or just play some good old-fashioned Crosswords, newspaper Jumbles, and Sudoku.
What if Grandma’s “11 across” on her crossword puzzle gave a boost to little Jimmy’s turbo-rocket-spacemarine’s flight ability on his PS3? What if your friend’s Farmville haybale collection provided you with some raw ingredient on your Non-Facebook Alchemy recipe or a rare ingredient to upgrading your armor in a completely separate game? What if someone’s ultimate combo in Bejeweled, the screen awash in casino-style sounds and color flashes, increased the chances of a rare-drop in an MMORPG?
The concept has been used before though on a more coherent structure. I’ve seen this mechanic implemented in all manner of Facebook games, and even a semblance of such in real-time strategies where individual battles affect territories owned by the various factions, thus placing more importance on your victory/failure. I love when these innovations are implemented, but the brand-new idea to me is cross-game and even cross-genre integration.
EVE Online is infamous for its ruthless lawlessness and corporate space-pirating. In this massive multiplayer space-sim, you can apparently be robbed, deceived, and screwed over in more ways than you’d think, and all is done so safely within the confines of the coding. Alliances are made, the stars are charted, and large corporations fight for dominance among planets far and wide. With this in mind, developer CCP Games has created a new game to inject into the foray. But as opposed to an MMORPG space sim, it is a FPS squad shooter. The innovation? The two very different games are linked. The territories squabbled for actually impact the other games! This encourages teamwork (and in-fighting) on an ever-increasing scale! I’m not patient or emotionally suicidal enough to play the original EVE, but I might join a strike force and fight planetside to impact my chosen affiliations throughout the very real and living galaxy.
In the past, the majority of developers had a very cut-and-run mentality: crank out a game, if it’s unsuccessful they’ll drop it, but if it catches on they’ll churn up a series of sequels that span all platforms until the cow runs dry. Even more recently, developers have (almost ad nauseum) released DownLoadable-Content that both infuriate the gamer communities and also add fresh “stuff” to a game that would have normally been abandoned in light of the next big thing. Whether or not DLC is being used effectively (the launch-date releases and on-disk content *ahem*), it signifies an extended relationship between a developer and their game. Which in my opinion is good. “Meta gaming” in this manner may fight the cut-and-run mentality and force the developers to improve upon their content with patches and additions instead of selling a brand new incarnation at full price but with a handful of new features (read as: textures).
The Grandma Crossword, World of Warcraft, and Bejeweled examples are all ecclectic, admittedly, but something can be done with this concept. Games can be further developed and improved upon, rather than scrapped and then improved upon in a full-price version. The games can be connected in crazy and fun ways, bringing folks who normally wouldn’t go on a WOW Raid together into a gaming experience that is both unique and unifying. I’m not delusional enough to think that this is in any way “quality time” spent together, one person casually playing their hand-held digital version of Sudoku on a bench across town while another person is sitting for the eighth hour straight on a gaming marathon…. but it’s something. People are going to play their own games regardless so they might as well be linked in some digital method outside of spamming obnoxious alerts about in-game accomplishments.
Should this idea be pursued it will undoubtedly be done in almost random and arbitrary ways, sure, but better minds than my own can sleek it up and make it both relevant and enjoyable. The cookie-cutter gaming experience is a thing of the past anyways, what with the complexity of modern games, the choices, the DLC, the dialogue options, the varying amounts of play from person to person, multiple endings, and multiple party members. If the experience is going to wildly vary as much as it has, why not throw in some arbitrary bonuses to have a grandson congratulate his grandmother on a harsh bit of trivia she solved? This is a social gaming connection outlet for people who don’t like or are not cut out for the illustrious “internet experience” and all that entails. With this idea, the bond between various types of games, their developers, consumers, and each other is strengthened on all accounts.
And ten minutes after this concept’s implementation, Korean gamers will of course master the system, chain the effect for max efficiency, and then write a wiki about how they continue to kick everyone’s asses.