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In the vein of giving away something free - see also Puzzle Pirates, a nice cross-platform Java based MMOG, developed on Linux (the free trial is free!). The in-house game toolkit will be open-sourced soon, apparently.

offtopic -- how did your post get to 0?

Such a game already exists. Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is completely skill based, with no real levels (levels exist but have extremely minor gameplay effect), and does not require any great time commitment. This is an ideal game for casual players, and still has enough in-depth content (eg. player run economy) for the hardcore players. It's also written in Java so it's crossplatform, and it doesn't require great hardware or internet connection. You can try it for free and subscription isn't too expensive.

I've already hyped the great features in Puzzle Pirates elsewhere here, but I'll do so again, because it has clever solutions to so many of these issues.

In Puzzle Pirates, there is no death to speak of, but the closest you can come is having your ship sunk. This is a fairly rare occurence, since it requires that your flag be declared "at war" with the other ship's flag - a consensual act voted on by the leaders of both parties. Most of the time battles result in simply boarding the losing ship and pillaging their goods and money.

Although losing an expensive ship is a pretty big negative, the other penalty of having a ship sunk from under you is actually one that is desired by players. When your ship is sunk, the whole crew washes up on the shore of the island they set out from. Although the characters experience no actual injury or harm, on very rare occasions some characters will have a resulting eyepatch, pegleg or a hook from injuries experienced in the sinking.

This is the only way to acquire these desirable marks of distinction, and this makes getting sunk - and warfare in general - a double-edged sword, and something that players both desire and fear at the same time. As yet I don't believe there is anyone in the game world who has any of these physical attributes. This is probably because there have so far been very few declared wars. A pending update will introduce colonization of islands, which will require warfare, so there should soon be a number of pirates walking the docks with peglegs and hooks...

Although Puzzle Pirates doesn't include player death of any kind, there is a clever system for discouraging unbalanced attacking of inexperienced ships. Each ship you encounter is highlighted by a color representing its ability level relative to your own (determined by stats). Red is far more advanced, green is equal in skill, and blue is much less experienced, with a spectrum of colors in between to help you decide whether to attack. Attacking reds can be a fun challenge, but most battles take place between green ships who are fairly equal in experience and skill.

In order to minimize griefing, attacking a blue ship will run a random chance of instead encountering the BLACK SHIP OF DEATH, a unbeatable ghost ship manned by undead skeleton pirates. This ship will mercilessly slaughter your crew and take all the goods in the hold ("slaughter" is a relative term, they're just eliminated from the puzzle duel).

It's a very effective and fun technique for solving this problem and new or relatively inexperienced players are rarely preyed upon. Some crews of course go out and attack blue ships in hopes of facing the famed Black Ship, but they usually get their asses handed to them, and disengage if they actually do end up attacking a blue ship unintentionally. I believe no one has defeated the latest incarnation of the Black Ship, though many have tried...

If you want a skill-based MMORPG, try Puzzle Pirates. Combat etc. are all resolved by participants solving puzzles, rather than clicking madly in an all-out twitch-fest.

For phones, Java is great and binary portability makes sense. For the desktop though, I really wonder and don't see the use of binary portability, especially in a gaming sense (unless you are executing distributed objects over multiple platforms, maybe in some kind of MMORPG game....)

What, like Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates for example?

You probably mean Yohoho Puzzle Pirates. Very different to the usual MM game, although it has its own version of grind despite not having levels as such. It is 2D isometric, written in Java (Linux and Mac friendly), and has a free trial (X free sessions, X is 10 or 15 or so, I believe). I'm not an employee or anything; if you do try it out then please do realize that (in general) it caters to a more mature audience. Although sword fighting tournaments are most popular, there are also fashion and poetry contests.

Clay Shirky has an excellent article on his site about how online groups are their own worst enemy. Basically, he states that in any online community there will eventually come hordes of people who miss the point and spoil the fun for everybody. It's a great read for anybody who's ever been player-killed, trolled or flamed on the 'net.

I might add one exception I've found; puzzle pirates. When I tried this game during the beta testing, I thought I'd accidentally connected to the wrong internet or something. In general the users are helpful and benign, and there's hardly a mention of 'I w1ll 0wnz0r j00 f4gg0t!!'.

Puzzle Pirates.

