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A Chronology of Domination

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A Chronology of Domination

Unread postby icycalm » 03 Jan 2020 21:46

What is the domination genre? It's my name for what others are calling "survival-crafting MMO". That label is inadequate for many reasons I'll be explaining in an upcoming essay, so I made my own. And since this is the best MP genre ever, and will remain so for the rest of time, I want to draw up a comprehensive chronology of it and make sure that I personally review every single game in it (which won't be that hard since this is an incredibly complex genre so very few studios try their hand at it, and the results are usually subpar, so it doesn't take long to figure this out). So without further ado, this is the list I drew up in ten minutes off the top of my head. I'll be keeping it updated, and you can let me know if I miss anything.

P.S. Star Citizen [ > ] is not domination from what I've heard of it so far. Both the building aspect and the PVP sound too limited to qualify. The entire world has to be buildable from scratch and fully destroyable, pretty much, plus there must be few to zero safe-from-PVP areas in it. It simply doesn't get any more hardcore than this genre, which is why it's the best MP genre ever, and I think my label perfectly reflects this. Of course, borderline titles also exist, like SCUM for example, so I'll be deciding on their inclusion on a case-by-case basis (SCUM started out with lots of crafting but little building, but the devs have been adding quite a bit of building since release, so the game sort of qualifies now).

As you can see from this first draft below, I've already reviewed a bunch of these games, and I have several installed and ready to go, so it won't be long before I've covered everything. And from then on I'll be jumping into every new title on release, so I can promise you that Insomnia will be the #1 resource for domination games from now on. It has always been so, ever since I fell in love with Rust, but I am now taking things to the next level.

P.P.S. One immediate benefit of the chronology is making me realize that Space Engineers was released a couple months before Rust. Obviously this means nothing in terms of inspiration because you can't develop a game like this in a couple of months, and also we can't take SE as having invented the genre because it's not an MMO, servers are tiny, and PVP is an afterthought not the focus. It's still mostly about building stuff in your own time, like Minecraft. It's proto-domination though, since all the elements are there, even if in embryonic form, so I think it warrants inclusion. And maybe someone can enlighten me if Minecraft should be included too? Is there PVP in it, and if so, at what point in the game's development was it added?


COMING SOON
TBA 2020
Starbase

May 2020
New World [ > ]

Q1 2020
Last Oasis [ > ]


2019
October
Stars End [ > ]

August
Lost Region [ > ]

March
Outlaws of the Old West [ > ]

January
Pantropy [ > ]
Heat [ > ]


2018
December
Atlas [ > ]

August
★★★☆☆ SCUM

February
Eco


2017
November
★★★★★ Life is Feudal: MMO

January
Conan Exiles


2016


2015
August
Empyrion: Galactic Survival

June
ARK: Survival Evolved [ > ]

February
Medieval Engineers


2014


2013
December
★★★★★ Rust

October
★★★☆☆ Space Engineers
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icycalm
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Unread postby Beakman » 03 Jan 2020 22:50

I always regarded Rust as a follow-up of Minecraft's Survival mode in MP:

https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutoria ... sus_Player

MP Survival was available since Minecraft's alpha in 2010:

https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Java_Edition#Alpha

I was never interested in the "Creative" mode of the game (where you have limitless resources to build stuff) and only played Survival. I never played online, however, and I'm not sure if PvP was available since this version (i.e. before Rust), but I suspect it was. I'll report back if I find when PvP was added.
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