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Friday at the Austin Game Conference
This year's AGC is now at an end, and several sites have coverage of the last day's events. The hit event for the day seemed to be Damion Schubert's Moving Beyond Men in Tights talk. MMORPG.com has a slew of interesting articles, covering Emerging PR Strategies for MMOGs, Running Your Own MMOG, and Rich Vogel on MMOG Betas. Raph has a liveblog on a session about Virtual Economies, and finally the 3pointD site has a look at a panel on Virtual Worlds. Interesting stuff. From the 'Men in Tights' writeup: "The queston to answer, why do we keep making grindtastic classbased combat oriented men in tights gamey games? I'm not going to answer 'because it sells' because it's a circular argument and a copout. We won't get anywhere if we only do what was done before. Instead, I'll ask why do we need a grind, why do games appear to be winning, why are classes good, and so on. The reason to tackle this is because whenever people decide to make a new game, these are often the first five things people choose to innovate on. But there's a lot of bad innovation from people trying to solve these five problems."
Here, I made a copy of the summary in case the slashdot gets servered :)
This year's AGC is now at an end, and several sites have coverage of the last day's events. The hit event for the day seemed to be Damion Schubert's Moving Beyond Men in Tights talk. MMORPG.com has a slew of interesting articles, covering Emerging PR Strategies for MMOGs, Running Your Own MMOG, and Rich Vogel on MMOG Betas. Raph has a liveblog on a session about Virtual Economies, and finally the 3pointD site has a look at a panel on Virtual Worlds. Interesting stuff. From the 'Men in Tights' writeup:
"The queston to answer, why do we keep making grindtastic classbased combat oriented men in tights gamey games? I'm not going to answer 'because it sells' because it's a circular argument and a copout. We won't get anywhere if we only do what was done before. Instead, I'll ask why do we need a grind, why do games appear to be winning, why are classes good, and so on. The reason to tackle this is because whenever people decide to make a new game, these are often the first five things people choose to innovate on. But there's a lot of bad innovation from people trying to solve these five problems."
Like a lot of slashdotters I've quit WoW to salvage my real life. For the last few months I've been busy downloading and trying a variety of mmogs trying to find some methadone. These articles show there's a lot of folk out there trying to cater to my needs! I like that a lot (because I haven't figured out what my needs are yet). Damion Schubert's Moving Beyond Men in Tights talk has some nice ideas, "You don't need fantasy but you need an inviting world. People want to spend their spare time here. This is their corner bar. Even the bad guys in WoW are cute and funny." It's because of this idea that I've settled on Puzzle Pirates while I'm waiting for the next great mmog.
-- Just a boy in a beard
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There are, I think, two reasons that fantasy games are the big draws in MMORPGs right now...First, the biggest movies and book series for the "mainstream" challenged amongst us, of recent times, have been fantasies: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Wheel of Time, Star Wars (yes, Star Wars is a fantasy, even it if has blaster rifles). People have already been immersed in these worlds, so the fantasy world is familiar to them. Which makes them comfortable and easy to get in to. Second, Computer games really aren't taht much of an area for story innovation. MMORPGs won't move beyond fantasy until someone has a successful non-fantasy MMORPG. People will point to EVE Online, but it's play numbers aren't nearly large enough to push other game makers to make sci-fi games. And Earth and Beyond died a miserable death (at least as much through EAs mismanagement as through mediocre game play and boring story lines). I think if someone could put out a good Alien MMORPG or a killer Cthulu game (there was one being discussed at one time), they might break the mold wide open. But it is still an industry of copy cats. And most of the copiers don't do that good of work.
There is a decent amount of sci fi fans no doubt. just look at SWG at its peak, subscribers have nearly 5 times that of the peak subscriber numbers Eve-Online ever had. With recent demise of SWG a lot of sci fi MMOGers moved to Eve Online, the only remaining major sci fi MMOG in the market right now, as numbers would back this up.
No major publisher made a push to sci fi based spaceship slash futuristic ground combat game like SWG because probably none of them thought they could compete with Star Wars trademark plus SOE (who was the king of MMOs at the time with Everquest). Unfortunately SOE totally dropped the ball on this one and Eve-Online is to benefit from all of this SOE Lucas fiasco. I wager there is a good number of MMO sci fi fans out there (about 300k strong) still in search of a good game to call home. Some may be waiting for up and comer Star Trek Online. Only time will tell.
However, in my personal experience sci fi based MMOs usually fail to deliver. In Fantasy we all know what to expect, but a sci fi game needs to challenge our imaginations unless its created in a known universe like Star Wars. Many simply fail to meet the challenge of giving us the wow's and ooo's of a good sci fi based experience.
I'm sorry but Eve Online's flying around in spaceships that you can never walk out of, warping to planets that you can never land on, and flying around giant ships with no crew but yourself (as seen where both your ships piloting behavior and weapon mastery relies on your avatar's trained skillset only regardless of its crew). Eve Online just doesnt cut it for me. It totally failed to garner the type of imagination and unlimited possibilities that is implied by both the sci fi genre and its online advertisements.
SWG pre-NGE is hands down the best sci fi based MMOG ever. Take SWG and throw away half of it (i.e. drop the planetary interaction and its in depth crafting system) you have Eve-Online.
Star Trek Online please come save the day!
"the game needs to reward devotion more than skill."
/sigh
i think that sums up the biggest problem right there, its the reason most people I used to play with have quit WoW. I dont want to seem niave, I mean, its a buisness and this is the strategy they chose to ensure future profits. Unfortunatly, it is what makes rationalizing non-play easiest.
It really has nothing to do with copying each other, even though it does seem that way. It really is about Intellectual Property's ability to reach an audience.
For example, Eve Online and Anarchy Online. When I hear those names, I know nothing about them. In order to experience the story line, I have to find a reason to jump into the game. This is a huge hurdle for the game and one of the reasons why they are offering Free Trials and even Free Play with Ads in the case of AO. They need something to suck you into the world in the first place.
However, let's take a few games that are not fantasy based and do not currently have a MMORPG. How much do you know about the storyline, the environment and the history of the game?
StarCraft
Command and Conquer
Total Annihilation
If Blizzard takes what they have learned about MMORPG's from WoW and applies it to a MMORPG featuring the Starcraft Universe, I dare say it will be bigger than WoW is today.
C&C and TA may not be as big, but they have enough history to create an interesting and already familiar environment.
RTFG - Read The F#$%ing Google!