Gaming.

Spil, hardware og e-sport.

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'It Was Critical' — Street Fighter 6 Producer Reveals How He Saved Capcom’s Iconic Fighting Game Franchise From ‘Dying’ Street Fighter 6-producer Shuhei Matsumoto fortæller, at Capcom under Street Fighter V vurderede, at serien risikerede at forsvinde inden for et årti. Udviklerne valgte derfor at gentænke spillet fra bunden med fokus på nye og yngre spillere, blandt andet gennem Modern Controls og mere tilgængelige spiltyper. Strategien har ifølge Capcom bidraget til, at Street Fighter 6 har solgt over syv millioner eksemplarer.

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Ben Affleck's New Movie Takes Inspiration from Fortnite Skins, Says He Gets Into Fights With Kids on the Game Ben Affleck fortæller, at han spiller blandt andet Fortnite, Madden, 2K og Valorant, men jævnligt bliver udfordret af yngre spillere i onlinekampe. Skuespilleren hentede inspiration fra Fortnites skins til kostumerne i sin kommende Netflix-thriller Animals, blandt andet en figur med en lodden kaninmaske. Affleck har tidligere deltaget i Valorant-arrangementer sammen med sin søn.

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'Continuous Process of Trial and Error' — Resident Evil Requiem Was Originally Planned as an Online Game, Producer Says Resident Evil Requiem var oprindeligt planlagt som et onlinespil, afslører producer Masachika Kawata i en ny fanbog om serien. Capcom opgav retningen efter undersøgelser viste dårlige resultater og valgte i stedet at prioritere spillets horror-elementer. Leon Kennedy var først tænkt som hovedperson, men udviklerne introducerede også Grace, fordi Leons stærke kampevner kunne gøre spillet for actionpræget.

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Razer opdaterer Basilisk Mus: Ny V4 Pro har 14 knapper og vejer 12 gram mindre - recordere.dk Razer har lanceret gamingmusen Basilisk V4 Pro med 14 programmerbare knapper, nyt scrollhjul og en vægt, der er 12 gram lavere end forgængeren. Den har en 50.000 DPI-sensor, op til 200 timers batteritid og understøtter både trådløs forbindelse, Bluetooth og kabel. Samtidig lanceres den billigere Basilisk V4 HyperSpeed samt ladestationen Mouse Dock V2 Pro.

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Forza Horizon 6 Announces 2027 Release Date for PS5 Release, Will Come Alongside First Expansion Forza Horizon 6 udkommer til PlayStation 5 den 26. januar 2027, bekræfter en ny trailer. Spillet lanceres samtidig med sin første større udvidelse, som endnu ikke er blevet nærmere beskrevet. Forudbestillinger giver blandt andet adgang til en Ferrari J50, mens Premium Edition også inkluderer fem dages tidlig adgang. Spillet blev oprindeligt lanceret til Xbox og PC i maj 2026.

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Final Fantasy VII Revelation Announces an NPC-ified, Non-Summoned Version of Shiva Voiced by Marisha Ray at New York Comic Con 2026 Final Fantasy VII Revelation får en ny version af Shiva kaldet Polydroid Shiva, som spilles af Critical Role-skuespilleren Marisha Ray. Figuren blev afsløret ved spillets panel på New York Comic Con og forbindes blandt andet med et snowboard-minispil sammen med Vincent Valentine. Spillet udkommer 8. april 2027, og instruktøren har tidligere sagt, at det kan tage over 100 timer at gennemføre for samlere.

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Paramount Is Working on a Live-Action Cyberpunk 2077 Movie Paramount Pictures er i gang med at udvikle en live-action-film baseret på Cyberpunk 2077. Lorenzo di Bonaventura og CD Projekt Red skal producere, men der er endnu ikke tilknyttet manuskriptforfatter, instruktør eller skuespillere. Det er uklart, om filmen bliver en direkte adaption af spillet eller fortæller en ny historie i Cyberpunk-universet.

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As PlayStation Pushes Ahead With Its Plan to Kill Physical Media, 35% of Marvel's Wolverine Sales Were on Disc Analysefirmaet Ampere vurderer, at Marvel’s Wolverine solgte 2,16 millioner eksemplarer i september, hvor 35 procent globalt blev købt på fysiske diske. I Europa udgjorde boxed-versionen 51 procent af salget, men andelen varierede betydeligt mellem landene. Tallene kommer samtidig med kritik af Sonys plan om at udfase produktionen af fysiske PlayStation-spil senest i 2028.