There's a lot more shareware gaming on the Mac, companies like Ambrosia, Spiderweb and Freeverse put out good quality games. If you get anything though I'd recommend Escape Velocity.

You might want to check out Yohoho Puzzle Pirates as well.

Yarrr!

This is a great online game that is quite addictive. Basically its a bunch of different puzzle games, but you use puzzles to sail ships, fight swordfights, and distill beer. I play a lot of FPS games and online role-playing games and never thought to be addicted to this.

The Puzzle Pirates community is a great bunch of people too. I've met a few new friends out there. Its java based, so you can play it in Windows, Linux, the Mac, and whatever else out there can use java.

http://www.puzzlepirates.com

Take a gander!

Me and my wife have recentley started playing Puzzle Pirates And have been loving every minute of it. If you give it a try send me a /tell in the game and say hi, my username is fabel.

As someone running an online game, there is one thing that will set the PC apart from consoles in the online arena: niche games. I can make a reasonable (if lean) living off of running Meridian 59 for a few thousand players. There were probably more people playing Phantasy Star Online (PSO) on the Dreamcast, but that got shut down while M59 continues to live on. M59 is able to offer a serious PvP game (which is a very niche product) for a much more select audience.

One benefit of the PC is that it's easier to develop games for it on a limited budget. Console development is expensive, starting with the development kit you have to buy for the cost of the entire budget of some indie games. Therefore, most console games are very expensive to make, and selling less than 50k units is considered terrible. On the PC side of things, you can make a game that will target a few thousand players and be profitable. So, it's easier to "take risks" on the PC.

I expect to see a rise in independent games in the online medium on the PC. Our company's next project is for the PC (and hopefully Linux!) because the costs to develop the game are cheaper. A look at Puzzle Pirates shows a cool game that would never make it as a console game. It's really unfortunate, seeing as how Puzzle Pirates is a great idea and a fun game that most likely wouldn't push the millions of units to make it truly profitable on a console.

So, in summary: online PC gaming isn't dead. I expect to see the larger companies like EA follow the dollars as they always have. But for true gameplayers, things will probably look better after a short while.

My thoughts,

Well, there's always Puzzle Pirates, which uses skill at Popcap-ish puzzles to simulate skill at whatever you're doing in game. That and the playing community seems to kill most of the problems with RPGs and MMOs in one fell swoop.

Now what would be cool is if they took that skill idea and married it with something a bit more pulse-pounding, but I'm not too unhappy.

For that matter, I'm also playing DROD (obligatory advertisement) which is from about 1996 but I only found it this year. Does that count?

Puzzle Pirates, the world's first MMOArrrrPG. You play as a cute little isometric pirate who plays popcap type puzzles to sail your pirate ship, attack other ships, and accumulate booty. It looks flatly retarded, but I assure you it's the most enjoyable/addictive little game ever made.

How about Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates? It is fairly original, constructing a fairly complex group dynamic from a relatively simple set of puzzles.

Y!PP

Try Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. Linux supported.

As developer of one of the entrants with a relatively high budget, I can't imagine how we could be more 'independent'. Two friends had a ridiculous idea for a Pirate game, hired another friend, two artists, and another friend, made a game. Yes, we were lucky enough to be able to rustle up the money from friends and family to pay salaries, buy servers, etc. If we hadn't, the game would never have been made (for better or for worse none of the development team are at a time of life where they can live without earning some money).

As it is we've made PP for substantially less than 1/20th of the cost of recent big-corp developed MMPs such as the Sims Online. So we're pretty cheap. Restricting the budgets of entrants to ~$10,000 would make it the 'cheap games written by moonlight or students' competition, not the independent games festival. There's a place for both, of course.

This is indeed analogous to the independent movie vs. studio movie distinction. I believe that most independent films cost hundreds of thousands, some a lot less, some quite a bit more.

That said, I agree about the points below regarding entrants being required to attend. There is a student showcase, perhaps there should be another category for people who are unable to made the GDC. I don't think $100 entry fee is out of line, although I did baulk at the $1,000 entry fee for the 'Interactive Academy' or whatnot awards.

Here is the pricing faq

Check four articles up from this one: Puzzle Pirates

It's a massively multiplayer game where you cooperate with a crew of pirates to sail around, trading and engaging in sea battle and sword fights with other players and computer controlled crews. All the activities in the game are accomplished by puzzles. There are many many couples playing the game and they dig it the most.

