Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Curt said something in that recent Instance interview something really poignant about the genre, especially now days when the market is so saturated with mediocre MMOs. Something to the effect of:

"If you aren"t impressed with the game within the first 10 minutes of playing it, chances are you wont play it."

My response to that, QFT. I am a fiction writer, and that same principle applies to novels, short stories, etc. If your hook line, paragraph, page, etc doesn"t draw in the reader, they"ll drop your shit and never look back. Thats why games who release their product before it"s time, making it unpolished and that initial login experience distasteful, will screw themselves over more than they know.

I"d settle for finding a new MMO that is simply polished. Nevermind subgenre, mechanics, etc. Polish is rare enough as it is.

*holds breath on AoC*

Slayder said:

I"d settle for finding a new MMO that is simply polished. Nevermind subgenre, mechanics, etc. Polish is rare enough as it is.

*holds breath on AoC*

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Don"t suffocate.

Ngruk said:

Your points addressed from my perspective
1) Entering a market with more potential customers than any genre out there.
2) Entering the market with the people actually MAKING the game having a huge list of titles shipped, from building teams to shipping products, the leadership group has done it all and the dev team is comprised of people that have worked on pretty much every MMO in existance.
3/4) (They are the much the same thing in our case) Entering the market with two men who have built entire companies and careers on creating their own original IP/Brand and have succeeded for almost 30 some years doing so.

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You sooo much sound like my old producer on Ryzom. Except for the shipped bit part, in 2000, there were very little people having worked in online games yet, and even less in France

I"ve heard it already, and I do agree with other views; if you are not believing all of the above, you will fail in epically proportions. But you still haven"t got all the advantages on your side. You do have chosen a difficult path; which makes the victory sweeter, no doubt, but also less likely.

Are the hurdles high? No doubt. But like many others you make the mistake of assuming the way to "win" is to throw "hundreds of milions of dollars NEEDED to go head to head with WoW.

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You don"t need to throw a hundred million $ to make a good game. You do need to throw an humoungous amount if you try to make a good game aimed squarely at detroning WoWin his own market, and have a good chance of success. Content and polish (which are two of the key ingredients of WoW"s success) do not come for free.

It"s not a guarantee of success. But if you try to make a game with 10 million $, you"re not going to get into WoW"s category - notably if you insist on competing in the same market segment.

I don"t understand why people keep biting on Blizzards take that it would cost hundreds of millions to develop a game that could challenge them. The fact is it didn"t cost them much more than was spent on Vanguard to develop WoW.

On top of that i have to 100% agree with Slayder. Every MMO that has come out so far, outside of WoW, has been niche - whether its been Fantasy or not.

The most important thing to provide is a game with a fun casual element, that you can just log in and enjoy for a half hour or a couple hours - emphasis on the fun. If WoW didn"t have that and was just about the end game, it would be just as "niche" as all the other MMOS.



Another thing about WoW- people constantly hold it up as an example of content and polish. The fact is its a game that is nearly four years old and only has one expansion. It had a really crap beta experience at times and released without this "huge amount of content" people go on about. People forgive and forget a lot about WoW pre and post launch, due to the enjoyable casual element. Its all about FUN; most MMOs released to date are whackamole with XP, grinding to max level, then getting uber loot from ballsache encounters. Nothing is challenging WoW because nothing has been designed with fun as a primary component.

Tyen said:

These games were developed to do so. These companys aren"t looking for a "moderate success" they are trying to go balls to the walls and gather every gamer in the MMO spectrum. Developing a product that is sub-par and knowing this DOES NOT attract investors and that is NOT what these company"s want.

Every single company that tried to shake things up and go a new evolved route, fails completely or has some mundane amount of users. It"s all halfass bullshit that looks AMAZING on paper but TERRIBLE when implemented;POTBS for example. They try to do their best but when it comes to implementation, they are so used to the traditional system, they lose their vision and put in the same exact crap we have had for years.

I want something new, exciting, and something I"ve never experienced. I don"t want the same rinse and repeat crap I"ve played for years. I want something that is challenging and diverts from what I"ve played for 9 years straight.

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THere are some decent non EQ clone MMOs out there, a la EVE and some of the non American ones.

