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Goodbye, "Majestic"
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."
I mean, Jim Carrey's cut alone has to be worth more than what the thing brought in. Really though, how much suspense and paranoid can you get from an old movie theatre?
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
The concept of a game that regulates how fast you can play it and then has a pricing system based on time periods rather than episodes struck me as an odd combination to start.
While the beginning plot was done rather well, describing a world where Majestic had started off as a game until things went horribly awry, it tried to do to much. 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.
By far the biggest problem was the bots. They spent a great deal of time and Real Video (emails web sites etc.) creating believable characters with distinct personalities to whom you could relate. Then you talked to them, and they have the IQ of slime mold. It was a little too free form for its own good.
sell your certainty and buy bewilderment
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.
How do we know that the "announcement" isn't just part of the game?
Now I'm never going to get to put in my bosses pager number, Cell Number, Fax and email addresses.
I dunno, sounds pretty uncool to me. The list of reasons is pretty long. First off, going on a first date to dinner and having to tell your girlfriend that you need to take a call from a video game would be pretty dorky. Second, I would have to guess somewhere in the message, it would let you know that it was the game calling, otherwise you might have a serious threat on your life. Case in point: "I am going to kill you, I am going to gut you like a stuck pig. Thanks for playing Majestic." I don't know, the whole idea just sounds really, REALLY cheesy.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
Maybe you shouldn't worry about a game threatening your life next time that pager goes off; the person behind you is probably a more valid concern.
Majestic was good (although not unique) in concept, but very poor in execution.
A lot of people reading slashdot probably had some interaction with "The Beast" - the A.I movie webgame. Besides the stigma associated with the fact it was ran by M$... 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.
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
It's cool to be out for a fancy dinner and have the game calling you threatening your life. You don't have a girlfriend, do you?
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
and I'LL call you and threaten your life, if that's what you're into...
www.clarke.ca
I find it very bizarre that the Majestic team attempts to vindicate their efforts by repeatedly referring to their game as "critically acclaimed."
Majestic got a lot of buzz and ink for being a novel concept, but in terms of actual critical reviews it was universally slammed by the gaming press. Since the Majestic team has such a short memory, they can find some reviews here and here.
Like the gaming press, I really wanted to like this game, but I could not be dragged into paying $120 a year for an elaborate "click here to continue the poorly acted movie" setup that lasts a few hours each month.
Yeah darn that new technology.
What will they think of next, a fake newscast about aliens invading earth, and no one will know whether it is real or not?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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
You didn't play Majestic. That's a shame, because if you had you'd know that there's this nice little checkbox you can click on the user configuration page. I forget the exact text, but it basically says "Click this if you want us to put 'This message is from Majestic the game' on the end of every phone call/IM/email/fax."
/. never admit they're uninformed - but it would be better still if you'd actually look at their web page before condemning the game as yet another sign of the Collapse of Western Civilization and Our Moral Decay. (Note: "Collapse of Western Civilization" and "Our Moral Decay" are registered trademarks of the Christian Coalition, RIAA, and Republican Party. You are free to use these phrases for non-commercial, private use, but public viewings require written permission from these parties.)
The game was immersive and cool, but there was always a very clear border between the game world and reality for those who wanted it.
You're entitled to post your opinion, of course - and thank you for admitting you never player, too many people on
I'm the stranger...posting to
Their right in one respect: the game definitely does "play you", not the other way around. Actually EA is playing you. Charging money and then forcing you to sit through ads on the game's main homepage -- kind of takes the suspense out of things, huh?
Ever since EA started partnerning with companies like AOL their quality has shot to hell. Yes, "let's make a game identical to a previous one, provide even more unrealistic action, beef up the graphics (because that's the only thing we do anyway) and advertise a song by calling it SSX Tricky. People will love it!"
It's not capitalism in itself that is a problem.
I do not know majestic, so I'm going to speak in general terms about all media and cultural activities.
It just shows that culture cannot ever fully be run by for-profit companies. Countries need at least some sort of government backing for cultural activities that isn't profitable, because culture and media isn't necessarily better, just because it is profitable.
An example is BBC, which creates some extraordinary stuff that would never have been created in a for-profit company because the income would not justify the costs.
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.
Actualyl, if you had companies owned by the state you'd have state capitalism. This is what the Soviet Union was (not communism, as much as it wanted to be.) I'm sure you remember how well that worked for Russia. I'd rather take the lesser evil of American-style capitalism than state capitalism anytime.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.