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Will Harvey On There Not Being There Anymore?
Thanks to GameSpot for its interview with Will Harvey, founder of There Inc., after the virtual world creator announced this week that it "is reevaluating its consumer-side game environment, giving itself 90 days to determine if a licensing-only model might offer a more secure upside to the company." Harvey explains that he has "left the company and I'm no longer on the board", and describes his original vision of There: "to support all the kinds of rich interactivity and human experience that top-tier video games are capable of, but in a single, unified world where everything works together." When asked to describe the problems with 'virtual world' products, he suggests: "If you look at the nongenre MMORPGS--There, Second Life, The Sims Online--they are all version 1 products that won't really be complete until version 37. The challenge is making version 1 commercially viable."
Most - Confusing - Title - EVAR!
Maybe the problem with these sim games is that they're inherently boring.
If you'd tried, I mean really tried hard, it might have been possible to come up with a worse headline than this one.
I write in my journal
Maybe you should make an effort to write understandable title?
Fact is, a game is a game no matter what tileset you're using. I think There's problem was more a lack of focus on game mechanic than any sort of marketing or technological failure. Looking at there's site their attraction is "play cards on an island and meet some new people" and "chat with people all over the world. I can register for a free Yahoo! games account and presumably get Yahoo Instant Messenger or AIM. There, I can play cards and chat with millions of people around the world for free already. That's just not a compelling experience and certainly not compelling enough to make me want to upgrade my computer, run a particular OS, pay for some subscription, or even have to install some client software when it can all be done from any computer on the road with a web browser.
People are drawn to the typical mmorpg for many reasons, most of which I don't necessarily find healthy, but at least some of them are only possible outside reality. There and The Sims Online only manage to accomplish experiences that point out just how hollow a world without substance can be.
No kidding. Especially for news articles posted at 2 in the freakin' morning.
/., I just lost 30 minutes trying to figure out what the hell that title meant.
Thank you,
Well, they have a "fuck off" web site that insulted my decision to use a browser they don't approve of, and they only offer Windows software. So, I say good riddance.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Right, sarcasm aside, it's damn near impossible to create an online experience which achieves that kind of perfection. That's why there are revision cycles, public betas (which still don't catch everything), and upgrades to put the stuff that wasn't caught before into the mix.
Don't get me wrong, the notion of the MMORPG is a wonderful idea, both as a game and as an online community.
But players either aren't willing to wait while the MMORPG gets tweaked into perfection, or the experience will be ruined for those few players who like exploiting those imperfections for their own good.
And many commercial companies who produce MMORPGs (cough*SONY*cough) will either not want to wait to create a perfect game, or they'll charge through the nose, both ears, and a tear duct for whatever work they do on it, which will still not make it perfect (but will make the company rich). Cash cows make the best hamburger.
No, to make an MMORPG good requires plenty of dialog with the participants, plenty of patience with programming, and lots of time. And the modern players and producers both tend to want instant gratification and lots of it.
I still want to see a good MMORPG make it. It just won't be any time soon.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
This "game" has been beyond buggy for over a year, and there have hardly been any upgrades or visible bug fixes since I started playing last March. For the first 2 months I loved this game obsessively. I saw incredible potential in the premise and I really enjoyed exploring the landscape and meeting new people. Being able to move your very human avatar around the same environment with others was extremely fulfilling. However, after the initial awe, the whole thing got old really quick. Too many bugs and not enough features.
I've been pessimistic about There for some time now. They've spent millions of dollars in the 3-year beta and they are not ready to go gold. I think they made a mistake by going pay so early. The MMOG side of There is doomed to disappear in the near future. Good thing they signed that fat deal with the American military for tactical group simulations. There Inc has made an amazing product with many many viable uses.
Some interesting things in the interview, but I'm going to have to disagree with this assessment about team size, etc. There are a small number of online world that were built and are maintained by small teams. My own game, Meridian 59, is one example that is being maintained by about 4 people. A Tale in The Desert is another game that was built and is being maintained by a small team. Yes, these games are a bit smaller than the ones that get all the press, but they're still interesting virtual words that show it can be done.
I think the bigger problem is that everyone wants to be the "million seller" online game. I suspect There had its sights set too high, and when the million subscribers didn't show up, they became a bit disillusioned. But, I think it's interesting that he says smaller projects can lead to bigger things. I've been a firm believer in that; Meridian 59 is a niche product, and we offer it to the playerbase in order to scratch a particular itch they have, namely balanced PvP.
In short, I think it's quite possible to do a virtual world with a small team. You just have to be smarter about it and not expect to be an "EverQuest-killer" out of the gate. Target an audience and serve them well. That's my plan, at least.
My thoughts,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
You can say that again. I think a big part of the problem these days is that when your project has huge amounts of funding, it's almost impossible to keep touch with reality. There had $35 million in funding. The Sims Online was well up into the tens of millions also. When a project has that kind of money spent on it, they get a lot of staff, their burn rate is very high, and most people in the company will have one of two attitudes. A) They believe in sales projections that forecast phenomenally high sales/susbscription rates, which would lead to the game being profitable even with its high costs, and maybe everyone can keep their jobs, or B) having some vague (or not so vague) sense that it's hugely risky and a bit crazy to spend all that money, they just try not to think about the financial realities of the situation and keep working on the game as long as they still have a job.
Neither of these attitudes is conducive to doing a savvy, realistic assessment of what's practical, sensible, and maybe even profitable. Having the huge investment up front to make back precludes a lot of approaches, and forces them into a "swing hard and get a home run or strike out trying" approach. The Sims Online peaked at around 100,000 subscribers, down to about 80,000 now, and that's a "failure" because they needed the home run. We have only 50,000 players, none of whom are required to actually spend anything, and we're supporting a team of half a dozen reasonably well. (Up from the two we started with, and an initial budget a bit over 1/1000th the size of There's!) Other than our starting money, we haven't spent anything until after the game earned it - keeps us firmly grounded in reality, which I like.
So Brian's right, you CAN make an MMORPG with a small team. (Hi Brian!) But when it comes to social games, maybe there's an argument to be made that you SHOULD have a small team, for now. In the combat oriented fantasy games, we know at least one "hook" that can, potentially, make a game hugely profitable. In social games, while a lot of people have good ideas, there's nothing that's proven itself capable of being a huge moneymaker. Until that happens, this type of game is a huge risk to invest in. Well, "even huger" - games are a huge risk compared to other types of investments to begin with! Given that, I think it might make more sense to keep the risk down to a few million or less. The field doesn't necessarily merit a $35 million gamble. And I think it doesn't necessarily need one - the social market doesn't require tens of millions of dollars worth of eye candy for something to succeed, the way the "blockbuster summer movie" market does, or the "latest hottest videogame" market does. Look at something like ICQ - a huge hit in social software, and how much art does it have? The right features may be more important in the social market than winning the "computer graphics arms race" against Everquest 2 or what-have-you.
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
There could be successful, if they changed their business model:
1. There is not a game, therefore they shouldn't have marketed it to a "gamer" audience. (Their real audience is people looking for social interaction and virtual place to build communities. HabboHotel is successful. Why not There?)
2. There charged an initial signup fee, then $4.95 a month, and even then you didn't get access to everything in the game! This sparked outrage and people cancelling. You can't mix a subscription model with a "piece-meal purchase" model. It just doesn't work.
There hasn't been around long enough to call it quits yet.