Massively Multiplayer: Gaming In The New Millennium

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HP say hi...heck i'm old remind the bad ramna and gundam wing fics in both english and spanish...and sailor moon too..

Maybe the first internet original fandom...but i think homestar runner beat it too.
Star Trek and Star Wars would also like to raise their hands.
 
And Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galatica is waiting behind them.
B5 came after the others, the debate was "oldest mass fandom".
And with all-due-respect, BSG Classic was more of a cult hit than a mass fandom.
I would add Doctor Who to the list though, because although it wasn't until the internet age that became popular worldwide, it was bigger in Britain than Trek was in the States for a long while, and pre-dates Trek by a full year.
 
Winter 2009 (Part 6) - Throw Open The Gate
Gate

Gate is a shooter/RPG hybrid developed by Criterion Games and published by Electronic Arts. Its gameplay can best be described as being similar to games like OTL's Mass Effect and the later Deus Ex games, but with more action-packed combat and a somewhat smaller scale. It takes place in the late 21st century in the future United States. Earth's technology has vastly progressed in the last 75 years, and the most revolutionary invention of all has been the creation of personal teleportation devices that can teleport a human being from one place to another. This technology has had incredible applications for personal transportation but has also come with a massive amount of ethical and logistical concerns, and addressing those concerns becomes the dominant question of the current political landscape. In addition, a saboteur has found a way to interfere with the technology. Catching the saboteur becomes the responsibility of Portland, Oregon detective Raymond Holmes (his last name a deliberate reference to Sherlock Holmes, though he acts very little like the character he's named after). Holmes must not only find the saboteur, but also deal with the changes in the world that the new teleportation technology has caused. Holmes is able to utilize the technology himself, and is able to fast transport all over the city of Portland, between various way stations that have been erected as conduits for the teleportation devices. He also has the limited ability to teleport short distances, though this ability is restricted in certain places. Beyond that, Holmes has a fairly standard action hero skillset: he can shoot guns and use melee attacks, he can sneak, duck, roll, jump, and essentially perform all of the feats that a well trained, athletic police officer can. He does have some slight genetic enhancements that let him do a bit more, but nothing on the level of, say, Adam Jensen from OTL's Deus Ex. Essentially, the player is asked to master the game's teleportation systems while leveling up Holmes' shooting abilities. The player can purchase or find stronger weapons or body armor to use, though the buffs provided by these new weapons and armor are somewhat limited compared to what they might be in other games. The player is also asked to find and talk to various people and elicit different responses from them, testing the player's detective skills and their ability to think logically. There's more than one way to approach a case in this game, which adds a degree of strategy to the various missions that can be undertaken. Side missions can also be taken, which will help Holmes' reputation with different people and groups that might make it easier to interrogate people later on, or even get someone to help him during key battles. As an Electronic Arts title, and a tentpole one at that, Gate had a large production budget, making it one of the most graphically gorgeous titles of the seventh generation thus far. The city of Portland is shown both in the daytime and at night, and looks absolutely beautiful, with animated signs lit up at night and great weather effects during the day. The cast consists mostly of unknowns, including the voice actor for Raymond Holmes. Greta Lorenza, a major character in the game, is voiced by Laura Bailey, but that's the most well known name in the voice cast.

