Disney Takes Aim at Movie Based MMOGs

eldavojohn writes "Disney has announced plans to launch more movie-based Massively Multiplayer Online Games. With plans already on the table for a "Pirates of the Caribbean" title, additional properties are apparently now under consideration for a similar treatment. They are aiming at teens more than the older crowd, and don't seem to be interested in fighting for players from World of Warcraft or Second Life." From the article: 'We plan to build more virtual worlds like "Pirates" based on a broad range of our properties,' Iger told attendees of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas ... 'You can imagine living in Buzz and Woody's toy universe,' he added, recalling Disney Pixar's computer animated hit feature film 'Toy Story'."

Comments

This is hilarious

[Killjoy_NL]

They really think they can make more money like this?
The only good "Disney" games are the Kingdom Hearts series (in my opinion)

For this, I predict a 100% failure, unless there are no subscription fees like in Guild Wars.

Re:This is hilarious

[HappySqurriel]

When I took my niece to Lilo and Stitch in the theaters several years ago I thought that there was an opportunity for someone to make an interesting MMO based on something similar to this. My thought was that being able to 'create' a character from scratch and their choices would impact gameplay (say having 4 arms alows you to quad wield but you waste so many 'creation points' you can't have massive strength), in a science fiction setting with many (Vastly different) planets.

The problem is most companies are looking for a cash grab based on IP.

Re:This is hilarious

[Fozzyuw]

The only good "Disney" games are the Kingdom Hearts series (in my opinion)

I guess you must be too young to remember all the 'classic' games published by Disney, such as...

• DuckTales
• Aladdin
• Chip n' Dale
• The Lion King

These games where well received by critics and sold very well, besides all the fond memories they bring back. =) There was also a Gargoyles video game some time ago, and I only vaguely recall enjoying it, and it had some interesting game play, but I cannot recall if it sold well.

Of course, people just hear 'Disney' and think 'kids' and probably expect lame, cheesy, and easy games, however, once upon a time, they had some pretty good fanfare and even set the bar for some game play. Though, having to keep it 'kid friendly', I would expect an MMO to be like Disney's other MMO ToonTown Online, where the only chatting you can do is with pre-selected text, which would probably keep out plenty of people. However, I suspect that they might go for the 14-18 crowd, so chatting will be a normal thing, but game play will be a little bit easier or less 'grinding' and more social interaction.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:This is hilarious

[xiong.chiamiov]

Mmm, two points.
1. Guild Wars is not an MMO. It is an RPG that allows you to play with other people, called a CORPG (co-op role-playing game)
2. The lack of a subscription fee is not what makes Guild Wars pwn; it's the bait. I refuse to pay monthly for games, and that's what got me to buy GW. However, it is all the other things that have made me stay. (ask if you really want a list)

Please Disney

[Anonymous Coward]

Please over-saturate this heavily over-done market as quickly as possible so that game developers might move on to making games that are actually entertaining instead of vain attempts to quickly garner monthly service fees from helplessly addicted users.

Re:Please Disney

[TeraCo]

I expect we'll eventually reach the point where all games are MMO or MMOlike. Simply because with MMO style games, developers and publishers don't have to worry about piracy. They know for a fact that 100% of their customer base not only paid for the game, but are doing so over and over again.

repeat of earlier flops

[Speare]

It seems that every company that wants to get into the MMORPG game makes the same predictable mistakes. Thankfully, most of these never make it to the final "go live" moment. Some can limp along for a while but are nowhere near the leaders of the pack. It's just a waste of time when companies can't learn the mistakes they watch their competitors make.

In this case, it's making the fatal assumption that "great character-based story will make great MMO franchise." MMORPGs are about the players, not about a few trademarked names that served as the ensemble core of a story. To entertain the players, they must feel like the star of their personal story, and if the premise is about the key personalities in that world, there's a big disconnect there. Find mythical worlds which don't rely on the obvious few characters, where everyone has a chance at being great in an original way. The pre-authored content should be about the settings, the mythos, the backstories, not about the "main characters."

