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Command & Conquer MMO a Possibility?
TheProphet92 sends along a speculative piece about the future of EA's popular RTS franchise, writing:
"EA's real-time strategy games don't have the luxury of extensive funding the way some other franchises do. EA has been milking their game engines for all they're worth and then some. They have been using various versions of the 'Sage' engine for the past half-dozen or so RTS games, and they need money to make a new one. Perhaps an MMO is the way to go for EA, using none other than their famous Command & Conquer franchise."
I for one would pay to see fifty sims battling a gargantuan chromatic dragon, with epic furniture.
Warcraft managed to get RTS -> MMO RPG transition just fine, and it is not surprising.
RTS tradition creates rich lore (past conflicts and battles, locations and settings - each map can equal to explorable area, iconic bad and good guys, enough rectcons to give lorephile hardon) and identifiable image (there is reason why wow town building designs are pretty much directly takes from its RTS roots.). MMO gameplay already has standardized features, so that is nobrainer too.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
Seriously. Developing an MMO to pay for a new RTS engine is like building a city so you can get your Starbucks fix.
I would love to see that happen. Imagine you can pick any class and evolve in it. There must be a mechanism that gives you an incentive to keep playing the same class. You get rewarded with specialised weapons, e.g. an improved tank or mechinfantry. Not only do you get rewarded for frags but also for following orders and pre-battlefield instructions. Over time you can become higher in rank which actually gives you authority over other players.
Basically this would be the perfect balance between the excitement of arcade and the lawfulness and realism of simulation. This would take out a lot of annoying game elements that are solely produced by game-developers creating instant gratification to children, whoring for frags.
Admittedly we need a lot more work done on communication and control. But I'm seeing this become reality.
How about they get rid of their DRM, stop treating their customers like theives, and then they might sell some units? I love C&C but I didn't buy the last one because of the DRM (SecuROM I think?)
-SaNo
Good point. And in the spirit of lending a helping hand to the publishers, here is my own list of franchises which have been sadly overlooked when it came to making an MMO.
1. Zorro. Just think about it. For a start, you don't even need to pay the artists for more than one outfit for the players. You just need to figure out a way to need 25 Zorros for the final boss, and you're all set.
2. Tom and Jerry. This could be huge. Just think of the millions of children who have grown up on seeing the cat and mouse (and occasionally dog) hit each other over the head with frying pans, lead pipes, and just about everything except the kitchen sink. Actually, wait, I think they used the kitchen sink too. It could make the perfect PvP MMO. (And you may think that it would be limited to have just two races in an MMO and have it all happen in one house and its yard, but AION launched literally with one race per side and the zones aren't much bigger either.)
I for one can hardly wait to grind for the Epic Frying Pan Of Power, and whack a cat over the head with it. What? You're saying it's just me?
3. Barbie. Well, Mattel already proved that you can make money with Barbie games for little girls. (Mostly because the one buying the game is the father, whose idea of what game would a little girl want is a little fuzzy.) Now imagine the many possibilities in a MMO. Not only you can dress up your Barbie and pretend she's a fashion model, you can sit her together with other people's Barbies and have a tea party. Won't that be fun? Little girls love having tea parties with their dolls. (At this point if you're a father, you're supposed to nod and reach for your wallet.)
4. Debbie Does Dallas. Perfect for the few horny 14 year olds trying to cybersex every female character in sight... and for the many 40 year olds pretending to be a horny 14 year old. 'Nuff said.
5. Harvest Moon. All the fun of watering crops and brushing your pony, except in a massively multi-player setting. And if you get a 40 man group you can brush an epic pony.
6. Dallas. I believe more housewives worldwide have watched that soap opera than nerds have watched Star Trek. If they can make an MMO out of the latter, I don't see why they can't make one out of Dallas.
7. The Bible. Yes, you've heard that right. It sold more copies than all 6 Star Wars episodes and all SW books combined. And if you don't think it has MMO potential, you haven't read it.
E.g., the siege and genocide of Midian (not kidding, read Numbers) would make a great battleground. E.g., imagine the fun of an escort quest to get Lot out of Sodom. For that matter, of trying to get to Lot's house with your sphincter intact ;) E.g., for a FedEx quest, recreate Jeremiah's treck to the Euphrates to bury his loincloth because the Lord told him to. (Again, I'm not kidding.) Etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The article makes no sense at all. Using one game-type to fund another is okay but hell, an MMO is a company in itself, not just a product. It's also complete speculation.
And, the C&C series went downhill after Red Alert (and, as others have pointed out, EA's purchase of Westwood). I can hardly bring myself to play anything after that at all. I wanted to have a look at Red Alert 3 but wasn't going to buy without a demo. By the time a demo came out that I could actually find and download, it was 1.8Gb and I had lost interest. And the min specs looked scary for something quite benign in terms of gameplay.
The best way for EA to make money on that franchise would be to stick the entire C&C / RA back-catalogue on Steam, with a new system for multiplayer lobbies... I know I'd buy it and compared to even the demo of Red Alert, it'd be small to download. I know RA itself is "freeware" now but just the hassle of keeping the CD images around and the multiplayer, plus the various expansion packs, has got to be worth a little bit. A lot of people times a little bit is quite a chunk.
If EA came up with an MMO, could you really trust them not to make it Pay-to-Play and:
If my previous experience with Online PvP gaming using EA products (Battlefield series on the PC) is any indication of their behavior, I expect them to release the game buggy (yet strangely with great reviews from certain well-known gaming websites), have a 6 month period with a couple of bug-fixes while they "hook as many players as they can into the game" and then proceed to do all the "returns enhancing" ideas listed above.
Tired of the WoW grind? Hop into a Harvester and start gathering Tiberium for a living!
there is an iphone version of C&C in development
How fitting that the /. icon for this article should be a warcraft picture. God, I miss the time when there were two types of gamers in this world: C&C and Warcraft II.
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If this was being done by the guys of the old Westwood, then I'd say go for it. Because you know if those guys did it, it would be awesome. But EA has done nothing but destroy the C&C franchise, so I don't really want to see them try this.
On the other hand, it would be extremely interesting to see how they would pull off something like that. If done well it could be very good. But it's EA, they don't do anything well.
Dungeon Keeper MMO.
The only problem is the arguments over who geets to be the Horned Reaper and who gets to be the Keeper...
Remember that C&C is based upon the engine created for the game Dune II. If you want an MMO based upon the style of game, go after Dune! It's a hugely rich history, with larger than life chracaters, epic battles, and vast spaces. Remember that the collection of Tiberium was originally the collection of the Spice, Melange, upon which the whole Universe runs on...it allows the Navigators to fold space, and Paul Atreides, aka Muad'Dib, later to see the future. That could be a whole lot of fun! About the only Universe richer than the Dune is Star Wars, which, of course, borrowed from Dune in the first place.
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