JOHN THE OBSCURE ™
By John Ruch
© 2007
From “MLB 2K7” to MMORPG: The First Pitch in
a Whole New Ball (Make That Video) Game
Two or
three years ago, I saw a press-conference photo of Curt Schilling, the Boston
Red Sox pitching great, wearing an “EverQuest”
baseball cap.
It struck
me as extremely significant that a famous Republican jock was clad in merch for a nerd-subculture online fantasy game. I
suggested to an editor at the paper that ran the photo that it was worth asking
Schilling about. I was literally laughed off the idea.
Since then,
I’ve kept a wrinkled Post-it Note in my story-idea file reading “Schilling—EverQuest.”
Schilling
himself has been a lot busier. He came out as a nerd and full-blown fantasy
gamer in various gaming magazines. (And actually already was known in some
circles as a major supporter of tabletop wargaming.)
Last summer, he set up a charity stunt where fans could battle his “EverQuest II” avatar online; he donated 5 g.p., er,
dollars to ALS
research for every time his ass was virtually kicked.
Over the
past few months, he’s established a new video game production
company—Massachusetts-based 38 Studios.1
Virtually
unrecognized by local media and particularly the myopic sportswriters who
surround Schilling (and who tend to loathe his personal blog
where he refers to gaming), this is in fact a
watershed moment in video game art and culture.
And I don’t
mean so much 38 Studios’ unnamed forthcoming MMORPG—though the founding team
certainly is promising, featuring a former Dungeons & Dragons executive and
R.A. Salvatore, the premiere D&D adventure author.
The really
big deal is someone of Schilling’s stature, demographic and financial resources
just completely nerding out.
This must
be the first time that someone who is already himself a video game character
(in the “MLB 2K” baseball series) has started a video game company.
If you want
to be pessimistic, this could be the beginning of RPGs
falling into the hands of the jocks, much as happened so fatally with punk
rock. A white, conservative, born-again, early-40s sports dude—you gotta admit, he looks like the
poster boy for 1980s anti-RPG witch-hunting.
I see
exactly the opposite—a chance for gamers to start recognizing, and
contemplating, the differences and complexities already (and increasingly)
among them.
In fact,
Schilling raises all sorts of new and interesting issues in the already
under-examined realm of the psychological experience of gaming. What’s it like
to be someone who already plays a competitive game for a living, then enters a
competitive virtual game? Or to be a celebrity in a public
yet pseudonymous online gameworld? So many pro
athletes enjoy sports video games; what draws him to the more unusual realm of RPGs? (Schilling was unavailable for an interview,
according to a spokesperson.)
Certainly
nothing’s going to be the same again in post-Schilling video gaming, and my
sense is that’s a positive, if yet-undefined, thing.
Maybe
Schilling comes in and makes a huge splash with a terrific game, and/or uses
his clout to rescue from obscurity the outstanding work of others. Or maybe
he’s just an unmistakable bellwether of a demographic expansion where online
and multiplayer games like “EverQuest” and “World of Warcraft” are becoming standard modes of socializing among
older suburbanites—even between mothers and daughters, as I’ve learned from
players I recently met.
Either way,
Schilling is throwing the first pitch in a whole new video game.
1 Its site is already worth
checking out for its cursor-eating Green Monster animation. (The company was
started as Green Monster Games, a great moniker that apparently led to some Red
Sox intellectual property bickering.)
Posted