Gate begins with a fairly simple mission in which Holmes must take down a robber who has been using his teleportation device to commit crimes, introducing the player to the game's teleportation mechanic and giving them a decent run through a fair portion of the city. After this intro mission, Holmes is contacted by his superiors, who tell him that Phytek Corporation (the creators of the teleportation devices) have asked for him by name. When Holmes arrives, he is met by a beautiful woman, Greta Lorenza, who believes that someone working for Phytek has found a way to hack the Gate technology, and is able to use it to abduct people to an unknown location. Numerous people who recently acquired Gate devices have disappeared and have gone off the grid, meaning that they can't be tracked. Holmes is given a promising lead to the location of one of the missing people, and follows these breadcrumbs to a homeless camp, where the person who disappeared is said to have lived. None of the homeless people living there can afford a Gate device, and Holmes initially believes that the person stole one, but then learns that the person, a young woman named Sandrine, is said to have been having regular conversations with a man named Noah Credding, a man who used to work for Phytek until he too disappeared soon after being fired from the company. By this time, Holmes is being pursued by members of a criminal gang known as the Derezzers, who all have Gate devices and rudimentary hacking abilities. The Derezzers and their leader, a hacker who goes by the nickname Scrapheap, are major antagonists during the first two-thirds of the game, and Scrapheap himself has a connection to Noah. Holmes learns more and more about Noah as he evades the derezzers and continues to pursue missing people throughout the city. Finally, two of the missing people are found: an old man who is found in a deranged state, and Noah himself, who is found comatose in an alley. The old man claims to have seen God, and is generally considered an unreliable witness, while Noah awakens with little memories apart from certain aspects of his career at Phytek. Through conversations with Noah (and also with Greta, who by now is a regular confidant to Holmes), Holmes gleans lots of information about the inner workings of Phytek and the state of society in general since the Gate technology was invented. Holmes is then clued into a third missing person being found: Sandrine, who was found trapped in a building, lucid but extremely disturbed, and claiming that her device took her to some kind of factory where she was forced to work endlessly, and that she saw thousands of other people there and that she was subjected to advanced brainwashing techniques. Her words match up with what the supposedly "deranged" old man was saying, and that the one the old man called "God" must be responsible for the disappearances. Noah claims to know nothing about anything that happened, and when Sandrine sees him, she sobs in his arms, treating him like a trusted friend. All the evidence points to someone at Phytek being responsible for hacking the Gate system to teleport users to a secret prison, and that Phytek is testing it on people who supposedly won't be missed, such as vagrants and criminals. Holmes starts to suspect Greta, who knows an incredible amount about the technology. Just when Holmes is getting ready to confront Greta, he too is taken by the technology, and ends up disoriented in a surreal hidden factory, where he must resist brainwashing and interrogation before being forced to work. Holmes spots an ex-Derezzer in the prison, and also spots a missing Phytek worker, but neither of them give any useful information. The player must break Holmes out of this strange prison and glean information on the figure referred to as God, who speaks in an androgynous, almost inhuman voice and gives commands to both subordinates and prisoners. When Holmes finally escapes, he goes again to confront Greta, but she's missing and Phytek's offices are being raided by the federal authorities. Holmes learns that the old man is dead and that Sandrine is missing again, but that Noah is relieved to see him. After a mission in which Holmes finally takes down Scrapheap, who gives up some key information about the prison factory and the fact that the Derezzers were helping to scout disappearance victims, he stops suspecting Greta and starts suspecting Noah, and his suspicions grow even more when Sandrine attempts to kill him. Holmes fatally wounds Sandrine, who comes to her senses and whispers Greta's name before dying. Holmes believes that Greta was trying to warn him about Noah before he disappeared and that instead of going after her he should have gone after Noah. He blames himself for Greta's death, but soon after is relieved to learn that she's alive, after she uses the Gate technology to "capture" him. When Holmes reveals to Greta his suspicions about Noah, she is shocked to learn this because the two of them used to be lovers and that they shared ideas with each other before having a falling out over ethics concerns with the technology. Holmes believes that Noah burned Phytek in order to clear all suspicion from himself before making his move, which would be mass abductions and enslavement of everyone with a Gate device: which, after a major product launch in a few days, will be over two billion people. Holmes and Greta race to stop Noah before he can activate his plan, but he's one step ahead of them, sending brainwashed assassins to kill them. Fortunately, Greta has access to the Gate device's root controls, unlocking more teleportation capabilities for herself and Holmes and enabling them to stay one step ahead of their pursuers. Eventually, the two confront Noah himself, but he's able to hack into Greta's Gate device and teleport her into the vacuum of space. He attempts to do the same with Holmes, but Holmes counters the hack and locks his device so it can't be hacked into. Noah reveals his purpose for hacking the Gate devices: he claims that people are already slaves to technology, and that he will simply redirect that energy to serve a greater purpose: him. Then, Holmes and Noah battle it out in a fight that combines teleportation with gunplay. Holmes kills Noah and tries to use his device to get into space and save Greta, but since Holmes can't pinpoint her location, he's unable to save her. Instead, he uses the Gate's master control to disable all Gate devices, destroying the technology for good: taking away a revolutionary invention, but preventing catastrophic misuse. He knows he may have done the wrong thing, but he states that the potential consequences of not doing anything are far worse. There IS a secret ending in which Holmes doesn't destroy the Gate technology, but requires the player complete three fairly well hidden side missions in order to access it. In the end, the world is changed, though it's ambiguous whether or not destroying the technology was the right decision. In a post-credits scene, Greta has managed to find her way onto an abandoned space station. She's alone and it seems like she'll starve to death in deep space, but her Gate device still has some power left, and it's left ambiguous whether or not she's able to get back.

Gate is released on March 3, 2009, for the Nintendo Sapphire, Microsoft Xbox 2, and Apple iTwin. The game is one of the most hyped titles of the first quarter of 2009 (arguably the most hyped multiplatform game, with only Gran Turismo 4 for the Sapphire being hyped more overall). It gets strong review scores from critics, solidly mid 8s with some 5-7 scores on the lower end and a few 9s and 10s from especially enthusiastic reviewers. The game is considered groundbreaking from a graphical perspective, with excellent combat utilizing the teleportation mechanic to great effect. It also gets praised for its storyline, which explores modern technological ethics (a lot of reviewers see parallels between the Gate teleportation technology and the rise of smartphones during the late 2000s, with some of them saying that the writers of Gate were making a clear parallel). The game is criticized somewhat for its fairly repetitive missions, which usually take the "go here, kill this guy" format and its limited customization and actual role-playing for the main character, who is seen as being fairly bland (numerous Phytek employees are seen as being more interesting, with main heroine Greta and villain Noah being especially praised). The game draws a lot of comparisons to Selene, though in that game the player has a lot more choice about how the game's missions and story turn out. Overall, Gate is seen as being a great achievement from a technical standpoint but being somewhat flawed thematically. Sales are excellent, among the best for games released in the first quarter of 2009, and first week sales for the three versions of the game combined come out slightly ahead of first week sales for the Sapphire exclusive Gran Turismo 4. The game is considered a success, though not QUITE a blockbuster level one for Electronic Arts, which hopes that a sequel will perform even better. Gate performs best on the Nintendo Sapphire, with sales lagging on the iTwin and REALLY lagging on the Xbox 2, being overshadowed by the release of Techno Angel: Immortal in that same month.
 
