Ultima X Odyssey - Wisdom In Cancellation?

Thanks to Corpnews.com for its discussion of the history of the Ultima MMO franchise in the content of the recent cancellation of MMO title Ultima X: Odyssey. The author argues of the cancellation: "This isn't a surprise. No, really. More fundamentally, all this points to the fact that somebody in EA's headcheese department is scared stiff of potentially sapping subscribers from the only truly successful title [Ultima Online] to come out of the company's development sweatshops." He claims: "Furthermore, all this comes at a time when the amount of 'surefire bets' in the industry seems to be dropping exponentially. Miniscule subscription bases for former hot-ticket games like Horizons and Shadowbane, coupled with disappointing numbers for Star Wars Galaxies - at last count, the game widely predicted to crack the MMO industry open and bring in a new rush of players... make it easier than ever for suits to pull the plug on projects which require millions of dollars to even hit the shallow waters of beta." Where does EA go from here with the online Ultima franchise, given that this is the second cancelled online Ultima title?

Comments

Was cancelled for good reasons

[TreyBastian]

Being an old Ultima Online Vet I have to say it was cancelled for good reasons. Ultima Online was once a Great Game that turned into Diablo II with the Age of Shadows Expansion Pack. What it apears to me is that the developers are trying to revive this once great game. The new publich coming out even prooves the effort by balancing the Player vs Player system.

Madden?

[the_skywise]

What about EA's sports franchise? Isn't that still a profit center for EA? Or is that losing money as well?

Just give up already.

[bluemeep]

They've tried generic fantasy ganes, generic sci-fi games and completely off-the-wall longshots. Only one of them even remotely pulls it's weight and that's because it's one of the major milestones of the industry. Just save us all a lot of grief and quit hemorrhaging money on MMOs already.

Hell, give up on online play completely. Throw some cash at a few promising single player games! They still exist, after all. All of these project cancellations have really hurt my already shaky opinion of EA -- to the point where I might just make a concious effort to avoid their titles. But if some of the developers under their wing can cook up something really outstanding with their full support (and negligable meddling), it'd go a long way towards turning that opinion around.

I'm sure there's a Madden Online joke in there somewhere...

MMORPG success? Ha...

[hoferbr]

Are the companys finally realizing that there aren't enought hardcore gamers to sustain all MMORPG titles?
Half of the MMORPG currently in development are doomed to vanish after six months of relative success.

Obvious really.

[TheLink]

They still can have new games and they should before the old stuff gets "real old". But what they need is a new game that enhances the "network effects"- more and more players playing the "same game".

So it has to be compatible with the existing game. e.g. even if it's a new world with different rules etc, the players can be migrated between them, (and probably communicate with each other between worlds - pick the right cost- heck link the "Ether resistance" to the CPU/bandwidth usage if you want) e.g. wormhole/teleport or whatever. Let them retain their attributes and some of their stuff (you could force them to leave behind some items- can't take everything back in the old world).

If you want you could even force them to spend X gp/credits/USD/items etc to travel between the worlds. Or make it a quest or something. Come up with a story.

Maybe some things become transformed into other things during the transfer (greater risk/chance of arbitrage opportunities if you do that).

If lots of players move to the new world, then you can retask/reassign the resources for the old world for the new world.

It is better for you to risk cannibalizing your old game than for SOMEONE ELSE to cannibalize yours.

Perhaps I totally don't get it coz I'm not an MMORPG player or designer. But I don't see why my idea is any worse than frustrating their _developers_. Good developers/artists want to see their work become reality, bad ones are relieved if it never does :).

Cancel stuff enough times and they'll make a new game - for a competitor.

MMOs more like TV shows than movies

[servognome]

The execs are learning the differences between single player games and MMOs are similar to those of movies and TV shows.
Single player games are 1-time experiences similar to movies, you play the game, you enjoy it, then the next game with better graphics and physics comes along and you play that. You can have tons of titles co-exist. Far Cry isn't killing the customer base for Doom 3 or half life 2, in fact people look forward to see how can they one-up what far cry did.
Contrast this with the persistant experience of MMOs. Its more like a TV series like Friends or the Simpsons. People invest lots of time, they form relationships with the characters, they even alter their life to accomadate the schedule. In this scenario there are limited titles that can co-exist. By their nature you can't have a bunch of "hit" MMOs. Once an MMO has claimed a consumer base, its very difficult to convert them.
Even followups to popular MMOs can fail (much like TV spinoffs) AC2 wasn't able to fully capitalize on the popularity of AC1. I have a number of friends who will quit MMOs altogether, or take a break, when EQ1 gets shutdown. They don't consider EQ2 to be a continuation of their EQ1 experiences.
Just like every TV exec came up with their own version of Survivor, most of which have been cancelled, most of the MMOs that will come out are doomed to cancellation.

