Blizzard is coming out with their Titan project 2014. The mmorph sites list hundreds of new games being released every year. It's hard to see how any one game can be as dominate as EQ and WoW were in their time. I remember rage quitting EQ more than once, only to come back because there weren't any viable alternatives at the time. I thought WoW was repetitive in beta, and I still think it is, but I played it for a year anyways. But nowadays? If I don't like something, I have another game downloaded in a few hours and am playing. That just wasn't possible before. Besides, I think most people are serial gamers now anyways. It doesn't matter what a game offers, there will always be that next one promising more.
Well, now what?
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The problem I see with MMO's these days is everything is so linear and broken up into pieces to make it easier for people to complete. It doesn't feel like that massive thriving world with unlimited things to do, it feels like a single player RPG that allows you to group with others if you so choose too.
Then once you max level in a week, you log in, run a little instance that is all private to yourself, get all the loot you need within a few weeks, and then that's it. At that point you either keep running the same handful of instances or you quit. There is no reason to keep playing. That's like a month worth of gameplay, and that isn't enough to keep people around. I don't care how fun gameplay is, if there isn't some sort of meaningful achievement you can work towards, there is no drive to continue to play.
The thousand dollar question is how can you please the mainstream crowd and the dedicated crowd without alienating either one of them, or making pathways of progression worthless. Dedicated players obviously should be rewarded for their investment, but at the same time, casuals get butt hurt and rage that they're not equal just because they "have a life." So developers cater to the casuals because they make up the majority. At the same time, they alienate the dedicated by making them burn through the entire game in a week, and in turn they now complain. The way I see it, word of mouth is the way to win, and who generates word of mouth? The people who do it first. Who does it first? The dedicated. The mainstream casual crowd will flock to whatever the new and cool thing is. When the dedicated player base that does it first, aren't pleased, they generate negativity, scaring the mainstream masses away.
WoW was successful because of the first wave of people that played it, not because of the millions of mainstream fadsters that flooded into the game around BC. The only reason those millions flooded in was because of the word of mouth generated by those players who did it first. Developers are trying to target that mainstream crowd, while not understanding that those players just follow trends, they don't make trends. In order to be successful you need to make your own trend, and to do that, you have to win the dedicated first, because they are the ones who generate word of mouth.
Then once you max level in a week, you log in, run a little instance that is all private to yourself, get all the loot you need within a few weeks, and then that's it. At that point you either keep running the same handful of instances or you quit. There is no reason to keep playing. That's like a month worth of gameplay, and that isn't enough to keep people around. I don't care how fun gameplay is, if there isn't some sort of meaningful achievement you can work towards, there is no drive to continue to play.
The thousand dollar question is how can you please the mainstream crowd and the dedicated crowd without alienating either one of them, or making pathways of progression worthless. Dedicated players obviously should be rewarded for their investment, but at the same time, casuals get butt hurt and rage that they're not equal just because they "have a life." So developers cater to the casuals because they make up the majority. At the same time, they alienate the dedicated by making them burn through the entire game in a week, and in turn they now complain. The way I see it, word of mouth is the way to win, and who generates word of mouth? The people who do it first. Who does it first? The dedicated. The mainstream casual crowd will flock to whatever the new and cool thing is. When the dedicated player base that does it first, aren't pleased, they generate negativity, scaring the mainstream masses away.
WoW was successful because of the first wave of people that played it, not because of the millions of mainstream fadsters that flooded into the game around BC. The only reason those millions flooded in was because of the word of mouth generated by those players who did it first. Developers are trying to target that mainstream crowd, while not understanding that those players just follow trends, they don't make trends. In order to be successful you need to make your own trend, and to do that, you have to win the dedicated first, because they are the ones who generate word of mouth.
I think you might be missing the key element here. In today's world your online social life is concentrated on facebook, twitter, forums, txt messages, or whatever other social media is out there. Ten or twenty years ago, your whole online social life was nearly concentrated in game except for AIM and ICQ.
That's why games are more lobby and less like breathing worlds. Most people de-immerse themselves by using other places to communicate and hang out. Hell even now, even if you only communicate with other guild mates, it's all in vent/skype/tspeak and still not in game; and this breaks up in-game community even more because people ignore chat channels in game even more.
That's why games are more lobby and less like breathing worlds. Most people de-immerse themselves by using other places to communicate and hang out. Hell even now, even if you only communicate with other guild mates, it's all in vent/skype/tspeak and still not in game; and this breaks up in-game community even more because people ignore chat channels in game even more.
who the hell continues to play a game he dislikes? we're not talking about being forced to eat something for survival.
