Have you read the April edition of Wired, the issue with Will Wright emblazoned on the cover? Not much meat in the in the New Worlds of Gaming section for those that are paying attention (and one editorial I quite disagree with, more later), but the Cory Doctrow interview with Danny Hillis did jar loose some ideas.

Called “The Massively Multiplayer Magic Kingdom,” it’s a look at the theme park as a precursor to the MMOs we all know and love. Sorry. No link.

Let’s take it as read that Theme Parks are one of the ancestors of the MMO. They are both magical environments with fanciful characters wandering about and long lines to get to the good stuff (at least in the days before the instanced dungeon).

So let’s turn it around. Can we talk today about taking an MMO and turning into a successful theme park? I’m partial to the idea. I was rooting around the file cabinet the other day and chanced upon a shareholder’s letter from The Dream Park Corporation dated 1995. Based on the Larry Niven novel Dream Park, they were trying to bring to life a very ambitious park-as-multiplayer game, a few years before the technologies to make it work were really available. I gave them a few bucks to push the idea forward.

More recently, I’ve participated in Otherworld, a fantasy-themed adventure weekend. This was a great experience, but doesn’t scale to theme-park size (check them out, you’ll have a wonderful time).

Could you create a theme park based, for instance, on World of Warcraft. EverQuest? Should you?

I think the Dream Park model is fundamentally flawed. Too few visitors requiring too huge an infrastructure.

Make a park where, like current theme parks, a lot of the fun comes from exploring, finding the secrets, the out of the way places. It should integrate rides in ways that sell the experience. If the park is Disney’s World of Warcraft, a swooping transportation system that emulates the Gobblin Zepplin or Deeprun Tram would be one such integrated experience.

Make scavenger-hunt/puzzle games that reveal new information about the lore, and offer ways to unlock in-game content. Needless to say, anyone who buys a subscription to the game gets a free pair of tickets to the park, and anyone who buys entry to the park gets a free 3 month trial for the game.

Run fedex quests that are essentially a string of interconnected rides and ancillary experiences that culminate in a reward, a staff, a sheild, some tangible artifact that the player can take home (with a serial number on it that unlocks the same item in-game). Some of the ancillary activities could include stylized or abstracted combat (a virtual archery range where a group repels a horde attack), but should also include other hallmarks, like crafting and healing. Crafting should also result in tchotchkes that the player can take home.

When possible, the quest should involve socializing and trading (cards, spells) with other visitors, tying in to the scavenger-hunt mechanic, assuming the interactions can be designed to be griefer-proof. I think in general grief-play is less likely when the player is there in person, and can be banned by a large orc security guard named Maximo.

The quests are plentiful, and vary in scope and time investment required. Many quest can use the same rides in different contexts.

Once this infrastructure is in place and generating a profit, then you can think about running high profile, high-tech LARP events, which are costly to run, and attend These would probably start out as loss-leaders. The reality TV tie-in could start to make some of that money back.

-game over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.