Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling
- Thread starter Lord Thanos_foh
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God, the years of Ut on ignore (a rather exclusive list for me: population of Makata, Fedor (occasional and depending on how much of a dick he"s being in SS), Lunal and hrm, I think that"s most really... I know regret ever doubting that decision.
Baseball boy is in a very enviable situation. He earned/has a big chunk of money and has retired pretty young. He"s at the perfect age to leverage that into a hobby/passion/whatever and even if he fucks it all up, he"s still fine. Lucky for us, his passion is MMOs and hell, it might just turn into something really damned special. I certainly know of a few million armchair quarterbacks (sorry Curt on the mixed metaphors) that would love to be in the same situation.
Who the hell knows how it will turn out though. Perhaps decades of steroids and oxy abuse will turn him into Brad 1.01 or perhaps he will sell his soul to EASports for their new MMO division (shit, there"s something about that bothering me but I"ll forge ahead!). Who knows.
Even after all these pages and posts, I"m still interested in seeing how it plays out. Then again, I was a long-term poster on Sigil"s forums and well, yeah.
Baseball boy is in a very enviable situation. He earned/has a big chunk of money and has retired pretty young. He"s at the perfect age to leverage that into a hobby/passion/whatever and even if he fucks it all up, he"s still fine. Lucky for us, his passion is MMOs and hell, it might just turn into something really damned special. I certainly know of a few million armchair quarterbacks (sorry Curt on the mixed metaphors) that would love to be in the same situation.
Who the hell knows how it will turn out though. Perhaps decades of steroids and oxy abuse will turn him into Brad 1.01 or perhaps he will sell his soul to EASports for their new MMO division (shit, there"s something about that bothering me but I"ll forge ahead!). Who knows.
Even after all these pages and posts, I"m still interested in seeing how it plays out. Then again, I was a long-term poster on Sigil"s forums and well, yeah.
Caliane
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Very true.Believe said:
I think its very important to point out competition is going WAY up as well though.
Mistakes, and weaker games in the past put up decent numbers. EQ with all its faults, lineage1 and 2, even UO and DaoC had some major issues really.
Recently games like WAR and Conan were both pretty well done games, but effectively failed because they weren"t at the bar. They were missing components gamers are demanding in an mmo today. The bar has been raised. A game can aim and hit a niche market like Eve, though as well.
We"ve been hearing this crock of shit for 4 years now.Caliane said:
"Numbers don"t matter", or, "as long as it does well enough to sustain itself, it"ll do fine" or, "it"ll appeal to a niche market".....
Bullshit. Did you even bother to consider the astronomical costs associated with building some of the games you mentioned? WAR, Conan, Vanguard, and other high end games like them, won"t likely ever see any considerale profit relative to thier development costs.
They failed BECAUSE they shot for the bar and missed. By a country fuckin" mile.
You think these guys will be any different? HELL NO! They"re setting thier sights directly on that same exact bar. And if they don"t at least come somewhat close, you"ll be adding thier game to the list when we"re talking about the same shit years from now about some other game.
What is funny is that the money it takes to make MMOs doesn"t have to necessarily be that high. It"s one of the industries, like mine (music) where you can bs your salary to a range that if you actually took those skills to other industries your salary would DRASTICALLY drop.
Talent industries (entertainment, sports, politics are always the screwiest (word?) when it comes to finances.
The thing about these industries is that it"s the only places you will get epic wins and epic failures.
MJ"s Thriller vs Costner"s Waterworld for example.
Talent industries (entertainment, sports, politics are always the screwiest (word?) when it comes to finances.
The thing about these industries is that it"s the only places you will get epic wins and epic failures.
MJ"s Thriller vs Costner"s Waterworld for example.
I think you"re over generalizing. Vanguard was a complete failure, yes. Between client problems, polish issues and generally unfinished content it was never going to be anything.Rayne said:
WAR, on the other hand, did not fail because they "missed the bar". WAR had a small number of crippling design decisions that killed it. For all the retarded UI responsiveness, stock PvE and repetitive BG grinding, it wasfunand would have succeeded. It didn"t because of, IMO, two very simple reasons. One was the destro bloat (entirely expected by everyone BUT mythic and no contingencies planned) and the second was simply the EXP grind required to get to the fun part of RvR, especially when no one else is on to RvR with.
AoC was also fun but suffered from some ridiculous bugs like female combat animation delays and the complete lack of content between 50-60.