I think what you want is a dynamic non level based immersive world that offers fun and variety. The problem with that is the technology isn"t there to develop this sort of game, yet. The closest thing would be SWG when released, but even that was really not what the design team envisioned and people bitched that it wasn"t an EQ clone. Unfortunately, it is now.

I think we"re at least 5, maybe 10 years away from the technology to be there to allow for the games those of us old time MMO players want. Sadly, the kiddies and their WOW love will possibly will prevent it from being made sooner, due to companies continuing to copy Blizzard and go the safe route, instead of spending the money to make something super innovative and dynamic,

Again, agree with a lot of what Gecko has to say. We need innovation - the problem is human nature is not to like change. The question is whether as a mass we give change a chance when it comes along, allied with what it will cost to implement it (and I"m talking about the time it takes to get it right, test it, balance it etc not the financial cost).

As a target audience we now demand :

i) fun;

ii) innovation, both technically and in game mechanics :
a) its got to look fantastic, but play on three year old PCs;
b) we want new classes and abilities, but if we don"t get group dynamics off the bat we"ll rip it to pieces;

iii) a game flushed out with a huge amount of content and an end game at launch;

iv) we want all this in beta.


If its immediately fun and accessible, a developer might get away with some of the above and get time to work on it. Don"t count on it, though.

Flight said:

iv) we want all this in beta.

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As a consumer we have to right to demand this. The company can provide this or deny us this because we"re not paying for it.

Flight said:

iv) we want all this at release.

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FIFY

Expecting all of this in beta is a stretch. It"s one thing to expect to see good indications of where a game is headed and will eventually end up during beta. However, it"s reasonable to expect that a company has plenty up it"s sleeve that will be finessed or tweaked based on what occurs during beta.

What we"re seeing currently is a bunch of games that are showing stuff that is at best mediocre or a tired rehashing of past concepts and at worst flat out broken during beta.

By the end of beta a game better be fun and innovative in some way. It better run well and be scalable to allow it to run on mediocre hardware while looking good on newer components and it better have content and an established method of rolling out new content in a timely manner (and not 6 month expansion cycles like EQ).

That"s the framework it will take to even consider competing with WoW.

Twobit Whore;1044294[B said:

]By the end of beta a game better be fun and innovative in some way.[/b] It better run well and be scalable to allow it to run on mediocre hardware while looking good on newer components and it better have content and an established method of rolling out new content in a timely manner (and not 6 month expansion cycles like EQ).

That"s the framework it will take to even consider competing with WoW.

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I"d argue innovation is not required. Upgrading and refining, yes. New, no.

What is more important is keeping it simple and fun to get into, with a lot of carrots to keep the masses playing.

The successful MMOs by and large are more copy than anything original.

The ones that tried new and exotic things do not appeal to the mainstream casual gaming crowd, and often try things that are not feasible for an MMO.

Gecko said:

I"d argue innovation is not required.

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While I agree with everything else both you and 2bit said, at this stage in the game I most certainly think "innovation" has become a very important factor for many, if not most, mmo gamers. Thats the problem. There isn"t a whole lot of room left for innovation. Especially in the fantasy sector of the genre.

Draegan said:

As a consumer we have to right to demand this. The company can provide this or deny us this because we"re not paying for it.

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We might have no right to demand it, but a lot of people expect it. I agree its dumb, but you only need to read most of the beta threads on this forum to see it for yourself.

Who cares about a bunch of mouth breathers on forums? Companies shouldn"t alter plans etc based on this population.

Rayne said:

While I agree with everything else both you and 2bit said, at this stage in the game I most certainly think "innovation" has become a very important factor for many, if not most, mmo gamers. Thats the problem. There isn"t a whole lot of room left for innovation. Especially in the fantasy sector of the genre.

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What I don"t understand is how another genre would aid innovation?

It may give someone the illusion that the game is innovative and unique because the skin it"s wearing is different, but ultimately, the game play would likely be the same. Couldn"t any new innovative mechanics be just as easily inserted into a fantasy game? The MMO genre has the same basic concepts regardless of the setting, and changing those is the only thing that would be considered innovation.

Rayne said:

There isn"t a whole lot of room left for innovation. Especially in the fantasy sector of the genre.

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I"d argue what is needed more than innovation is evolution.

