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Caveat: I'm an MMO developer and I like the microtransaction system. In short, if you're not the biggest game (if you're an indie developer, for example), you can't compete with a larger developer via subscriptions. They'll make more money with more subscribers, therefore the $15 someone pays for another game will feel "worth more" than the money paid for your smaller game. You can read a more in-depth analysis on my professional blog.

The example I give of why I like microtransactions as a player is that I can control my costs easier. I play Dungeons & Dragons Online with some friends, which uses this business model. I can tell you exactly how much money I've spent on DDO: $100. I've also played WoW in the past, but I don't know exactly how much money I've spent on it. I will say I know I've spent more than $100 just on buying boxes for the original game and expansions for WoW.

Anyway, it's not like subscriptions are inherently virtuous. Just ask anyone how much they love their cell phone provider or cable company. You can be gouged by unscrupulous businesses with a subscription or any other business model, even "free" given that most companies sell your personal data to support that business model.

Unfortunately, the creator of MMOGchart.com doesn't consider Meridian 59 worthy of mentioning, but it was launched in September, 1996.

However, the problem is that the patent is an extension of a previous patent, number 6,219,045, dated November 12, 1996. A proper defense would require that that you go after that patent as well, as I was told by lawyer I know. There's still prior art to be had, but it's not quite so easy to find it.

If you want to read more about the NCSoft lawsuit issues and patent problems relating to game development, I posted up about this a little while ago on my professional MMO development blog: http://www.psychochild.org/?p=540

Have fun.

I edited a book on business and legal issues in game development. Not exactly a tech tome, but I'm a programmer by training, so I hope I can share some insight.

The important thing, as others have mentioned, is a question on if you have a publisher, if you are going to look for a publisher, or if you want to self-publish.

If you are going to self-publish, take a long, hard look at what you're doing. Does this have to be in book format? Or, would setting up a convenient website be better? There's a certain cachet to having a published book, but for a lot of tech things I'd prefer to have an online reference. Even if you do have a compelling reason to put the work into dead tree format, having a companion website is highly advised.

If you have a publisher or want to find a publisher, I'd recommend doing that first. When my co-editor and I thought about our book, we wrote up a Table of Contents for the book and pitched that to the publisher. We went to a publisher of other books on the game industry and they were really receptive to our idea. If you're going to write the book on your own, you might want to write up a chapter in addition as you approach publishers.

Once you find a publisher, they'll give you the information you need. They might want everything submitted in Word format, as ours did. Use the tools they recommend to ease the process. The last thing you want is an irate publisher, trust me on this one.

Finally, work with an editor. If you're self-publishing, get an editor! Another pair of eyes with the ability to go through your work with bloody red pen is absolutely vital to ensure that you aren't writing boring crap. If you're working with a publisher, try to get on good terms with your editor from the start and build some respect both ways. The editor's job is to improve your work, so understand that every nugget that is created by your keyboard isn't always made of gold. Your editor is vital to the long-term success of your work.

Here are some lessons I learned along the way:

* It takes a lot of time. More than you probably think right now. Even though I was "only" an editor (ha!) for chapters contributed by others, it was a full-time job and then some. Expect to write every waking moment you're not doing something to ensure your survival (eating, sleeping, earning money). Do whatever you can to stay focused, because it's going to take a lot of work, and a lot of times it will be boring. Re-writing a chapter for the fourth time in so many weeks because it just doesn't seem to want to come together defines "test of endurance".

* Don't expect to get rich. Some people get into writing a book thinking it's the path to riches; it's not. A book that does well sells a few thousand copies. But, as one person put it, a book is an awesome business card. ;) Use the book to open doors and provide other opportunities for you that can help you achieve your goals.

* It really is awesome to have a published book with your name on it. It's a tremendous sense of accomplishment to have your book sitting on your bookshelf.

Hope that helps a bit. Good luck with your work!

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'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.