None of those would have killed WoW, but there have been many MMOs that have been soveryclose to becoming a critical success and opening up the genre to more investors. The main issue is studios keep making games people don"t want to play. WoW is a huge enabler to the gaming population because its a game made by people who want YOU to play it. Gone are the days where you can make really shitty game mechanics and annoy the everliving crap out of anyone trying to achieve anything in your game and retain subs. Can you imagine if a game got released with the downtime and obfuscated mechanics of EQ today? It would get ravaged and canceled faster than HGL.
Warhammer and AOC were not even remotely well done. They failed miserably in the most important category that matters: Risk vs Reward.
If you think those games were well done you don"t understand game design in the slightest.
If you think those games were well done you don"t understand game design in the slightest.
Because when I said they were fun, I meant they were well done and engineered flawlessly. I"ll have to go grab my dictionary to double check that I guess. Also, sorry but there"s no such thing as "Risk" in modern MMOs except perhaps in EVE. It"s all effort vs reward which is entirely a moot point unless the game succeeds to where the end game matters. None of those MMOs did, so your entire post is invalid.
On a very basic level, there are three main reasons people continue playing MMORPG"s.
1) Achievement
2) Competition
3) Social
Almost everyone who plays falls into 1 of the 3 categories, some people falling into multiple categories. Without explaining it in detail, the #1 reason people continue playing MMORPG"s is achievement. People like accomplishing things, it makes them feel good. This directly correlates to a risk vs reward system and hence why it is the #1 most important thing you have to get right in your MMORPG.
People expect that for time spent playing, they will be rewarded. In most cases the EXPECTATION of a future reward is what keeps people playing. A game designed correctly is properly rewarding players for their time. In most games this means itemization is one of the most important aspects of the game design as the power of the items dictates the value of the reward, a key component of the risk vs reward equation. If the items suck, like they did in AOC, the risk vs reward formula is now broken. People can accomplish what they set out to accomplish, but they aren"t being adequately rewarded for their time. The same was true in Warhammer, where there was little correlation between time spent and rewards obtained. In fact, the system was skewed in the wrong direction. Renown Rank 80 took a ridiculously long time to accomplish but provided very little reward over what people already had. That doesn"t fulfill the Risk vs Reward formula. The harder and longer something takes to achieve, the rewards should be greater in proportion.
WoW is one of the only games that is setup to consistently reward players for time spent playing. Even if you lose in the battlegrounds, you can still measure the amount of time needed to obtain the next item you want. The power of the item, and the time spent obtaining it is an important factor in Risk vs Reward. The proverbial carrot keeps people playing as the goals are obtainable for all types of players.
1) Achievement
2) Competition
3) Social
Almost everyone who plays falls into 1 of the 3 categories, some people falling into multiple categories. Without explaining it in detail, the #1 reason people continue playing MMORPG"s is achievement. People like accomplishing things, it makes them feel good. This directly correlates to a risk vs reward system and hence why it is the #1 most important thing you have to get right in your MMORPG.
People expect that for time spent playing, they will be rewarded. In most cases the EXPECTATION of a future reward is what keeps people playing. A game designed correctly is properly rewarding players for their time. In most games this means itemization is one of the most important aspects of the game design as the power of the items dictates the value of the reward, a key component of the risk vs reward equation. If the items suck, like they did in AOC, the risk vs reward formula is now broken. People can accomplish what they set out to accomplish, but they aren"t being adequately rewarded for their time. The same was true in Warhammer, where there was little correlation between time spent and rewards obtained. In fact, the system was skewed in the wrong direction. Renown Rank 80 took a ridiculously long time to accomplish but provided very little reward over what people already had. That doesn"t fulfill the Risk vs Reward formula. The harder and longer something takes to achieve, the rewards should be greater in proportion.
WoW is one of the only games that is setup to consistently reward players for time spent playing. Even if you lose in the battlegrounds, you can still measure the amount of time needed to obtain the next item you want. The power of the item, and the time spent obtaining it is an important factor in Risk vs Reward. The proverbial carrot keeps people playing as the goals are obtainable for all types of players.
The problem with using the word "fun" is that it"s subjective to the person. Your "fun" and my "fun" are probably different so much so that you can"t design a game to be "fun", you need to understand what CAUSES people to have fun, then design the game around that. There is nothing that is universally "fun", it"s a subjective word.Palum said:
If a player is achievement oriented, their fun would be derived from being rewarded. If a player is competitively oriented, their fun would be derived from a victory in competition or in some cases simply the nature of the competition. Do you think it"s a coincidence that most pro athletes who are likely very competitive in nature seem to have more "fun" on a winning team then a losing team?
