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Goodbye, "Majestic"

Posted by timothy on from the too-much-like-real-life-perhaps dept.

fonixmunkee writes: "Ack, looks like EA is stopping the very cool, ground-breaking game 'Majestic.' The article is here. I got hooked on this from the very start, and in turn got a bunch of friends into it. It's cool to be out for a fancy dinner and have the game calling you threatening your life. Oh well, I'm sure a new spinoff will rise up."

16 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. The gameplay was too slow by Therlin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was hooked to Majestic and played a couple of the chapters but ended up cancelling. Why? Because the gameplay was too slow.

    You would work through certain tasks and then you'd be put on "Standby mode" for about 24 hours and you couldn't do anything else.

    I realize that this made it look as if the other characters in the game were working on their tasks but it was frustrating because I felt I wasn't always getting my money's worth of gameplay and at the same time, it would break the mood. You got into the game and were forced to stop.

  2. Trust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How do we know that the "announcement" isn't just part of the game?

    1. Re:Trust by HamNRye · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Oddly enough, I remember that after the Sept. 11 attacks I read a story about Majestic shutting down. Basic point being "Government Conspiracies and terrorism are not appropriate subject matter in light of the attacks."

      I was actually considering playing the game, and with that announcement gave up on it. From reading the other posts, I'm glad I didn't.

      ~Hammy
      Nothing4sale.org

  3. The problem with Majestic.. by Ndr_Amigo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Majestic was good (although not unique) in concept, but very poor in execution.

    A lot of people reading slashdot probably had some interaction with "The Beast" - the A.I movie webgame. Besides the stigma associated with the fact it was ran by M$... it was a brilliant game.

    Based in several medium - many many webpages, phonenumbers, e-mails etc it was a well executed version of the Majestic concept. Intrestingly enough it ran at the same time Majestic was being developed and finished just after Majestic was announced.

    The problem with Majestic is that while the idea of an immersive game is good - anything on this kind of scale must EVOLVE. The puzzles in the game were generally very easy. The pace was set badly, and the storyline did not evolve. You could quite easily guess what was going to happen next.

    The people running "The Beast" however (besides the fact it was free) were working full time on constantly adapting the game. They monitored game players communities and if they discovered a plotpoint had been guessed at, they would weave that knowledge into the next puzzle.

    Most gamers know that games depend on a community. Majestic was a very stagnent game - for even a traditional adventure game the story was bad, the pace was terrible and it did not emphisize the need to cooperate.

    Majestic was being shut down because people were quitting the game at an alarming rate. It's not suprising, because for a subscription-based adventure game it didn't promote any interaction outside of the strict game encounters. It was too linear - something that just doesn't work with game players these days. Besides a highly predictable storyline there was no point to playing the game. Other subscription-based games (like Ultima Online, Everquest, etc) all really relied on a sense of community... you would play not only for the game, but to interact with your online friends.

    Technologically and concept-wise, Majestic was close to perfect. But as a game, it missed the point totally.

    1. Re:The problem with Majestic.. by adrian_hon · · Score: 5, Interesting
      There are many reasons why Majestic didn't succeed, and most of them aren't those that are listed above. I wrote an in-depth analysis of Majestic here, contained within a report examining all of the aspects concerning the Microsoft A.I. game. I correctly predicted that EA would have a hard if not impossible time of attracting and retaining the 100,000+ subscribers required to recoup their $10 million investment.

      Briefly, Majestic attempted far too much with far too little. It didn't have an engrossing storyline, unlike that of the universally acclaimed Microsoft A.I. game, it didn't have enough content and it overly restricted the activities of players via its cumbersome 'episodes'.

      There was little to no direct interaction with real human people and interaction with AI bots was painfully obvious and crude. Due to a focus on a more individual-based game, teamwork and thus the online community was kept rather small, as opposed to the fanatic-like community of the Microsoft game.

      But I'm being far too harsh here. As I said in my analysis, most players actually enjoyed the game. Unfortunately, the game wasn't known to that many people, it cost $10/month and it was restricted to North America. Additionally, its demographic was sorely restricted to the 18-35 male player range.

      The A.I. game had, supposedly, around two million players. While I loved the A.I. game and was one of the most active players (just check out my Guide if you don't believe me) I honestly don't think it had two million players. That number really means two million unique page views on the game sites. Not that this really matters - the game produced an ungodly amount of publicity, far beyond that of Majestic, and received awards from Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times, among others.

      I believe a central problem of any game of this type is that for $10/month, you really expect to get constant interaction and stimulation from your game. In games such as Everquest and so on, you can easily play constantly and not get too bored. In these developer-content driven games such as Majestic, there is only so much you can read and only so many puzzles you can solve. You can't play them all the time.

      So you have to have a substitute. In the Microsoft A.I. game, that substitute was the Cloudmakers community that formed around the game and spent 24 hours a day speculating about the storyline and hard-as-nails puzzles. I suspect that in future games, user-created content will serve as a substitute, along with more diverse content and puzzles (e.g. real life treasure hunts, role playing, etc etc).

