NAB
You may not have heard of Elden Ring, but it’s
already one of the most popular video games in recent times, and some believe
it holds clues to how communication within the metaverse might look.
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The game launched late February and has sold more than 12
million copies, making it a massive hit for Japanese developer FromSoftware.
Elden Ring is an open-world game, a genre in which a
player can explore a virtual world and reach objectives with significantly more
freedom than linear games with a more structured gameplay.
ArtsTechnica reckons it has sold faster than other
open-world hits like Grand Theft Auto IV, Skyrim, The Witcher 3,
or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, matching pace with
mega-hit Grand Theft Auto V, which sold roughly 29 million copies
in six weeks following its 2014 launch. That game went on to sell 160 million
copies across multiple hardware generations.
Reviewers seem in awe of the game’s visuals, which TechCrunch’s Taylor
Hatmaker describes as “beautiful, expansive and grand,” and The
Guardian calls “extraordinarily beautiful,” even while they remain divided
about the ease of its gameplay.
The Guardian’s reviewer, Keith Stuart, in particular
calls its user interface design “horrible to interact with — it’s just so bad,”
and goes on to add, “The thing is, I’ll be moaning about it after 500 hours and
1,000 hours, but I’ll still be playing. Because it is wonderful. What does that
tell us about art and rules? Nothing easy, that’s for sure.”
This is important because game design is going to be key to
the way many more of us interact with the virtual world of the 3D internet. And
when we interact the virtual worlds in the metaverse we’re also going to need
to communicate with each other, perhaps even across different virtual worlds.
Mark Zuckerberg’s purchase of Oculus was always intended to
hook the social media connections of Facebook with the immersivity of VR. No
one, not even Meta, has cracked this yet, but the makers of Elden Ring might
have stumbled onto the solution.
“I’m talking about the low-key genius of From Software
developing an asynchronous communications system in its games, which I think
could be revolutionary outside of games,” writes Will Greenwald for PC
Mag.
Elden Ring doesn’t have simple one-to-one
cooperative or competitive modes, nor can you communicate directly with other
players, but Greenwald thinks Elden Ring is “absolutely saturated in
communication between players, filtered and organized in brilliant ways.”
Even The Guardian, which can’t quite make up its mind
if the game is any good or not, says that “the metagame — the stuff that goes
on around the actual on-screen action — is as important as the game itself.”
So what do they mean? Well, Elden Ring has
three core multiplayer features: called messages, ghosts, and summons. They
each work differently and, according to Greenwald, “make the game feel alive
and populated, and let people help each other.”
You can, for example, write a message that appears as a
glowing sign on the ground, which any other player can read if they’re nearby.
You can’t write just anything to other players, though. You
have to choose from a collection of templates and a limited glossary, to leave
a message like “Trap ahead!”
“This means messages can’t be personal or directly toxic or
threatening; they can only be helpful or playful. You can also pair the message
with a ‘ghost’ of your character performing a simple action in front of whoever
reads the message,” Greenwald notes.
The third multiplayer feature is summons which enables you
to seek help from other players if you’re stuck in part of the game. When
you’re summoned by another player, you’re transported to the area they’re in.
You can only communicate with that player through gestures, not words, and you
share a common goal to work toward. Those limitations, according to Greenwald,
keep toxicity and trolling to a minimum and encourage cooperation.
Could these multiplayer features be adopted in the real
world using AR on a smartphone or headset?
“Now we have a framework that lets people communicate and
assist friends and strangers at their own pace, and doesn’t require everyone to
be around and online in the same virtual place at the same time to work.”
Greenwald speculates that the messaging feature could be
turned into an app enabling people to leave messages in AR for others to read
when they reach that spot. In return, other people’s messages will appear for
you when you’re near them, limited to cleverly arranged preset words and
phrases, and filtered so you don’t see hundreds of them around an active
location. Other people don’t need to be where you are right now, and you don’t
need to stick around for your tips to be seen by others.
“Yes, it’s a bit like Yelp mixed with Pokémon Go, but
keeping messages simple and focusing on the augmented reality aspect of it
ensures that communication is both quick and useful.”
How about “ghosts?” Place motion-captured ghosts of people
at important locations, he suggests. Stores could show someone waving customers
inside, or a work crew could drop a caution figure pointing at a hard hat.
“Add a sense of livelihood and physical context to whatever
a sign is trying to say, conveying not vital information or replacing actual
markers, but providing additional information to users who want to use the
metaverse and are equipped to do it.”
A phone camera and a good video filter that can edit
surroundings out from around a person could let everyday users contribute their
ghosts, too. Combine the games’ ghost and message gesture concepts to drop
little floating clips of people pointing out something worthwhile.
As for the idea of “summons.” On the simplest level, people
could set “beacons” at locations if they want information directly from another
person.
“If other people have set their phone or headset to keep an
eye out for those beacons, they can come up and give directions to a train
station or suggestions for where to get the best ramen nearby.”
Commercially, “summoned” staffers could also provide
guidance. For example, there could be a virtual guide walking with you through
a museum (which is what we do now with recorded narration on special phones)
while you’re using a phone camera or headset.
“Let people control exactly how much interaction they want
with other people, like Elden Ring does,” says Greenwald. “These
concepts are already present in some apps and social networks to some extent,
but implementing the limited structure and adding the AR aspects of Elden
Ring might make those ideas much more engaging while keeping
interactions quick, immersive, and only when desired.”
Designing the social networking component of the metaverse
in AR would also be less intrusive and frustrating than requiring simultaneous
virtual reality headset use to do things that are already easier and more fun
to do outside of VR.
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