My adventures in Nantucket, a game about hunting Moby Dick
It should not be too surprising that game designers have turned to Moby-Dick as a source of inspiration. For much of his novel, Melville is describing something that sounds a lot like an MMO.
Listen: Players band together in parties, board their ships and set off for epic hunting missions spread across the wavy blue wilds. The resource game is strong: you need enough to eat when you're out there, enough to pay the crew and keep everybody in harpoons, and you also need to make sure that the whales you kill, broken down and turned into oil on board ships which are, in essence, floating factories, will leave you in the black at the end of what might be a three-year voyage. It's all haphazardly sociable: occasionally whaling ships would cross paths out there at the edge of the world. The crews would have 'gams', instances where they all mingled and exchanged news before going their separate ways. Whaling ships would take a bag of mail before they left port on the off-chance they might meet some of the recipients while floating about. Competition was strong, but so was camaraderie.
And the stakes? The stakes could not be higher. Even before you factor in the white whale and Ahab's revenge, there's the simple fact that a lot of people relied on whale oil for lamps and for industry. Whales lit the world. Imagine if the only way to get light bulbs was to crew up and head into certain danger, hell-bent on tackling monsters? (Sounds like the sort of thing that might make a good game.)
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