    2. Re:The problem with Majestic.. by adrian_hon · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I forgot to mention this in my previous reply. Essentially, the fact that Majestic was linear had absolutely bugger all to do with its demise.

      Why? Two reasons.

      1. How are you going to make it fully interactive, exactly? The game is several months long, has FMV, phone calls, AI bots, intricately made puzzles and hundreds of pages of content. Even three or four branch points would increase the workload intolerably, and if you call that interactivity, I'll eat my hat. Most of the A.I. game content was created before the start of the game, and I suspect this was the same for Majestic.

      In any case, would the game be interactive for each player, or for the entire community? For full, convincing interactivity (not that cheapo Dragon's Lair type stuff), doing it per-player is impossible, again due to workload. Doing it for the community is slightly easier but then you run into the problem of trying to get the community to make a single decision.

      2. In the case of Majestic and the A.I. game, linearity is to be desired. Basically, it's far easier to write a decent story (and that is the *central* requirement of all these games) if you don't have to keep on changing it all the time according to someone else's whims. The A.I. game, contrary to popular opinion, did not allow its players to affect the storyline in any significant manner and it came out perfectly fine.

    3. Re:The problem with Majestic.. by Ndr_Amigo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm hardly going to argue with Adrian here - although I think he is thinking more of the financial aspect when I'm looking more at the reason why it lost appeal to the subscribers it already had.

      But firstly, although both Elan and Sean have mentioned that the storyline was adapted to fit new evolutions in the community. However I agree there was probably no major effect on the storyline, considering how much had to be rewritten due to time constraints anyway.

      I think linear was the wrong word to use in hindsight. My intention wasn't really to highlight Majestics problem with getting players involved - the real problem Majestic had was in keeping them. The A.I game had maybe 5000-6000 constant players.. However I do not know of anyone who started seriously playing, leaving because of dissatisfaction of the game itself.

      And besides those who left Majestic for personal or financial reasons, those who left disatisifed with the fundemental game (I believe) were mostly affected by the problems above.

      But then again, there is no way to totally satisfy a mass-market audience, with this kind of interactive storytelling. It can't really be self-paced without removing the invasiveness, nor can it be sped up without inserting an element of uncertainty most have already expressed (getting phonecalls in the middle of meetings or other awkward moments).

      Maybe the key was to tone down the interactivity and increase the pace. Playing more of a 'detective' in a murder mystery than a bystander. Most of A.Is interactive events were insigated by the players (calling numbers instead of being called), and this was just as immersive for some.

  4. Could have been a great game by Quay42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I got in on this game when it was in its 2nd episode I think. The pilot was of course quite good but after that each part of an episode got too easy. The cycle became:
    1) Watch video
    2) Look for clue in video
    3) Go to website (or do something else) related to that clue
    4) Wait a day in "standby" mode

    And so on. At first it was really cool to go through all the conspiracy websites (which I was into anyways before I got into the game) but it got so that you realized these weren't at all central to the game itself.

    As the poster themself mentioned, it was pretty damn cool/spooky at times to get calls and voicemails at odd hours. One of them even mentioned coming to my house! I almost looked forward to that...but I suppose that would hvae been too much.

    The game was positioned as being for people with normal jobs and outside lives, which explained the relatively short play time increments, but they shouldn't have been so easy. It really could have been such an incredible game, consdiering it used email, video, AIM, phones, and fax machines as elements of play to get you into it...oh well. I think the boxed version would be pretty cool for people without high bandwidth connections like me who mised clues because so many frames were dropped in videos.

    Cheers,
    jw

    --
    "Has anything you've done made your life better?" - American History X
  5. Re:Receiving Threatening Phone Calls Is Cool?! by Quay42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well the way it worked was you told it when you would accept calls. So you could set it for hours you knew you wouldn't be doing stuff important, and could change it at anytime. You also could set it for "any time" which included like 2 in the morning which is great because your mind isn't totally functioned. As for your second complaint, you had the option of turning on or off the "Majestic Greeting" to make it more real. The voice acting was very good in my opinion and sometimes I would get real calls tat I mistook for in-game (this only happened once, cause they asked for the wrong person...). But generally you could tell that it was in-game because there was no room to respond, they were just long monologues (sometimes threatening, but nothing too bad). The game is meant for 18+ so I had no problem with the swearing and such.

    Cheers,
    jw

    --
    "Has anything you've done made your life better?" - American History X
  6. Re:i'm not too crushed by b0r0din · · Score: 3, Interesting
    What would really be cool to do with a game is allow players to interact with each other, to have two players in the same area be called upon to meet at a designated location to share their information.

    Now that would be groundbreaking, but it would be a little scary. Still, you could have the option of receiving your info through emails; this would just make it more immersive.

  7. This is a sign of some sort of cultural deficiency by aussersterne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I didn't play Majestic, but...

    Am I the only one here who thinks there is something desperately wrong if you wish to turn your entire real life -- as in your walking, talking self and your working days and nights -- into one large video game -- a fiction?

    Even more to the point, getting death threats is cool? How do you know they aren't real? Are you about to say that you relish the day when reality and fantasy blur to the point that you can't tell which is which?