Take that, bandwagon!

[pommaq]

Why does each and every publisher need to have some grandiose MMORPG in their line-up? It makes no sense - the market is small, the maintenance costs are high, and with the treadmill setup everyone's using there really isn't room for more than one MMORPG (sometimes not even one, since most of them want you to put in at least an hour or two a day) per potential user. Totally senseless, it's been like that since the start, and I can't help but chuckle condescendingly every time a new UO/EQ clone goes down the toilet. Love seeing that herd mentality get punished, even if it probably means tighter budgets and less risk from the EA mooks in the future.

Now, if you really have to make a massively multiplayer game, why not try some new ideas? Raph Koster's word is far from law, games like Puzzle Pirates have shown that level grind isn't the only way of doing things and that it's possible to have a vibrant online community without levels, without requiring you to be unemployed and/or a college student to be successful, and without beards and dwarves. The MMORPG scene consists 99% of me-too games and we really don't need any more of those. So, I'm not crying over Ultima X. Its predecessor was revolutionary in many ways and deserved its success, but honestly - what would this game bring to the table that wasn't already there? Creativity, please!

Re:Take that, bandwagon!

[0x0d0a]

Why does each and every publisher need to have some grandiose MMORPG in their line-up? It makes no sense - the market is small, the maintenance costs are high, and with the treadmill setup everyone's using there really isn't room for more than one MMORPG (sometimes not even one, since most of them want you to put in at least an hour or two a day) per potential user.

I agree that the market is vastly over-saturated. However, there are reasons why each publisher can be easily convinced that an MMORPG is worth the risks:

* Very, very good antipiracy protection -- you're selling a service, not really the game.

* A subscription model. Aside from making more money per year than a per-copy game, it's easy to get people "subscribed".

* Good, free AIs. Oh, there are disadvantages to having humans running other NPCs (such as out-of-context behavior), but major advantages. People are smart, understand commands in English and can organize tactics. They can become friends (and hence increase the value of the game). If there is competition, there is generally tough competition out there -- in most single-player games, it's possible to beat/out-manuver all the computer AIs.

* A channel to make more sales. If you have a strong media channel to your customers, you can freely push ads to other products that you're making.

* A predictable revenue source. If you have sales numbers for each month, you have nice, predictable numbers to work with to show investors and whatnot.

* Greater freedom from deadlines. If a developer doesn't have to finish all of a game by a deadline -- he can build another country while being paid by revenues from initial sales -- he has the ability to work on a project that is uniquely his for a long period of time.

* Planned obsolescence. There is now a lot of video game content out there. Every person that is still spending time playing Tetris or Pac-Man or Super Metroid is not buying new games. Unless you can somehow springboard new sales from the old, having people continuing to play your game is *bad* -- it means that your market is less interested in buying your next game. I can play a fifteen-year-old videogame for most systems today. With an MMORPG, once the other players are gone, the game is "gone", and a player has nothing to do but buy the next product from the publisher.

* Gambling mentality -- the nature of MMORPGs has shown to exploit well addictive personalities. Vendors love addictive types of people -- they will do a marvelous job of shoveling money into the company's pockets forever. MMORPGs generally have no "end", continually have new content, and generally do a good job of forcing people to *start* playing a little bit per time period, making it easy to play a *lot* per time period without an effort of will.

EA Needs a Good Idea

[gamerdave]

There will always be failures in an overcrowded market, but for those that get it right, MMOGs can still be very lucrative under the subscriber model. Although people love to hate it, SWG has been very successful and reached a quarter million players much quicker than EQ did, and continues to grow. FFXI and City of Heros are also doing well, and WoW stands a chance of breaking all previous records. I still think MMORPGs have a bright future, but developers will have to think creatively to avoid becoming casualties in what is, at the moment, a sort of gold rush.