Actually, there are some independent online RPGs out there. We just don't get the press coverage of the larger games. We also don't have as high of production values (I.E., our art isn't as pretty as the big-name games).

My own game, Meridian 59 is a typical fantasy RPG, with a heavier focus on player vs. player combat and socialization. It has a much more interesting character advancement system which is much faster than most other games.

If you like crafting or an Egyptian setting, you might try A Tale In The Desert.

If you like puzzles and pirates, try out Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates.

Want to express yourself creatively while playing an anthropomorphic animal? Furcadia might be your game.

It's kinda like movies. Sure you can go see the latest action flick starring The Rock(tm) advertised heavily on TV and magazines, or you could spend a bit of time reasearching for yourself and find a great indie movie. The indie MMORPGs are out there, you just gotta look a bit harder.

It's something new in the world of MMORPGs
It's an ocean archipelago world of pirates, filled with piratey tasks that are all puzzles! There's swordfighting.. but it's a puzzle! There's drinking! But that's a puzzle too! There's bilging and sailing and navigation and gunnery and sea battles galore. Blending elements from classic puzzles like Tetris, Bejeweled, Chu Chu Rocket, Puzzle Fighter, Baku Baku, Dr. Mario, and Alchemy in a whole new way, with the promise of many more puzzles to come, it has endless addictive properties.

It's got a short learning curve.
Because the puzzles are similar, and each one is simple to learn (but difficult to master!), you can be a useful swabbie on a ship in moments. Some of the puzzles never seem to grow old as you practice creating big combos, or as the ship is in dire need of someone to man those sails!

There are no bloody pests.
The only opponents in the game are pirates. Some of them are computer controlled, but there are almost 3000 pirates on every day now, and the game is still in beta with no fatal bugs. Making your opponents skilled humans instead of people who can click really fast makes the game both challenging and rewarding.

It's got broad appeal
Because it's based on puzzles that almost anyone can learn to be decent at, it's got appeal to an enormous age range, not to mention the fact that the gender ratio seems to be almost equitable.

Playing forever won't necessarily make you good
One of the things that always bothered me about MMORPG's was that the 14 year old kid who played 12 hours a day all summer could easily outpace the 20-something year old who was holding down a job, even if the 20-something was a better gamer. In Puzzle Pirates, your pirate doesn't get "better" at the game unless you yourself improve in your puzzling abilities. The puzzles are ranked in two manners - experience and prestige. Experience DOES only go up as you puzzle multiple times over a long period of time, but on the other hand, having a large amount of experience does NOT mean that you can beat an excellent swashbuckler automatically. Prestige, on the other hand, is entirely based on your skill. You don't need to win very many times before you slide up the ranks, and if you're beating people many ranks higher than you, you leapfrog up the ranks. But the game isn't ABOUT numbers. Another note is that all the money you earn in the game, or Pieces of Eight (POE), can't buy you victory. It can buy you a new sword, but if you can't swordfight, that isn't worth a damn. It can buy you a new ship, but if you don't have a good crew to man it with you, that's not worth a damn either.

It's about teamwork
Everyone knows that the most interesting characters in an MMORPG are always other people. Y!PP forces you to be social. You cannot effectively sail a ship into combat by yourself, you need a crew to man the sails, the guns, and the bilge with you. Fortunately, most of the crews are friendly, and you can quickly learn the ship job puzzles with your new mates as you help THEM sail against vile foes! And of course, for helping them sail, you get rewarded with a cut of the booty!

There is no thin veil of a story.
The story is your story. The story is the life of your pirate on the high seas, and you write it as you go. Whether you buy your loyalty with POE, or with kindness, or inspire awe with your swordfighting skills, the story is in the friends you make, and the deeds you do. The story can be the time you beat Pennsuedo (one of the Flag Kings) in a swordfighting tournament, or how you yourself became king of a flag. The story can be how you recruited the best crew in the seas for battling the dreaded Black Ship, or how you trained the best drinking team around.

The possiblities are endless already, and the game hasn't even started yet.

If there were more MMORPG's like this, there would be no shortage of addicts, or part time players, people who play with their families, spouses, sisters, brothers, best friends from college, or new friends forged in sea battle. It's a piratey life for me, certainly.