Sapphire has Wave hardware built into it and can play all Wave games (and Ultra Nintendo and SNES-CD games for that matter)

Xbox 2 can play all Xbox games.

iTwin can't play any previous gen games natively but has a slew of Katana/Saturn/Genesis games available on the iTunes Store at reasonable prices.

Hmmm... I wonder how the hardware handles all that backwards compatibility, considering the OTL PS3 had dropped PS2 compatibility over time and PS1 was emulation. And then you get the PS4, where there's no backwards compatibility at all. At some point things have to switch to some form of emulation as they have to balance between cost, power, and functionality. Are they still using some exotic architectures for their CPU/GPUs?
 
Sales are excellent, among the best for games released in the first quarter of 2009, and first week sales for the three versions of the game combined come out slightly ahead of first week sales for the Sapphire exclusive Gran Turismo 4. The game is considered a success, though not QUITE a blockbuster level one for Electronic Arts, which hopes that a sequel will perform even better.

The trend of EA expecting everything to make them billions starts.
 
I remember OTL EA were considered the "good guys" at least compared to Activision around this time. I wonder what if would take to maintain that minimal goodwill.
 
Yeah I remember Activision cancelling several games one of which they did supposedly due to they couldn't figure out a way to make it into a series.
 
I don't remember EA being the good guys ITTL, they just weren't the worst guys. Their reputation did improve from 2008-2010 in all fairness, but it plummeted once Dragon Age 2 came out and never recovered.
 
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In OTL News, Detective Pikachu, the first live-action Pokémon film, has its first trailer:

The question is, how will Sony attempt to take Pokémon in a direction like this ITTL?
 
Hmmm... I wonder how the hardware handles all that backwards compatibility, considering the OTL PS3 had dropped PS2 compatibility over time and PS1 was emulation. And then you get the PS4, where there's no backwards compatibility at all. At some point things have to switch to some form of emulation as they have to balance between cost, power, and functionality. Are they still using some exotic architectures for their CPU/GPUs?

The iTwin has already switched over, largely because Apple didn't want to mess with all the hardware emulation hassle and because they wanted to start fresh for the iTwin.

Nintendo and Sony have been slowly building upon the SNES-CD hardware model with their consoles. They've taken lengths to make legacy software compatible with the new hardware, largely at Kutaragi's urging. It was tough to build the Wave hardware into the Sapphire without driving cost up too much but not as difficult as it was to build PS2 hardware into the early PS3. They MAY finally abandon backward compatibility with the seventh gen console, but we'll see.

Xbox 2 and OTL Xbox 360 are quite similar, so the backwards compatibility is about the same as OTL.

The trend of EA expecting everything to make them billions starts.

Yeah, that's always been a part of EA. Gate was made with franchise plans from the very start.

And you let them sink their claws into the Fallout franchise.

Yeah.... We'll see how that turns out!

In OTL News, Detective Pikachu, the first live-action Pokémon film, has its first trailer:

The question is, how will Sony attempt to take Pokémon in a direction like this ITTL?

Hmm... Sony would definitely be likely to do a Pokemon movie at some point. They might play it more straight though.
 
I don't remember EA being the good guys this time, they just weren't the worst guys. Their reputation did improve from 2008-2010 in all fairness, but it plummeted once Dragon Age 2 came out and never recovered.

Good guys was in quotes. ;) But yeah I wonder what it would take for them to maintain and further improve that reputation.
 
In OTL News, Detective Pikachu, the first live-action Pokémon film, has its first trailer:

The question is, how will Sony attempt to take Pokémon in a direction like this ITTL?
.....I....have mixed feelings about this...
...Honestly...I don't know how to feel about this.....
I am kinda confused about "everyone really only here's them say their name" even in-universe...
...I kinda always felt like people (or at least trainers) could understand them...kinda like how in Star Wars people just understand what astromech droids say...

Stan Lee's dead.
Wait...what?!!?
....
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
 
...I....have mixed feelings about this...
...Honestly...I don't know how to feel about this.....
I am kinda confused about "everyone really only here's them say their name" even in-universe...
...I kinda always felt like people (or at least trainers) could understand them...kinda like how in Star Wars people just understand what astromech droids say...
I'm more off with the looks of the pokemon, dunno they should have goes full anime skin rather that subrealistic fur, skin and scales with them, the looks is a little uncanny, the pokemon speak is a side effect of the anime and is tolerable but yeah natural sounds or animal grows always works better with them(see pokemon the origin or black and white 2 promotional video)
 
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