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.'"

Comments

Total annihilation

[Xavier CMU]

For many players, the sims has already met total annihilation.

Hasnt this already happened?

[kizzbizz]

Basically any DnD Computer RPG acts like "The Sims meets Total Anniliation". Creating your character, tweaking stats, strategic placement in battles, it basically seems like a neat way to say something that has been done 30 million times before.

FREE!?! As in beer???

[RootsLINUX]

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.

Free? Wait a minute, I'm confused here. Why would they make this game free? Not that I'm complaining or anything, I just haven't ever heard of a for-profit company working to develop a game more complex than Frogger and giving it out for free. What's the catch here?

Re:FREE!?! As in beer???

[mrluisp]

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/

Re:FREE!?! As in beer???

[17028]

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.

Re:FREE!?! As in beer???

[zoomba]

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.

Free With Ads?

[GweiLeong]

So... we'll take our +4 Holy Sword of Pepsi into Chryslertown and go on a killing spree inside the IPod store?

Re:Free With Ads?

[DA_MAN_DA_MYTH]

...on a killing spree inside the IPod store?

That's some Creative advertising.

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.

Total Annihilation...

[pudding7]

...being the best RTS game ever, of course. Never understood this fascination people have with Starcraft and C&C. To me, those games were like junior high. Dumbed down interfaces, limited units and command options, etc. TA was grad school. Insane unites, complex commands and unit construction...

Re:Total Annihilation...

[Snowmit]

Insane unites, complex commands and unit construction...

When I was a kid, we invented a variation on chess. There were, like, twice as many units, some of them moved using dice, some units could come back to life I think at one point we raided a stratego box for playing peices. We might have even used the Stratego board.

This game was much more complex than chess but it was not a better game.

Re:Total Annihilation...

[Pxtl]

Wrong. TA was not more complex - it was simpler. That was why it was good. No spells to limit how much you can control at a time. No weapon energy to distract you from handling large groups. No worrying about whether units are moving or attacking (they do both). No need to "attack to position" - they do that automatically. No relocating your base to handlde depleting resources. Harvesting resources was just building a building. No artificial unit caps.

The improved commands were just consolidating things - unlimited queues for units, starting orders, construction buildigns, construction workers. Simple things like the "guard" command made the gameplay so much easier to manage.

Many games increase complexity by adding more spells, more complex units, things like formations, bizarre terrain, etc. TA did the opposite - everything in the game is simple, and the emerging gameplay is so much more mindblowing than StarCraft.

Just spread your army like the plague, and try not to panic when shit happens.

Again, careful simplicity brings emerging complexity - compare Lisp to C++, Go to Chess,etc. Where in "complex" systems like C++, you learn a long list of specific rules, strategies, combinations, etc. simple but well-designed systems allow you do do just as much in a more elegant fashion.

TA is such a simple system. Yes, the list of units is nauseatingly long compared to StarCraft - but each unit is simple and pure in function, and generally knows how to do its job whether or not you babysit it.

alternative acronym

[kn0tw0rk]

Why not World Accessable Real Time Strategy?

problems to overcome?

[roberto0]

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.

Brad responds

[FrogBoy!]

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.

Boneyards

[Supurcell]

Total Annihilation had the best multiplayer system of any RTS game. The Boneyards. You had a galactic map with the Arm and Core controlling half of the systems. Player registered as either Arm and Core and they fought it out on the contested worlds. At the end of the day, whichever side had the most wins would get control of the planet. This would go on until one side controlled the entire map and then there would be a new map. This system really gave me a feeling of accomplishment when I contributed in winning the war for my side. I wonder how this new game will be different from the Boneyards. I would be happy if another RTS used this system for multiplayer.

My kids and I still play TA after all these years.

[cmilkosky]

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!!!