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The first one I encountered was Shattered Galaxy, which was a fun little game but not compelling enough to suck a monthly fee out of my wallet. You had to put a unit (or was it units? I forget) on the POC (point of contention) for sufficiently long to take it. Take enough POCs and you get the map. Or keep the invaders from taking enough POCs for long enough, and you keep the map... Does anyone remember seeing this back in the mists of antiquity?

Shattered Galaxy might be fun. It's basically a tactical combat game where a bunch of people on each side controling squads fight it out for 15 minutes to control a map area- so it fits your short time online criteria. Nonpayers can play for free, though if you wind up liking it paying the $10/month once every 3 months still meets your $5 limit while letting you avoid a lot of the pitfalls of not paying. It is more fun to be in a regiment with others, but not required, and in any case there are regiments with enough people that you'll both find population at any time, and not get in trouble for not being on much. Drawbacks- it's old, it's slowly decreasing in users (though there's still enough to have fun), and there are are just as many incoherent people as there are in more popular games. The tutorial is terrible, you'll want to get help from other players, preferably on the vetran planet Morgana Prime, reading up at SG City can help too.

I can personally vouch for Shattered Galaxy, which is sort of Korean- their coders are in Korea, but the US offices have pretty much total control over the US version, aside from having to ask the guys back in Korea to code things they want :p. Check out http://sgalaxy.com/newSG.html for how their free users compare to their paying users.

Note that level 50 is close to the top anyway (60 I think, haven't played in a while), and 10% isn't an impossible penalty in damage.

You might try Shattered Galaxies. http://www.sgalaxy.com/. It's a rts tactical game, with some character/unit development involved. You take six mechanical units into a forray, with your teammates who each also have control of six units. You then play out a battle, with usually 10+ players on each side. I'd recommend giving it a try.

My absolute favourite MMO game "Shattered Galaxy" Followed this approach. An open beta while the game was being polished. They got an huge playerbase doing that and most of them went pay after release. People don't expect perfect games in beta and you can build a playerbase. Shattered Galaxy is hands down the best MMO rpg/rts you can play. In no small part because of the community and the smooth gameplay. They took their time and polished the game all the while using the beta to build a base of players.

Actually I believe "Independant" as far as the IGF is concerned, just means that the company hasn't had anything published by a game publisher.

Three years ago a game called Shattered Galaxy won four of the six awards from the IGF. It was a game created by Nexon, a huge game company in Korea (second to NCsoft). Shattered Galaxy had a budget of just under 1 million dollars. I know that because I worked on it. Last year Savage was entered into the IGF. Savage is a game developed with a multi-million dollar budget. I know that because I talked with some of the developers, but you can read about it, as well as some of the controversy here or here.

Whether you feel that these relatively high budget games should be considered "independant" is your decision. I'm happy that my game won the awards that it did, and I don't feel that the budget of a project should have an impact on its inclusion into the IGF. Small games with excellent gameplay, such as Insaniquarium or Bontago, have shown that they will get their deserved spotlight.

Shattered Galaxy does this, and it's old. 2001, I think? They've been offering the free download since it started, and recently apparently started offering a free play alternative (minor downsides). Mind you, the game may not be as popular as other titles, but I'd say it's simply due to lack of marketing.. Have yet to hear any complaints about the online distribution.

Oooh, good question. Its so rarely that I am qualified to respond to a post on /. I'm a game designer, I've been part of several online projects, currently working on this one. I know its not a huge title and its pretty old, but I hope it lends some credibility to my post.

Firstly there is the problem of employment. I'm sure other posters have mentioned it, but ULtima Online had a program where players would volunteer to guide people and handle some basic customer service. This was a pretty typical program that was in place in other persistant commerical multiplayer games at the time, such as EverQuest or GemStone3. EA was eventually sued by the people who were a part of that program. They claimed they were being treated as employees and should get employee benefits. When this happened, the player volunteer program in my game at the time was curtailed. Nobody wants to have to defend a lawsuit. Lawyers are too damn expensive!
I believe AOL had a similar suit filed agaist them by their volunteers.

Aside from legal issues, its very risky to give players any enhanced power or responsibility within the game world. MMOG Players are often not very nice people. These games bring out the worst in people. I know, I see the support emails about friends stealing items, passwords, etc. I read the chatlogs filled with hateful, vicious comments. Upset or angry players will write the most obscene emails they can, saying how much they hate the game and they'll never play it again, only to turn around a few days later and plead to get their account and characters back.

In short, players are often very unpredictable. Even the most seemingly well-mannered people will have their moments (we all do, its human nature). They could disagree with a new item or skill and feel insulted that they "weren't listened to", "being ignored", etc. Or worse, there could be outside issues affecting the players life, and they have a breakdown within the game. When things like this happen it will hurt business, give a bad image of the game, and scare away new players (which are the most important ones). EverQuest might not have a problem absorbing it, being that they have close to half a million accounts. But as the number of accounts decreases, these outbursts have a more potent effect.