I can't believe anyone cares about what happens in Second Life. The 'game' is a crock of shit, and bugged five ways from Sunday. It's like those horrible old 3D IRC clients pretending to be an actual game.

If you want to play in an online community-style game that has an actual GAME to it, check out Puzzle Pirates

Puzzle Pirates Beta.

You and your wife, and her friends, should try:

http://www.puzzlepirates.com/

Puzzles + MMP + Pirates == Arrr!

Where do the new ideas go if we can't have games like...Shenmue...?

In the case of Shenmue, hopefully into the garbage. Someone at Sega seems to have confused "innovative" with "boring," "pointless," "repetative," "plot-free," and "wildly unrealistic."

Anyway... back on topic...

The editorial is off base. As any creative industry grows the core of the industry becomes conservative, unwilling to take the risks necessary to create truly innovative work. But just because the core does doesn't mean that everyone will. Some companies will realize that you don't need to sell millions of copies to be successful and will happily make modest profits with smaller markets making truly innovative games. The original Counterstrike was just such a case, it popularized the modern SWAT style game and refined into the basis of many multi-player games. Pop Cap Games has done phenominally well with their little games, most notably Bejeweled Something genuinely original? How about surprisingly addictive game about building bridges, Chronic Logic's Pontifex . How about a hard to explain that can only be inaccurately described as action puzzle play matched with turn based stategy, Moonbase Commander . Check out the Independent Games Festival for bunches more of genuinely new and interesting games.

Of course, certain genres are completely unreasonable for small publishers, like massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Or are they? How about a MMORPG without any combat? A Tale in the Desert . A puzzle based MMORPG? Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates .

Thanks to internet distribution, it's becoming more and more economical for a smaller company to reach out to a global audience.

So, there is lots of great new game ideas. Sometimes they even escape from big, conservative companies. So why don't we see them? Why aren't more people aware of them? The problem isn't that a lack of new ideas, the problem is the journalists themselves! By focusing on the big budget rehash games, spending time giving us pointless "preview" coverage over and over ("We still haven't actually played the game, but boy, it sure does look neat. We look forward to its release in forty-eight months") instead of seeking out and publicizing great stuff from small companies. It wouldn't take much to get the general public looking for these games, helping to encourage further innovation. Because the journalists hype them so, the game industry is still stuck in the idiot "Big budget, big payoff" gamble that the movie industry is. With a few small budge success stories we could see big companies realizing that quarter or half million dollar risks don't have huge rewards, but they also lack the possibility of becoming catastrophic failures.

If you're worried about the lack of innovative games, go looking for them, they exist. Point them out to your friends. And if you're a journalist, don't just bitch, tell your readers about what gems you do find!

Meanwhile, you might be interested in this game, World of Pirates. It's an MMORPG set in, er, a Pirate universe. That doesn't sound right, but it's cool. Anyway, it's in beta at the moment, and you can sign up for it at their site.

Another good pirate game is Puzzle Pirates, where you do puzzles for piratey stuff. Pretty cool. In open beta.

Really looking forward to this Pirates! remake, though. It'll kick all those games' asses. :)

Whilst the field of Java gaming is pretty sparsely planted, there are a few efforts.

We're developing our game Puzzle Pirates on Linux in Java 1.4. It also runs on Windows and OSX (sorta, pending apple's swing fixes). It's an MMP based on Pirates and uh Puzzle games, in free alpharrr testing.

I believe that you're equating 'indie' with 'unprofessional'. This is clearly false; there are now a number of developers and small shops who are creating games without retail publisher funding or interference in a professional manner; PopCap, Pyrogon (Brian Hook's company), Gamelab, us and so forth. Of course these projects aren't fiascos of 3D content and over-production, like independent movies aren't special fx blockblusters, but neither are they amateur wannabee-gamedev material.

Fundamentally I believe that the answer does come with independent game development, because it's only through proving new markets and styles of gameplay that 'publishers' will wake up and start funding such projects. I am all for balanced relationships between publishers and developers, but the current dismal state of big-budget game development is clearly not trending in that direction.

'Pirates + Puzzles + MMP = Kick Ass' - User Comment
Puzzle Pirates

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  Games like this (and Tetris, and Solitaire, and so many others) are simply antisocial and psychologically crippling. You play for hours, not because you're "enjoying" it, but because your brain is too numbed to stop.