Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Even if the first 10 levels aren"t anything to write home about, they go really quickly and the "newness" of playing a new game, learning a new class, seeing new things, will out trump anything else. I fail to see people leaving if they don"t feel epic right away.

Just make some of the high end zones / dungeons close by the newby areas so the newbs can see all the "l33t l00tz" and have something to strive for. EQ1 was great about that. Was killing rats in a field outside the city super cool? You wouldn"t think so but it felt that way to most.

I"ve stumbled upon an interesting project today while browsing around.

Infinity - 2008 Retrospective and progress(press next for more pages)

It contains a whole lot of procedural graphics Pretty smart approach for that type of game.

Have you had a chance to speak with Mr. Salvatore regarding his previous experience in the gaming industry and, if so, have the two of you created a better pipeline to avoid the mediocrity that was Demon Stone? Prior to beginning this project, he was more experienced than you so I"m intrigued as to what he probably demanded/expected/suggested.

Shame y"all felt that you had to announce so early, though

Ngruk said:

It was fun, it was so far beyond what we"d come to expect in a "polished" game

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What "won" WoW is the yellow "!". The plugging-in of an essentially single player RPG mechanic (the quest line) in the MMO. All MMOs prior to WoW essentially relied on player being fully autonomous. You had no (or very little) pointers, you had to decide what to do.

EQ2 (which launched at the same time) almost had it correctly, but relied in a far more "immersive" (the NPCs would make gestures trying to "attract" your attention); whereas WoW went fully "gameish". (plus, they suffered from the EQ1 trauma: omg, never make quest give good xp. No muffins for Pando)

In fact that"s what went well. WoW tried to be a game first, and a world second, where others MMO tried to be more or less a "world", supposted by gameplay.

Ukerric said:

What "won" WoW is the yellow "!". The plugging-in of an essentially single player RPG mechanic (the quest line) in the MMO. All MMOs prior to WoW essentially relied on player being fully autonomous. You had no (or very little) pointers, you had to decide what to do.

EQ2 (which launched at the same time) almost had it correctly, but relied in a far more "immersive" (the NPCs would make gestures trying to "attract" your attention); whereas WoW went fully "gameish". (plus, they suffered from the EQ1 trauma: omg, never make quest give good xp. No muffins for Pando)

In fact that"s what went well. WoW tried to be a game first, and a world second, where others MMO tried to be more or less a "world", supposted by gameplay.

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agreed. however i thought that leveling up in WoW was supurb while i felt that the end game was severely lacking when compared to EQ1 (which i felt was the complete opposite. leveling sucked but the end game was fun). i"d like to see a game get both ends right, where low level and end game content mold together and make for a great experience. i just don"t understand why this is so hard for newer games to do. when i played vanguard, as flawed as that game was, what really drove me away weren"t the bugs and crashes, it was really how empty the game felt after level 30. i think the end game is vital to a game"s survival, even at launch end game content should be done and done well so that you don"t run into a problem where the devs wind up saying "shit, people got to level 50 faster than we expected, now what do we do?"

etchazz said:

agreed. however i thought that leveling up in WoW was supurb while i felt that the end game was severely lacking when compared to EQ1 (which i felt was the complete opposite. leveling sucked but the end game was fun). i"d like to see a game get both ends right, where low level and end game content mold together and make for a great experience. i just don"t understand why this is so hard for newer games to do. when i played vanguard, as flawed as that game was, what really drove me away weren"t the bugs and crashes, it was really how empty the game felt after level 30. i think the end game is vital to a game"s survival, even at launch end game content should be done and done well so that you don"t run into a problem where the devs wind up saying "shit, people got to level 50 faster than we expected, now what do we do?"

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I couldn"t agree more. Games need to be made from the top down. Instead they are made from bottom up with dev teams racing the player base to complete the end game before enough players reach max level, get bored and leave.

Until this trend is reversed games will continue to fail months after they"re released.

IGDA posted up videos from their Leadership Forum from last November. Curt was one of the speakers there

IGDA Leadership Forum 08 - "MVP Leadership" by Curt Schilling

Skip to about 4 minutes in to get Curt, might be better to leave it running in the background and listen to the audio. For whatever reason the camera angle keeps switching back and forth every 30 seconds.

As soon as he started talking about the "Last Supper Boss" Brad McQuaid"s face immediately popped into my head.

However, I am a little skeptical if you guys can avoid that "crunch" before release as you said. What if the money runs out Curt and you just simply have to ship the game? It happened to Sigil and Funcom...even though you guys probably won"t dig as big a hole as they did. I don"t know if 50 million bucks gives you enough wiggle room to delay the game as much as you might need to.

Locithon said:

As soon as he started talking about the "Last Supper Boss" Brad McQuaid"s face immediately popped into my head.

However, I am a little skeptical if you guys can avoid that "crunch" before release as you said. What if the money runs out Curt and you just simply have to ship the game? It happened to Sigil and Funcom...even though you guys probably won"t dig as big a hole as they did. I don"t know if 50 million bucks gives you enough wiggle room to delay the game as much as you might need to.

