culture hacker

Now that Google Wave has been out for a while, have you joined up? Is it living up to all your expectations, plus some? Or is it just something that you slobbered over because invitations were rare, but now you just keep forgetting to check in because you can’t figure out what to do with it?

To be honest, I’m in the latter group, but have been making a concerted effort to suss out the service and figure out what it’s good for. Recently there was an article on Ars Technica about people who are using Wave to play role-playing games and that, my friends, is something that’s totally feasible.

Ever since Online was invented, there have been gamers taking advantage of it to play RPGs with geographically-dispersed groups, from BBS door games in the mid 80s and the rise of MUDs in the 90s to dedicated IRC channels for the purpose. But what’s lacking in these various media is a sense of organization – they can be very good for living in the now, but trying to go back and make sense of what happened in the past can be quite a task. Wave’s automatic threading is excellent for that, providing both instant communication as well as ways to format it and keep it sane and pretty. Not only that, but new players can look back on what’s already happened and catch up easily just by reading the existing Wave, something that’s impossible to do in a MUD or IRC.

Of course this is a new technology and has drawbacks – the article mentions a lack of moderation capabilities and dice rolling widgets, to name two – but it certainly seems like the potential is there and has gamers quite excited for the future.

Have you tried Wave and put it to good use? Still trying to score an invitation? Drop a line in the comments and let us know.