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Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Gets Yet Another New Guest Character Soon, as Tekken 8's Reina Is Teased SNK har teaset Reina fra Tekken 8 som den næste gæstekarakter i kampspillet Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. En kort trailer viser hende kun som en silhuet, og der er endnu ikke offentliggjort en udgivelsesdato. Reina føjer sig til spillets voksende gæstekarakterliste, der blandt andre tæller Chun-Li, Kenshiro og Cristiano Ronaldo.

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Best Buy Confirms Midnight Launch Event Openings for Ocarina of Time, With Limited Edition The Legend Zelda Switch 2 Consoles Also Up for Grabs Best Buy åbner udvalgte amerikanske butikker ved midnat den 5. november i forbindelse med lanceringen af The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time til Nintendo Switch 2. Forhandleren ventes samtidig at få et begrænset lager af Zelda 40th Anniversary-udgaven af Switch 2 samt matchende Pro-controllere. Det præcise antal enheder og de deltagende butikker er endnu ikke oplyst.

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GTA 6: Rockstar Releases Brand New Official Screenshots Showing Off Stunning Reflections Rockstar Games har offentliggjort tre nye skærmbilleder fra GTA 6 i forbindelse med en præsentation af spillets radiostationer. Billederne viser blandt andet tæt trafik, et biltræf og en natlig scene med neonbelyste refleksioner i vandpytter. Spillet udkommer på konsoller den 19. november 2026, men Rockstar har endnu ikke oplyst, hvilken konsol billederne er taget på eller spillets ydeevne.

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Try Unlimited Checklist Tracking on IGN’s Ocarina of Time Guides This October - IGN IGN tilbyder gratis, ubegrænset brug af sine tjeklister og guides til The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time fra 8. oktober til 5. november 2026. Materialet dækker blandt andet hovedhistorien, sideopgaver, bosser og samlegenstande. Artiklen beskriver også, hvordan spillet kan spilles via Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack eller på ældre Nintendo-konsoller.

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GTA 6 Radio Stations Officially Confirmed, Hosted by Celebrities Like Lana Del Rey and Morgan Wallen Rockstar Games har offentliggjort flere radiostationer, værter og sange fra GTA 6 via en ny hjemmeside. Udvalget spænder blandt andet over pop, country, afrikansk musik, metal og hiphop med bidrag fra kunstnere som Bad Bunny, Lana Del Rey og Black Sabbath. Spillere kan også lytte til radio og podcasts til fods gennem hovedtelefoner og en smartphone, når spillet udkommer 19. november til PlayStation 5 og Xbox Series X|S.

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‘It’s Difficult To Justify the Investment’ – How MMOs Have Become Niche, Despite Starting the World’s Obsession With Live-Service Games Artiklen gennemgår, hvordan MMORPG’er som Ultima Online, EverQuest og World of Warcraft lagde grunden til moderne live-service-spil. Genren skabte vedvarende virtuelle verdener med stærke fællesskaber, abonnementer og løbende indhold, men har siden mistet sin dominerende position til bredere live-service-formater. MMORPG’er findes stadig, men nye udgivelser er sjældnere, mens mange klassikere fortsætter på ældre teknologi.

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‘Enough Games Have Been Cancelled and Shut Down. That Betrayal Has Ramifications’ – As the Market Shows Signs of Decline, Is This the Beginning of the End for Live-Service? IGN undersøger, om live-service-modellen er på vej ind i en længerevarende nedtur. Mange projekter bliver aflyst eller lukket, mens flere store spil har mistet en betydelig del af deres spillere, og også battle royale- og free-to-play-markedet viser tilbagegang. Udviklere peger samtidig på, at spillernes tillid er svækket, fordi de frygter, at nye spil hurtigt bliver opgivet.

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‘It’s Almost Not Worth Being Number Two’ –Live-Service Has Turned Gaming Into a Bloody Battle Royale Where Losing Can Ruin Developers. This Is How It Happened Artiklen gennemgår, hvordan live-service-modellen og battle royale-genren voksede fra Minecraft-servere og mods til en milliardforretning domineret af PUBG og Fortnite. Den store økonomiske succes har udløst en overfyldt markedsplads, hvor mange spilprojekter hurtigt er lukket igen. Analysen undersøger samtidig, hvordan jagten på tilbagevendende indtægter kan begrænse kreativiteten i spilbranchen.