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I was so ridiculously disappointed in that presentation. It came off "pre-fabbed" and rehearsed when the topics are all very personal and things I am incredibly passionate about. I won"t make that same mistake twice.

I wish our game was costing that much The budget and time lines are things we"re pretty adamant about sticking to, and we"ve done that, so far. Things can change for sure, but the "crunch" we"ve experienced has been "player driven" because the folks here believe in each other, and the vision, and are intent on delivering as much for each other as anything. That"s huge to me.

You CAN make a HUGE game, and incredibly successful game, and not ruin peoples lives in the process.

Tyen said:

It"s tough to find capital for a high risk investment.

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Could have ended the post like this

The economy has only more clearly defined the players. Using the economy as a reason for failing to find funding is a cheap way out, it"s an excuse.

If you are delivering on something the economy won"t change that, and someone(s) will "buy in".

Ngruk said:

The economy has only more clearly defined the players. Using the economy as a reason for failing to find funding is a cheap way out, it"s an excuse.

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You think so? After enough people got burnt on MMO"s, is it still easy to get funding? I mean there were enough spectacular failures that I am worried that not many people are willing to step up to Blizzard now.

Gnome Eater said:

You think so? After enough people got burnt on MMO"s, is it still easy to get funding? I mean there were enough spectacular failures that I am worried that not many people are willing to step up to Blizzard now.

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No, not at all. It"s not easy, never has been. Even when it appeared to be easy, it wasn"t. But the economy has removed much of the periphery and marginal players for something of the size and scope we are undertaking and made the playing field a lot easier to see.

At the same time you are finding more and more "middle men" in the game as well. You don"t need a publisher to provide all the things you used to. Hell you could cut separate deals for every aspect of online game delivery, from billing and authetication, to hosting to CS and QA if that"s what you wanted to do.

Publishers are also into playing a different game now, for better or worse, and realized something we thought about for the last few years. Many are offering up the smorgasboard of services. Pick and choose from the menu on what services you want to include in a deal.

Just a fascinating time all the way around.

Ngruk said:

Could have ended the post like this

The economy has only more clearly defined the players. Using the economy as a reason for failing to find funding is a cheap way out, it"s an excuse.

If you are delivering on something the economy won"t change that, and someone(s) will "buy in".

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Everyone in the industry is hurting. Even in investment hotbeds like the Valley. It"s hard to get funded right now, especially on a long-term project. The entrepreneurs with huge balls or lots of money will stick with it. Guys like Damon Grow aren"t going anywhere.

This defines the players to an extent, it defines the brand names, leaders, and companies that will make an immediate impact. However, what it doesn"t really change the people who truly pour their hearts and souls into the game, the workers.

Unfortunately I"ve pretty much ignored this thread. I have some catching up to do!

Ngruk said:

Could have ended the post like this

The economy has only more clearly defined the players. Using the economy as a reason for failing to find funding is a cheap way out, it"s an excuse.

If you are delivering on something the economy won"t change that, and someone(s) will "buy in".

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So what makes y"all a player in this market? Is it because you"re the front man? Because y"all have Talent? Experience?

What are you delivering that the economy can"t change?

Again, it"s a shame that y"all felt that you had to announce so early.

CylusSoulreaver said:

So what makes y"all a player in this market? Is it because you"re the front man? Because y"all have Talent? Experience?

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I know absolutely nothing about baseball, but isn"t Ngruk a sport superstar? That alone probably is why he is credible enough to pitch an idea and get people to listen - as a society tend to worship our sport champions.

This doesn"t mean that his game will be automatically amazing, but it does mean that venture capitalists might be willing to hear his pitch out at least, so it will be easier to gather funds.

Didn"t Vivendi have to lay out nearly a billion dollars during the first year of wow to resolve the server queues? The goalisto have a game on that scale right? That seems like a pretty daunting problem in the current economic climate.

Zehn - Vhex said:

AoC just had too much shit that was flat out broke. I mean, once you get past level 20...and sometimes even before that...shit just didn"t work.

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I had 2 lvl 80s within the first month of release. Did almost all of the world firsts, including siege. AOC for the first 20 lvls was one of the best MMO"s I"ve played.

After that, it was the worst.

Frax said:

how do you judge an MMO as a success in the retrospect of 2008"s large releases and relative failures of AoC and WAR? Conan and Warhammer both sold a million plus boxes.

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AOC and Warhammer have proven that there is a huge audience out there hungry for something fresh with meaningful PVP.

However, both of the games suffered from "the last 5%" syndrome. It"s pretty obvious that no developers played AOC. If they had, they"d be throwing chairs at the guy saying it"s ready for release. They could have hired me and a few people for a month after crunch time and we could have made it amazing..assuming they listened.

Curt seems like a very genuine guy who cares about his employees. I spent the last 5 years at a start up, that got eaten by a giant and had our team whimsically destroyed. I"m at that stage in my life where I"m determined to work for a company that cares. I"ve always been a guy who takes my friends and tries to conquer the world.