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Yep. Unfortunately I think EQN is going to disappoint a lot of people on this board. However, it does at least offer a distraction until it's release for those individuals.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...ing+the+dragon
Do you know many well intentioned people wanted to make their own game before you? A billion trillion. Do you know many of those people actually took their project to completion? About 12.
I know a lot of projects that have tried and failed, and no offence but the teams were a lot more promising than any thrown together groups of enthusiasts. Probably the best example I could give you is a game called Dawntide, look it up. But here's a brief history of that game. There once was a guy called Wiz, he was an utterly exceptional programmer. He was one of the first people to make an EverQuest Emulator server, but unlike the other morons who made them with the ability to reach max level by typing in a command etc.. Wiz was smart enough to realize that being 'legit' was crucial. But he was also smart enough to make this server run great, and he modified the game in a way that actually even improved on the original EverQuest... It started to become extremely popular and word of mouth was really spreading. SoE got very angry and sent lawyers at him and things got very heavy for Wiz, he might be a wiz kid uber programmer and gaming guru, but he couldn't take on Sony. So he moved the hosting of the server to another country, he renamed it, and re-launched it with an entirely new world that Wiz created himself. EVERYTHING that was trade-markable by Sony, was replaced with something Wiz created himself. So places like The Oasis and Freeport could stay, but Qeynos, Iksar, and all the lore and all the gods had to be replaced, and Wiz did it, he also improved many of EQ's old mechanics and the result was a free alternative to EQ that many think is actually a better game. He reopened the game and this time Sony couldn't touch him. Legend has it, they then tried to hire him, and so did some other big companies, but Wiz being the eccentric strong minded nerd type, told them all to go fuck themselves. Meanwhile his server went from strength to strength, and is still playable today, several years later.
In the past few years Wiz retired from the server he created, and he handed over control to some trusted people. He then started his own company and took with him some of the best helpers he had from his emulator days. He secured funding, he bought a good engine, and work began with his new team officially, on a commercial sandbox MMO taking inspiration mostly from UO, but also EQ and some others. For the first year, everything was very exciting and things were progressing nicely. But eventually things went quiet, development ground to a halt, and months went by with no word. Eventually he admitted, they ran out of money and the project is on hold unless they can new funding. That was a year ago.
Game development is littered with stories very similar to this. Small budget is not less than a million anymore, when Vanguard cost at least 50 million and Rift cost at least 100 million, even 10 million is small budget. The fact is, the engine isn't even that important. It takes people to make a game, and people who work for free, can't be pushed to deliver and will end up drifting away because of family issues, personal issues, or their real job (that pays the bills) demands them. Games with teams like that rarely every get anywhere at all. If you have people who are paid a salary then you are talking say 50k a year for just one person. So even just one artist, one programmer, and one business manager type, that's $150,000 per year, and with just three people, you aint going to get much done in a year. It's more likely to take 2 years, so that's about a third of a million, and with no income coming from past projects, that money would have to be borrowed from somewhere. And people don't invest a third of a million on something that might not work out.
It's not impossible for something like this to work, but it's literally one in a million. The best chance is to do something like Minecraft. Just have one guy working 24/7 because he a poopsocker who lives in the mountains, and make the whole thing in java or some crap. The result will look like something from the 1980's, but it could have some decent gameplay. Release it on your own website so no assholes take a cut, and you could make some money, maybe. But only if the stars align and you sell your soul or something and end up with other people generating hype about your shitty product, again, like Minecraft.
Yes, Sony and EA created their original MMOspurelyfor the fun of it and not for anything as base as turning a profit.
Now if you'll excuse me, my eyeballs just rolled clean out of their sockets.
That's not the point. The AD&D derived, Diku based game built from a small group of passionate people with a Vision? is far different from the focus group built, soulless drivel being released today.
There's a reason SWTOR and WOW don't even use their own fucking game footage in advertising.
fanaskin
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it's a matter of scale
These records show "more than 225,000" subscriptions on 1 November 1999,
with an increase to "more than 450,000" subscriptions by 25 September 2003
December 2, 2004 - World of Warcraft becomes the fastest selling U.S. PC game in history.
It begins. World of Warcraft sells 240,000 units in one day
-June 14, 2005 - World of Warcraft hits 2 million subscribers.
-June 29, 2005 - Blizzard announces its first BlizzCon convention will be held in October in Orange County, California.
-July 21, 2005 - World of Warcraft accumulates more than 1.5 million paying customers in China, pushing the worldwide consumer total over 3.5 million.