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No, I Have Not Seen Jason’s Penis in GTA 6 – but Does That Mean There’s No Junk, or Was It Just a Carefully Positioned Camera? IGN afviser, at journalisten har set Jason Duvals penis i en nøgenscene fra GTA 6. Hovedpersonen vises nøgen i et brusebad, men kameravinklerne skjuler hans kønsdele, så det er fortsat uklart, om spillet indeholder fuld frontal nøgenhed. En lækket PEGI-vurdering bekræfter dog, at spillet vil indeholde nøgenhed, seksuelle temaer og samlejescener.

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Bloom Toggles on Console and Larger Lighting Changes Land for The Witcher 3: Remastered After 'Washed Out' Complaints CD Projekt Red har udsendt patch 5.01 til The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered med større ændringer af spillets lys og billedbehandling. Konsolspillere kan nu slå bloom, lyssøjler og depth of field fra, mens opdateringen også indeholder forbedringer til tone mapping, karakterbelysning, ray tracing og ydeevne. En særskilt opdatering til Nintendo Switch 2 skal senere bringe versionen tættere på de øvrige platforme.

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Fans Issue GTA 6 Spoiler Warnings as 'Cyberleek' Returns With New 24-Minute Gameplay Video En person eller gruppe kendt som Cyberleek har offentliggjort en 24 minutter lang, uautoriseret gameplayvideo fra GTA 6. Videoen skulle indeholde historiedetaljer, scener med spillets hovedpersoner og en førstepersonsvisning under kørsel, hvilket har udløst nye spoileradvarsler blandt fans. Lækket kommer efter tidligere afsløringer, som fik Rockstar-ejeren Take-Two til at indlede en undersøgelse.

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Xbox Aims to Produce More Movies and TV Shows Through Its New XP Division Microsoft lancerer XP, en ny Xbox-division, der skal udvide spilfranchiser til film, tv, merchandise, partnerskaber og fysiske oplevelser. Divisionen ledes af Kayleen Walters, tidligere chef for Mojang, og skal arbejde sammen med eksterne producenter frem for selv at fungere som produktionsselskab. Xbox fremhæver blandt andet Minecraft- og Fallout-filmatiseringer samt kommende projekter baseret på Call of Duty og Diablo.

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Hellraiser: Revival Review IGN anmelder Hellraiser: Revival som et blodigt survival horror-spil med Pinhead og en historie inspireret af Clive Barkers univers. Anmeldelsen fremhæver solid skydning, begrænset ammunition og kreative telekinetiske kræfter gennem Genesis Configuration. Spillet kritiseres samtidig for tunge ekspositionssekvenser, gentagne jagter, ensformige fjender og bosskampe, der ikke fuldt ud lever op til den stærke visuelle og makabre overflade.

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'Let’s Pretend GTA 6 Is Coming Out Tomorrow' — The Australian Government Helps Workers Know Their Rights for Taking Time Off for GTA 6 Australiens arbejdsmarkedsmyndighed, Fair Work Ombudsman, har lavet en humoristisk grafik om mulighederne for at tage fri, når GTA 6 udkommer i november. Myndigheden forklarer, at ulønnet orlov kun gælder under bestemte omstændigheder, så spillet i sig selv giver ikke ret til fri. Medarbejdere kan dog forsøge at aftale fri med deres arbejdsgiver.

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Wizards of the Coast Confirms Rumors That It's Finally Reprinting Magic: The Gathering's Iconic Warhammer 40K Commander Decks Wizards of the Coast har bekræftet en mindre genoptrykserie af de fire populære Magic: The Gathering Commander-decks baseret på Warhammer 40K. Decksene, der oprindeligt udkom i 2022, har været dyre på brugtmarkedet, men bliver snart tilgængelige igen gennem distributører og butikker. Det er endnu uklart, om Collector’s Edition-versionerne også genoptrykkes, og hvad de nye priser bliver.

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'Vice City Is Unmistakably Miami' — CBS News Amazed by Accuracy of GTA 6 CBS News har undersøgt, hvor præcist GTA 6 genskaber Miami i spillets fiktive Vice City. Mere end 100 virkelige steder og landemærker skulle kunne genkendes, blandt andet South Beach, PortMiami, Wynwood og Everglades. Rapporten fremhæver også Rockstars detaljerede gengivelse af byens arkitektur, kultur og historie. GTA 6 er planlagt til udgivelse 19. november 2026 på PS5 og Xbox Series X/S.