Example: don't make an MMORPG about Harry Potter's world. There's a huge castle, a wonderful surrounding countryside, four great built-in guilds, and more magic spells than you can shake a stick at (literally). But you're also going to have five thousand people who can't succeed without a ragged scar on their forehead in an entirely predictable way.

Example: don't make an MMORPG about Cap'n Jack Sparrow's world. There's a huge ship, a great collection of ports of call and legendary treasure to plunder. But you're also going to have five thousand people who can't succeed without swaggering around drunk on sun and rum in an entirely predictable way.

I could cut and paste a few more examples, but you could just look down the NetFlix Top 100 and the Amazon Top 100 for a lot of the ideas that are being discussed in MMORPG board rooms today.

Re:repeat of earlier flops

[Nasarius]

It seems to me like a Pirates of the Caribbean MMORPG would just end up as a title tacked on to a game set in the era of the Spanish Main. There's not a whole lot of unique content or mythology in the movies, and therefore not many constraints. The possibilities are essentially the same as a MMO version of Sid Meier's Pirates!

Re:repeat of earlier flops

[Protonk]

This is an excellent point.

I figure the same arguments are going to be dredged up about how Disney can't succeed in the MMO field:

1. The market is too crowded.

2. Disney won't make a successful MMO until the master "X" esoteric element of the genre (e.g. economy, novel server design, etc.)

3. It won't work because Disney is for kids, and so on.

The real limitations here aren't those above, and they aren't the story, exactly. The pretense of strong and powerful game world characters can do serious damage to an MMO where the "story", or whatever you might want to call the pretense for interaction, is based on a number of roughly equally powerful customers. if the universe permits power held by a single person to affect others disproportionately, then you will find it is very difficult to manage. SWG failed for this reason, the world was replete with common interactions with chracters who were only common in the universe of film and movies because of necessity--the only reason we followed R2-D2 and C3PO in the movies were because they were witness to events of great gravity. If they were just droids, they would make for a boring narrative. MMO's provide just the opposite. No one is the hero of the game, the game is in interaction and struggle by everyone. The whole notion of persistence on a world shows that one character CANNOt be the hero of his own story.

As for the three arguments presented above, they are all silly:

1. WoW came along when the market for MMO's was saturated with hundreds of thousands of EQ, AO, and DAOC customers. Before EQ, there were claims that UO customers could not be lured away. When it premiered, there were dozens of other 3D MMO's in development or released that were clamoring for marketshare. There is some truth to the notion that the market is squeezed more tightly now than in 2001, but the dymanics are the same. The presense of a crowded market does not always eliminate the prospect of success.

2. The "silver bullet" argument is one deployed most often by armchair MMO developers. Pick a facet of an MMO that most annoys/interests you and declare that without the perfection of this facet, that MMO is doomed. The dictum is as useless as it is arbitrary. UO had a non-functioning economy and still attracted and kept a huge player base, even in the face of EQ. EQ lacked PvP in any real sense and was derided for this but still managed to become wildly succesful. The real trick to success is that there isn't one trick. It helps to have great IP, recognizable to casual gamers and MMO players (WoW). It helps to have an innovative world (Eve). It helps to be first--or close enough (EQ). It also helps to be lucky. That is a huge factor in this industry but goes unsaid because no analyst would keep his job if he told the newspapers that X company cornered the widget market through sheer chance

3. Disney's IP. Microsoft loved to deride nintendo as being for aged 6-18, and the XBOX for more mature gamers--the logic goes that everyone gets older, and "we'll just take them when they turn 18." Oops. Turns out that Nintendo is microsoft's serious rival in the console world and that cartoons and adolescent friendly characters have some traction. look at the sales for kingdom hearts, for Zelda (even Windwaker). Nintendo and Disney know what the ciggarette companies have always known. Hook them when they are young, and they'll stick around for the rest of their lives. Don't count Disney out here.