The more money involved, (more subs) the more your development staff is directed by marketers. its pretty simple concept to understand, the developers are freer to do what they want when there are less people telling them what to do because of marketing.
Marketers work off the concept of 'commedification' or monetization, both of these concepts are extremely common in big business. the marketers come up with the strategy, including the parameters of guiding customers behavior, to make the most money, this instantly has the effect of placing a cage around what the goals are, they are to make this marketing strategy work, not to make you happy about the game, that is just a side effect in their equations.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KenWi...h_of_Games.php
But the lure of microtransaction money is insidiously persistent. One MMO I was hired to work on changed its business model mid-development to become a Free-to-Play title, funded entirely by ingame purchases.Suddenly all design features in a traditional but potentially ground breaking MMO had to be justified by how they could be monetized. Designers could no longer simply come up with good gameplay. It had to be exploitable gameplay - systems and features that were either directly monetizable, or which funneled players toward those that were.In one foul, fetid swoop we went from game designers to online casino pimps.
Absolutely spot on article. It's not fucking nostalgia - games have objectively fuckinggotten worse thanks to money.
What Games Are: The Fun Boson Does Not Exist
What Games Are: The Fun Boson Does Not Exist
Except I completely disagree with that premise. Games and TV are a thousand times better than even ten years ago. Even more so than twenty years ago. Software design is based on process. Art is subjective but in my opinion the quality and quantity is far better.
I know that I've changed and things that interested me before do not anymore simply because of the vast, sick area of entertainment options I have thanks to the plethora of great TV shows, fun games, and different platforms.
The article smacks of grumpy old fart syndrome. Yes, I think games have become too corporate influenced, but at the same time there are plenty of Indy games, options, and companies releasing a lot of good stuff. I think the MMO genre has taken a hit, just because of unreal expectations but I see good, new companies like Trion or older companies like Arenanet pushing out good products, too.
Lithose
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To be fair. If you've ever had to deal with investors, the first thing you realize is that as the principle goes up and the time horizon goes up--the amount of control the investor wants increases. And if you've ever had to work in a corporate environment, then you know a bunch of people who are good with numbers, money but not necessarily your product come in, learn through different prospectuses, work out their own "system" of best time/money in--->Profit out and will force that on the developers.
I mean, you SEE this in most modern games...The "corporate hand"...It's a meal made by committee, rather than a chef.
On the other hand...This can go in the opposite direction too. No over site can lead to artists musing and missing deadlines and hosts of other trouble. In general, it can lead to Vanguard.
Caliane
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yeah, I feel that is completely wrong as well. Right off the bat, suggesting UO and EQ weren't built in the effort to make money is just stupid. Sub fees started for a reason right from the start.
Seananigans
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The assertion is not that they were philanthropic in nature, it's that they were created as games, and sold for money. Which is counter to most of today's AAA shit that is created SOLELY for money, with no regard for creating a compelling game.
Honestly if you guys can't look at the video game (and tv, movies, books etc.) market and see the truth in these statements, you probably never will. Some people get it, some people don't. Mass commercialization/capitalism has done much to undermine artistic integrity.
Honestly if you guys can't look at the video game (and tv, movies, books etc.) market and see the truth in these statements, you probably never will. Some people get it, some people don't. Mass commercialization/capitalism has done much to undermine artistic integrity.
Pancreas
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I think the article was a good look at why there is so little innovation coming from the large publishers. The article was actually in regards to the social games industry and not gaming as a whole.
It's a matter of understanding. The individuals who are a part of the decision making process in most large publishing companies could not design a single interesting game. Even if you stole their ID and told them they had two weeks to make one before you hunted them down and killed them, they would fail. They understand money and numbers, so that is the language they speak when it comes to game development.
The article was simply stating that these new metrics by which social games are being measured, are being used in lieu of old fashioned play testing and iteration. That it not longer matters if the game is fun or good or any kind of qualifier the average user might apply to it, but simply that it produces good metrics.
The consumer does not give a shit about how much a game cost to make, how much money it makes for the company, what kind of metrics it produces and what kind of market it was geared for. The consumer only cares about one thing... is this game any fun?
So to essentially ignore what the consumer may want in favor of statistics that might not be fully understood is going to lead to games that are all identically pared down to fit some arbitrary mold. This is a really poor way to approach any product. It will lead to a homogenized unvarying landscape with products that really miss their potential quality.
As for the T.V. metaphor, that's correct as well and is evidenced every time a really amazing and critically acclaimed show gets cancelled because it didn't meet some threshold statistic.
Grim1
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