Actually, the game assets were put into escrow as assets against investment from other companies. I don't remember if this "Redbana" is the investor, but there's someone that is interested and has a claim against the assets. So, no open sourcing for this game. Plus, consider that open sourcing a project like a game of this scale is not a non-trivial bit of work.

Anyway, the whole situation with Hellgate and Flagship was a pretty fucked up affair. You can see an interview with Bill Roper here: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3169356. I also wrote a book about business and legal issues: Business & Legal Primer for Game Development , which would give you some insight into the business and legal issues in game development.

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'm a professional MMO developer. This idea isn't new, but the word "permadeath" sends most MMO players into a frothing frenzy. I think it would be interesting to do in a game.

I previously wrote up a concept similar to this where players would manage a family on my professional blog at http://www.psychochild.org/?p=198. I also had the concept of expansions "fast forwarding" the timeline and advancing the story; this allows the story and world to change based on player actions without having some of the problems associated with a fully dyanmic, persistent world. I'd like to do it someday. :)

Some thoughts,

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,

You are exactly right; and I'm an MMO developer. The current game require the currency of time to be spent (in addition to a flat monthly fee). This means that people that have more time than other people will advance further and faster.

From a small game developer's point of view, the subscription business model is a dead end. I got into this in some depth in a post on my blog from over a year ago. The executive summary is: A small game charging as much as a larger game for subscriptions means the smaller game makes less money but is considered "just as expensive" as the larger game. Offering the game without a subscription allows people to pay what they think the game is worth.

Of course, there will always be greedy people. I heard one person say that they overheard someone at the GDC saying their newly developed game will be "World of Warcraft with microtransactions!" That's one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of them since I started developing games professionally.

My thoughts,

Day late, dollar short, all that. That's what I get for not reading Slashdot daily. ;P

The problem is that game development is a creative endeavor. Part of what makes a team work well is team chemistry, and it's not easy to go to a new place and instantly feel that chemistry. That's one of the problems with modern game development, because otherwise promising teams are axed merely by looking at the bottom line and ignoring the other factors that can't be put in terms of dollars and cents on the balance sheet. Game development, despite it's similarities with software development, is much more similar to putting together a movie or play rather than coding a business application.

Yes, game development is a business; I was an editor for a book on that very topic. But, there's much more to maximizing profits in the industry than simply increasing profit and/or lowering costs.

I wasn't aware that graphic murder was an art form.

Many works of art have included graphic killing. The classic Goya painting Tres de Mayo is incredibly graphic. You can argue if this is murder or mere killing depending on your point of view. The same can be said of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, which was intensely graphic and disturbing to many people.

Of course, I'm going for the easy points here because these two works dealt with war, or "justified killing". How about we take a look at a movie like American Psycho? Here's a movie that shows someone murdering others in gruesome ways for the mere pleasure of killing; based on a book which I assume has some descriptions of murder in it. Should we ban this movie and the book because they has graphic murder in them?

Games should be recognized as a viable art form and should be given equal protection as are other forms of art. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it has no artistic value. (For what it's worth, I thought American Psycho was disgusting and boring. But, I am opposed to censoring/banning creative works.) I discuss this more on my game development blog under the term "legitimacy".

You know, for all your smugness, you don't seem to posses a functional grasp of the principles of copyright.

As I pointed out in another comment, I've actually done expert work for an IP law firm and edited a book on business and legal issues in game development ( Business & Legal Primer for Game Development ). I've also been creating, designing, and managing online spaces for about a decade. So, uh, I have more than a passing familiarity with these issues. And, let me tell you, the actual arguments between lawyers on this case is a lot more esoteric than what I'm arguing.