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'It’s Obviously Not an Intended Part of the Game' — Wardogs Streamer Banned for Exploiting the Game's Building Mechanics to Get Rich Wardogs-streameren KatieRouu er blevet bannet efter at have udnyttet spillets byggesystem til at opbygge store mængder valuta sammen med andre spillere. Gruppen lod fjender overtage baser og beskød dem derefter med morterer for at tjene penge uden at bidrage til holdets krigsindsats. Udvikleren Bulkhead fastholder, at der var tale om bevidst misbrug af en exploit, som nu er rettet i sæson 2.

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‘It’s Difficult To Justify the Investment’ – How MMOs Have Become Niche, Despite Starting the World’s Obsession With Live-Service Games

Artiklen gennemgår, hvordan MMORPG’er som Ultima Online, EverQuest og World of Warcraft lagde grunden til moderne live-service-spil. Genren skabte vedvarende virtuelle verdener med stærke fællesskaber, abonnementer og løbende indhold, men har siden mistet sin dominerende position til bredere live-service-formater. MMORPG’er findes stadig, men nye udgivelser er sjældnere, mens mange klassikere fortsætter på ældre teknologi.

Fra IGN

Whatever happened to the MMORPG? In the early 2000s, the likes of World of Warcraft, RuneScape, and EverQuest dominated cyberspace, their worlds host to millions of players questing and raiding together. Today, Roblox’s titanic 123 million daily player count dwarfs the combined historical peak of this trio and many other genre stablemates of the time.

That’s not to say the MMORPG is dead. A brand new one, Aion 2, launched just this week and quickly found itself on Steam’s Most Played list. The long-awaited Guild Wars 3 is on the horizon. And many of the genre’s pioneering games continue to run successfully, some even 25 years on from their inception. But that’s become the genre’s norm – ongoing projects built on ageing technology, rather than fresh new blood. The “live-service” game has taken its place, but that controversial industry trend has stolen the crown that the MMORPG forged.

The Past, Present, and Future of Live-Service

Live-service is one of the biggest issues in gaming. Is it a curse destined to destroy studios, or the key to the industry's survival? With expert insight from veteran developers, including Overwatch's Jeff Kaplan and Anthem's Mark Darrah, IGN exlores the long timeline of live-service games across three detailed articles. Combining interviews, analysis, and opinion, this is the past, present, and future of gaming's most divisive trend.

The 2000s: How MMORPGs Built (and Lost) the Live-Service Throne
The 2010s: How Live-Service Turned Gaming Into a Bloody Battle Royale
The 2020s: Is It the Beginning of the End for Live-Service Games?

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games were the first live-service games, long before the term had become common parlance. Both formats share a similar definition: at their core, they are online multiplayer games that are continually expanded, evolved, and developed beyond their initial launch, with that process often buffered by microtransactions or subscription models. The one key difference is that the modern live-service game can be anything from a tight 6v6 battle arena to a galaxy-spanning looter shooter. MMORPGs, meanwhile, typically take place in large fantasy or sci-fi open worlds, inspired by (or sometimes set in) the likes of Dungeons & Dragons or Star Wars, allowing players to act out long-imagined fantasies together.

Their replication of a world, with cities to visit and countries to travel across, means there’s an innate communal core to MMORPGs – like in reality, the game’s digital population becomes a community. It’s a notably different feeling compared to the communities of many modern live-service titles, like Apex Legends and Overwatch, which often focus on short, trigger-happy play cycles. People don’t admire Fortnite’s often rebranded islands in the same way they do World of Warcraft’s Nagrand or Stormwind. One is a battlefield, the other is home.

MMORPGs evolved from multi-user dungeons, or “MUDS”. Back in the early days of the internet, MUDs functioned like a virtual chatroom hinged around a fantastical adventure. They were D&D for your desktop instead of your tabletop. As entertaining as they were, multiplayer gaming took a huge step toward how we understand it today in 1997 when Ultima Online launched. It is the game from which the term ‘MMORPG’ came from, coined by Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima series. Directed by Starr Long, it was an ambitious spin-off from the mainline Ultima RPG series that gave players something brand-new: a world that could change whilst they weren’t playing.

“The idea you could play in a virtual world with thousands of other people was a pretty novel idea at the time”, Long tells me. “It was like, ‘Wow, I can play D&D with my friends without even needing to be in the same town.’”

