I'm primarily a solo gamer, straying only occasionally into multiplayer territory, but this editorial by nocoolnamejim about multiplayer features sometimes causing single player games to suffer got me thinking...

Anyone think there's a way to make Silent Hill an MMOG? Wait now, before I blasted, take a look for a second at my thought process...

Silent Hill is a town, possibly close to a small city, maybe with connecting cities around it that are occasionally affected. People -- and not just a couple, but lots of people -- come from miles and miles around to visit Silent Hill, for it's beautiful scenery, quiet countryside and serenity. The first few SH games there were, the characters stumbled upon brochures for Silent Hill, so there's clearly some kind of marketing associated with this place. People know about it, it's not an unknown corner of the universe like Buttface, Baltimore, people know about that town! People have thought about going there for a week over the summer. Maybe it has problems, but Silent Hill is tourist attraction. Look at how surprised every visitor in the games are when they see the place is damn near deserted. They always visit a hospital expecting to see people there, and there's next to no one. But that's another aspect at play here...people are present in Silent Hill when you visit, and although most of them are freaky, strange, antisocial types who don't know all that much about how to make friends, there are still people there. Besides, not everyone is a minion of the town, look at Cybil Bennett (my apologies if I spelled her name wrong, it's been a while since I played SH1), she was an average cop stopping into a diner when she met Harry Mason, and she had a good enough heart to want to help. Sure, she got involved with the wrong fella, and look where that landed her...but still...people visit Silent Hill who aren't necessarily evil, spooky or out to trap and kill passersby. So there probably could be some element of meetings, teamwork, and so forth.

I'm sure the thought comes to mind that most of the stories in Silent Hill games are very personal, and they are! James is looking for his sick/dead wife...Harry is looking for his daughter...Heather, into her past, and Henry into his relationships with people. Well, it easily wouldn't be the first time a game has allowed for players to customize their experience. You could make any kind of character you want, make him or her look exactly the way he or she should, and even give him or her their very own backstory. Why they arrived in Silent Hill, what called them to go there. Are you on vacation? Seeking peace and quiet? In search of answers or tranquility or epiphanies? Whatever it happens to be, and players could be encouraged to be as creative as possible, as this wouldn't be a place where immature people want to dance and sing and mess around online, this would be as serious as possible. As far as gameplay, well...maybe Silent Hill Online doesn't lend itself to the endless questing and level grinding that phenomenons like World of Warcraft and Everquest lend themselves to. I suppose it could play rather like The Sims with a twist...you go to Silent Hill at the beginning of your journey, talk to people, see who's present, everything's fine and dandy...you meet new people in the town, make friends...maybe you could get a job that you could go to...and at random times, possibly linked to your character's motivation for being there, you could get warped to the Otherworld. The directors could come up with any number of different ways for the player to enter the Otherworld, from touching a mirror, hearing a certain name, stepping on a shadow, even falling into water. What you need, or what you need to do, to accomplish your mission that brought you to the town, though, could be almost endless. It would require tons of exploration, clues, discussions with other players, ducking into buildings...sure, maybe Silent Hill isn't nearly as big as Sanctuary or Norrath, but that just means there's more buildings to explore, each one with a basement...cellars...tunnels...I mean, Silent Hill always seems like Springfield from the Simpsons, it has everything! You could find underground prisons, deep down holes and secret rooms...you could visit a high school, ball field, library, anything a town could have. And as your character meets new people in the town, they could grow in certain ways, accomplish certain general tasks (rather like when you play The Sims solo...you have to grow your character by getting a job, working, saving money, building a nice house, furnishing it, etc.), and once you reach a certain level of understanding, knowledge or insight into your problem, that's when things start getting hairy and you begin to get pulled into the Otherworld by whatever means. You might realize you need to research a particular phenomenon and have to find and read a book at the library...you might find a particular object that sparks a memory that makes your enitre motivation change. Things could be wildly unexplainable. You could get injured by a monster that you encounter, and need an energy drink or first aid, so you visit the general store, which is fully stocked with energy drinks...it gets completely depleted by players, sure, but it'd be interesting for the energy drinks to replenish themselves...the town seems to usually have a mind of its own, after all.

Fact is, this game could be a fully functional town...just...without anyone to run it. The moderators, supervisors, anyone else, could be a sort of Dungeon Master...the people who control the unexplainable events, the ones who pull the strings. First aid kits are found sorta scattered in the existing games, but in Silent Hill Online, you might not always be able to depend on items respawning or appearing in the same spots all the time. You'd have to depend on luck, just like in the existing games. All in all, though, everyone's experience with the game could be ridiculously unique, if the designers used their imaginations and did things right. If they put their focus into the nitty gritty aspects that make past Silent Hill games great (a person's personality, their emotions and fear and guilt and shame manifesting horrible creatures, mind-melting puzzles and searches they need complete and fight and get past in order to complete their journey) and make it more personal, more down to earth, hit closer to home. Who knows? We may find there's people out there with genuine problems in the real world that they feel like trying to solve by visiting Silent Hill. With enough imagination, the designers could install any number of freaky anomalies, obstacles and hurtles for an individual player to have to solve before their character finds peace.

It'd definitely be a long journey to create it, but I think it could happen, :-)