Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Neric said:

Dynamic market reminds me of M.U.L.E. on the C-64. Incredibly simple concept, but one of the best games ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.L.E.

Edit: To take this concept further, how about an MMO where the town vendors are looking for certain raw material in turns. Let"s say this week the dwarven vendors pay lots for minerals, because they are planning to forge something while the next week, the woodelf vendors pay a lot for wood because they want to build something. Players could even buy and sell such goods like stocks and speculate with them. All of this needs a world where money is worth something of course. If everything is NO DROP and money can"t buy anything, this won"t work.

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Again, if you want a great example of this you can look at EVE.

There are NPC corps that put out buy orders for goods. You can see exactly how many they will buy before they don"t want more, they are usually location specific and vary greatly. A station that is 30 minutes away, deep in 0.0 space (lots of pirates) might buy the goods you just created or looted for 500% of what your current station will.

The orders change on a semi-regular basis. There are some orders in the starting areas that never expire and buy unlimited amounts so newbies don"t always have to find a player market for their goods. Although doing so is usually much more profitable.

I haven"t played Eve, but this sounds interesting. Still I want to point out that there is a difference between "collect x amount of y"-type of quests and a real market where prices move up and down.

The big idea in M.U.L.E. was that people had to work together to a certain degree, because if they refused to do it, one could exploit it. On the other side they were all competing against each other. Some sort of prisoneers dilemma.

Another major factor in Eve is that everything can be reprocessed down to its base metals. So nothing becomes worthless no matter how common it is. So even is newbie quest spits out 100 shield booster 1 item"s, There will be people who have buy orders for however much the base metals are worth, or more likely great deal lower then that, and lots of people will sell it just to get quick cash. Tied into that is having good skills to get the best amount of metals back from reprocessing, so old skool players always going to have advantage over the newbies, but it does give a chance to funnel quick cash into newbie hands.

And because most items in Eve are crafter, there are very real market forces in play. Factor in distance, rarity of resources in areas, danger, and it makes for some very complex market behaviour.

In terms of player run economies, Eve is so far ahead of every other game in the genre, that it"s in a class of its own. And because that doesn"t really translate into more subscribers directly, I don"t see very many other games trying to emulate it.

Eve"s crafting, economy, territory grabbing, and massive wars are so money. Everytime I read the Eve thread I"m like [Woah]... but then I think about actually playing the game and I"m like [yawn]. If some game that was fun to play could steal those 4 concepts and integrate them flawlessly I"d be hooked for life.

If they had implemented those systems into SWG (the original design), with a little tweaking that game would have been unholy.

Dear Curt:

I hate your team for having won the posting for Daisuke Matsuzaka.

How will you feel about being the #2 starter on your own team?

*ducks a fastball aimed at the head*

Love, a Mariners fan

Ngruk said:

Hmm, I haven"t worked in the real world in, well, all my life. Soon to me means within a few days, which I meant, but due to a few different circumstances it will be early next week at this point.

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I"m waiting

I told you soon, and I meant soon. Google us or check out the website today. Soon means soon in real time.

Ngruk said:

Soon means soon in real time.

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This makes no sense. Soon is so subjective I wish devolopers would stop using it.

Well, the website just got a bunch of updates. They"re not hiring programmers anymore, for one.

Wodin you got hired?

Man0warr said:

Wodin you got hired?

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Heh, no. I would make a very bad game programmer - I"m good at theory and analysis, not optimizing network or graphics code. I just noticed that the page went from "we"re looking for lead programmers" to "we"re not hiring at this time."

They added a bunch of press release information and stuff.

Rythonn said:

This makes no sense. Soon is so subjective I wish devolopers would stop using it.

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Ok, um, how about now, or right now, next few days, years, months, weeks?
Soon fits because no one can ever define it and no one can hold you to it

When I say soon I mean soon as an impatient, overzealous, and anxious gamer would mean soon. Just ask the guys at the office....

Press releaseis out.

Guesses were right and both Blackguard and Moorgard are part of GMG, with a few more from SOE and other studios.

now wait n+2 years for the verdict

Curt Schilling on the FoH boards; Yee-Haw!

Abalieno said:

Press releaseis out.

Guesses were right and both Blackguard and Moorgard are part of GMG, with a few more from SOE and other studios.

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Somebody forgot to change the title tag on that press release.

Can we expect anyone other than close friends and SoE employees to join the GMG team? Call me paranoid, but a full SoE team making another MMO with promises of it being "Totally awesome!" has me more than a little wary. EQ2 has come a long way from where it was at release, but it"s the release that killed the game for me in the first place.

No offense to Curt and the new GMG members. I didn"t follow a who-dun"it with EQ2"s primary blundering, and for all I know these are the guys that have saved the game. I"m just a cynical, jaded old fart in a young man"s body.

Also, thanks for the timely update, Curt. I"m glad to see a developer not throwing around "soon" with reckless abandon.

He should have stolen Gallenite.