The world we built and situations we set up made people bond together.

Ultima Online was one of the earliest pioneers of many aspects that are now baked into almost every live-service game, including monthly subscriptions and digital currency purchasable through brick-and-mortar retail stores. It became the first MMORPG to reach 100,000 subscribers and it did so within six months – an unexpected success which led to severe performance issues. Players responded by staging a digital protest in the castle grounds of Garriott’s in-game alter-ego, Lord British, over-indulging on consumables in order to fill the area with vomit.

“That was the turning point where we realized, while we are the game creators, this is the players’ world,” says Long. “We’re just facilitating it for them.”

The success of Ultima Online was analysed by many, including EverQuest co-creator Bill Trost. “The whole Ultima series was a big influence on me throughout high school,” he recalls. And in 1999, just two years after Ultima Online, Trost, alongside co-creators Steve Clover and Brad McQuaid, launched EverQuest. Its 3D game engine demonstrated just what an MMORPG world could be, and led to EverQuest’s immense popularity.

While EverQuest’s world looked significantly more advanced, Ultima Online’s success had taught Trost that the most important thing was the communal experience. “My world-building philosophy was to build a world with integrity, but don’t design it to death,” he explains. “The world we built and situations we set up made people bond together.”

Trost attributes EverQuest’s ongoing success to the team’s light touch, allowing players to make sense of the game themselves. It’s a sentiment echoed by Long: “We realized that running one of these games is more like running a government. Your people are your citizens,” he says.

These expansive communities changed people’s lives. It was in EverQuest where Jeff Kaplan first met Blizzard’s Vice President of Game Design, Rob Pardo, via the Legacy of Steel guild. That fateful meeting led to Kaplan joining the World of Warcraft team as a quest designer, a position from which he eventually rose to become game director.

Kaplan loved EverQuest, clocking up over 6,000 hours of play, but always felt like there could be more to the game. Joining the World of Warcraft team was his opportunity to make that “more” a reality. Blizzard needed something special because the competition was tough – it not only had to battle Ultima Online and EverQuest’s existing success, but stand up against the hype for EverQuest 2 and Star Wars: Galaxies, both of which were on the horizon when World of Warcraft launched in 2004.

We realized that running one of these games is more like running a government. Your people are your citizens

“Everyone said, ‘Who is this RTS company? Who do they think they are to make an MMO?,” Kaplan recalls. At the time, Blizzard was known solely as a strategy games developer, although its Diablo ARPG series, beloved for its online multiplayer, was perhaps the first sign that the studio would go on to make arguably the definitive MMORPG.

While Kaplan and his colleague, Pat Nagle, initially designed World of Warcraft’s quest system to match EverQuest, player test feedback told them one thing: the game needed way more quests. Of the many ways WoW revolutionized the modern MMORPG, creating a seemingly never-ending quest chain that propelled players through the world’s regions is perhaps the most important, setting the mold for quest systems moving forward. There are over 10,000 unique quests, and even the most hardcore players still find themselves challenged with new daily and weekly activities delivered by patches and expansions.

In the modern live-service landscape, World of Warcraft’s approach to questing is increasingly niche. The idea of the never-ending hobby game has drifted away from the concept of living a second life in another world alongside hundreds of players, finding new ground in the likes of competitive shooters – a genre with little need for narrative rigour and a sense of adventure. That has brought with it a shift away from vast troves of unique quests, with many games instead prioritizing lightning play sessions buffeted by the ingenious corporate creation of the ‘Battle Pass’. Games like Call of Duty and Apex Legends offer simple challenges like ‘eliminate four players’ or ‘get five knockdowns’ for short-term XP buffs, allowing players to make their infinite grind slightly shorter to get ever-closer to that mythical level 90 skin. For these games, narrative is now occasional lore drops, event-driven cutscenes, and seasonal set dressing.

But while live-service is now dominated by very different types of games, the MMORPG still remains. It’s a less stable genre than it once was – Amazon’s lavish New World launched in 2021 and will close for good next year – but a new Guild Wars is on the horizon, and Final Fantasy 14 has been a huge success for Square Enix. The three titans of the MMO’s golden age – Ultima Online, EverQuest, and World of Warcraft – all continue to run to this day. In that sense, they have proven the ultimate live-service games, generating revenue for multiple decades.

