z is for Zeitgeist
A language designer’s thoughts on hypermedia’s ability to influence language design:
I have always been fascinated by videogames, not so much for their narrative or competitive elements, but for the way they let you discover mysterious alternative worlds that operated according to their own rules. In a way both hypermedia and multimedia can be seen as subsets of gameworlds: whether you are stepping through apertures in Portal that link you to spatially unconnected locations, or are just writing your name on a wall with the bullet-holes made by your machine gun in Halo - indeed, its Forge is a collaborative hyper-multimedia authoring environment (for that too lets you create linked teleports). The success of Minecraft and Little Big Planet prove that consumers welcome the responsibilities of creation and don’t somehow see it as an onerous task, nor do publishers seem to fear giving players tools that converge with the capabilities of their own in-house middleware - one might assume that they would jealously guard the goose that laid the golden eggs and mint new levels as a precious revenue stream of optionally Downloadable Content yet that thankfully isn’t the case.
That said, even when something as capable as the CryEngine middleware is made available for modders:
Sandbox 2 - Making a cave
I do wonder about the tool’s accessibility. Both Halo’s Forge and Little Big Planet’s editor keep you largely inside an active gameworld which you then modify around you. The menus you encounter are unobtrusive, their settings are not unfathomably complex. Whilst I applaud Crytek’s gift of such powerful tools I suspect the amount of work involved in creating your own level is so high that their next game’s sales aren’t at risk due to a community’s appetite sated by a glut of high quality content.