The problem here is that, as I've said before, the issues are not clear-cut. If it were an offline press conference and someone threw a bunch of sex toys in front of the camera, then most of the free speech and fair use arguments would hold true, and I'd absolutely agree that reposting pictures would be legal. This has been well-established. The problem here, if you'd bother to actually read my arguments, is that a) this takes place online with avatars and creations that can be covered under copyright, and b) this is a case dealing with online harassment. There are plenty of laws to deal with offline harassment, but many people, including yourself obviously, don't put the same weight behind online harassment; neither would the police when it came to enforcing existing laws.

Don't believe this is harassment? Do this: go to work and carry around a large rubber dildo and show it off to your co-workers, particularly the female ones. You'll learn soon enough that brandishing a phallic image is harassment according to many opinions.

And slashdot has a perfectly functional way of dealing with that.
[...]
And in online computer games they are called "suspended accounts".

No, no, no. If I called your mother (or wife, or daughter) something offensive, and for some reason BoingBoing decided to point to the article, do you think it would matter if the comment was rated at a -1? No, it wouldn't matter in the lightest. Hundreds of thousands of people would see a comment insulting your mother (or wife, or daughter). Yes, the system takes steps to discourage this type of behavior, but when forces outside the system operate then the internal mechanisms are insufficient.

And, suspended accounts are worthless in most of the cases we're talking about. The penis offenders in Second Life just sign up with a new account. Same with the YouTube posters. And, who's going to suspend BoingBoing for posting information about it? Nobody. So, your solutions to what is a serious issue are non-solutions.

That's what gets you, just because you think something isn't nice you want it to be illegal.

Honestly, stop trying to read between the lines of my posts because you are always wrong. My point here is that there are reasonable limits to free speech and I picked the two most common examples: endangering others and obscenity. I didn't feel the need to include threats and harassment because we're already talking about it in this case, and the examples are obvious. I guess I have to spell it out for you: there is no such thing as 100% free speech. There are always limitations on it, and often for good reasons.

[long, nigh incomprehensible paragraph]

Translated: you can't be bothered to look at a real, thought-out argument. It was too difficult to twist that passage around to support your strawmen arguments, I take it? I even put the important distinction in bold: the Anshe Chung avatar is not a person. Therefore, most of the free speech arguments fall apart; we truly are talking about something covered under copyright.

For the first half of that mess you seem to be arguing my point, then you draw the conclusion that it's basically impossible for anyone to post a screenshot of an online game...

That's because you're just looking for an argument against what you're saying.

Yes it fucking does. Do everyone a favour and look up fair use.

As someone who has done expert work for an IP law firm and someone who has edited a book on business and legal issues ( Business & Legal Primer for Game Development ), I think you're probably incorrect that I don't know the basics of IP law. Now, I'm not a lawyer (I still have my soul), but fair use doesn't mean you get to use whatever you want at any time.

Now, I admit I was a bit unclear, in a legal sense, when I said "for your own purposes"; however, I was referring to posting them up on a blog as had been done with the clips of Anshe Chung. And "fair use" is unlikely to apply in this case; part of the confusion here is because we're dealing with an online presentation instead of an offline occurrence as people are trying to compare this situation to. Anyway, you should do yourself a favor and learn about the specifics of fair use in U.S. law before you criticize others.

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.

Actually, you can already see a bit of this business model in modern online games in what I like to call a "pay for perks" business model. In this model you don't pay just to play the game, but you do pay for enhancements ("perks") in the game.

A great example of this for a U.S. game is Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. In addition to the subscription-based servers, you can join servers that are free to play. However, some activities and in-game items cost "doubloons", which are a currency that can only bought using offline money (or "real money" like dollars, etc.) You can play most of the game and enjoy a majority of the puzzles without paying one penny. But, most people do buy at least a few doubloons to enjoy a larger section of the game. You can also convert the doubloons to in-game currency ("pieces o' eight") at a fixed rate.

This model is good for the player for two reasons: first, it allows you to control how much you want to spend. Only want to spend $5 this month? No problem, just buy that many doubloons. You aren't forced to pay $15/month like other recent games charge. On the other hand, you might decide that you want to have more in-game cash without spending the time to earn it; in this case, you can spend more than $15/month and get more money to spend in the game. So, even people who want to experience more of the game but that have limited play time can enjoy the game as well.