Woefully Inept
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So you"re saying just becauseyoudon"t think a game is fun doesn"t necessarily mean the game itself is shitty then?
None of those matter if a game never gets off the ground. The only games I can think of which didn"t succeed because of a complete lack of end-game are Earth and Beyond, Auto Assault and AC2.
People quit AoC because Tortage was interesting, polished and had voice acting and every other zone was a complete shithole. People quit WAR because level 20-40 were so boring it wasn"t worth playing anymore. Even kekes who would grind endlessly for months for competition aren"t going to waste their time if the general populace quits after a week.
Regardless of whether AoC or WAR would have held up in the long run, they died on release. Every single MMO lives or dies in its first month. It sets the stage for the entire life of the project. Arguing the validity of their game design philosophy is pointless. If its fun, it will generate enough subs to cause serious interest. At that point if there"s enough to do in the end-game, people will stay and in the case of some rare MMOs you might even gain market share.
People quit AoC because Tortage was interesting, polished and had voice acting and every other zone was a complete shithole. People quit WAR because level 20-40 were so boring it wasn"t worth playing anymore. Even kekes who would grind endlessly for months for competition aren"t going to waste their time if the general populace quits after a week.
Regardless of whether AoC or WAR would have held up in the long run, they died on release. Every single MMO lives or dies in its first month. It sets the stage for the entire life of the project. Arguing the validity of their game design philosophy is pointless. If its fun, it will generate enough subs to cause serious interest. At that point if there"s enough to do in the end-game, people will stay and in the case of some rare MMOs you might even gain market share.
Exactly. I didn"t think WoW was fun, but I still think the game is very well designed. Just because a game doesn"t cater to my specific needs doesn"t mean the game itself is shitty.Tred said:
I"m sure very few MMORPG designers do it, but the industry has target markets just like every other industry. The game"s focus really determines which type of players you are catering to.
If you"re developing a PVP MMORPG you need to understand that you are primarily trying to cater to competitive players and that you"re competition extends OUTSIDE of MMORPG"s to games appealing to the same playerbase. For example, first person shooters or real time strategy games would be competition for a PVP MMORPG.
The draw of a PVP MMORPG over say, a first person shooter / real time strategy game is that it also incorporates a system of achievement where you can continuously improve upon your character. That means the primary thing that would keep people playing a PVP MMORPG over another competitive game like a first person shooter is character advancement and to a lesser degree the social aspect of an MMORPG. You"re catering to people who like the competition and also like the ability the improve their characters.
That means a quality system of character advancement whether it be through gained abilities or gear should be the #1 priority when making a PVP MMORPG. It"s the main thing that will keep people playing. Another very important factor is balance and maintaining the integrity of the competition. In truth, it"s a lot harder to design a PVP focused MMORPG then a PVE one and your potential target market is smaller.
Caliane
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I think you missed what I said.Rayne said:
Games like conan/WAR are intended to be AAA mmos with high costs and a high bar. Both failed to hit that expected level of quality/gameplay/etc. (WAR was oh so close) The competition for these AAA titles is very heavy.
Neither conan or WAR are particularly bad games. But they failed to meet peoples expectations and thus lost subs.
But not every mmo needs to do that. EVE, fusionfall, city of heroes, Maplestory, Runescape, etc. Things of this nature. Aim for a niche market, attend to their needs, and you are good to go.
Okay. Lets try this from a simpler angle.Caliane said:
You CANNOT spend 10"s of millions of dollars, expecting your game to turn out numbers even remotely comparable to WoW, and when it doesn"t simply say, "oh well, we missed the mark, but this niche audience we"ve attracted will turn us a decent profit".
Cause that ain"t gonna happen for about a decade. IF it even lasts that long. And lets face it, we aren"t talking about any upcoming "niche" title here. We"re talking about whats expecting to be a top notch AAA title.
And any title expecting to be considered "AAA", NEEDS to contend directly with whatever the current kings of the hill are. I"m telling you right now, that with the list of talent here in this very thread, expectations are running into overload mode. And if those expections aren"t at least reasonably met, it"ll be ripped to shit in every gaming circle on the net.
I hope they do well. I genuinely do. But I don"t hold much faith for anything fantasy based. Because anything fantasy based needs to contend with WoW directly. And that means spending big money, and getting everything right. Beyond that, sustenance will be key.
And WoW has set that bar pretty fuckin" high.