What Does it Mean?
There is a big difference in how you determine what classifies as an MMOG depending on what you feel the acronym means. This is a bit of a problem. The main “argument” is it is either “Massive Multiplayer Online Game” or “Massively Multiplayer Online Game.” I’ll skip the lesson on grammar here and just move on to what the main difference is.
If we take the acronym to be the first of those two we find three distinct ways which we can mark what the game is. Massive. Multiplayer. Online. That way of looking at it is nice because it gives us a simple checklist of items which we can see if a game is all of those things or not. The problem is that it is incredibly flawed. What is massive? How is that defined? Is it in number of people who play the game? In that case games like Halo and Team Fortress are MMOGs. Those games fit all other parts of the equation, they are both multiplayer, and online, but are they massive? I would say so, but most people do not classify them as such? Why is that?
Usually it is because what they actually mean is the game is “Massively Multiplayer” the second of the two options. It is not about the size of the game, but rather the number of concurrent users occupying a space. Assuming we want to keep the same acronym to describe this group of games, and at this point it is probably a little bit late to change things, we need to start deciding what it means. The second options just makes more sense. It fits what actually needs to be said better. So, if you disagree (assuming, of course, you are okay with being wrong) then what should be done to determine what is or is not an MMOG? Or what acronym should we replace the whole thing with?
mmog, mmorpg, mmo gaming, mmo
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