Everybody’s doing sandbox MMOARGs these days — including Disney.
Disney World in Orlando has been working on a new Star Wars ride, glad news for anyone who barfed on the old one over the last couple of decades. But Disney is getting more than an updated ride: The Star Wars expansion land part of the park nabbed an extensive panel reveal during this past weekend’s Star Wars Celebration, and it definitely shares a bit in common with live-action MMOs.
“We wanted to build new Star Wars stories, new Star Wars destinations,” Disney Creative Exec Scott Trowbridge says, echoing thousands of giddy game devs before him, “but this time you can be in the story.”
To that end, Disney is setting the new area on a new-to-the-franchise planet, within the new trilogy timeline. Attendees will fly the Millennium Falcon as one of the “rides,” and what they do during one trip will affect the trip of the next batch of guests, with “total immersion” as the goal. You’ll also be picking… a faction.
“Given the nature of the world, there will be plenty of opportunities for people to interact, taking that idea of decisions and consequences even further,” explains The Verge. “Some visitors may opt to take a side job with some smugglers and have their own side mission. Others might decide to join the Resistance, while still others may decide to pledge their allegiance to the First Order. […] It essentially amounts to taking the kinds of interactive, real-world interactions we currently see in immersive theater or haunted houses, mixing them with the Star Wars mythology, and letting the whole thing play out in a massive, all-encompassing sandbox built for that express purpose from the ground up.”
As MOP tipster Sally pointed out, Disney is a themepark already flush with double-dipping cash shops — now it’s got a collaborative multiplayer sandbox with a rep grind.
