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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."
Slashdot's February 2002 story about the technical challenges in starting a MMORPG.
10: Too Many are Being Built
9: It Requires a Mastery of Too Many Disciplines
8: A Huge Team is Required
7: Getting a Credit Card from a Customer is Hard
6: The Online Industry is Counter-Intuitive to Packaged-Goods Company Management
5: Everything You Know about Single-Player Games is Wrong
4: The Internet Sucks as a Commercial Delivery Platform
3: Customer Service is Hard
2: There are Lots of Legal Issues
1: They Cost Too Much money to Build and Launch!
0: WHA WHA WHA!
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Especially since they are inlcuding Metroid Prime with the purchase of a new Game Cube.
I realized this two weeks into Everquest's release and went straight back to MUDs. Least its free and I still get to kill stuff. I've yet to find an MMOG that can actually hold my attention. Too much going on, and I'm too limited to where I can play from. IRC, MUDs, whatever have you, they are accessible from anywhere, require any barebones system, and still let a person envision the game and characters in whichever way their mind chooses. People always say the book is better than the movie. The same goes for MMOG's.
Not to be overlooked are the winners of the 5th Annual Independent Games Festival competition, which were also announced at the GDC awards ceremony.
The festival included ten innovative and often offbeat titles, such as Teenage Lawnmower (a mowing simulation that manages to incorporates issues such as domestic violence, unplanned pregnancy and alcohol abuse) and Pontifex II (a game that lets you design your own dream bridge, and hope it doesn't collapse). The competition's grand prize was won by Wild Earth, a beautifully animated game that sends players on an African safari to take pictures of wildlife. (Wild Earth also won two awards in the IGF for Game Design and Visual Arts).
This post sponsored by Ninja Burger. "
Quote: "AC2 offers individualized dungeons so groups can go hunting and questing without running into packed "camped" dungeons, and AC1 does not." I play AC2 on occasion and it does *not* have individualized dungeons.
That was his "set up and deployment" costs. You also have "development" costs, and then on-going "enhancement" costs - and the biggest and most sinking one, "support" costs.