10 Video Games The World Wasn't Ready For
1. Star Wars Galaxies
What upset many about 2006 MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies at the time was that out of the dozens of possible jobs and roles that players could assign to their characters, Jedi wasn’t one of them. This was deliberate for a few reasons. Chiefly among them, the developers were trying to steer away from combat-focused classes.
Star Wars Galaxies was more about roleplay than the standard MMO loop of hitting things and watching the numbers go up. Playing as merchants, chefs, doctors etcetera meant actually fulfilling your role and becoming part of an actual fictional community. When World of Warcraft launched though, players flocked to it looking for a game that fed their power-hungry needs.
A few years after Star Wars Galaxies' servers closed, life-sim games were all the rage.
Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley just to name a few are the kind of chill titles that are all about social simulation. Animal Crossing in particular thrives on growing and interacting with a community and New Horizons on Nintendo Switch has sold nearly 40 million copies alone.
More than that, the space for roleplaying in general has never been bigger. People watch Dungeons & Dragons groups online not to see who gets the highest damage rolls but for the stories, the characters and the roleplaying. This is something that gaming could do more to cater to, in the way that Star Wars Galaxies did years ago.