Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Cylus, while I agree that in general the 1% on boards (or even less than 1%) is not a minority worth directly catering too, spreading word of mouth rumours about an upcoming game is some of the cheapest marketing you can get.

I imagine almost all of us try games because friends we trust reccomand them to us, so at least getting the name out there early on builds anticipation.

I mean, it isn"t like the game is massively talked about, look at this for some perspective:

Google Trends: 38 studios, world of warcraft

Two points :


i) They are aiming for their IP to be bigger than the MMO. McFarlane and Salvatore aren"t onboard just to put their name to a game. They are making something much bigger. A drip, drip feeding unfounded expectations and discussions is going to take away from them growing it the way they want to. Yeah it sucks, but there it is.


ii) Curt is out of order sharing anything about the IP or the game. It"s not just that he is paying people money to do it and they have the good ideas, it is that it is disrespectful to the people who have the responsibility delegated to them. You can"t recruit people worth having about, give them ownership over decisions then not live by that if you want to retain a quality organization. He"s already out of order sharing the little bits that he has.



We have had some good clues from two folk at 38S that no-one has followed up on.

a) Dymus told us that we can get an idea about the art direction from the work of the artists on staff and their past and present work. I"m no art expert, but you can look up their staff on the 38S site - even a quick Google gives you plenty of idea what they are like, their work that has won prizes, recent art competitions they have entered etc


b) MacLean said, just last week, "I'm excited about leading the incredible developers here and expanding our strategic vision of allowing customers to interact with our products and stories where, when, and how they want".


Knock, knock. Is this mike working ? No-one has picked up on this ?

Interacting with our MMOs via browser, IPhone / mobile ? Where is this going ? Offline character development ? ........

Offline character development was done by Eve already. It has its pros and cons, the cons are that if you do not start right away, you are fucked.

The atlernative of course is to have a "gated" advancement with a heavily logarithmic curve, but that still doesn"t do much. A trillian plug in to talk to people on EQ via EQIM existed until Sony destroyed it, if Blizzard wanted, it would be utterly trivial to implement it for the iphone or the like.

Yes, but think of the alternatives. It doesn"t necessarily mean the level system from EvE.

How about an AA system that is time based ? If it"s growth was planned years and expansions in advance, it wouldn"t need to be a barrier to entry.

Off line trade skill or trade skill advancement that is time based ? RF Online was another suck game, but the offline mining system was intriguing, if not well executed.


Random skill ups to the offline development ? Can you imagine how often we would be checking our character sheets offline ? "Bzzzz ..Mr Jackson, are you there, you are late for your two o"clock development meeting .. ". "Tell them I"ll be 15 late, would you Samantha, I"m sure that silver smithing advancement is going to click over any minute now..".

Gnome Eater said:

Cylus, while I agree that in general the 1% on boards (or even less than 1%) is not a minority worth directly catering too, spreading word of mouth rumours about an upcoming game is some of the cheapest marketing you can get.

I imagine almost all of us try games because friends we trust reccomand them to us, so at least getting the name out there early on builds anticipation.[/url]

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I"ll just go ahead and just say that a good game doesn"t need cheap marketing. If you, as a consumer, run into cheap marketing, well...

On the other hand, this also goes back to what Zehn mentioned. Word of mouth between folks is great but what are the chances of you convincing 40 of Zehn"s friends to say "fuck all" to each of their 5 years of WoW? Anchoring your chances on the "word-of-mouth" pyramid scheme is foolish.

There"s a gorilla out there. Her shit could be your ticket to a good MMO. Ignore the smell, distill it a bit, and run with it

Flight said:

Yes, but think of the alternatives. It doesn"t necessarily mean the level system from EvE.

How about an AA system that is time based ? If it"s growth was planned years and expansions in advance, it wouldn"t need to be a barrier to entry.

Off line trade skill or trade skill advancement that is time based ? RF Online was another suck game, but the offline mining system was intriguing, if not well executed.


Random skill ups to the offline development ? Can you imagine how often we would be checking our character sheets offline ? "Bzzzz ..Mr Jackson, are you there, you are late for your two o"clock development meeting .. ". "Tell them I"ll be 15 late, would you Samantha, I"m sure that silver smithing advancement is going to click over any minute now..".

Click to expand...

Yeah, EvE"s offline was a great idea, but attached to the wrong things. Attaching it to trade skills, and gathering would be perfect. Literally farming gold while offline.

