Other Classics That Need to be MMOs
With the announcement of Ever, Jane–a Jane Austen-themed MMO game, where the weapons are gossip and the events are balls, I started thinking about what other classics should become their own online multiplayer games.
Watership Down by Richard Adams
So, we had Club Penguin when we were younger, but that shut down, so what is more 2017 than Club Rabbits Destroy Fascism and also find a homeland? Come on! There’s adventure, and relationship building, and you know-rabbit police states. You can decide if you want to be a Fiver (a seer, or a magic user), a Bigwig (the tank, clearly), or Hazel, the rogue. Who DOESN’T want to see this happen, I ask you.
Charles Dickens: Orphanworld.
Think about it. There’s an MMO of Victorian England, and your goal is to be the orphan that survives in the midst of a society that is actively rooting against you (oh man, shit just got real.) There’s several options to take: you can pursue marriage or apprenticeships and try to band together with other noble orphans in pursuit of a better life, or you can be one of the cadre of characters whose role is to manipulate the orphans and keep them down. Or, you could be a chaotic neutral character, and join an orphan thieving guild.
The Beautiful and the Damned of F. Scott Fitzgerald
This MMO is made up of really beautiful and really well-dressed people who make terrible decisions, and your goal is to survive and not die in a pool.
Frankenstein‘s Adventures
Its a world of monsters and scientists, where people push experiments as far as possible. Think kinda like Pokemon, where your goal is to create a train your very own monster. Hopefully you can find someone else who is making a creature compatible with yours, though, because if not-hoo boy, it can get rough.
1001 Nights
Just think about it. A world of folktales full of thieves and magic and diabolical villains? A world of storytellers and epic quests? WHY ISN’T THIS AN MMO ALREADY? Think of the loot! Like a lamp with a djinn that might ruin your life or maybe give you everything you ever wanted, if you phrase it right. I think graphics on this one would take a while, so uh, get cracking designers.
Tale of Genji
Think of the scenery here and the beautiful watercolor backdrops. You are in an aristocratic Japenese society, and you are trying to find romance while claiming political power. There’s lots of machinations and interpersonal drama in this one, and your alliances are of utmost importance.
The Russians
Every interface is so complex, and every tutorial so long and boring that no one actually plays this game. They just say they have.
There’s a lot more I considered adding here like: Wuthering Heights: Killing Heathcliff, where Heathcliff is kinda like a golden snitch you have to get first before he ruins everything, or The Odysseus Adventures–where you can fight or have sex with all manner of magical beasts, but maybe some things are better left to other people’s imaginations.
