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Stardock Developing MMORTS Game
John Callaham writes "Computer Games Magazine has learned that Stardock, developer of Galactic Civilizations and The Political Machine, is now working on an unnamed massively multiplayer real time strategy title that will be free to play." From the article: "...the development team is trying to solve the problems that have kept other similar games from being as popular as other MMO titles. When asked to describe the gameplay Wardell said, 'I like to call it The Sims meets Total Annihilation.'"
For many players, the sims has already met total annihilation.
Two comments. First, there several other examples of "free" MMO games. Second, it's probably not really free, as in you will have to buy things in game to improve your user experience (like in Project Entropia).
For other examples, check out:
- Project Entropia http://www.project-entropia.com/
- Guild Wars http://www.guildwars.com/
- Roma Victor http://www.roma-victor.com/
Free to play, the same way Diablo is free to play online, I would guess. You buy the game and the online service is free.
Have you actually played any of their games in the past few years?
-GalCiv beat the pants off of MoO3... one of the best 4x games out in quite a while
-Political Machine was a fun budget title that got a TON of press coverage during the election
-GalCiv 2 just entered beta and it looks EXTREMELY promising.
I heard Brad hint at how they could possibly pass this off for free. It went something like this title, because it's free and being offered by a stable company (one that isn't dependent on the one title) that the media and general attention it will create will draw more and more people to their sites. Those new eyes will see the other products (Object Desktop, TotalGaming.Net, GalCiv 2 etc...) and then if they like the free game, pick up other products.
The large amount of press generated by The Political Machine last summer did exactly this. People came to Stardock that had never heard of them before. Since then sales of other products have increased and stayed higher than projections.
Stardock is one of the companies to keep an eye on in the next few years. They've got some cool stuff up their sleeves.
I think the real hornets' nest here is how to combine a RTS with an MMO. Whether you're playing TA or WC3 or C&C, the overall gameplay is similar: 1) collect resources
2) produce units/tech
3) battle
Each game takes a finite amount of time, there are limited resources, and once the game is "won", it doesn't matter how many units/resources you have left.
Other games like CIVIII may make players weigh greater the costs of battle, but there is still an attainable goal or "end" to the game.
In most MMORPGs (or the good ones, anyway like WoW, CoH, EQ, etc), the gameworld is persistent. How will resource gathering/teching strategy matter in a persistent gameworld? I imagine you must fight to gain control of limited resources, but without the ability to accumulate resources "offline", the game will heavily favor plaers logged in for the most amount of time.
I remember an old BBS game called "Trade Wars" back in the day. It was turn-based, and resource accumulation was handled "offline". If you managed to own any planets, the resources were gathered for you while you were logged out, and ready for your use when you log back in. Granted this could be possible in a new MMO, where players control vast galactic and intergalactic territories.
Anyways, it seems like the RTS world and the MMO world are at cross-purposes.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
Why make it free?
Go and look at the Alexa.com ranking of WorldOfWarcraft.com (646).
The cost in these kinds of games is due to the massive network, IT, bandwidth and database resources. But we already have massive resources in those areas that are barely tapped for our non-games software.
BTW, by free we mean freeware. That means not adware or something.
Secondly, as someone pointed out, games like The Political Machine helped increase our overall revenue by a significant percentage because of all the new people that came in.
Since we can afford to make the game and we have the infrastructure to support it, then the game helps pave the way for exposing millions of people to TotalGaming.net and our non-game software.
As for an OS/2 version, who knows. It wouldn't be made by us though. We do plan Linux, MacOS, handheld, net-connected consoles and other platforms. However, what versions are supported will largely be based on who makes the client (so if a team of OS/2 developers volunteer to make an OS/2 client then sure).
There will be more info around E3.
My kids and I are gamers. We've seen games come and go with a few that remain fun for a decent amount of time. But TA? I bought the game in 1997 by recommendation from a friend, and it is still played to this day.
The original with the Core Contingency and Battle Tactics was great. Loved it. I don't know about you TA games out there, but I think my favorite unit was the Brawler (or bee as I liked to call it). The AI was terrific, the units looked great, the multiplayer gameplay was a lot of fun. In 2001 or so, I introduced it to my kids (6 and 7 at the time) who immediately were hooked. No killing people or anything. Units. My kids would play head to head with me all of the time. Now they can kick my ass in it (which really sucks!).
Later - some mods were independently released. New units, some cheats & stuff, etc. etc.. Then more - huge units bigger than the Krogoths.. some for the Arm (man am I a TA geek or what). It just kept getting better. Mods and TA sites are still in action today:
http://www.planetannihilation.com
http://www.tauniverse.com
http://www.tafansite.com
http://www.tadesigners.com
http://www.fileuniverse.com (for some files)
Examples of great mods (my son asked me to list these!!):
UTASP
Absolute Annihilation
Uberhack
a Starwars mod
etc. etc...
There's even a program called TA: Mutation which allows you to switch between the many mods, change AI's, change units, etc. etc..
If you have TA still - you must check out the mods. They completely renew the game, which you may be able to still buy in bargain bins for $5 - $10.
So - my point is - which has nothing really to do with Stardock with a Sims + TA game - is that TA was probably one of the best games that came along in a LONG time. A computer game that people still play after 8 years?!?!? Name me another one that is that good.
And now - my kids have both taken to modifying the units themselves - messing with the build times, unit speed, etc. etc...
Check it out again!!!