Of course, most current players won't like this type of system. To be perfectly honest, the $15 you pay for a month of gameplay is an incredible bargain for entertainment. So, having access to the whole game for a low monthly fee is a great deal for the people that play the game for dozens of hours every week. These people could end up paying more in the long run if they want to play the same number of hours over an extended period of time.

From a developer point of view, this business model is nice. It doesn't put limits on how much a customer can spend per month on your game. Also, even though some people play essentially for free, others will usually spend more than enough to make your average income per customer higher than it is under a subscription model. I've heard stories of people spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a game in one month. Personally, I couldn't see myself ever doing that, but I'm more than happy to take someone's money if they want to do that in my game. :)

The biggest downside is that your game has to be well-designed for this business model. It's very hard to shoehorn it into the game after launch. You also have to balance what people can buy very carefully with what people can earn in the game. If you give too big of an advantage to the people buying stuff, you'll upset the people that can't afford to keep up. If the advantages aren't good enough, people won't buy the items....

I wrote about this a bit on my professional blog, where I pretty much say the monthly subscription business model is doomed. Perhaps a bit strong of an assertion, but probably accurate. Goes into more description on why I think this is a good future business model from the developer's point of view. I also cover some of the negative aspects in more depth.

Hope this is interesting for some people. :)

Have fun,

The parent post says, "What it takes is hard work." then two sentences later says, "I can tell you that it is not hard...." So, hard work isn't hard?

Speaking as someone who works in another creative field, it does take good promotion (usually through marketing/advertising) to make a work of art that will get attention, just as the grandparent post said. The trick is, as the parent post points out, that this can be self-promotion. Self-promotion can be done on a much more modest budget than an all-out print/TV/radio advertising campaign can.

It sounds like the poster's father is good at self-promotion in addition to having musical skills, so it is easy for him to get attention. Unfortunately, not everyone is blessed with these types of skills. Plus, forming contacts can take a long time even if you are good at it; sometimes it takes longer than someone can survive without steady income. True, you can short-circuit the system if you happen to stumble across a good social network to tap into, but you can't rely on that.

And, you are right in that giving away stuff for "free" can help build a reputation. I write about game design and game business on my game development blog for free and talk at various conventions in order to stay in contact with people in my industry. It is incredibly important to get the word out about you and your work. My reputation and writings have gotten me quite a bit of contract work to help keep food on the table while I starve for my art. This is one reason why I think P2P networks are great: they allow people to distribute their work for free if they want. Not necessarily something I can take direct advantage of in my situation, but I have seen how it helps others.

However, I think that if we really believe this is the best use for P2P networks, then we do need to take a stand against the people that just want stuff for free. We need to quit with the "it's not theft because you still have the work even though I'm enjoying it without paying!" bullshit. Or the "I wouldn't buy it anyway, so it makes no difference of I download it!" excuses. Don't even get me started on the "I'm doing civil disobedience (from the safety of my basement!)" garbage some people tout as an excuse. These are all excuses people use to justify their own desire for free stuff.

If we let the P2P networks flourish with a majority of truly free stuff, if we allow content creators who want to give away their stuff to create a counter culture, then we'll see a real change. As long as people are downloading stuff for free instead of looking for independent artists, it puts more control in the hands of the MPAA and RIAA and other associations and large companies like that.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the best way to hurt the MPAA and RIAA is to stop downloading "mainstream" stuff for free and go look for independent artists that do stuff you like. At the very least, start supporting big acts that give away songs, videos, or even whole albums for free. As long as people continue to violate copyright, these associations will continue to wield so much power and influence. As soon as we have people actively looking for indies, then the large marketing and promotion budgets will become less necessary, and self-promotion will come easier. By violating copyright law and downloading songs/movies/games/whatever, you are just supporting the role of these companies even more. Let me make this perfectly clear: You are not weakening the MPAA or RIAA or other such association by downloading commercial products without paying for them.

