Fantasy Trumps Sci-Fi For MMOs

simoniker writes "Mythic's Mark Jacobs, whose MMO company is being acquired by EA, has commented in detail on why fantasy MMOs sell better as part of an extended interview. He suggests of MMOs: 'Fantasy is easier than sci-fi. Want to know why? It's simple. A gun. What's a gun? A gun is impersonal. A gun can shoot somebody from across the room... Part of the challenge we found with Imperator is how do you make a combat system based on lasers and energy weapons, compelling to an RPG audience. The other challenge with a sci-fi game is that fantasy is very well defined in our minds ... I also think there's something I can't explain, which is that people are more willing to play a fantasy game that's not as good online, than they are willing to play a sci-fi game that's not as good online. And I'm not sure why that is.' Suggestions?"

Comments

Re:Why?

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

In a Fantasy environment it's easy to say "You don't have the required years of training and spellcasting experience to be able to whip out a fireball capable of 24d6 damage".

In a realistic Sci-fi environment it's difficult to say "You don't have the required years of training and marksmanship to be able to wield a high damage laser pistol, you get a different kind of pistol capable of only doing 2d4 damage."

Re:correction:

[Creepy]

Star Wars is a Space Opera, not Sci-Fi, yes.

There are a lot of things that are feasible but not explainable in sci-fi, though - for instance, warp is feasible by manipulating space-time or possibly using an aspect of quantum mechanics (physics is way too far back, but I recall there was an unexplained phenomenon where quanta moves faster than the speed of light - I thought it was quantum tunneling, but that doesn't appear to be it). We don't have any idea how we would manipulate space-time, but one theory is you surround a ship with a bubble of fast time and float it on a bubble of slow (or normal) time (some say you need to also maintain a small conduit between them to avoid dimension hopping). I had heard this theorized before by a sci-fi buff and gamer (of all people) about 15 years ago, but just a few months ago another person had essentially the same theory in Popular Science.

There's a huge difference between "black box" technology and stuff that's impossible - like engine noises in space. God forbid anybody ever has "passive sonar" in space, like in Wing Commander. I wanted to shoot Chris in the head for that one (figuratively speaking - I'm not a psycho stalker yet ;) ).