    When this type of product becomes ubiquitous, we will be watching the news wondering whether we are really at war or whether it is a part of the latest game. When you hear that so-and-so that you know was shot and can you please come to the funeral, you will go with your game face on, taking notes and playing detective, not sure whether your friend is really dead or whether it's all a part of the game, and you won't care because you're so engrossed and because you're paying good money.

    And when the general populace becomes very, very involved in the same games, might it not become a part of the game if you get murdered in cold blood by another, rival player? And since you're a participating character in that game -- might everyone not be thrilled at such a "plot development" and attend your funeral not to eulogize, but to play or make some kind of breakthrough?

    I'm sure you had to sign some sort of user agreement to play Majestic. It isn't hard to imagine a user agreement in which you agree that the "designers" can use any event in any player's life as a part of the developing plot, and that you as a player agree not to hold them liable for the actions of other players, including actions taken against you or your family...

    Games should stay on a board, on a screen, on a field. Americans are too rich, safe and complacent for their own good if they are so bored that they must turn their real lives and identities into gamepieces for entertainment purposes.

    I suppose I'll get flamed and called a luddite, but I liked it when smart people used to get degrees and go do research for the greater good, rather than just signing up to receive death threats for entertainment purposes.

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
  8. Re:i'm not too crushed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "To have a plot centered on a conspiracy is one thing; to include every alleged conspiracy of the twentieth century, from JFK to the Illuminati, from black helicopters to mind control, was a bit much."

    Too much? That was the plot of Deus Ex, which was a superb game. ;')

    -AC

  9. I was a tester for this game by Loco3KGT · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Someone tell me if you see Steve Gula in the credits for this game. I was a tester for it for 3 months at EA-VA (EA Charlottesville, VA) before going back to school, they axed everyone but like 20 people (was about 150-200) a month later.

    Anyways, the game was a definite change from all other games, and although EA anticipated that, they didn't anticipate the raw manpower that would be needed to make sure it worked and to keep the episodes going. I remember from work, that in the 3 months that it was out, it was already a month behind schedule. And they were just grabbing for air when they brought in Cypher from the Matrix. We also ran into trouble when the lead test head guy left to go to Florida, because the people on the west coast were complete assholes about everything it seemed. Heard him yell so many times over a conference call that he wasn't going to let them push (release) something that he hasn't even seen, and they were all 'it works, don't worry blah blah'.

    Oh well, looks damn good on a resume :
    Worked as tester for Electronic Arts, tested/broke/hacked/cheated Majestic, BattleTech:3025, Motor City Online, and a dozen other ea.com games.

    Oh well, fond memories of taking the prescripted AIM bot conversations out of context and sending it to the testbay fun stuff email list.

    --
    Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
  10. Why not make your own Majestic? by Robotech_Master · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Check out the Hogshead "new wave" roleplaying game De Profundis. It's an epistolary RPG of the Cthulhu mythos, focusing on playing in the horror milieu (either in the 20s and 30s, or the present-day) by writing letters, journals, diaries, and so on. I've got some friends who are running a game via a Livejournal group; it's not too hard to imagine something sort of like Majestic growing out of several groups getting in contact with each other.

    And hey, it's only $7, how can you go wrong?

    --
    Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
  11. OT... Series 7: The Contenders by asteinberg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sorry for the OT post, but your post reminded me a lot of a recent movie called Series 7: The Contenders. This is a great dark satire, making fun of reality TV shows. It's about a reality show where the players are all given guns and the object is for them to be the last one alive. They're allowed to kill each other without getting in trouble, just cause they're part of the game. Definitely worth the cost of a rental.

    --
    The first ever Ultimate Frisbee video game: here (now
  12. Goodbye Majestic by JPawloski · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I actually knew someone who worked at EA (not anymore, unfortunately) who helped develop the AI for the game. Needless to say, EA created a unique AI scripting language from scratch, which is pretty much a requirement for a game of this scale and a goal this ambitious.

    I was talking to him on AIM once when he was scripting, telling me that he was working on an AIMbot that would give information. I was already familar with some AIMbots (add "SmarterChild" to your AOL list and say "hello" to him -- he is hellacool!) so I enquired as to how they were implementing the system at a time. I was a little disappointed when he told me it was keyword based (the bot would scan for certain words) - this is archaic technology that has been around since the late 70s and early 80s.

    Even though it did make *some* attempt to parse the language, such as searching for negative words and helping verbs ("not the gun" would invoke a different response than "that gun") and it did take into account misspellings, the bots were too "mechanical" for the average non-programmer to use.

    And that's the problem with trying to develop a game like this - our AI technology is not advanced yet. Not until we make significant gains on a Turing machine (on home computers, no less) will games like this become successful.

    On the other hand, I was surprised to see how little attention this game received compared to other "ground breaking" games such as UO and EverQuest. We've all seen sci-fi movies where games become reality, and I thought it was an interesting twist for reality to become the game. I thought it was a really good idea, and when I explained the concept to friends they thought it was a good idea too. I don't know what went wrong with the project, but I suppose this can be blamed on marketing or something.