This applies to all creative works: music, writing, games, etc. If you want something, then pay for it. If you don't to pay, then look for cheaper/free alternatives. By giving these alternatives a chance and helping to support the artist, they can continue to give you content and they don't have to sign a contract with the devil (in the form of the MPAA or RIAA) in order to make

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,

There are a few misconceptions in your post. Unfortunately, lots of people make them.

First, WoW does not make $90 million per month. A large portion of those 6 million subscriptions Blizzard claims are in China, and Chinese players pay US$0.06/hour. They would have to play more than 8 hours per day to reach $15/month, and China has restrictions on how long minors can play these types of games. (I made a post on my professional blog with more details and links to references.)

Second, the 6 million subscription figure is worldwide. As I said above, most of those players are in China, a market that was not available to most of the previous games one might consider. The half-million figure you state is for North American subscriptions for previous games. Comparing this to Blizzard's last press release claiming 1 million North American subscriptions, we get a figure of 2x rather than 10x as you state.

Don't get me wrong, Blizzard certainly has done very well and surpassed the "old guard" quite handily. They also proved all the naysayers wrong that said the fantasy online game market was oversaturated and no new game could possibly do as well. But, it is best to keep the figures in proper perspective when discussing this topic.

All that said, I do agree with your central point: the Blizzard and Warcraft brands were well-loved for being great games from a pretty honest company. This definitely helped them make an online RPG that surpassed all previous records.

On the other hand, the Atari situation is different. I suspect most of the income goes to Bioware, so Atari doesn't make much off the premium modules; they likely expect to make more from sales of NWN2 and want as little competition as possible. Some people that won't get getting the newest patches and content might look to the sequel for an upgrade. Is it the smartest move? Not sure. But, the decision did not totally come out of left field.

Some thoughts from a game developer,

There's often discussion about "games as art", and some people question why it's important for games to be considered "art" instead of being just fun. This story shows one of the biggest reasons: it makes the medium of games more legitimate and less prone to attacks like this.

Do you think this bill would have passed unanimously if we were talking about violent books? What about violent paintings? Consider Goya's El Tres de Mayo . It's extremely violent, but we consider it art. I remember seeing this painting in my text books in school in history. We don't fret about kids seeing the blood and violence.

Of course, game developers also need to take some responsibility here and create more works that are worthy of the title "art". And, even if games are considered as having artistic merit, there will still be politicians that try to play politics with it, just as they do with music these days.

I discuss this a bit more in a essay and comments on my professional blog.

You can find a more reasonable approximation here: http://www.psychochild.org/?p=127 . Chinese players pay about six cents an hour.

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,

Sadly, the problem seems to be that Nintendo isn't lying enough. I wrote about a bit of the hype over next-generation consoles on game development my blog. It references a great article over at CNN where the video games writer takes a look at the previous generation.

Take one quick example: Remember the "Emotion Chip"? Remember how Sony said that games developed on the PS2 would be so powerful that developers could make life-like characters to bring emotion to games? Yeah, right. You can go throw in just about any PS2 game and more likely than not the faces aren't even animated.

So while other console manufacturers are up to their old tricks, again, Nintendo decided not to give into hype. As such people are declaring them the losers even though the hardware isn't even out yet. Of course, Nintendo tends to get the last laugh by having a wildly profitable video games division.

My thoughts,

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.

Very few people understand how hard it is to provide good customer service for an MMORPG.

This is due in no small part to the subscription fees being too low. (yes, that's right, too LOW).

Blizzard may have room for improvement, but they're doing as good a job as any large-scale MMO has ever done. Certainly a better job than Sony/Verant has ever done!