Why these three have survived far beyond the genre’s mid-2000s heyday is thanks to the three key tenets that Long, Trost, and Kaplan have all followed: learn from what came before and find gaps to innovate within; build an engaging world that intrigues players and makes them want to take ownership of it; and above all else, look to fulfil those clear wishes of gamers that haven’t yet been realised. As Kaplan mentions, you can’t create greatness out of a vacuum: “You have to take inspiration. You have to try and evolve the art form and move it forward in some way. It’s not about the idea. It’s about the execution.”

The trio’s legacies have come from constant communication not just with their playerbases, but with one another, too. They are a model for the ideal live-service game: living and breathing, open to change, headed by custodians who aren’t afraid to push things forward whilst acknowledging their contemporaries. So why, despite their servers remaining live and new content being developed, does it feel like these games have disappeared? Well, MMO developers have granted a lot of wishes since 1996. Perhaps there’s nothing left to wish for.

“Now we’re getting pretty niche, and it’s harder to fulfil [those wishes] for audiences. We’re seeing it across film and TV as well as games”, Long says.

The stakes required are now so high it becomes difficult to justify the investment.

Technology has rapidly evolved and expanded, and with it, the cost of investment. “The table stakes required to even be considered by the gaming public are now so high it becomes difficult to justify the investment it takes”, Trost believes. When even Amazon can’t make the MMORPG work, it’s easy to see why bringing a new one to life is such a challenge.

Even if you have the financial backing to launch your bold new MMO, the question remains: will your audience have the attention span to invest into it? “The market overall has moved to much, much shorter play cycles over the last two decades,” Long explains. The average playtime for World of Warcraft ranges from 10 to 20 hours per week, with each individual session typically demanding a few hours of questing. Raiding takes even more time. While this overall time commitment can easily be met by a shooter’s most ardent fans, particularly in the era of the battle pass grind, there is a notable difference between the way each genre makes demands of a player’s attention. The modern live-service game has taken the essential bones of the MMORPG – those massive populations playing together – but has shifted its core away from a long-term communal hub to a quick ‘jump in, jump out’ combat spree.

That transformation has impacted the way a game’s population develops. “The ubiquitous nature of community doesn’t feel confined to the game anymore - it’s fragmented out across all our social media”, Trost notes. In an MMORPG, the community exists within a shared world. They can meet in a particular city, quest together in a specific region. This sense of being a genuine population living together in a digital reality creates a very different community than those grown on a game’s sub-reddit. Deep, meaningful connections were formed in World of Warcraft through the many hours that players sunk into its world every week – many real-life couples and even marriages have formed from the time taken planning raids together. And while the same has surely happened as a result of a fateful lobby match-up, it’s hard to imagine many Fortnite players finding that same connection when each match takes place in a confined battlefield and lasts just 15 to 20 minutes.

This shift in how multiplayer communities are grown and fostered is just a small part of a much larger change. Gaming is like travelling to a new holiday destination: it transports you to incredible, unknown lands and allows you to play out transient fantasies of a different life. In the early 2000s, games were the destination; World of Warcraft, EverQuest, and Ultima Online all offered a centralized hub that was an immersive world to explore. In 2026, games are no longer the destination – they’ve become the airport. Call of Duty’s menu is a departure list made up of rowdy weekend getaways. Fortnite is a portal to thousands of unique, custom islands hosting events powered by charting musicians and massive brands. And Roblox not only offers a plethora of worlds-upon-worlds to explore, but has formed an alluring ecosystem where players can not only craft those worlds themselves, but also be paid to do it. Everything from Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty to Among Us and even Fortnite have been recreated in its virtual universe.

The Roblox community has evolved beyond players into mini development studios. These virtual worlds now belong to the players even more than the original developers themselves. During the era of the MMORPG, developers discovered that they were creating worlds for an autonomous population with wants and needs. Since then, player autonomy has rapidly evolved. It’s no longer about wondering when the next Warcraft expansion will come and continue the story. There’s a bustling embryonic mini gaming industry taking shape across these platforms, with a community that’s set to grow exponentially over the next five years. The real question, then, is can these platforms keep up? Because the era of live-service that came after MMORPGs suggests that’s a much, much harder task than simply designing a hit video game.

Next: How live-service turned gaming into a bloody battle royale.

Sab Astley is a freelance writer who has written for IGN, Polygon, TotalFilm, Rolling Stone, Radio Times, and Metro UK.

MMORPG Live-service World of Warcraft EverQuest Ultima Online Aion 2