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."

Comments

i'm not too crushed

[b1nd0x]

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.

Trust

[Anonymous Coward]

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

The problem with Majestic..

[Ndr_Amigo]

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.

Re:The problem with Majestic..

[adrian_hon]

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).

Re:The problem with Majestic..

[adrian_hon]

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.

Why geeks will never be accepted

[Mahtar]

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?

This is a sign of some sort of cultural deficiency

[aussersterne]

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.

Send me your phone number...

[aclarke]

and I'LL call you and threaten your life, if that's what you're into...

Re:Receiving Threatening Phone Calls Is Cool?!

[majcher]

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.

*looks around* Ummm...did you by any chance realize where you were when you said that? Forget playing it - just knowing what Majestic is (the game, or otherwise) pretty much puts you firmly in the "dork" category right off. Even if you're not being paged by a computer during dinner, you know that you're going to eventually let something about your Quake clan or your Everquest guild (or whatever they are) accidentally slip in conversation, and that's it. Your scam is up. Best to face the truth head on, and count on your date being cool enough to be interested... in you, at least, if not the game.

Like the kids at Penny Arcade say, "You play videogames? Welcome to Dorksville. You want to know how cool your videogames are? Ask your fucking girlfriend how cool. And if you don't have a girlfriend? That's part of the test."

Re:This is a sign of some sort of cultural deficie

[GigsVT]

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?

Why not make your own Majestic?

[Robotech_Master]

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?

"Very cool"? "Groundbreaking"? Not EA.

[SilentChris]

I tried the Majestic pilot, then read numerous reviews trashing it and the whole concept. I agree. Majestic is a "game" in the same way Metal Gear Solid 2 is an "interactive movie" -- a misnomer. Much of Majestic involved reading a few web pages, listening to prerecorded messages, and engaging conversations with pathetic chatbots. In the process, I had to install a variety of commercialware (AIM, RealPlayer) and wait days between contacts.

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!"

Re:No, it's just a game

[aardvarkjoe]

And I'd say:

"How hedonistic and selfish is it to spend your money and your time entertaining yourself by reading and posting to slashdot instead of using those same resources to do some good in the world?"

Why are there so many people that think it should be illegal to enjoy themselves? They bitch all the time about how the Republicans / the Government / Micro$oft / the RIAA / etc. are attempting to control their lives, and then you claim that everyone should devote all their time and money towards the causes that you deem of most importance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should be selfish pigs thinking only of ourselves. But your own quality of life is important as well, and no one ought to begrudge someone the opportunity to enjoy themself.

Goodbye Majestic

[JPawloski]

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.