Single-player gaming is all very well, but doesn’t seem to have nearly the life-crushingly addictive capacity that even the most broken and half-arsed MMO does on me. I’ve no idea why, but suspect it’s half something to do with my own withered psyche, and half something to do with the basic fundamentals of current MMO design, which lends itself to very short repetitive tasks conducted with a framework of extremely long-term progress. And no Save Games.

All this means that while many of my offline games are indeed very good, and enjoyable, I still have trouble putting in the same level of sheer graft as any typical night in WoW, or similar. So I’ve started borrowing DVDs of entire ‘Seasons’ of TV Sci from a friend whom I regularly ridicule for buying and owning said shows, and trying to break myself that way, and despite my default preconception of pretentious high-brow ‘Bah!’, some of that stuff is actually pretty good.

Latest loan was Firefly, the Space Cowboy Romp by Joss Whedon, and much like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, once I’d given it a try, I turned out that I actually really enjoyed it, but hate myself for it. I think I get put off by the concepts, which look really bad on the paper of my imagination, and end up having to grudgingly admit that in reality, it’s all in the execution.

Anyway, this isn’t a TV Review blog, so back to the point, which was that there needs to be an MMO about Cowboys, and isn’t. Indeed, going from the MMORPG.com list of MMOs, the most comprehensive list I can find, there isn’t an MMO about much at all really.

  • Total Titles Listed: 160
  • Titles listed as ‘Fantasy’: 113 (70%)
  • Titles listed as ‘Sci-Fi’: 32 (20%)
  • Titles Listed as anything else: 15 (10%)

Obviously definitions of what ‘Fantasy’ vary slightly, but come on people, are we not bored of Tolkien yet? The ‘Historical’ line-up consists of seven titles; ten thousand years of human civilisation, and we can only come up with seven games? Two of them aren’t even out yet!

History can be fun too – hell, it needn’t be that accurate, or even real. Imperator is about a future history in which Rome never fell. That sounds interesting. Top marks for originality, but alas, it’s to be postponed until summer next year. Pirates of the Burning Sea looks to be novel as well, based in the 16th century Carribean. I’m not sure how the mechanics of tall-ship sailing can be made to be an intense and fun gaming experience, but at least they’re trying something different.

Brave attempts are being made into the Future; one of Neocron 2's big advertising angles is ‘No Elves here!’, and Anarchy Online has been offering a solid alternative for ages, but they’re nowhere near as popular as the usual, and extremely safe, Psuedo-Medieval Hero Online that bulks up most of the list. In turn, this poularity ensures that putting anything other than Goblins and Magic Missiles in an MMO becomes a dangerous and risky gamble.

Where is the Victoriana? The Thirties Detectives and Gangsters? The Gothic? The South Sea Island Tribes? The Mounted Hordes? The Ninjas and Samurai? History is littered with fascinating epochs and lavish playgrounds – why not use some of them?

Where are all the Cowboys?