GDC: 10 Reasons NOT to Make MMOGs

Warrior-GS writes "Gordon Walton, who helped create such games as Ultima Online and the Sims Online, is at the Game Developers Conference giving a seminar on "Ten Reasons You Don't Want to Run a Massively Multiplayer Online Game". GameSpy has been providing coverage of GDC, with several game previews and several conference reports. They also have a hands-on report of the Nokia N-Gage from four of their editors, and a somewhat unorthodox report of the Game Developer Choice Awards, where Metroid Prime was named Game of the Year. The convention continues through Saturday."

Comments

and the #1 reason......

[stratjakt]

They suck once you realize it's just an IRC chatroom with graphics that you're paying $40 a month for.

I'd comment on this...

[Anonymous Coward]

But I need to get back to the game, sorry.

Brought to you by the letter "M"

[Sgs-Cruz]

Why you don't want to make MMOLRPG Haiku:

Internet attracts
nitpickers with no money;
driving you to drink.

Re:Brought to you by the letter "M"

[Anonymous Coward]

bandwidth not enough
for witty reply to this;
lamer types, "me too"

Multimedia?

[MrEd]

All these visual aids?

It would be nicer to have just one focused, properly framed, and complimentary photo of the guy...

Re:Multimedia?

[Sabalon]

That's what I was thinking. I'm guessing that number 11 on the list is "It's hard to get a decent in-focus photo."

Re:Multimedia?

[ibbie]

i suppose that after dealing with tech support issues for this long, the man twitches too fast to be caught clearly on film.

*twitch!*

One of the reasons:

[GreyyGuy]

"You make too much money and have to hire more accountants. Trust me- you don't want to have problems like that"

Reason #11

[ralico]

Doing customer and tech support for 50,000 adolescents who have free reign of their parents' credit cards.

Did you see his picture?

[BoomerSooner]

That's reason enough. I bet he had hair before he started.

Re:credit cards are hard to get from customers?

[Coutal]

i don't get it. getting a credit card number is *easy*. just post fake job listingsor something...

so why code a virtual world full of monsters and quests just to get a credit card number?
sheesh. in my days, exploits used to be a few kilobytes each...

(My apologize to those who had their CC number stolen and for the humor impaired in general)
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this message is quad-rot13 encrypted for your privacy

Re:And his most compelling reason...

[daeley]

Hey, if I can take a blaster and a Wookie into a SimOnline neighborhood for target practice, I'm there!

Re:To summarize

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since you summarised the article for those too lazy to click on the link or too dumb to understand it, mind if I summarise your summary for those too lazy to read your post?

Reasons: It's hard.

Thank you. /LarsWestergren

Re:Next up: BF1942 clones

[schon]

like lemmings, there'll be a few dozen BF1942 clones, and most will die due to too much competition.

Really? There were lots of spinoffs, but I only remember one or two clones of Lemmings.

Re:Electronic crack

[flewp]

A little common sense and some personal responsibility seem to be sorely lacking in the populace today.

That's not my fault!

Re:Metroid Prime

[3Y3]

The reason the first Metroid was difficult would be the fact that you had NO MAP!!!

Sure you could create some bastardized atlas yourself on severla hundred pages of paper using nothing but fat Crayola markers, but really...I'd rather not go into the childhood trauma which was losing those maps.

Re:Two things:

[T.E.D.]

Unfortunately, high levels are relatively easy to attain. I played for 1 month, a few hours a night, and I'm currently at level 32, right where the content stops. But there are people who were level 50 only 3 weeks after the game was launched. What do they do now?

Roughly same thing bored gangs of kids do in real life. They hang out and greif innocent passers-by.

Re:Learn from Sony

[T.E.D.]

Sony has LONG since tackled the issue of harrasing customer phone calls with their customer service program, "Operation: Go Fuck Yourself". Sony believed that if you truly just stopped giving a shit, eventually your customers would pick up on this and quit asking for help. It's a beautiful, horrifying behemoth of a program that paid off big time in their favor. Grats to them.

That's true. They even made a motivational poster for the program.

Re:Maximum Charisma's Spectacular Online Game fail

[Imperator]

I worked for a computer gaming software development company called Maximum Charisma Studios in 2001-2002. I was the systems and network engineer, doing all of the production and corporate infrastructure -- desktops, servers, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, WAN and LAN networking.

Is it just me or is this guy subtly looking for a job?