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MMOGs With Television, Movie Add-Ons
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an exclusive interview with James Cameron. In it, the director reveals plans to design a massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG) alongside his next film, Project 880. There's also exclusive news that Ron Howard's upcoming reality show, XQuest, will have an MMOG component. Gamers will be able to interact with the contestants in the show (the game will be similar to Eve Online), and winners at home will be in the next season's show."
When I go to the store and see a game that's based on a movie, I don't even give the box a second glance. There have been so many bad movie-licenced games (and it seems that every single movie has one) that it's just not worth trying them anymore. It surprises me that people buy these games and therefore make it worth it for more bad games to be released. I have a feeling this game will be another "Enter the Matrix"
If this is any kind of success, I'd imagine that many of the major Hollywood producers with their millions will want to start backing MMOG's of their own. Remember, folks, games are still in a very nascent stage; similar to movies in the 50's (as in, 30 years after the start of cinema).
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Making MMOs is Difficult. Very Difficult.
No information of any established MMO dev/publisher being tied into this leads me to belive that this will crash and burn in the most spectacular way ever. All they mention are couple of 'names' and unknown startups. Those poor souls... they have no clue what they are getting themselves into.
Either the 'game' will suck horribly, or if it doesn't, their infrastructure will implode under the onslaught of gamers, they'll be overrun by exploiters and farmers. See: Blizzard, WoW launch. And Blizzard was a pro developer with years of experience with online games (just not MMOs).
Looks to me some big name hollywood guys noticed that Blizzard is taking in 300M$/year off MMOs, and that's big hollywood-grade wad of cash. So the hollywood guys are locking onto the 'money detected'-signal, and desperately trying to cash into the market with an unique spin.
Now the idea of the show about a team in a 'spaceship simulator' sounds intriguing, but I'd never let outsiders break everything by adding 'MMO universe' to the mix - at least not without *minimum* 5 year development schedule to get a working game, before adding the TV show bits to the mix.
Now lets assume for a minute that their nice pitch can somehow be made into reality... If they'd try the described system by tossing a 'simulator spaceship' into, for example, EVE Online, the 'TV show ship' would get podded to hell and back over and over again, and the 'crew' would end up sitting in a station trying to refit a new ship 99% of the time, with dozens of nolifers camping the station for the chance of getting to show their l33t ships and guns on TV. Not very exiting after the first couple of explosions. PvP-enabled game universes can be harsh, and the only real way to avoid repeated ganking is to look unimportant - which doesn't work if there's a "celebrity" in the game. And if they make sure nobody can kill anyone, the "celebrity" people will just get mobbed by a horde of players that will just lag everything until servers go 'boom'.
There *is* a reason why MMOs don't generally do 'live events' - as soon as word spreads something 'unusual' is going on, everyone online wants to get to see it and participate and/or grief. Just ask Lord British about his 'celebrity visit' to Ultima Online way back... (hint: he got killed by a player, and yes, servers almost croaked as everyone on the server tried to get to the hotspot)
Just my two cynical eurocents...