So don't look at the standard reasons for rejection! Think about the problem and the real troubles will appear soon enough.

Of course...

[dangitman]

Nobody wants players from Second Life. That's why they are playing Second Life in the first place.

Tron?

[GrpA]

You know, as much as I think a POTC MMORPG conversion would probably suck, Disney has the ultimate MMORPG ready to go... In their TRON universe.

The TRON2.0 game was pretty enjoyable, and Disney could build an entire universe around the premises in TRON and the later game without even trying. Even the game engine is ready to go. How much tweaking would it need to convert the Tron2.0 game into a MMORPG?

And if you could enter your world as a "User" or otherwise have your "Program" running around according to it's own script when you weren't in control, it would be pretty cool. Having your program search for interesting items / escape routes etc, and emailing you back in the real world when it found them, allowing you to control the game either from the command line or email and then using a full client when you wanted to roam around.

Probably the era of the MCP would be the ideal time.... As you recall, the MCP controlled all the NPCs while the programs were essentially independant reflections of their users... Better still if you could download a basic bitmap of your size/features as parameters, your program could even look like you... (Not that difficult to send along with co-ordinate information if well thought out).

And you could develop your "User" powers over time, gain access to Tanks, Recognisers and Lightcycles to move through a massive world inside the computer. Even set up your own hard drive file area to store them :) Gain more resources (primitives) and even design your own transport or accomodation.

As much as the thought of a Disney MMORPG bothers me, I (and I imagine other programmers) could probably really get into and enjoy something like this. Kinda like Second Life but with Neon... :)

GrpA.

Re:Tron?

[ClamIAm]

Even the game engine is ready to go. How much tweaking would it need to convert the Tron2.0 game into a MMORPG?

Sounds to me like somebody's never written an MMORPG. Not that I have, of course, but I have read interviews and articles about what goes into the engines used in them. And it's very different from what goes into a "regular" game.

Disney is well positioned

[ObligatoryUserName]

Most of the posts seem to indicate that people are unaware of Disney's history in the field. They've been running the well regarded Toontown online since 2003.

Also, you can thank this group for the Nintendo Friends code system. To my knowledge Disney designed and developed the first implementation a friends code system with a Barbie diary product years ago. It's the best way developed to prevent young kids from interacting with strangers online, and they shared what they learned with the rest of the industry. (And, yes, it's a pain to everyone else.)

I'm confident that Disney will do well with their next product, even if it isn't as big as World of Warcraft.

Fantasia/Grey Goo

[Atrax]

Remember the recent Second Life Grey Goo incident?

I see Disney's MMORPG crumbling under a flood of magical fantasia broomsticks

Disney MMORPG

[Teppy]

The NDC is long expired on this, so I guess it's OK to talk about it.

Before A Tale in the Desert, we proposed an episodic MMORPG to Disney based on A Bug's Life. We built a playable (2D) prototype that was a lot of fun. Characters from the movie were NPCs - for instance, Flick would give you "blueprints" for crazy contraptions, and you'd have to scavenge and make all the parts for each one.

You could find grain and plant it to grow wheat shoots to use as rubber-bands. You could climb the tree and toss down acorns to other players. They could show them to Flick who would suggest an invention to pry the nut from the cap, and then the cap could be used with glue that came from sap as part of a gear for other contraptions.

Ultimately you'd build a little ant-sized sailboat/raft to get yourself and trhe others off the island, and that would lead to episode 2. IIRC, the content that we had could be played through in an hour or two by a team of 3-5 people.

Unfortunately the project never made it further than the prototype - I think this was all in 1999. But I still think that A Bug's Life is *the* Disney property that needs an MMO.

Re:World Of Disney

[ab0mb88]

This really is a good idea. I have a sister that is right in this age range and when the WoW episode of South Park came out she made me look up Hello Kitty Island Adventure. She really wanted a game that was like World of Warcraft but was made for her age. If someone did this right it really could sell.