Why is the "trapped in a video game/MMO" premise so popular?

...in favor of just setting an anime/manga in a fantasy world to be begin with?

I remember this trope being really common in the 90s in various media before it died out.

Like, Overlord's setting could easily work as just a standard fantasy world without the set up that it's the year 2126 and this ultra-advanced MMO is having it's servers shut down.

Same with other "trapped in another world" story lines-------you can have the fantasy world without even having to involve e "the real world" at all.

Is there a reason this seems more common recently?

because its easy to write

But the entire premise of Overlord revolves around it being set in a video game and the guild Momonga was once a part of. It could definitely have been set in a regular fantasy world, but the premise would be completely different. It's specifically targeting people that know and understand the nostalgia from being in a guild and the sadness that comes with its disbanding. I think it actually uses the isekai + inside a video game premise pretty well.

Maybe I'm just saying that because I like it though.

Also, a bunch of people probably saw how popular Sword Art Online got and decided it's time to make some quick yen and what said.

I love VR settings but these type of series are just VR by name, or at least most of them. Remove the first few minutes when they talk about the game and exchange a bunch of names for attacks and shit and you have a typical fantasy.
I'd love to see some shit that involves hacking, in-deep game machanics and some psychological shit. And of course, the fucking real world as well. Otherwise there's no point choosing VR in the first place if there isn't even a comparison to the real world.

But Overlord is set in a generic fantasy world

All the mmo shit is important to the setting because entities from another universe (players in their characters bodies) keep showing up and fucking everything up.

I remember .hack//sign beating protagonist and the viewers over the head with the fact that it was an MMO. It really felt like these characters, for better or worse, were neglecting their real lives in favor of messing about in the game.

I'd like to see that aspect more in stories involving MMOs/single player games as their setting. At times it just feels like a fantasy until the author chooses to give a reminder that it's all another world/simulation

> Why is the "trapped in a video game/MMO" premise so popular?
How popular your "popular"? As I see it it's no more popular that death games and other similar things.
>Like, Overlord's setting could easily work as just a standard fantasy
Nope. Like, at all.
>Same with other "trapped in another world" story lines
As you can see, you need to switch to "trapped in another world" plot, because "trapped in a video game/MMO" pretty small. But that's two different premises.

>in favor of just setting an anime/manga in a fantasy world to be begin with
Alright then, let's list all the shows in the last 5 years or so that's about being trapped in a video game, not a fantasy world:

SAO (first season only)

And that's it. Log Horizon is set in a fantasy world, not an MMO, but everything's effectively the same. If you want to count that, fair enough. Overlord is in the same situation, but the world is much, much farther removed from their MMO. And everything else is flat out isekai.

.hack did it first and best

Yeah that's why I loved Sign. The characters had their personal reasons for spending so much time in there, except from Mimiru who did it for fun at first, and later to help Tsukasa. But it was interesting to see why they prefered the game over reality or not and whom they were in real life. I liked that aspect how everything was better in the game because you are able to choose your team there unlike in reality where you are just stuck with shitty parents or problematic kids (Bear's son). It was also kind of cool to see how people tend to project wishful thinking into the design of their avatars, like Tsukasa who chose to be a boy there. I totally missed thsi aspect in Sao for example. Characters just look like their real life counterparts which was cause by some plot device in the first part - but it was the same shti later which makes no sense at all because out of a party of 10 you an be sure that at least 6 of them will look completely different from their real selves for various reasons.

This. "It's magic I ain't gotta explain shit" is less played out when it's game mechanics. Makes world-building preposterously easy and you don't need to develop intricate cultures or sub-cultures for npcs.

It's just a variation of isekai hype.

It'll pass like all the other hype.

Cute girls doing cute things passed.
Little sister anime passed.

This will pass too.

Why? It's just a setting.
Permits the introduction of elements that are modern (MC is our proxy) while delving into the fantasy-something genre at the same time.

As a setting device, it's easy and convenient.

All this said, it doesn't mean whatever you get out of it will be good or bad.

Mostly its just another version of "trapped in a fantasy world" stories, which are more popular than standard fantasy stories because the character being new to the world allows more natural exposition, since the audience and the protagonist are both just as clueless about the world.

They are easy to write and more importantly, very easy for readers to self-insert.

>very easy for readers to self-insert
It sells because no one has experience going to the woods but they do play MMOs.

Eh, the only 2 real trapped in a MMO animes are .Hack series and SAO. Everything else has been some weird isekai that just uses the game aspect as a launchpad.

Frankly I'd prefer to see a MMO anime that dives into the mechanics and social aspects of MMO more.

It sucked, because the message was "Real life is more important." Nigga, if I wanted to be preached to I'd join a church.

