Slashdot Mirror
Ultimate Baseball Online - Rise Of The MMOSG?
Cobol Junky writes "Ultimate Baseball Online, a game claiming to be the first MMOSG (massively multiplayer online sports game) has recently transitioned into free Beta status. Each player's character takes a position on the baseball field, and can improve their skills and stats by gaining experience, just like a regular MMORPG. UBO is being created by NetAmin, the creators of an scrapped MMORPG called Fallen Age." This title has been in development for a while, and a GameSpot preview reveals more, but what other genres will get tarred by the massively multiplayer brush before long?
Honestly, I hope they start charging monthly fees for this! I don't think enough games charge monthly fees! Maybe we can get people to charge monthly fees for offline games too!
Seriously, I don't see enough of a market to justify a full scale MMO game. People log on and play everquest like there's nothing better in the world, but I have a hard time beliving that the type of people willing to play sports games would be dedicated enough to play them in an MMO format (which inevitably means monthly fees)
It looks to me as if they're taking features that have been around in sports games for quite some time in single player mode and putting them online.
Still, the game doesn't look all too good, and I fail to see exactly what makes this massively multiplayer. From what I can tell, you're still constrained to the field area. You can't roam the land trying to wrangle up teammates to find the perfect ballpark to call your own. Hell, there's even a player lobby, just like normal multiplayer games. To me, calling this game an MMO title is nothing but marketing babble for a crappy sports game without any professional licenses.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
MMO is waaay overblown. Simple reason. There just aren't enough players. MMOGs take time to play. There just aren't enough people willing to devote a significant enough chunk of their life to a game. There are some, and they were enough to keep Ultima Online flush with players. There were even enough for Everquest as well. But there are now MMOGs coming out at an incredible clip, which keeps fragmenting the customers base further, and reducing the value of other competitors in the field. MMOGs are flopping left and right, and still publishers frantic for a pirate-resistant subscription model try to start new MMOGs.
May we never see th
It's become fashionable to bash MMO's and just declare them the CB Radio of gaming, but this sounds fun and seems like a good idea. Controlling a whole team vs another guy controlling a whole team is an abstraction, this is truly a sports simulator, with team dynamics and personalities playing a huge role. Maybe the fat kids in school will get a little redemption.
Awesome! I can't wait to spend hours on end scouring the stadium, whacking rats with my +2 Baseball Bat of Slugging in order to level up my half-elf Second Baseman. ;)
DecafJedi
my weblog: apropos of something
Guys, they're not going after the established MMO fanbase. They're going after the sports fans who want just a little more. Entirely different target demographics.
That said, I hope someone does this with football so I could play it. I call tight end... Blocking is fun!
Wow, this can now simulate how boring it is to play baseball. Maybe I'll get stuck in right field and the ball wont come in my direction the whole game. Sounds like fun, paying monthly fees to sit around like i'm playing baseball. Cmon people, if you love the game that much, go sign up for a league and play it for real? It's not like baseball is an unaccessable sport like football or hockey. Oh well, mmorpg on..
...Motor City Online? I predict that this will be jsut as successfull as Motor City Online. I think that, at least at this point, the relative failure of the Sims Online shows that MMO games jsut aren't for the mainstream yet.
Certainly the game makers need to keep trying and I'm glad they are. Eventually something will hit the wall and stick with teh general public. However, I just don't see this as being it.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Here's the problem with MMOSG's...
For example, take any team game. It's an excellent idea - 20 people each in a specialized position, playing like a real match. The problem is that, unlike when you're standing on the field, people will NOT have the patience to play correctly. You'll have fullbacks (defense guys in soccer) trying to score goals because they're bored, shortstops trying to catch a left-field popup (and messing up the play later), EVERYONE trying to shoot in basketball (no one, i predict, will want to be all-defensive).
This may work, however, with interesting rules (like, for example, the goalie can't pull himself if he's bored since the puck is always on the other side... unless a majority of the team votes it).
While on the subject, a manager/coach might be one of the most interesting positions in a MMOSG. They would pick who's on the ice (call line switches), pick the pass that the quarterback has to follow (or at least narrow it down to 2-3 options or quartback sneak), etc.
So again, this could work work, could be amazing, but it's going to need some intelligent programming/rule-creating to make it fun.