Just expand Rested mechanics to stuff other than XP.

Ayeshala said:

Just expand Rested mechanics to stuff other than XP.

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Nah. The idea is to merge and incorporated almost browers based gameplay into the game experience.
Checking your character status literally in firefox.
Assigning tasks in your web browser.
So when you log in the game for real at 6:00 or whatever, you have real bonuses for having "played" during the day.

Merging WoW with mafiawars? are you kidding me? people would eat that up.

**double post**

Caliane said:

Nah. The idea is to merge and incorporated almost browers based gameplay into the game experience.
Checking your character status literally in firefox.
Assigning tasks in your web browser.
So when you log in the game for real at 6:00 or whatever, you have real bonuses for having "played" during the day.

Merging WoW with mafiawars? are you kidding me? people would eat that up.

Click to expand...

Exactly.

And I suggested it in this thread aeons ago, so I"ll be expecting royalties, courtesy of my copyright lawyer, Sam Deathwalker.



Imagine you are having the crappest day possible at work, but you log in to your task sheet and see you just got your first ever crit on a tailoring task, opening up a server first recipe. You just got the rocket of your life off your boss, but you are walking around with a grin on your face, like the cat that got the cream. They"ll never understand .....

I like to load my character up on the armory and inspect all his gears and achievements, then I close my eyes and imagine it in all its Orcish glory.

Imagine you are having the crappest day possible at work, but you log in to your task sheet ..

Click to expand...

O Lawdy

Yeah I thought going web based was the way to go too.

Then I realized Web based games all end up requiring way too much of your attention through the day. The burn rate on those games is enormous. Play rates look like an inverted V. You don"t want to jeopardize your subs because people feel they need to check their progress every 30 minutes to stay competitive.

Let people do Day stuff during the Day and just expand Rested mechanics.
If you REALLY want all the web based/iPhone minigame shit we can all easily picture, make it have a negative impact on Rested.

The value in web based stuff for most people would be to make the game more accessible; a web based LFG app with direct link to the launcher for example.

I guess the "living breathing world" thing about MMO"s is dead with all this talk about offline rewards and browser based bullshit.

When you log out, your toon goes to sleep for the night. Nuff said.

First it was zone maps.
Then it was crazy addons that tell you when to take a shit.
Next comes browser based tasking, LFG and chat systems.
Soon enough you"ll just be paying $15.00/mo for an empty box, irc chat, and a game called "Imagination the MMO"... wait a minute. Are we de-evolving back into MUDs?

Offline resources are great, don"t get me wrong. Armory, Forums, Even Sony"s EQPlayers thing had some good points.

But the second you allow someone to play the game offline, even if it is just simple, mindless tasks like gathering or farming. You"ve just made a horrible mistake in my opinion.

Though.. that would be a good way to combat the gold farming companies. Make everyone a bot.

*rolleyes*

The LFG app with a link to launch the game is about as far as I would take it. Anymore than that and you"re just pushing it in a direction where people wont log in to your game.

Think about it, Your main toon in WoW. What would you login to him for, aside from raids, if dailies and farming mats for elixir"s, pot"s and food"s could all be done offline?

Even if it doesn"t start out this way, we"ve seen it in WoW one hundred thousand times. Blizzard implements something to make things more streamlined/easier. Then the masses say, well wtf.. if we have this, why can"t we have that too? Then three patches later, we have that.

I guess it really doesn"t matter to the gaming company though. Whatever the fuck is making them money, and ideas like this probably would make a shit load of money.

But I thought the majority of the discussion in here was about making good games.

But I thought the majority of the discussion in here was about making good games.

Contrary to the Mel Gibson Conspiracy Theorists here, that"s exactly what this is.

Not much, if anything, that"s been speculated about us is even remotely true, even when discussing the AA. I"ve found when you debate something that"s so far from truth you lend it credibility to be the case.

I"m a gamer, every bit as much as anyone here is, and that was the sole reason Green Monster Games, now 38 Studios, was founded. No different than Bioware, Blizzard or any of the others.

I"m still feeling my way through this, and will be, but forums like this I belonged to before I started this company, and I"ll partake in long after I am gone.

You"ll post here from BEYOND THE GRAVE?

If we can get that feature in game, ya.....

Sidetrack; Curt you have traveled a lot, and I am sure have sampled your fair share of foods in this nation. Who has the best BBQ?

Cincinnati, best BBQ ribs on the planet. 1 of my top 10 spreads, post game.