Thanks. However, I think what we were proposing was very risky; permanent death alone could have lost us many players, and I don't doubt that many others would have been put-off by the fact that they couldn't 'play Gandalf'. Of course, I stick by our designs, and wish we'd had the chance to prove them.
I suspect that Verant will have to deal with a lot of the problems that we were tackling with Middle-earth. Restrictions on numbers of Elves | Jedi Knights and so on. Beloved licenses are double-edged swords, with spikey handles (don't worry, Sierra never understood the analogy, either.)
I look forward to seeing how Verant handles the challenge, and wish them luck.
Daniel Ex-Designer, Middle-earth
p.s. The folk who are moaning about charging for MMP's above have failed to think things through; centrally operated MMP's are a service business, and to provide large-scale customer service (both human and bandwidth etc.) is *very* costly. There is a reasonable point made, however, that charging for a retail box too is perhaps a little rich. Unfortunately, the margins on the commonly (and, because of this, imho foolishly) established price of $10/month are slim, such that a subscription-only model becomes marginal and uncertain to return its considerable development investment. (Yes, I have done the maths.)
Of course, it all depends how well your support your game. Trim your support costs to near-zero, rely on volunteers, you might make more money from each of your dwindling number of disaffected subscribers.
Finally, anyone who thinks that advertising can be used to support a 'classic fantasy' MMP world like Star Wars or Middle-earth is, imho, delusional. Gandalf does not drink Coke.
Yeah, you can use a middleware product designed 2 months ago in your new projects... if you don't mind being laughed at by everyone who passed on your project and is using the new guys product who went and made his own in a new and innovative way... game programming involves constant innovation.
Umm, no. Half-life? StarCraft? I don't need to give further counter-examples. As you point out, gameplay and balance are the things that really build a game. Technology that 'knocks their socks off' is all well and good, but it is secondary. I would love to spend the time and money to research fantastic new technology, but it's not necessarily on the critical path to shipping a great game.
While I'm here, do any game industry types have any opinions on the author's argument that game middleware such as NetImmerse or Renderware will be increasingly used in future?
Definitely. One of the key arguments in this book is that research has no place in the critical path of game development. If you don't have existing in-house technology, and established middleware will meet your requirement, it's probably a good option - especially as most of the licenses are pretty reasonable in the scale of commercial development. Well-tested code and robust, useable tools are very helpful.
Unfortunately, the choices are limited and tend to the same architecture, e.g. BSPs. We'd love to use middleware on our project, but it becomes less attractive when you need to adapt either the design or the middleware code to fit. Besides, if we just did a bit of research...
Daniel, hiring good engineers, no games exp. necessary
I have to disagree with your assertion re: implications lost. I read Wyndham as an adolescent in the early 1980's and the apocalyptic themes met fertile soil. Of course, I don't know how bad it was in the 50's, but I remember (in the UK) a clear feeling of impending armaggedon - doubtless fuelled by CND protests, TV dramas such as Threads, The Morning After and the continued posturing of world leaders.
Anyone recall 'Protect and Survive'? Ugh.
Of course, 'this generation' may be folks ten years younger than me, in which case I'd have to agree that it appears nuclear threat is a much less dominant meme. 'Triffidian' apocalypse seems like a better bet than ever, though.
Slashdot Mirror
The development team was doing a fantastic job.
Thanks. However, I think what we were proposing was very risky; permanent death alone could have lost us many players, and I don't doubt that many others would have been put-off by the fact that they couldn't 'play Gandalf'. Of course, I stick by our designs, and wish we'd had the chance to prove them.
I suspect that Verant will have to deal with a lot of the problems that we were tackling with Middle-earth. Restrictions on numbers of Elves | Jedi Knights and so on. Beloved licenses are double-edged swords, with spikey handles (don't worry, Sierra never understood the analogy, either.)
I look forward to seeing how Verant handles the challenge, and wish them luck.
Daniel
Ex-Designer, Middle-earth
p.s. The folk who are moaning about charging for MMP's above have failed to think things through; centrally operated MMP's are a service business, and to provide large-scale customer service (both human and bandwidth etc.) is *very* costly. There is a reasonable point made, however, that charging for a retail box too is perhaps a little rich. Unfortunately, the margins on the commonly (and, because of this, imho foolishly) established price of $10/month are slim, such that a subscription-only model becomes marginal and uncertain to return its considerable development investment. (Yes, I have done the maths.)
Of course, it all depends how well your support your game. Trim your support costs to near-zero, rely on volunteers, you might make more money from each of your dwindling number of disaffected subscribers.
Finally, anyone who thinks that advertising can be used to support a 'classic fantasy' MMP world like Star Wars or Middle-earth is, imho, delusional. Gandalf does not drink Coke.
Yeah, you can use a middleware product designed 2 months ago in your new projects... if you don't mind being laughed at by everyone who passed on your project and is using the new guys product who went and made his own in a new and innovative way... game programming involves constant innovation.
Umm, no. Half-life? StarCraft? I don't need to give further counter-examples. As you point out, gameplay and balance are the things that really build a game. Technology that 'knocks their socks off' is all well and good, but it is secondary. I would love to spend the time and money to research fantastic new technology, but it's not necessarily on the critical path to shipping a great game.
While I'm here, do any game industry types have any opinions on the author's argument that game middleware such as NetImmerse or Renderware will be increasingly used in future?
Definitely. One of the key arguments in this book is that research has no place in the critical path of game development. If you don't have existing in-house technology, and established middleware will meet your requirement, it's probably a good option - especially as most of the licenses are pretty reasonable in the scale of commercial development. Well-tested code and robust, useable tools are very helpful.
Unfortunately, the choices are limited and tend to the same architecture, e.g. BSPs. We'd love to use middleware on our project, but it becomes less attractive when you need to adapt either the design or the middleware code to fit. Besides, if we just did a bit of research...
Daniel, hiring good engineers, no games exp. necessary
I have to disagree with your assertion re: implications lost. I read Wyndham as an adolescent in the early 1980's and the apocalyptic themes met fertile soil. Of course, I don't know how bad it was in the 50's, but I remember (in the UK) a clear feeling of impending armaggedon - doubtless fuelled by CND protests, TV dramas such as Threads, The Morning After and the continued posturing of world leaders.
Anyone recall 'Protect and Survive'? Ugh.
Of course, 'this generation' may be folks ten years younger than me, in which case I'd have to agree that it appears nuclear threat is a much less dominant meme. 'Triffidian' apocalypse seems like a better bet than ever, though.