Then compare the problems to the potential benefits, which are reletively small. Some active characters to enhance the roleplaying atmosphere of a roleplaying game are certainly good things to have.. but data from my games has shown that the impact of feature characters isn't signifigant. Players mostly want new items, new things to play with, and new areas (in that order). And as the population of a game scales up, so must the number of active feature characters.. adding more risk and potential problems. As well as organizational problems. Each of these players will have their own ideas on how the game world should develop. It takes some pretty tight reigns and a watchful eye to make sure that they aren't taking things in a direction you don't want to go. That monitoring takes resources which most teams just don't have. Maintaining an online games takes alot of time.. its much worse than any "normal business" project I was a part of. But its fun, most of the time.

I understand the idea. Its an idea that everyone has. In fact it was one of the first things I suggested when I was hired as a designer for my first online game, and I was given this speech then (minus the lawsuit stuff, of course).

In the end, it would be really nice to have the extra hands helping with the game. The risks and resources required do not outweigh the disadvantages.


One thing to note, though, is that the mmog Shadowbane has done something along the lines of what was suggested. They have hired a team to play Feature Characters on their servers. Since they are hired employees

Shattered Galaxies. It lets groups of roughly 40 battle, each commanding squads of 6-12 units.

The eds and writers at Gamecenter.com aren't exactly the greatest source for true gaming information. The purist and hardcore gamers get their information from sites dedicated to their favorite type of gaming, even to the point of shunning the psuedo-targetted gaming sites like the GameSpy network (www.planetquake.com, www.planetunreal.com, etc).

The future of the gaming industry is my forte. Hell, it'll be my thesis when I hit the point where I want a doctorate. And believe me when I say that the biggest cause of any genre of game "dying off", as they put it, is due to corporate and VC pressure to stick to things that they know work. Gaming companies are less likely to go out on a limb and innovate in their games. The few that do don't end up with the funding for the mainstream marketting thats needed to compete with the big publishes. Its alot like the music industry right now - except no Napster.

Gaming is becomming more and more about making profits than it is about making games. Companies are producing things that are very much clones of things that sold well. Instead of trying to recreate a good engine, and possibly comming up with new interesting innovations, the companies opt to simply license the engine and make minor upgrades to it. Look at all the various commercial games (not player-made mods) that came out on the Quake2 engine. It was pathetic in my opinion. The only game using the Q2 engine which caught my attention was KingPin: Life of Crime, and still that was only a so-so game. It was only different in that it offered much more of a story than the others.

Its the large publishers like Interplay and Sierra who are just drowning the game market with these 2-bit titles based on other games. And its these clones that are tiring players out, and confusing them. Titles that are truly different from the pack get hidden behind the clones. FPS games like Rainbow Six and its sequel Rogue Spear that were very much different from the fragfests of Quake didn't get noticed. But games like Soldier of Fortune take the spotlight because they're using the hottest latest (licensed) engine, when all they're really doing is adding some new graphics and more blood and making the genre a little more stale.

What game design teams really need to do is stop producing clones of other peoples' work, and start working on their own innovations and interesting games. Licensing of engines is fine, when done to a degree and when signifigant changes to the original game are made. Quality games are becomming more and more difficult to find due to the flood of clones. Not all licensed engines turn into junk games, but the amount of them coming out is making it very difficult for gamers to choose which ones to own and which to ignore. If an avid RPG gamer who enjoyed Baldur's Gate decides she wants to play more of those games, does she purchase IceWind Dale or Planescape: Torment, or the Tales of Sword Coast? In my opinion, Planescape: Torment blows the others away, even the original Baldurs Gate. But reviewers can't tell you if you'll like a game or not, or if you'll like it better than another game (and this is only made worse by reviewers who sell out to game companies or to generate clicks).


More and more games are going online. As an AI designer I can understand this. Its very difficult to write an AI which gets close to simulating a real opponent without using too much cpu power. Also, online games provide the sense of community and friendly rivalry that is lacking in singleplayer games. But the online world still suffers from the same problems that the singleplayer world suffers from. Funding is not provided to game companies with a radically different idea.

The original NeverWinter Nights was a superb game. It had a large base of absolutely fanatical players. AOL made one of their biggest mistakes by shutting it down. With modern network technology the original NWN could become 10x's what it was limited to on AOL. But no game company now would be willing to do that, because it isn't "safe" for them to do so. The companies see that there aren't enough clones of the original NWN around to make it a surefire sale. Its ironic that NWN, something alot of people who've played it consider pivitol, was only created due to alot of GoldBox clones.. In other words, it takes a saturation of clones in order for a game to become worth of support by a publisher. But its the saturation of clones that confuses gamers and makes them bored of the genre.

More power to the Garage Developers. More power to Forgotten World, Shattered Galaxy, and all design teams that can create thier ideas from scratch.