SAO's message is "Fuck that, VR is awesome." And so it's insanely popular while SIGN sank without a trace.

"Trapped In a Game" is not to be confused with "Isekai".

That's because .hack//SIGN is about the characters and Tsukasa's cycle of depression, and not the fucking video game. It hardly ever explains game mechanics, and it never even tries to justify how the game magically rips people's souls out, because none of that shit fucking matters to the story it's telling.

It's funny to me that the show that aired in 2002 (when MMOs were still nascent) is the most accurate to what an MMO is actually like: people sitting around and shooting the shit in a game they're mostly indifferent to.

It and reincarnation stories actually the most logical format for telling any fantasy story.

There are a few reasons for this:

1) The audience learns with the characters. The same reason that Harry Potter is told from the perspective of Harry. He knows nothing about how a very complicated fantasy world works. Because of this, he can ask questions in the audience's stead, or have things explained to him in conversations that make sense. It would never make sense for Ron to ask for any of the explanations.

2) Our times are becoming increasingly distant from relations with the past. Our communication technology, our way of organizing things (digital instead of hardcopy), it's changing rapidly. In the 1940s, people would still relate to a lot of problems from the 1000s. Not so today. Eventually a lot of old knowledge is going to be entirely phased out and we will connect less and less with the past. MMOs and Reincarnation stories provide touch-points to connect present to past. It is going to be very hard 100 years from now for people to really grasp the realities of a pre-internet world.

3) It allows for the introduction of more Japanese cliches. The last pure fantasy story that tried to tell a story while connecting to desired cliches (Chaos Dragon) was god-awful. It didn't work.

MMOs relate the fantasy to the audience in a way that straight fantasy does not.

1. To a large degree, the sword and sorcery genre lets moody young adults fantasize about being powerful heroes, surrounded by beautiful women.

2. In the modern era, video games bring audiences closer to these fantasy worlds than ever before, especially via the grand projects of MMORPGs.

3. MMOs have a fatal flaw where they bring you to the world, but cockblock you on the fantasy of being the most powerful guy on the planet, because the best players on the server are the most organized and professional gamers rather than being moody young adults.

4. Faced with this threat to their gaming-centered identity, the original fantasy "I wish I was the most powerful person in the world" is displaced, and the new fantasy becomes "I wish I was the best at video games."

5. Thus genre fiction hits a new low, matched only by vampires who sparkle in the daylight.

Why is anything popular?

Because you touch yourself at night

Why is there no good fantasy anime anymore?
The last good thing was Scrapped Princess and it was over 10 years ago.

Overlord wouldn't be as funny or fun without all the "mmo-rpg" elements. Having Ainz and the NPCs actually use game-speak is rather funny. Or as rich. The whole AOG guild itself and the backstory is an important part of the story. Momonga's sadness and hope that his old friends that left may be still around in the NW is one of his driving motivations in the story. Also, he isnt "trapped" he was moved from a game to a real fantasy setting which is different from most of the other premises.

The plot device hasn't been done in film yet.

Because you can:

a) Have characters with knowledge of modern science and technology in a medieval world, which gives them a huge advantage. They can do a lot of fun things with this advantage.

b) (optionally) present statistics and abilities in a lazy manner - just write it on a menu or a card, or have the character shout out attack names. Then you can just say, "He got stronger because his stats are higher" instead of having to write out a scene to demonstrate it, which still isn't objective.

c) Lazily give the characters a plot or motivation - Just visit the guild hall for a quest, or do whatever the game's objective is supposed to be.
They can also automatically be the "chosen one" without needing any complicated backstory.

Because japan is shit at world building

If a show was actually set in a fantasy world, they would spend 70% of the show doing a giant info dump explaining damn near everything about the world instead of just showing it to the audience and letting them explore for themselves.

They can just say "oh it's an MMO and we're trapped" because people are familiar with the premise and explanations are barely needed for whatever world they are in.

It's lazy

I mean like, high fantasy? Can't really think of any good high fantasy becuase anything good just kind of feels like a copy of a greater work.

I think Rokka no Yuusha and Tenkyou no Alderamin are pretty decent fantasy series.

It gives the everyman protagonist the necessary skills to succeed without real effort.

Game mechanics give access to cooking skills for easy survival, magical powers and weapon skills. This let's the protagonist survive and thrive where they otherwise wouldn't, and let's their nerd fan base self insert without much trouble.

Otherwise the protagonist would be dead real fucking quick unless they were some sort of survivalist with medieval weapons training.

>Like, Overlord's setting could easily work as just a standard fantasy world
It literally does. The beginning premise hardly matters at all, except the fact in introduces overpowered people in to a new world. Which is literally the only point of the MMO shit at the start.

Other than that, it's a real world with real people and politics.