Right now MMOs are static respawning worlds of repetitiveness. People may enjoy them and they may have upgrades and better UIs, raids, or other things but that doesn"t change what they are.

In EQ, EQ2, or WOW you run around doing the same quests killing the same NPCs or bosses over and over, and often times farm the same areas or factions. This is the hook.

The few games that made an attempt to break the mold, a la SWG or AC2 were either inept or limited and failed.

You can use the classic AD&D mold to build a new MMO and have it evolve from ones that are buiilt from player desire for personal loot and honor/status to a real world of challenge and intrigue that changes and has some sense of danger, mystery, and in world accomplishment. The problem is this is a lot tougher to implement than the safe "static" no changing respawnland that we currently see.

Gecko said:

I"d argue what is needed more than innovation is evolution.

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For the most part, I agree. You have to start by not over-simplifying innovation as exclusively being various "mechanical concepts". But consider that innovation is conclusive to the entire package that makes up a game. The depth in which that innovation is utilised is what determines the evolution. This is exactly how Blizzard proceeded to achieve what they did with WoW. Are the mechanics innovative? No. Is the fantasy premise innovative? No. Is the overall concept of how they produced the game innovative? YES.

You can cross-criticise every game in the market space until the end of time, and never see the innovation that actually HAS taken place thus far, IF you choose to ignore the overall concepts. "Done right" is impossible. And thats the problem. The average gamer looks at the individual parts of a game, and bases thier opinion of the overall game on a number of various aspects. But rarely ever the whole package. This WILL NOT change. So the developer has to do thier best to hit as many key points as possible for mass appeal. Which is what Blizzard did with WoW. It may not be "done right" in the literal sense, but it certainly IS "done best".

And this is where it gets a bit deeper. Blizzard will most certainly continue to strive for "done best". And its going to be near impossible to overtake not only what they"ve already achieved, but what they"re YET TO achieve. Thats what i"m saying. To accomplish that, you need to not only "catch up", but you need to "surpass". And in the fantasy sector, there isn"t a whole lot of room left for improvement. No one is going to want a "better WoW". Especially if that better WoW is already being continuously delivered by the original.

Which is why I said this earlier:

But when you"re literally considering taking on Blizzard, I think the chance for success would be much greater for an IP approaching that task with an equally fun and accessible mmo in a different sector of the market. We"re not talking about EQ, DAoC, Lineage, or whatever high profile game you can think of. We"re talking about Blizzard"s Warcraft. A deeply seeded, well known IP that took the fantasy sector with such force, it currently holds more than 50% of the overall market share.

Build whatever you want. But avoid the sector that Blizzard has a pretty good deathgrip on, and won"t be easily persuaded to loosen any time soon. Everyone knows that a StarCraft mmo WILL eventually come to fruition. Its inevitable.If you really want to have a meaningful effect on Blizzard"s market share, beat them to the punch. BEFORE they launch yet another well known IP, in yet another major sector of the market space, AND bring even more millions of gamers into the gamespace.It takes building a WoW calibre game, every bit as fun, and every bit as accessible. But if you do it in the fantasy sector, you"re in for a challenge beyond the capacity for reasonable comprehension, because Blizzard will certainly dust your ass with the next expansion that not only includes what they intended to add anyway, but most likely EVERYTHING that made your game cost them market share.

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In short, fantasy is stagnating the mmo market. And I highly doubt yet another fantasy game is going to change that.

Okay, you hate fantasy. We get it. Start another thread about it. Curt is going forward with fantasy. Maybe 38 Studios MMO just isn"t the game for you.

Twobit Whore said:

Okay, you hate fantasy. We get it. Start another thread about it. Curt is going forward with fantasy. Maybe 38 Studios MMO just isn"t the game for you.

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Don"t be such a dumbass. I don"t "hate" fantasy. And maybe thier game WILL be something I enjoy. Thats not what this is about. If you don"t like what I say, feel free to ignore me.

Rayne said:

Which is why I said this earlier:

In short, fantasy is stagnating the mmo market. And I highly doubt yet another fantasy game is going to change that.

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Until there is a proven market in MMOs for anything but fantasy, it"ll continue to rule the roost.

To use a visual analogy, non fantasy MMOs are a la this: