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Okay, if you can take the "Bloody Penguin from Yeti Sports" and simply give it a fresh look and walk away with millions, then "the intellectual value of design" is clearly there. Since it's samzenpus's pick I always automatically assume it's a monetary issue. The word "art" is much like the word "natural", everything and nothing is depending on the context.

An example of the value of art: http://news.nationalgeographic...
Personally, I learned how to code, and how to speak English all because of a game called Meridian 59 http://www.meridian59.com/, and am proud to admit, I still dream of the landscape from time to time. So John can suck it! (Don't tell him I said that.)

The Open Meridian Project is going strong with 40 or so people logging in per day. Check us out at http://openmeridian.org/ we have a new 3d client in the works, and all kinds of fun. There is also the official legacy servers (also open source, we are a fork) at http://meridian59.com/

Yeah, and you can play for free too: good times

A game were you can loose nothing to a human opponent is kind of boring.

The problem is that almost all of these games are based on D&D style levels in one form or another. A level 10 character is going to kill a level 2 character every single day of the week and twice on Sunday, so you can't really run PK games like that, the obsessives would rule the roost. If games were less focused on turning individual PCs into demigods and more focused on something else (like actual adventures), you could have PK to a certain extent.

And there are games like that. My understanding (although I've never played it myself) is that Meridian 59 would be a good example.

I wonder how much better he could do financially if he would put together a bit more modern game engine.

As someone who as been there and done that, the answer is: he probably wouldn't do better. We worked on a major engine upgrade for Meridian 59; we upgraded the game to use 3D hardware acceleration instead of a software-based renderer, added dynamic lighting, and lots of other improvements to the engine. We didn't upgrade the art (I'll get to that in a moment), but the engine was a significant improvement, especially if you ran it at higher (read: modern) resolutions.

After a few years of work and a final big push, we saw pretty much no increase in interest after the upgrade. The problem is that while the presentation does improve, it still can't compete with the AAA level of quality. And the AAA games are what you will be compared to, no matter how much you improve your engine. The reality is that writing a more modern engine would probably cause the author to spend more time for very little return on investment.

"But, you should have improved your graphics, too!" We had to do some lovely hacks to get the 2D player art to work in the new 3D engine, so we had seriously discussed upgrading the art. The problem is that it was a huge amount of work. We'd have to replace a lot of artwork since the players (and all the variations of equipment we have) as well as monsters, items dropped on the ground, scenery, and lots of other things would all need to be upgraded. It's not something we could have done piecemeal and still have anything resembling a consistent look. And, inexpensive, quality 3D artists aren't as easy to find as a good engine programmer willing to work for free, unfortunately.

Ultimately, people play indie games because they like the gameplay. If you really enjoy old-school PC RPG type games, then the graphics shouldn't matter much. Heck, I still fire up Might&Magic 7 on an occasional basis because I enjoy the game, and that thing has graphics that are barely better than M59's old engine. Yes, there are going to be people that turn up their nose at the graphics but, to be honest, those people probably wouldn't be interested in the game anyway.

My thoughts,

Unfortunately, the problem becomes one of motivation. Who is more motivated, the griefer who enjoys the frustration of others, or the frustrated person starting to think that it's easier to log off forever than to fight the griefer? If you've ever seen the online trolls, even here on Slashdot, you know the painful answer to that.

I run an online game called Meridian 59 . It embraces a less restricted PvP philosophy with the intention that players can solve their own problems. Yeah, it doesn't quite work out that way in practice.

To address your specific suggestion, the problem is that the real problem makers won't flag themselves as villains. If you have it so that other people can flag individuals as villains, then the griefers will start flagging victims in order to harass them legitimately under the rules. The core problem here is that a coded system can't easily tell a person's intent (if at all). And, for most people, it's easier to walk away from a game rather than try to "fight the good fight" against the villains. Unfortunately, the people leaving are paying customers in the case of a commercial game.

Is there a solution? Perhaps this type of design isn't always doomed to fail, but you'd have to educate your players and get them to change their attitudes. Most people play games to dominate them, not to worry about conservation of limited resources. How to do that is left as an exercise for when you develop the game. ;)

I spent my time and money resurrecting a game I worked on that was shut down: Meridian 59 . I worked with another of the original developers to form a small team that included 3 other people to maintain and try to expand the game. So, I have some perspective on this issue based on first-hand experience.

Running an MMO server isn't easy. Even if you have a developer and team that put maintainability at the top of the list, your software will still have bugs. Any software developer knows that for any non-trivial program, there will be something that doesn't work as well as you might otherwise like. Fix those bugs, and others suddenly bubble to the surface. (Or, possibly, they were too minor to deal with before, but now they're the most noticable thorn in your side.)

The problem with running a very small online game with a subscription is that that business model doesn't scale down very well. For my game, I have about 250 or so hard-core people who still pay for the game. With the ~$10/player I make (after initial billing service charges), I make about $2500/month. Now, take out my other costs (bandwidth is the big one), and we're not talking about much money, and practically no marketing budget to grow the game. Even at our previous peak of many times the number of players we have now, it was enough to keep a handful of people from starving and not much more. At our peak, I was only personally making $24,000 per year while working 80+ hours per week. After a few years, knowing that you're working for less hourly wage than a burger flipper takes its toll.

Dropping in another business model, such as an "item mall" system would potentially bring in more money, but it would also potentially harm the game. Since one of our goals was to preserve the game instead of letting it fall into oblivion, that runs counter to what we want. Our game is also heavily PvP-focused, so things like "free accounts" and "buy some perks" doesn't really mesh well with the game due to abuse and feelings of unfairness. I like the "item mall" type business model for games, but I'm a firm believer that you should design that into the game from the start, not slap it on later.

You also have to realize that these games have failed for a reason. There simply aren't enough people interested in the game to keep it going. Now, some games may be killed before their prime (like Earth & Beyond was), but the fantasy that someone can take a struggling game and turn it around is just that: a fantasy. If you don't add to an online game, it gets stagnant and boring. After a few years the engine starts looking dated. Even if you do a massive overhaul of the engine, you still have to worry about how the art assets look, and it's no guarantee that people will take any new interest in your game.

In the end, resurrecting M59 was the right choice. Personally, it gave me a lot of valuable experience and it's helped my career by giving me a very visible note on my resumé. And, there is a core of dedicated fans that do thank us for our work. But, it's not a source of reliable income for me.

As for open sourcing it all, I might legally own the code but I am still in contact with the original developers. This is some of their earliest code, and they've never been overly enthusiastic about sharing that code with the rest of the world. But, note that taking the code open source does not necessarily preserve the game for others to play, it just puts something out there for people to tinker with. The tech is only part of the equation, the game design is also important but not necessarily covered under the same concept.

My thoughts.

I spent my time and money resurrecting a game I worked on that was shut down: Meridian 59 . I worked with another of the original developers to form a small team that included 3 other people to maintain and try to expand the game. So, I have some perspective on this issue based on first-hand experience.

Running an MMO server isn't easy. Even if you have a developer and team that put maintainability at the top of the list, your software will still have bugs. Any software developer knows that for any non-trivial program, there will be something that doesn't work as well as you might otherwise like. Fix those bugs, and others suddenly bubble to the surface. (Or, possibly, they were too minor to deal with before, but now they're the most noticable thorn in your side.)

The problem with running a very small online game with a subscription is that that business model doesn't scale down very well. For my game, I have about 250 or so hard-core people who still pay for the game. With the ~$10/player I make (after initial billing service charges), I make about $2500/month. Now, take out my other costs (bandwidth is the big one), and we're not talking about much money, and practically no marketing budget to grow the game. Even at our previous peak of many times the number of players we have now, it was enough to keep a handful of people from starving and not much more. At our peak, I was only personally making $24,000 per year while working 80+ hours per week. After a few years, knowing that you're working for less hourly wage than a burger flipper takes its toll.

Dropping in another business model, such as an "item mall" system would potentially bring in more money, but it would also potentially harm the game. Since one of our goals was to preserve the game instead of letting it fall into oblivion, that runs counter to what we want. Our game is also heavily PvP-focused, so things like "free accounts" and "buy some perks" doesn't really mesh well with the game due to abuse and feelings of unfairness. I like the "item mall" type business model for games, but I'm a firm believer that you should design that into the game from the start, not slap it on later.

You also have to realize that these games have failed for a reason. There simply aren't enough people interested in the game to keep it going. Now, some games may be killed before their prime (like Earth & Beyond was), but the fantasy that someone can take a struggling game and turn it around is just that: a fantasy. If you don't add to an online game, it gets stagnant and boring. After a few years the engine starts looking dated. Even if you do a massive overhaul of the engine, you still have to worry about how the art assets look, and it's no guarantee that people will take any new interest in your game.

In the end, resurrecting M59 was the right choice. Personally, it gave me a lot of valuable experience and it's helped my career by giving me a very visible note on my resumé. And, there is a core of dedicated fans that do thank us for our work. But, it's not a source of reliable income for me.

As for open sourcing it all, I might legally own the code but I am still in contact with the original developers. This is some of their earliest code, and they've never been overly enthusiastic about sharing that code with the rest of the world. But, note that taking the code open source does not necessarily preserve the game for others to play, it just puts something out there for people to tinker with. The tech is only part of the equation, the game design is also important but not necessarily covered under the same concept.

My thoughts.

I'd like to consider myself one of those "fellow dreamers", so there are a few points I feel I should address.

First, the industry is littered with the corpses of companies that thought money didn't matter. As much as it's fashionable to slag on Bill Roper for what happened to Flagship and Hellgate: London, his cardinal sin was believing that money didn't matter. He was used to an environment where the developer said, "We need more time," and the accountants replied, "It's worth the money we'll spend!"; instead, he had to face the harsh reality of a publisher that replied, "That's nice, how are you going to fund it? We aren't giving you any more cash."

I believe in this issue so much I edited a book about business and legal issues in game development. Ignore business issues and you won't have a game, as Hellgate is showing.

The second issue is that we already have the business model of paying for benefits in place: we call these "expansion packs". Since you mentioned WoW, let's consider the previous expansion pack, The Burning Crusade (TBC) as an example. If you didn't buy TBC, you couldn't gain a higher level, you could do the very lucrative daily quests, and (perhaps most importantly) you couldn't play with your friends who did buy TBC. About any argument you can muster about microtransactions you can say about expansion packs as well; the main difference is that in the U.S. market we've been doing expansion packs for a long time, whereas microtransactions are the "scary new thing".

Also, as some people have pointed out, a lot of these items that give direct benefit have been part of the game already, sometimes given to people who have spent a lot of time in the game ("veteran's rewards"). Sony is now offering alternate ways to acquire the items.

Finally, as a professional online game developer, I think microtransactions will help us see a wider variety of games. I run the small online game Meridian 59 , which uses the traditional subscription-based business model (and no charges for expansions, I might add). The problem is that someone spending $10.95/month on my game views the cost as "almost the same" as the $14.95/month to play WoW. However, my few hundred players don't generate nearly the income as Blizzard's millions and millions they brag about. So, to the player, they feel they are paying a comparable amount for a completely different product.

A properly developed game that uses the microtransaction business model (usually to replace the subscription fees) means that the player gets to control how much money is spent. If you decide not to play a month, you don't have to keep paying a monthly fee (or burn a month you already paid for because you wanted a multi-month discount). Any game that tries to nickel and dime the players is not going to have players long. If you're really interested, you can read up on more of my thoughts on my blog.

I'm an independent, professional game developer. I don't mean to attack you directly, but you're saying some things that seem logical but that the market doesn't really follow up on. I am one of the few people for whom graphics truly do not matter, and the game I run, Meridian 59 , is a game where I hoped fun would matter more than graphics.

I just hope it means they will spend more on gameplay and less on flashy graphics crap. I mean seriously, look at how many truly great games were made with the Quake 2 and 3 engines.

A lot of people say, "Graphics don't matter!" when they actually do. Many people judge a game based on graphical presentation; many people buy games based on the screenshots, for example. And, while a game's graphics may not mean much once you get into the middle of the game, they certainly do color most people's impressions at the beginning. A lot of people have a really hard time getting into a game if it's not visually stunning.

I think what a lot of people mean is that they don't buy games based on graphical advancement. The problem is that once the envelope is pushed, then expectations adjust to accommodate them. Using your examples of the Quake engines, the games based on those engines weren't necessarily pushing the envelope on graphics. But, there was a specific minimum expectations set by the engine. Most people wouldn't play a game based on the old Quake 1 engine these days, even though that engine was quite impressive for the time. In a few years, people will look at the Quake 2 engine the same way we might look at the DOOM engine now. Expectations will have changed.

The reason why you have the "ooh, pretty!" games is because some developers are trying to sell engines. The makers of Quake, id, made a lot of their money licensing the engine to other developers. They made the original games those were based on in order to sell the engine. Crysis is the same way: FarCry or Crysis may not be particularly engaging games, but the graphical presentation moves the expectations and this in turn requires developers to license the engines from the company. It's how they make their money.

And with the economy getting worse every day try to aim for the $30-40 price point.

And, that's not going to happen. The problem is that these shifting expectations have driven up the costs of developing games. As the price to develop a game increases, the amount of money needed to recoup costs increases as well. The reason why the large publishers are talking about reducing the secondary market is because their profit margins are becoming razor thin. They need people to buy the newer games to continue to stay in business. A lot of larger companies are feeling the pinch, especially during these economic times, and they know people aren't willing to pay more and more per game.

Here's some perspective, when I started developing games professionally a little over 10 years ago, the budget for a large game was one or two million dollars. These days it can easily reach $10 million or more. The biggest issue is that games are a hit-driven industry; the big, profitable games make the money that covers the failures. Unfortunately, that only covers the publisher and often a developer will go out of business even when they have a hit game. Check out the fate of Iron Lore studios, the makers of Titan Quest: they went out of business despite having a rather popular game title and expansion.

Some thoughts from someone who works on the inside of the beast known as the game industry.

It makes me wonder if an open-source MMO might one day not only rival the current big commercial ones, but even become far more long lived than any of them because its community would last forever, and it could never get shut down, regardless of perceived success or failure.

In a word: No. This has been tried many times before. Perhaps the most notable project has been WorldForge (http://worldforge.org/).

For a bit of background, I've been developing MMO games professionally for over a decade, and did text MUD coding in college starting in 1993. I currently own and operate the MMO Meridian 59 , a game that originally launched in 1996. So, I have some idea of what is required for making an MMO game. I'm also a professional who has shown a personal interest in maintaining an online game world even after it was originally shut down; 3DO shut down the game in 2000, and my business partner and I bought the rights to the game and re-launched it. Let me tell you, that has turned out to be a somewhat thankless task.

The main problem with a "community MMO" as you suggest is that you need a strong, central vision for the game. You can't just have a bunch of people working on things and hope it comes together as a cohesive project at the end. You need someone like Linus with Linux, someone who can direct the path of the project. These types of people tend to be fairly rare, though.

Another major problem is that MMO games aren't just technological, they're also creative. One part of being a professional game designer is being able to realize that most of your ideas suck. It's easy to sit around and spitball ideas all day, but refining them and turning them into something that can be implemented into a fun game is a pretty rare skill. And, most people contributing to the project probably don't want to hear, "Your game ideas suck, stick to coding." The reason a coder would work on a game rather than another project is probably because you want to have input on the formation of the game. Again, you need that strong, central vision to keep things going.

Finally, game development is really hard. I've tried to start up a lot of small-scale projects in the past, bootstrapping the project instead of getting a questionable deal on funding form publishers. Of the few dozen people I've interacted with in the past few years, about 95% of them have flaked out on me. Most of them weren't experienced game developers, so when the real work reared its ugly head, they were suddenly scarce. As I said above, it's easy to sit around and spitball different ideas to see what might stick, but actually turning that idle chatter into an actual game is much more difficult than people realize. Without a paycheck, it's hard to keep people productive when the "real work" starts.

...the MMO feeling is there despite the server requirements being not much different to those of an IRC server.

You're pretty off-base here. I'm not saying MMO servers are horribly complex (the server for Meridian 59 can be (and has been) run on my laptop), but they require a bit more than your typical IRC server, particularly if you want to support more than a few hundred people on a server. Most of the gameplay is calculated on the server, mostly to help reduce the effects of cheating. That's one of the reasons why a "distributed peer-to-peer" MMO is unlikely to work, unless you come up with some sure-fire way to prevent cheating. Given how much people have complained about WoW's Warden system on Slashdot in the past, that's a tall order to fill.

Some thoughts from someone who has some experience.

I'm an online game developer and I looked into doing pre-paid cards a few years ago for my own game, Meridian 59 .

Parent post gets it right. It's not a scam, because companies make less money from the pre-paid cards than they do on direct sales. Take a WoW pre-paid card, for example; a $30 card gets you 2 months of play, but the company has paid anywhere between 30-50% of the face value to create, distribute, and provide retail markup for the card. (At least, those were the figures I was quoted when looking into it.) A retail store probably buys that $30 card for $15-20, so the company is making a lot less money on the card compared to the player pulling out a credit card and paying directly.

Really, the cards are to get people that might not play otherwise: people without credit cards, who don't want to use credit cards online, or whatever reason. They're convenient for a lot of people, so they buy them and the company makes more money than they would have otherwise.

Some insight from someone who understand both parts of the equation.

Haha, same here. The only reason I think I passed my 2nd semester C++ class was because I learned LPC as a wizard that semester. I'm still not sure if "this_player()" showed up on any of my code answers for the final in that class! And, as someone else mentioned in this thread, I learned to type as fast as I do on MUDs. My pseudonym came about because I wanted a hard-to-type name on a PK MUD. Heh.

I thought it was mostly time wasted, too, until I realized how much I had learned. These days I'm an online computer game developer (I own the game Meridian 59 and have a professional blog at http://www.psychochild.org/). It's been quite a trip. :)

I usually don't post that as a title, but the parent post should be modded up. I'm also a professional MMO developer, not posting as an AC. The whole "players want 'entertainment'" bit is something I'm filing away to explain to other people.

The poster is also exactly right about the whole "hero" thing. Most people have a tremendous capacity for self-delusion. Even if I have to stand in line behind all my friends to release Sharpbeak, the game is still rewarding me for a specific "heroic" action. Or, think of it this way: if you rescued a little girl from a burning building, would everyone say, "Big deal, thousands of people have saved thousands of victims from burning buildings before." The fact that the world goes back to a steady state in an MMO doesn't mean your actions are any less heroic. They're just not unique, and people are fine with that. And, especially with things like instancing, you don't even have to compete with other groups to accomplish your heroic goals.

From the grandparent post:
"MMORPG are afraid to have people lose."

The parent poster is right, this is because people hate to lose. There's a thread about permadeath in another part of this discussion. Know why permadeath is never done? Because it's the *players* that scream loudest when this is brought up. They don't want to contemplate the thought of losing their hard-earned character, even if the game isn't designed like that. Most games are designed to have people invest a lot into a character. If someone tries to go against that particular bit of groupthink, then they're accused of "hating the players" or "caring more about experiments than fun".

The real reason why we see people clone DIKU MUDs/EQ/WoW is because the players are demanding that we make more of the same. There are some interesting alternative games out there, including Meridian 59 which I own, but people pass them by. M59 is a brutal PvP-focused game where you can lose just about everything you've worked for, and then some. And, because of that, it has a lot of trouble attracting and retaining players. The reality is that nobody is going to drop even $10 million (let alone the $50 million WoW cost) to build a game if nobody will play the game that cost a few hundred thousand to build. So, we keep seeing the same games that don't take risks and don't let players lose all they've worked for.

Anyone willing to invest in something different can contact me through my blog at http://www.psychochild.org/. I won't hold my breath. ;)

Some insight from another MMO developer,

I am also an MMO developer, but I disagree: people still do trust the client on occasion. It's usually for one of three reasons:

1) Newbie developer mistake, and they didn't think to ask an experienced developer.
2) Those times when trusting the client makes sense (benefits outweigh negatives).
3) A buggy check on the server-side.

I will agree that developers are better about it now than back in the bad old days. The game I own and administrate, Meridian 59 (a one-time "dead" game that lives again) had an amusing situation where the "Hold" spell was just a command sent to the victim's client to disallow input. Yeah, that taught the original development team a quick lesson. More recently, there was a dupe bug where people hacked the client to offer the same object twice in the secure trading window, creating lovely dupes. After figuring out the problem, I put a check in (but didn't actually prevent the cheat for a few days, heh heh) and then banned people who abused the bug. The funny part is this bug was probably in the game since launch, but it took about a decade for a player to figure it out.

My thoughts,

Poor, forgotten Meridian 59 .

Okay, so I mostly remember it because I now own it. :) But, it did bridge the gap between text MUDs and modern graphical games more than UO did. M59 also set the standard for the monthly subscription model; of course, it got that from AOL going to that business model a bit before M59's launch.

And, actually, there was quite a row at a developer's conference when they advertised Richard Garriott as the "grandfather" of online games. Mark Jacobs, a person who has been releasing online games for quite a while before UO came out, was upset that many other people (besides himself) were being overlooked.

A bit of history for you whipper-snappers. Sadly, the computer game industry is pretty terrible at recording and sharing our history.

It does seem that the original author seems to be taking a stance that could be interpreted as, "My business model and I deserve protection, but others may not." This is over-simplification, to be sure.

If someone were to infringe on the trademark or copyright of my small online RPG, it does harm my business even if the person does not do so in order to make a profit. My company is not a multi-million dollar one and the game does not generate significant profits, so every user counts. Why am I less deserving of protection than the original author? At what point do you say, "This company is large enough," or, "There was too little profit made," to give someone a free pass for violating someone else's intellectual property? This is a level of ambiguity I'd prefer that the law system not incorporate, myself.

My thoughts,

Well, there was some discussion about storytelling on a few game developers' blogs. I came out in defense of storytelling, because I think it can be a powerful force. In defense of the people I refer to in the linked blog entry above, they aren't 100% against story; I think they're mostly reacting to the poor state of storytelling in games.

I have degrees in Computer Science and Spanish (with a focus on literature and linguistics). I enjoy writing as a hobby, and have done a bit of writing in my own game. I'm still learning how to apply my writing ability into the interactive medium during the past eight years. It's harder than it first appears.

One thing in the post above I want to address:
There [sic] the rules said not to worry about programming or graphics, just storytelling, but entering still required learning their editor program, and its particular way of making characters move and talk.

This is one of the problems with writing for games. You can't just take traditional writing and slap it in and expect it to work without specialized knowledge. The whole interactivity thing is alien to most writers who have learned to write in traditional (non-interactive) forms. And the novel writer who complained that he didn't want to learn how to type would not get very much sympathy from book publishers.

But, this is also true in other media as well. I recently watched the special features for the movie The Dark Crystal. In the feature, they talk about having to create several versions of the storyboards in order to accommodate the restrictions placed upon them due to the nature of the puppets. If you wanted to write a story like The Dark Crystal, you would have to take the nature of the puppets into consideration. Similarly, you have to understand the nature of the game medium and be prepared to present your writing in a format suitable for the work. It's important to understand how you make the characters move and talk in order to write appropriate prose.

Some thoughts from a game developer.

One word for you: Kesmai.

EA bought a company known for their online games and killed the company and all the games only two years later. Some fine games from Multiplayer Battletech to Islands/Legends of Kesmai are no longer available to be played. You can read about these games, but will probably never be able to enjoy them.

The sad fate of Kesmai was one of the motivating reasons for my buying and preserving Meridian 59. It may not be the prettiest game, but at least people can go play a game with some historic significance.

My thoughts (instead of moderating),

The parent post is right. Indie games often do compete with other games, at least in the mind of the consumer. You may not create your little war game to compete with other war games on the market, but you can be sure that the war game fanatic is going to be comparing your game to every other game he has seen.

The trick is to have a unique selling point that draws people. For a "casual" game, that usually means having a more streamlined experience and a lower price point. If a person can jump into a game and buy it for $20, that's worth a lot more to most people than if the game has a multi-hour tutorial and costs me $60.

For other types of games it's harder. My own game, Meridian 59 is a small Player vs. Player (PvP) focused game. Definitely not for everyone, and it tends to cater to a hard-core audience that has enjoyed the game over the decade it has been running. The game isn't graphically impressive, so it runs on older computers. The game focuses more on skill-based PvP rather than level-based monster grinding. It couldn't be more different than World of Warcraft (WoW) unless we took out combat.

People still compare Meridian 59 to WoW, though.

WoW is bigger. WoW is prettier. WoW has more classes. WoW has better loot. The $10.95 per month for Meridian 59 is "almost as much" as the $14.95 per month for WoW. WoW has to be a better game because more people play it.

Now, I don't develop the game to compete with WoW. I'm mostly happy keeping the game running for the people that truly enjoy the unique aspects of the game. But, even if I'm not competing with WoW people are still going to compare my game to it despite what I think.

I've posted some other thoughts my game development blog.

Some thoughts from another indie developer,

Hah! Us small-scale game developers (I run Meridian 59) do it for the love of gaming and technology. What kind of gaming and technology geek worth the title could avoid reading Slashdot? ;)

The biggest problem with multiplayer games on mobile platforms is communication. Being able to chat with other people is an important part of the experience. Otherwise, you're just being charged more to play a single-player game.

I own and operate the online game Meridian 59. The game was released nearly 10 years ago, and the original client used a raycaster type engine similar to the original DOOM games. (We have since upgraded the engine to use 3D hardware acceleration on the PC.) It's often been suggested that we put the game on the mobile platform since the system requirements are so low.

Unfortunately, there are several problems. First, avatar customization is huge, and it takes a lot of resources to do that properly. Even modest Meridian 59 installs to about 100 MB. You'd have to do a lot of severe compression to get it to work right.

And, as stated above, you don't have good communication. Ironic, since you're usually using a phone. But, if you use voice you'll be taking up part of the bandwidth you need for sending data for the game. As someone else pointed out in comments, most phones won't support the data throughput and response you need for this type of game.

In the U.S., you also have the typical problems associated with mobile gaming. I have a fairly recent phone, but it still doesn't play most of the games out there. Most people can't afford the phones that keep them on the "cutting edge" and able to play these types of games. Why buy an expensive phone to play a crippled version of a game? Less users means that you'll have to increase the price in order to still make enough money to justify doing the phone version instead of a full-blown PC or console version.

So, there's a reason why you don't see these types of games on mobile. Perhaps eventually we'll get to the point where we have good networks and proper phones, but not anytime in the near future.

My thoughts,

C'mon now, there's reasonable consensus about what innovation is and isn't.

Not really. You obviously have what you feel is a good definition of innovation, but there are a lot of people that will disagree with you. If there's a solid definition for innovation, then why don't you share it with the rest of us?

You can hardly say that Square...

You seem to have a beef with Final Fantasy and Square that is affecting objectivity. Some of the points you bring up have very little to do with gameplay innovation ("prerendering technique"?). Was FarCry innovative when it demonstrated a number of newer (but not original) rendering techniques even though it had throughly derivative FPS gameplay?

Personally, I think the sphere grid system of advancement in FFX was very innovative. I don't know of an earlier game that used a similar mechanic, but I wouldn't be surprised if another game has done something similar. But, if that mechanic is original, does that make the whole game innovative? Probably not, but you were arguing that the specific mechanic isn't innovative.

Comparing Black and White to Catz/Dogz is silly. You could argue that, but you'd look a fool.

Ah, now come the personal attacks; a typical response when losing an argument. Don't worry, I don't take things personally. But, I should have B&W to a more obvious game like Creatures, instead. Or, am I still a fool for comparing two games where gameplay consists of training one or more neural nets, represented in game as "creatures", how to behave using positive and negative feedback? Or, will you argue that god-game layer was innovative (even if obviously derived from Populous)? Or that the gesture-based spells made the whole game innovative?

Fable did include a reasonable amount of new concepts and ideas over and above what Rune offered....

So, who decides what is a "reasonable amount" of "new" concepts? I guess it passes your personal tests, but there are other people that disagree. Consider Tomb Raider or Crusaders of Might & Magic as other games with varying degrees of similar gameplay mechanics. I still say innovation is in the eye of the beholder. It seems that you are proving Fable is innovative merely because you said so.

Also, stating you are a professional game developer doesn't really back up your arguements when they main (and far as I can see, only) game you develop is one you purchased from someone else. Excuse me while I scoff.

Again with the personal attacks? I made a single comment at the end of my post to show that I had some authority to speak on the things I did, not to make any invalid points valid.

But, yes, I bought Meridian 59 from 3DO before it went bankrupt. However, I had worked on the game for about 2 years while at 3DO. This is something your Google search probably wouldn't be able to tell you. Anyway, I've been working in the game industry since 1998, after quite a few years of amateur game development, including text MUD development in college. During my professional career I've worked as a programmer a single-player PC game, developed a simple scripting language for console game development, maintained a graphical chat system, designed small games as requested by customers, programmed a handheld game demo on contract, and started a business to develop online games that ended up purchasing the game I had worked on previously. I have worked with and gained the admiration and respect of many online developers who have been developing projects longer than you have probably been playing games.

So, while you're busy scoffing, feel free to share where your authority to define innovation comes from other than, "because I said so online!"

I actually played Meridian 59 when it first came out. No offense, but I wasn't that impressed.

Of course, things have changed in the past 10 years since M59 came out. This is another aspect of marketing, to let people know that the product is "New and Improved!" We've poured a lot of new content into the game, rebalanced things, even got a new rendering engine as an alternative to the old software renderer. Of course, it's still the same game that focuses on character advancement and PvP combat, but even those have changed over the years.

As for GalCiv2, a quick Google search shows that the game will enjoy some print marketing. Print advertising isn't cheap, and they would likely get much better results by having an "online street team" that probably costs about the same.

[A] better game will have strong success and fanbase beyond the initial sales....

True, but many games are like other entertainment media in that most of the sales happen at launch. Game players, in general, enjoy new things. Older games are generally seen as inferior, so encouraging people to buy the game at launch will boost sales. Recurring sales are not as valued, particularly by games in retail because shelf space is limited. A game that sells a steady trickle will make less money over a short period of time than a newly released game that's been hyped excessively and expects big sales.

Unfortunately, that's not the way the world works. If you have the best game in the world but nobody knows about it, you just have a good game you've probably invested a lot into. (For an indie, that's probably a lot of time in addition to some of what should have been your retirement fund.) Once people know about it, then you have a profitable business that lets you make other games.

The main purpose of marketing is to let you know about a product and drive demand. Of course, many times marketers use marketing to drive demand of sub-par products. Because of this, people become suspect when a company mentions its own product because it is not an unbiased source of information. However, if someone that doesn't appear related to the product or company endorses it, people are much more likely to give the product a chance. Especially if that person is on a forum you already participate on and you can look at their posting history and see that they hold some of the same opinions you do, too. This is why you have "online street teams" as described by the person in the grandparent post.

Many people think that spending more money to make a better game would be better in the long run. Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Marketing is vital to selling a good game, because if you don't sell your game you probably won't be able to make your next game. The whole myth of "if you build it they will come" is just that, a myth. It sometimes happens, but you can't rely on it as a business plan.

For example, I could mention my own game, Meridian 59, and tell you about how great the character development and PvP combat is. However, most people won't be interested in clicking on the link because they know I develop the game; I am obviously a biased source and I would tell you my game is great even if it were objectively one of the worst games ever (it's not, but most people still won't believe me). Even if you did visit the site, you might not find the game's screenshots to be that attractive because we don't doctor and/or misrepresent the screenshots; the game is about 10 years old by this point and our tiny company doesn't have the funds to revamp all the graphics and update the 2.5D engine to full 3D (and get 3D models of all the 2D art we'd have to replace, etc). However, if you had read several different people (shills or not) talking about how fun the game was despite the graphics, you might be more willing to try the game out. Even after you logged in you might be more willing to stick with the game a bit longer than you might otherwise, because other people found it fun and many people want to "fit in" with the "norm". (Of course, the person reading this is the exception to that rule, and you want to play the game because it's something only an intelligent individual would enjoy.)

And, if you really want to get meta, you might wonder to yourself if this discussion isn't just a way for me to get you intrigued about my own game without being obnoxious about it. Well, less obnoxious, maybe. ;) (For the record, it isn't because most people interested in the game would probably have stumbled across it by now given my postings here on Slashdot. This is just a situation I'm rather familiar with for obvious reasons. Of course, many people probably don't believe me because I have an interest in people playing my own game.) See, I know how to do the sleazy marketing techniques, I just find it all too distasteful. On the other hand, people aren't exactly rushing out to reward my scruples. :P

The truth is that you really need something to get the audience's attention. Having a good game is only the first step. The next steps are getting people aware of your game, and then getting them to want it. So, all this is just a long winded way of saying that the game wouldn't have necessarily been any better overall if they put their marketing bu

I don't think it would be so hard to increase the # of quests about 4x, and then make it so that they run on different, random timers, so that each playthrough (since all your alts are exactly the same) could have a randomized encounter, or that you could interact with the consequences of other people's encounters.

And you would be wrong, unfortunately. Content like quests take a lot of time and effort. Coming up with a quasi-original storyline, writing it out, proofreading, coding up the mechanics, and debugging all take considerable time. You can streamline the process, but that just makes all the quests feel really similar. (If you really take a deep look at WoW, you'll see that most of the quest mechanics are very similar, actually.) Adding in the things you suggest would make the quests more interesting, but they would increase the complexity of the quest system and this would make the quests harder to implement, and this means it would take longer to provide the same amount of content.

The other problem with your suggestions is that it would disrupt the gameplay for other people. Sure, it feels a bit cheezy to stand in line behind your friends an "heal" the "sick" girl by doing quest one after another, but that content is always available. Consider what would happen if the girl stayed healthy for a while after being cured. First, only one person could really do the quest (even if multiple people could attempt the quest), so some people might be going through the motions without any hope for reward. Even if she fell sick on an occasional basis, healing her would still be essentially meaningless in the context of changing the world, but now you have less interesting content to keep people occupied.

In my own game, Meridian 59, the quests are limited. If you fail a quest you have to wait before attempting it again, you can't just leap back and try the quest again. But, this is probably the one aspect of core, non-PvP gameplay that generates the most complaints. People get very frustrated and very angry because they can't play the game as they expect to be able to. So, having a "randomized" quest isn't going to make people happier.

Now, you could turn the quest around and have it so that the items to cure the "sick girl" could also cure other infirm people. Yet, that basically kills the what is really great about WoW's quests: the direction it gives a player. Going around and killing monsters aimlessly to collect doodads is exactly what makes other games so "boring" in comparison. Going to collect magic stardust and then wander around trying to find a sick NPC to cure to complete a quest isn't a whole lot different than what you get in other games. It's the fact that the quest NPC, with the obnoxious yellow punctuation symbol over their head, gives you direction and promises you a reward that makes the quest system so effective.

Some thoughts from a developer and (well, former) WoW player.

Wow, nice contradiction.

It's not a contradiction. Your reading comprehension obviously failed where I explained that WoW did, in fact, grow the market. But, there's a difference between if they had grown the market without cannibalizing other games, and the fact that they did cannibalize other games in order to grow the market.

That's some beautiful circular reasoning.

Perhaps you'd like a working definition of circular reasoning? There is a catch-22 here, in that nobody really makes new experiences because they don't sell and new experiences don't sell because no one makes them. However, this is not strictly true. There's been a number of indie games that have been released with quite interesting "new experiences", yet they languish. Puzzle Pirates has been the most notable, but A Tale in the Desert has only gained about 1500 subscribers despite the fact that they offer a new and very different experience than other games. Even my own game, Meridian 59 offers something beyond the strict class/level based gameplay even if it isn't "new". People don't fall over themselves to reward people who take risks like this. Why should I waste my money doing something "new" if nobody is going to bother playing my game?

Also, claiming that graphics somehow equates to how much of a "risk" developers take is completely invalid. WoW isn't exactly "cutting edge" in the graphics department, yet that wasn't "completely ignored".

And you'd be wrong. WoW's graphics are "cutting edge" (well, not so much anymore, but still neat), they're just not "photorealistic". Blizzard went with a cartoony style which has served them well in their previous games, and it was readily accepted by the market. However, don't think for a moment that they somehow had less artists creating assets or less graphics programmers throwing in neat effects than any other team. Creating art assets is a huge issue in game development.

But hey, I'm not the "professional game designer". You must know what you're talking about.

Someone who has worked in the industry for about 8 years speaks authoritatively? Shocking.

That's probably why your game needed a buyout just to stay alive.

Yes, that would be me and my business partner buying out the game from 3DO, a company that went bankrupt not too long after that. We were former developers that had worked at 3DO and who fixed up and relaunched the game. We did it largely by borrowing from family and credit cards, but we did launch the game. We even poured our resources into updating the rendering engine to make the game look better.

We bought out Meridian 59 because we were former developers and wanted to save the game from oblivion. We also wanted to... wait for it... provide new experiences to the market! The first step was to get people interested in Meridian 59 as something different, then use the income from that game to build new games that didn't just copy previous games wholesale. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way. People really aren't interested in new experiences, M59 basically makes enough to keep me from starving but not much more, and those "new experiences" you hunger for aren't happening by my hand. To top it all off, someone tries to label me as a "noob" on Slashdot.

Anything else you'd care to be terribly wrong about?

Wow, nice contradiction.

It's not a contradiction. Your reading comprehension obviously failed where I explained that WoW did, in fact, grow the market. But, there's a difference between if they had grown the market without cannibalizing other games, and the fact that they did cannibalize other games in order to grow the market.

That's some beautiful circular reasoning.

Perhaps you'd like a working definition of circular reasoning? There is a catch-22 here, in that nobody really makes new experiences because they don't sell and new experiences don't sell because no one makes them. However, this is not strictly true. There's been a number of indie games that have been released with quite interesting "new experiences", yet they languish. Puzzle Pirates has been the most notable, but A Tale in the Desert has only gained about 1500 subscribers despite the fact that they offer a new and very different experience than other games. Even my own game, Meridian 59 offers something beyond the strict class/level based gameplay even if it isn't "new". People don't fall over themselves to reward people who take risks like this. Why should I waste my money doing something "new" if nobody is going to bother playing my game?

Also, claiming that graphics somehow equates to how much of a "risk" developers take is completely invalid. WoW isn't exactly "cutting edge" in the graphics department, yet that wasn't "completely ignored".

And you'd be wrong. WoW's graphics are "cutting edge" (well, not so much anymore, but still neat), they're just not "photorealistic". Blizzard went with a cartoony style which has served them well in their previous games, and it was readily accepted by the market. However, don't think for a moment that they somehow had less artists creating assets or less graphics programmers throwing in neat effects than any other team. Creating art assets is a huge issue in game development.

But hey, I'm not the "professional game designer". You must know what you're talking about.

Someone who has worked in the industry for about 8 years speaks authoritatively? Shocking.

That's probably why your game needed a buyout just to stay alive.

Yes, that would be me and my business partner buying out the game from 3DO, a company that went bankrupt not too long after that. We were former developers that had worked at 3DO and who fixed up and relaunched the game. We did it largely by borrowing from family and credit cards, but we did launch the game. We even poured our resources into updating the rendering engine to make the game look better.

We bought out Meridian 59 because we were former developers and wanted to save the game from oblivion. We also wanted to... wait for it... provide new experiences to the market! The first step was to get people interested in Meridian 59 as something different, then use the income from that game to build new games that didn't just copy previous games wholesale. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way. People really aren't interested in new experiences, M59 basically makes enough to keep me from starving but not much more, and those "new experiences" you hunger for aren't happening by my hand. To top it all off, someone tries to label me as a "noob" on Slashdot.

Anything else you'd care to be terribly wrong about?

Wow, nice contradiction.

It's not a contradiction. Your reading comprehension obviously failed where I explained that WoW did, in fact, grow the market. But, there's a difference between if they had grown the market without cannibalizing other games, and the fact that they did cannibalize other games in order to grow the market.

That's some beautiful circular reasoning.

Perhaps you'd like a working definition of circular reasoning? There is a catch-22 here, in that nobody really makes new experiences because they don't sell and new experiences don't sell because no one makes them. However, this is not strictly true. There's been a number of indie games that have been released with quite interesting "new experiences", yet they languish. Puzzle Pirates has been the most notable, but A Tale in the Desert has only gained about 1500 subscribers despite the fact that they offer a new and very different experience than other games. Even my own game, Meridian 59 offers something beyond the strict class/level based gameplay even if it isn't "new". People don't fall over themselves to reward people who take risks like this. Why should I waste my money doing something "new" if nobody is going to bother playing my game?

Also, claiming that graphics somehow equates to how much of a "risk" developers take is completely invalid. WoW isn't exactly "cutting edge" in the graphics department, yet that wasn't "completely ignored".

And you'd be wrong. WoW's graphics are "cutting edge" (well, not so much anymore, but still neat), they're just not "photorealistic". Blizzard went with a cartoony style which has served them well in their previous games, and it was readily accepted by the market. However, don't think for a moment that they somehow had less artists creating assets or less graphics programmers throwing in neat effects than any other team. Creating art assets is a huge issue in game development.

But hey, I'm not the "professional game designer". You must know what you're talking about.

Someone who has worked in the industry for about 8 years speaks authoritatively? Shocking.

That's probably why your game needed a buyout just to stay alive.

Yes, that would be me and my business partner buying out the game from 3DO, a company that went bankrupt not too long after that. We were former developers that had worked at 3DO and who fixed up and relaunched the game. We did it largely by borrowing from family and credit cards, but we did launch the game. We even poured our resources into updating the rendering engine to make the game look better.

We bought out Meridian 59 because we were former developers and wanted to save the game from oblivion. We also wanted to... wait for it... provide new experiences to the market! The first step was to get people interested in Meridian 59 as something different, then use the income from that game to build new games that didn't just copy previous games wholesale. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way. People really aren't interested in new experiences, M59 basically makes enough to keep me from starving but not much more, and those "new experiences" you hunger for aren't happening by my hand. To top it all off, someone tries to label me as a "noob" on Slashdot.

Anything else you'd care to be terribly wrong about?

No, what we're seeing is potential market slowdown, not a saturation. It's true that WoW did cannibalize from other games in order to get their figures, but prior to WoW launching most people estimated the number of U.S. online gamers to be less than a million. Now WoW has boasted over 1 million subscribers and the other games are still humming along for the most part, including my own game Meridian 59. But, WoW still grew the market overall in North America.

As for Vanguard, they've always said they were trying to capture the "hardcore" players from old EQ's time. The developers want to make the game again, taking into consideration all the things they learned from doing it the first time around. There are some people that truly enjoy that sort of challenge, and if you can make enough money it makes sense to service that particular niche. It's a question of if they can make enough money from the people that will be interested.

And, some of the "bad" ideas do have some merit. The best times in a game are when you are first playing the game and seeing everything "for the first time". I've been making online games professionally for over 8 years now, and have been a game player for as long as I can remember; but even someone as jaded as I am got sucked into WoW and enjoyed just wandering around. Now, of course, I don't get that same sense of wonder while wandering around. But, if there were longer travel times, as Vanguard is proposing, then there might still be parts of the game I had not seen yet. I might still be interested in exploring new areas to see the sights instead of canceling my account a while ago.

I wish more companies would try and create truly *new* experiences in the massive genre, like what's going on in Korea.

The problem is that the market doesn't reward the companies that do this. Just look at how people are reacting to this article. Yes, admittedly, the team is looking to recapture the feel of a previous way of doing things, but the message here is still, "This isn't how my favorite game does everything, so it must suck!" People aren't willing to try (and pay for) "new experiences" so developers get a bit skittish about trying to develop them. If you take a look at some of the games in Korea, you'll see that there are a lot of really unusual games. For a while the largest games in Asia had 2D isometric art like the Diablo games. Frankly, most U.S. players would ignore those games based on the screenshots alone.

As soon as the market shows they're interested and willing to pay for "new experiences", you will likely see more of them. But, as long as any game that isn't cutting-edge graphics wise is completely ignored, you'll see developers take the "safe" path and focus on graphical presentation. It takes a lot of money to make a competitive online game, and it makes no sense to risk $50 million or more on a "new experience" that people are most likely ignore or criticize when the Slashdot article comes out.

Some thoughts from an experienced online developer,

Ever heard of MU online? Probably not. It was considered the largest online game in the world (not sure if it still holds that title now, though). It was never released in North America, yet it was tremendous in Asia.

There are also a number of other indie online games that you might not have heard of. Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates and A Tale in the Desert are two of the more original, for example. Just because you've never heard of these games doesn't mean they don't exist or that they aren't something to be noted.

As for Meridian 59, that's mostly an issue of poor marketing. You can see a bit of the game's information and history on Wikipedia. The game was originally launched by 3DO, but they never put much effective marketing behind it. The company largely considered the game, and by extension the whole online game industry, to be unsuccessful. There are interviews with 3DO CEO Trip Hawkins, even after the launch of EverQuest, where he says the market isn't ready for online games. With a bit more serious marketing, you probably would have heard of the game.

Some more info,

Single-player game developers (even superstars) often don't understand online games.

The reality is that a small game can make a modest income. The game I administrate, Meridian 59, makes enough to keep me from starving to death, but it'll never be as big and amazing as, say, Lineage. But, people who enjoy hard-core Player vs. Player (PvP) with consequences enjoy our game immensely. We're happy keeping our classic game alive (it first launched over 9 years ago) and serving a niche.

One problem is with the term "massive". People look at the smaller games and turn their noses up at them. Our game with about 100 players on at peak isn't very "massive", so most people give it a pass. In reality, the community is actually quite a bit stronger. But, no one puts out press releases about having "the best community" or "the most enthusiastic customers". It's all about "the most people playing (and paying!)" in press release land.

The problem with the Garriots' predictions is that online is a medium, not a genre. There's a LOT of untapped potential out there, too. Take a look at the Korean market and you'll see an amazing array of games. Of course, one issue in the U.S. market is that the existing audience expects millions to be poured into the production values of the game. As soon as people realize that gameplay really is more important, you'll start seeing a lot more options out there.

Personally, I think the future is in niche games. Why go visit a game trying to cater to the lowest common denominator when you can go visit a game that caters more specifically to your tastes and the tastes of people like you. Of course, as with most boutique offerings, don't expect the price to remain at the rock-bottom like it is now.

Some thoughts from someone else in the industry.

Have fun,

I agree, although I'm not as much a soloer. I had a group of friends that played on a regular basis, and it was fun to go in and do things with just the 5 of us. We cleared a lot of the stuff you can do with only 5 people, usually by the skin of our teeth.

But, we all got to the point where we couldn't do much more with our current characters. Our only avenue for advancement was to go on raids, and the five of us would have to start relying on others. We knew each other well and were able to coordinate without voice chat, etc. In fact, I played a druid before the 1.8 druid buff patch and was able to offtank just fine because the other people knew what the limitations were. Compare this to the typical raid situation (especially before that patch!) where the Druid was expected to be a secondary healer and Innervate bot. (Of course, people aren't thrilled these days when I tell them I'm Feral spec...) The game is good, but for me it is losing a lot of what made it unique.

But, from the numbers Blizzard reports, we're in the minority. The conventional wisdom was that many people were still working up characters, but I suspect more people find the raiding aspects more fun that the rest of us do. Blizzard is still claiming to have large numbers of players playing the game, so the grindy aspects of the game obviously aren't scaring too many people away.

But, at the end of the day, I still have my own game to go play that doesn't demand 40-person raids. Meridian 59 might be small, but it's still something I can play without devoting my life to it. (Developing the game, on the other hand, has consumed much of my life. :P)

My thoughts,

Actually, archetypes are used because that's what the people willing to spend money on these games really want. The history of online RPGs is much longer than the graphical "MMORPGs" you see today, going back as far as text-based games in the 70's, and a wide variety of possibilities have been explored. Current games rely on archetypes because this is what has proven to be popular.

There was actually quite a bit of variety in even just the first few retail online RPGs in the mid to late 1990's. Ultima Online, as other people have replied, had a fairly open skill system. They had a system where you could do just about anything you wanted. Even earlier than UO was Meridian 59, the game I currently own and administrate. This game also had a fairly open skill system without levels and "archetypes" (or classes as us old-schoolers call 'em), although groups of skills were organized into levels; but, you could build a wide variety of characters with the system.

What happened? Well, people looked for "the best" character build, and those became the dominant archetypes. And, don't give me any bullshit about "poor design", this is just the way players are. The majority of players still stuck to what was "accepted" over what was really more powerful, even if the "accepted" builds had always been weaker! In addition, even the best designers have a hard time keeping track of everything. In Meridian 59, we have about 150 unique spells and skills. Testing each one isn't too hard. Now, consider that two skills could interact with each other: 150 choose 2 is 11,175. Now consider what happens if three individual abilities could work together: 150 choose 3 is 551,300. Do you think the typical overworked designer has the time to test over half a million possible combinations? Keep in mind that Meridian 59 is a fairly small game, overall; that figure could potentially go into several millions in a game with a lot more abilities.

As for allow players freedom, let's just say that there's a reason there's few game worlds offering deep Player vs. Player possibilities.

Does this mean we're doomed to having archetypes and shallow gameplay forever? I hope not. But there are certainly reasons why your ideas aren't being incorporated into new games, and it's not for lack of intelligence by us designers.

People that are interested in online RPG development might want to check out my professional blog where I discuss a lot of topics concerning online RPGs from a professional developer's point of view.

Have fun,

I'm so sick of paying for a game that may not exist in the future.

Eventually everything fades into oblivion. I have a bunch of old console games (NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1) and if the console goes bad I can't play it anymore. Should Sony/Nintendo/whoever have to give me a refund? (And, yeah, PS1 games play on a PS2, but some games don't like my favorite Monster Rancher. Plus, will the PS3 play PS1 games?) So, this argument is really meaningless.

Anyway, I'm going to disagree with your assessment that games need to be released to the public. The game I currently own and operate, Meridian 59, was shut down by The 3DO Company. It took a while before 3DO was willing to sell, but we did finally acquire the game. The game would have been worth a lot less if it had been forced to be released.

We keep the game closed source for now because we want the game to remain as we, the developers that have poured a lot into the game, see fit. The game doesn't make us much money, but we're happy that the game is still alive and under our control. It'll never be the biggest, but we still love it. :)

Unfortunately, it looks like this won't happen with AC2. AC1 is still going strong as far as I know, and still making a profit. So, the name "Asheron's Call" still has value and you can't sell off a game with so much intellectual property in it. You could write up a license, but that's more expensive than just sitting on it all.

That said, I think it would be nice if there were a way for games to enter the public domain eventually. The whole purpose of the public domain is to make sure that everyone gets to benefit from the creative efforts of others. It's a shame that some important cultural works are tied up and will never been seen in even our children's lifetimes if things keep going as they have.

Some thought from the developer side of the fence.

The poster is correct about the relationship between reviewers and game publishers. Scores get inflated artificially in order to maintain their connections within the game industry. Reviewing games gets expensive when you consider that new games cost $50, and that dozens of mainstream games (and several more smaller scale games) are released every month.

Some sites try to buck the trend, such as GamersInfo.net (full disclosure: I've written reviews for them without direct compensation), but it's hard when you aren't taking publisher "advertising dollars" to supplement the site's income. And, if you have any seriously negative opinion about the game, the publishers get very angry with you.

I'm also a developer, so I've seen it on the other side. My game, Meridian 59 (M59), is a classic online game that launched back in 1996. We bought the rights to the game in 2001 and have worked hard to update the game. We did a rendering engine upgrade (comparison shots at the bottom of that page) about a year ago and tried to get a blurb in a print magazine. Now, M59 isn't the prettiest game, but it has some historical significance in being the first online game available at retail and having a monthly subscription fee. Anyway, we went to a magazine to show off the new engine, and we barely got a mention in the MMO issue of the magazine. Our game was called a "throwback" even though we had poured quite a bit of effort into improving the game. It probably goes without saying that we can't afford to buy print ads in these magazines, and the MMO games that did buy advertising got large articles dedicated to them. (To be fair, more recently we did get a half-page blurb about Meridian 59 in that same magazine recently, but this was quite a while afterwards.)

What's interesting is that while I worked at a game company, they repeatedly said that game reviews are largely meaningless, but that favorable game previews are what really drive sales. You'll notice that just about every game preview you ever read is very favorable, too. Since games are a hit-driven business, most of the sales happen right after launch. In other words, people will buy a game based on very little information. Few people really wait for reviews, but a good preview will give people a desire for a certain games. Something to think about.

So, yeah, there's a few troubles in the reviewing of games. :)

The poster is correct about the relationship between reviewers and game publishers. Scores get inflated artificially in order to maintain their connections within the game industry. Reviewing games gets expensive when you consider that new games cost $50, and that dozens of mainstream games (and several more smaller scale games) are released every month.

Some sites try to buck the trend, such as GamersInfo.net (full disclosure: I've written reviews for them without direct compensation), but it's hard when you aren't taking publisher "advertising dollars" to supplement the site's income. And, if you have any seriously negative opinion about the game, the publishers get very angry with you.

I'm also a developer, so I've seen it on the other side. My game, Meridian 59 (M59), is a classic online game that launched back in 1996. We bought the rights to the game in 2001 and have worked hard to update the game. We did a rendering engine upgrade (comparison shots at the bottom of that page) about a year ago and tried to get a blurb in a print magazine. Now, M59 isn't the prettiest game, but it has some historical significance in being the first online game available at retail and having a monthly subscription fee. Anyway, we went to a magazine to show off the new engine, and we barely got a mention in the MMO issue of the magazine. Our game was called a "throwback" even though we had poured quite a bit of effort into improving the game. It probably goes without saying that we can't afford to buy print ads in these magazines, and the MMO games that did buy advertising got large articles dedicated to them. (To be fair, more recently we did get a half-page blurb about Meridian 59 in that same magazine recently, but this was quite a while afterwards.)

What's interesting is that while I worked at a game company, they repeatedly said that game reviews are largely meaningless, but that favorable game previews are what really drive sales. You'll notice that just about every game preview you ever read is very favorable, too. Since games are a hit-driven business, most of the sales happen right after launch. In other words, people will buy a game based on very little information. Few people really wait for reviews, but a good preview will give people a desire for a certain games. Something to think about.

So, yeah, there's a few troubles in the reviewing of games. :)

As a few of the parent's sibling posts say, it's essentially that people want more value for their money.

Consider this, if I sell someone a toy for $1 and it bores him or her, what is that person likely to do? Set it aside or even throw it away; the toy has little value to you because that person paid almost nothing for it. Now, if someone paid $50 for the same toy, he or she might spend more time with it even if it bores that person initially. The person wants to get their money's worth, and many people don't want to face the fact that perhaps they paid too much for the toy. (Of course, it helps to make the $50 toy prettier to draw the attention of people spending money.)

The relates to these types of games, too. In my own game, Meridian 59, we give away the client and you pay $10.95 per month to play. In essence, the first month costs $10.95 whereas it costs $50 for other large games. The smaller price is much less than the normal price, so if someone gets frustrated with the game they are much more likely to set it aside. On the other hand, the game that charges $50 might have exactly the same type of experiences, but people are willing to "grin and bear it" in order to justify their purchase.

The point is that while more people will be willing to try the free (or cheap) game, the people who spent more money will likely be more dedicated customers. Of course, the free (or cheap) game has to spend more money on bandwidth and customer service costs as people flood to try the game. The more established game probably makes about the same amount of money on the box, but there are less players and they tend to be more dedicated, leading to less churn.

I talked a bit about this pricing psychology on my professional blog as it relates to online games. A very interesting topic, especially for someone like me that has to deal with it on a regular basis.

Some thoughts from someone who's been there, done that.

1. Firstly what consideration are you providing that I don't already have? I've paid the software vendor to use the software, what additional consideration are you providing in exchange for my agreeing to your EULA? A contract *does* require an consideration on both sides.

My company's consideration is that you can install the software from the media you purchased to your computer. Yeah, it's splitting hairs; welcome to the wonderful world of business and lawyers.

In the case of Meridian 59, we don't charge for the client software. So, the consideration is the installation of the software since you were able to download it freely from our site.

I think the answer here is to post the EULAs on a public website as we have, that way people can consider the contracts before they've spent the time and money to go to the store and purchase the box. I agree that springing a EULA on someone only at the point of installation isn't the best option. But, that doesn't mean that EULAs can't be contracts, especially if you can read it before you spend any money.

2. Secondly the idea that I can return the software if I don't agree is a non-sense. Most shops won't take back software if it's been opened. And you know what: they're more in the right than your EULA: they've provided something for my cash the EULA is irrelevant. In any case, see 1), I've already paid for what I want: the right to use the software.

Send it back to the company, then. If the contract states that you have the right to return the software, then exercise that right. Yeah, maybe you're out a dollar or so in postage, but you can return it. Also, many stores will take back opened software if you raise a stink about it. Explain that you didn't agree to the EULA and that you don't want another copy; ask to speak to a manager, then that manager's manager, etc. Eventually they'll give you your money back. At least, that's been my experience.

Have fun,

Off-topic: http://www.meridian59.com/M59-About-01.shtml - spelling mistake: Alphabet soul instead of alphabet soup.

A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties. The core of most contracts is a set of mutual promises (in legal terminology, "consideration"). The promises made by the parties define the rights and obligations of the parties.

It says nothing of an exchange of things. Further, that's silly because a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is a contract, but there's no "exchange of things" there. Just the promise that one party won't go blabbing (not a legal term) about the information another party agrees to share.

It has to be before the fact.

Which is why you can see the various agreements before you sign up for my game, Meridian 59:
End User License Agreement
The Rules of Play (in-game rules)
Terms of Service

All these are freely available for you to read before you buy our game or join our service.

If you take a moment to read our EULA, you'll see that at the top it says, "WARNING: YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER INTO A CONTRACT." That was written by the lawyer that drafted our EULA.

It has to be mutually agreed upon.

That's what "I agree" means, and it's written button you click on. At the very least I figure this is equivalent to a verbal contract; verbal contracts are usually valid, but usually not used because it can be hard to prove consent of both parties without a written records (which is why signatures are usually preferred). If you don't agree, then you shouldn't use the software. Clicking "I agree" then claiming it wasn't a valid agreement is the worst option, really.

Along those lines, it has to be open to negoation.

What are you doing to that goat for the contract? *shiver* Oh, wait, negotiation. Right....

Have you ever tried to negotiate? For my company, we have contact info posted on our website. You could revise any of our agreements and send it to us before you sign up and play the game. Of course, many companies will probably reject any revisions, but that's their prerogative as with any contract negotiations. And, nobody is forcing you to agree to the EULA. In most cases you can send the software back and get a refund. At the end of our EULA, we state:

If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, promptly return or, if received electronically, certify destruction of the Game Software within ten (10) calendar days after receipt of the Game Software and receive a full refund of any license fee paid if you: (a) Do not use the Game Software, and (B) return it with proof of payment to the location from which it was obtained.

Given my counters to your objections, it looks like our EULA is a valid contract, hmm?

It comes down to this: companies use the EULA to cover their liabilities and to assert their rights. If you don't like the EULA, you have the ultimate recourse: don't use the software. There's not much software out there that is essential, so whining about how the unfairness of the EULA solves nothing. Unless you're willing to not use the software nothing will change. Think Microsoft's OS EULAs are crap? There's a few alternatives out there, I've heard. Don't like the EULA on my game? Don't play. I promise not to be too hurt by your rejection, personally. Of course, I think our EULAs

Not surprising. People always act like development teams are these monolithic beasts that hate the players. In truth, many devs can easily see the truth of the matter, and they often are just as torn up by what's happening as anyone else is. The "official word" comes from managers that try to put the best spin possible on things, and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the people in the trenches.

Having been on an ignored project in a large company, I can sympathize with the developers. Often the developers will be doing their best work in spite of all the problems. They often believe that they can do something, ANYTHING, to turn the game's future around. I'm sure most of the developers are more devastated than anyone else to see the game close down. I know most of the former developers literally cried when Meridian 59 closed down at the hands of 3DO. I made the financially irrational decision to resurrect the game mostly out of love instead of a real desire to make gobs of money from it (HA!).

This isn't to pain the management as the bad guys, either. Sometimes your job as a manager is to make a hard decision like closing down a game like this. I don't think it's necessarily an easy decision for anyone that's involved in the development of the game in any meaningful way.

Some perspective from someone who's been there, done that before it was cool. :)

Let me explain why online RPGs aren't so easy to develop. In essence, players don't know what they really want. I know this is going to piss off a lot of people, but let me explain.

Let Us Lose

See, you say you want to be able to lose. The problem is most players don't want to lose. In my own game, Meridian 59, you can lose. If you die you drop your inventory and lose a percent in a variety of your skills. This means that if you die repeatedly, you can actually go backwards in character progression. Luckily, the game isn't quite as equipment-focused as other games are, so losing your inventory isn't as bad as it might be in other games. Plus, the monsters are dumb and it's fairly easy to get out of a bad situation if you are smart about playing, so multiple deaths isn't all that common.

Yet, when people look at this they cringe. They don't want to be "punished" by the game. Many will complain that they don't want to "lose" the "work" they put into their character. They want to gain power then enforce that power on other people without consequence. I have to admit, this is a compelling argument. It sucks to have a limited amount of time to play these types of games and it kinda sucks to have to spend a lot of your limited time rebuilding from your previous losses. It doesn't feel "fun" to rebuild, even though it is part of the a game that is fun because there's the risk of meaningful loss.

And this is just one issue like this. There are multiple other issues like this that keep developers from experimenting too much. Frankly, people are used to the way the games currently are, and until people are willing to pay for other types of games we'll see more and more clones made.

And, this is what it really boils down to: what will the market support? We already have people trying cool and innovative games, but they fall to the wayside. Meridian 59 has a very well-balanced and unique character development system in an original world. But, I suspect that most people clamoring for "innovation" won't be able to look past the outdated graphics long enough to see the cool PvP system at the core. It's all well and good to hope that one of the high-budget games will do something innovative, but let me put it this way: If I were given a budget of $30 million and told to make an online game, I would do the safest game possible. I would take almost no real risks, because it's my job and reputation on the line if the game doesn't make back its investment.

And, frankly, this is the smart thing to do. World of Warcraft followed the usual Blizzard technique of synthesizing the good parts of other games, polishing the gameplay and presentation to an amazing degree (ignoring issues like stability for now), and releasing a fun but hardly original game. World of Warcraft now boasts 3.5 million players worldwide (1.5 million of those Chinese), and is the most successful western online RPG ever. They followed the safe road and were rewarded for it. Unlike half a dozen other games I could mention that offered more innovation and have essentially faded into oblivion.

Once again, the developers do what the market tells them to do. They will provide the type of games that people will pay for and that will make a profit. Until the people who want innovation show themselves to be a large enough force with enough money to make a difference, we'll continue to see the types of games we have previously.

Listen, personally I agree with you, but people haven't been falling over themselves to financially reward my company for running a game that tries to buck the trend. And, if you're not supporting my current title with a bit of innovation, I'm not going to have the resources to do any other titles with more innovation. Hell, I'd love to do a game full of politics and set in something but a medieval fantasy setting, but I don't have the resources to do that anytime soon. And if you're waiting for one of those $30 million budget games to do something innovative so you can have your pretty graphics, too, you're going to be waiting a long, LONG time.

My thoughts,

Yes, my brother and I started the original Meridian 59. It was bought from 3DO by two of the developers and is still running here. The original 2.5D software renderer has been upgraded to 3D hardware in the intervening years.

There's a lot of room between the 30 person console dev team and the lone wolf working in his bedroom. My own company, developers of the game Meridian 59, is staffed by 3 people, for example. Yeah, I have to wear a lot of hats to develop the game, but I don't have to be a master programmer, artist, administrator, CSR, marketer, etc, just to survive; there are other people able to help out with the workload.

This is what the industry really needs; it needs something between the 30 person/2 year development team and the single person/2 month puzzle game developer. There needs to be some middle ground so that we can have reasonable interesting games that don't necessarily have to have multi-million dollar budgets. Unfortunately, this is no man's land currently; it's too small for the publishers to deal with, and too large for true indie development houses (those not dependent on publisher money to develop games) to be able to reasonably handle. On top of that, publishers control the most effective means of distribution, so you can't just drop a million dollars on developing a game then hope to make money back without having access to distribution to game stores, where the vast majority of game purchases are made. (Direct download is an option, but many people are still hesitant to give out credit card information to just anyone on the internet.)

Until we start seeing these middle-sized houses start to flourish, we won't see real change in the industry. And while I think unionization would be a good thing for the industry as a whole, I think independent development, similar to the indie movie side of Hollywood, is best for long-term improvement of the industry.

My thoughts as an indie developer,

Why is there a monthly fee? I already talked about this before. But, let's give it another go, shall we?

I'm familiar with this topic because I run my own online RPG, Meridian 59. It's not quite as large as WoW, but there's still a lot of basic costs that do scale up appropriately.

A discussion on about the monthly fee for larger games can be found at http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/busmodels.htm l which was written by Raph Koster of UO and SWG fame.

Essentially, these games take a lot of money to develop and then to maintain. The box fees help defray the costs of maintenance, and a large part of the subscription fees go towards maintaining the game world. Every time a gameworld in WoW goes down, there's a team of programmers and at least a few network center administrators working on the problem, most likely. These people don't come all that cheap, and a team of people working like this is fairly expensive. This is a necessary cost, because people expect unusually high uptime for these servers considering most people are only paying $15/month or so. I've had more broadband downtime over the past year than people would accept in M59.

I won't go too much into how good a price even $15/month is. You'd expect to pay that much if you watch pay-per-view shows a couple times per month. An online games will provide you with more than a few nights of entertainment per month.

There are alternatives out there, though. Meridian 59 doesn't require a box purchase and is only $10.95 per month. Sure you're not going to get the prettiest graphics and the slickest UI, but you will get a very balanced game that has superb uptime. You'll also get gameplay that's considerably deeper than most of the games out there. We don't have pre-defined classes and there's no levels.

One of the biggest things about the monthly fee is that no business runs at no profit. Every business needs a little bit to keep growing and developing, otherwise the company stagnates and eventually dies. One of the problems our company is having is that we feel our lower monthly fee is a better deal for players, and we want people to be able to play our game, but it's hard to make significant profit to fund development of new games. We'd love to do something a bit more modern than M59, but it's tough to do when you're on fairly thin margins.

Some information, as usual.

Why is there a monthly fee? I already talked about this before. But, let's give it another go, shall we?

I'm familiar with this topic because I run my own online RPG, Meridian 59. It's not quite as large as WoW, but there's still a lot of basic costs that do scale up appropriately.

A discussion on about the monthly fee for larger games can be found at http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/busmodels.htm l which was written by Raph Koster of UO and SWG fame.

Essentially, these games take a lot of money to develop and then to maintain. The box fees help defray the costs of maintenance, and a large part of the subscription fees go towards maintaining the game world. Every time a gameworld in WoW goes down, there's a team of programmers and at least a few network center administrators working on the problem, most likely. These people don't come all that cheap, and a team of people working like this is fairly expensive. This is a necessary cost, because people expect unusually high uptime for these servers considering most people are only paying $15/month or so. I've had more broadband downtime over the past year than people would accept in M59.

I won't go too much into how good a price even $15/month is. You'd expect to pay that much if you watch pay-per-view shows a couple times per month. An online games will provide you with more than a few nights of entertainment per month.

There are alternatives out there, though. Meridian 59 doesn't require a box purchase and is only $10.95 per month. Sure you're not going to get the prettiest graphics and the slickest UI, but you will get a very balanced game that has superb uptime. You'll also get gameplay that's considerably deeper than most of the games out there. We don't have pre-defined classes and there's no levels.

One of the biggest things about the monthly fee is that no business runs at no profit. Every business needs a little bit to keep growing and developing, otherwise the company stagnates and eventually dies. One of the problems our company is having is that we feel our lower monthly fee is a better deal for players, and we want people to be able to play our game, but it's hard to make significant profit to fund development of new games. We'd love to do something a bit more modern than M59, but it's tough to do when you're on fairly thin margins.

Some information, as usual.

There's a further problem in the games industry in that you can't really schedule for "fun". We're still trying to understand this mysterious beast from a logical point of view. Or, to put it another way, there's no test harness for "fun factor". You can plan out the game with a high degree of detail, implement everything on schedule and under budget, but if the game isn't fun it doesn't matter. Yet, the money people hate to think that all that work went for nothing, so they usually want a game to ship by the deadline no matter what state it's in. That's why you sometimes see games that are absolutely unplayable and obviously not finished; the developers weren't able to get the game to a "fun" state before the money dried up.

This gets worse when you have business people willing to exploit the eagerness of people developing games. I eagerly worked 60-80 hours at 3DO working on one project I enjoyed (the project I bought from 3DO after they closed it down, Meridian 59), but I hated working even 50 hour weeks on another game that only had a 6 month development cycle. Usually the managers just say, "Hey, you're making games. Suck it up and have fun!" if you complain about the hours. It doesn't help that many people have a completely misguided idea of what it's like to make games (even without the bullshit you have to tolerate at large companies); they don't realize that making games is different than playing games.

Enough of a rant for now. Some thoughts from someone who has seen the inside of the beast.

Have fun,

Haha! Exactly. I'm a 3DO survivor and know exactly how well ol' Trip's Magic 8 Ball works.

(Side note, why not mention him as founder of 3DO instead of EA? It's more recent, and oh, yeah, out of business! :P)

Seriously, this is the man that for years said online gaming wasn't ready for prime time, that it wasn't profitable, etc, despite the obvious successes of online games. It sucked for me, because my team working on Meridian 59 got almost no resources since online games couldn't be profitable, according to Trip's Magic 8 Ball. So, it's not a surprise that it faded into oblivion only to be resurrected by a much smaller company that cares. And has made the game profitable with few resources.

Ah, well. Hopefully one day I'll have a fluke success so people will listen to me no matter how irrelevant I become.

Have fun,

GOD, this attitude pisses me off.

Yes. It's not just TV and movies, either. My personal soapbox is for indie computer games, being an indie online RPG developer. People complain about the crap put out by the big companies, but they still buy that crap so it continues to be profitable. People complain about all sorts of things in games, especially online games. Yet, most people won't even go try out a game and give it an honest chance. They fear games that don't have the most prettiest graphics, just as they shun programs or movies without big-name actors. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of great stuff gets overlooked. In all honesty, the indie developer is usually much more interesting and willing to please. When WoW had server troubles, they gave people a few extra days of playtime. When Meridian 59 had a weekend of downtime, we gave everyone a full month free. Since we don't have box sales to counteract this, this really impacted our bottom line. But, we wanted to make it up to our players and show that we were willing to take responsibility for the downtime; let me tell you, there hasn't been significant downtime since then.

The answer is not to say, "Fuck the man!" and download content on the internet. The answer is to find someone that is honestly willing to entertain you and make a good product and support them. Only then will you see the end of bullshit legislation, "broadcast flags", and all that stupidity. Only then will you see real entertainment being done.

Have fun,