I just gave a talk at a conference which talked briefly about this. One of the my points was that the large companies have no incentive to advertise about older games. Activision makes more money for every copy of DOOM 3 that is sold than they do when someone fires up the original DOOM. (There are also issues with losing the history of the industry, but that's a whole other rant.)

In the end, the newer games get more attention than the older games. Companies spend a lot of money convincing people to keep track of the new games and that technology drives "fun". This is how the companies make more money.

This is actually a very backwards way of thinking of some games. For example, online RPGs (aka MMORPGs) actually get better with age. A game like my own Meridian 59 has had several expansions and tweaks done to the game over the years. These games tend to be very bug-free and well-balanced. The game grows and expands over the years, and the game you can play now is often quite different than the game it originally was.

Finally, sometimes games change. I'm a huge fan of computer RPGs, but the games released these days are hardly RPGs. Instead of being able to create a character (or party), I'm forced to deal with a pre-made character and run him (or rarely, her) through a pre-set adventure. Sometimes I just have to fire up a Wizardry game or the original Final Fantasy as an antidote to the mostly passive games that are released these days. I guess they sell really well, but it's not the type of game I want to play.

I'll post the slides to my conference talk on my professional blog (http://blog.psychochild.org/) when I get the chance.

Some thoughts,

I'll agree with you, the term "social" gets thrown around a lot. However, I think sometimes it is a good title. My professional blog does get some good discussion on there about game development issues. It's like sitting at a coffee shop discussing issues, but it's not just limited to people who like coffee in my immediate location.

I think you need to consider a larger issue: what is "real" socialization? You mention in your replies that you aren't an absolutist, but your attitude here seems to say that you don't believe that anything over the computer can be "real" socialization.

Of course, you seem to accept the telephone as socialization even though that puts distance between people and aspects of communication, notably body language, are missing. You might even consider letter writing to be socialization; people before the telephone certainly did, even though there were distances between people.

Your attitudes are a bit simplistic. I prefer email to phone calls not because I want more distance between me and the other person, but because I prefer the more thoughtful pace of email. Both people can take a bit of time to put some thought into their email instead of being put on the spot in a phone call. I once had an interview with someone who insisted on calling instead of emailing. We had a fairly empty phone conversation because neither of us could think of meaningful questions. Yet, once we finally did do email we had a very meaningful conversation and were able to cover a lot of topics.

In addition, technology helps bridge those gaps between people instead of emphasizing them. I run my own business and some of my employees are on the other coast from me. I use IM, email, and the telephone to keep in touch. I simply could not manage them without all these tools at my fingertips. IM in particular is more useful than a phone call because I don't have to balance the IM client between my shoulder and my ear while I'm writing code and trying to compile it.

I also think you are quick to write off the interaction in "networked video games" (you probably saw this coming once I said I develop games for a living). At a recent conference I attended, one of the officers of Yahoo! gave a talk about how he learned valuable management skills from running a guild of people on an online RPG (aka MMORPG). He told how he went into job interviews talking intelligently about management issues like dispute resolution, motivating others, managing peer opinions, and so on based on his experiences in the game. These issues are largely based on communication, relationship management, and other social elements.

In addition, many of these games encourage teamwork in order to overcome a challenge. This is exactly the same concept that allows soldiers to bond together in a combat unit. Yes, it's not live combat, but working together as a team in a game could be one of the most stressful things a typical American teenager has faced in his life. So, when that teenager says he feels some type of kinship with other people, even people he might not know offline details about, there may be something more to it than some sort of mental disorder as you imply.

At the end of the day, the person at the other end of the line is still a person. Honestly, some of the most hurtful people are the ones who take your attitude, the ones that believe online socialization isn't "real". They're the ones who don't realize that there are other human beings out there that can be affected by their words. Real feelings can be hurt, just as real feelings can develop between people, and all too often I see people completely ignorant of this fact. Taking a broader view of communication and socialization can help with interacting with others, including through online "social" software.

Another viewpoint for you to consider.