One problem with soft dates is that the games industry is hit-driven and still relies largely on print media. That means you have to buy ads 3 months in advance in a print magazine. If your product slips a few months, then you've wasted a lot of advertising money. People don't have attention spans to keep track of a game for months. Look at how big a joke Duke Nuk'em Forever has become.
Prototyping is done in the industry, although probably not as often as it should be. As you point out, though, a complex game like an online RPG is much harder to prototype for than a simpler game. Plus, sometimes the "fun factor" depends on other parts of the game; part of the enjoyment of Katamari Damacy, at least for me, is the silly art style.
There's a further problem in the games industry in that you can't really schedule for "fun". We're still trying to understand this mysterious beast from a logical point of view. Or, to put it another way, there's no test harness for "fun factor". You can plan out the game with a high degree of detail, implement everything on schedule and under budget, but if the game isn't fun it doesn't matter. Yet, the money people hate to think that all that work went for nothing, so they usually want a game to ship by the deadline no matter what state it's in. That's why you sometimes see games that are absolutely unplayable and obviously not finished; the developers weren't able to get the game to a "fun" state before the money dried up.
This gets worse when you have business people willing to exploit the eagerness of people developing games. I eagerly worked 60-80 hours at 3DO working on one project I enjoyed (the project I bought from 3DO after they closed it down, Meridian 59), but I hated working even 50 hour weeks on another game that only had a 6 month development cycle. Usually the managers just say, "Hey, you're making games. Suck it up and have fun!" if you complain about the hours. It doesn't help that many people have a completely misguided idea of what it's like to make games (even without the bullshit you have to tolerate at large companies); they don't realize that making games is different than playing games.
Enough of a rant for now. Some thoughts from someone who has seen the inside of the beast.
Haha! Exactly. I'm a 3DO survivor and know exactly how well ol' Trip's Magic 8 Ball works.
(Side note, why not mention him as founder of 3DO instead of EA? It's more recent, and oh, yeah, out of business!:P)
Seriously, this is the man that for years said online gaming wasn't ready for prime time, that it wasn't profitable, etc, despite the obvious successes of online games. It sucked for me, because my team working on Meridian 59 got almost no resources since online games couldn't be profitable, according to Trip's Magic 8 Ball. So, it's not a surprise that it faded into oblivion only to be resurrected by a much smaller company that cares. And has made the game profitable with few resources.
Ah, well. Hopefully one day I'll have a fluke success so people will listen to me no matter how irrelevant I become.
Yes. It's not just TV and movies, either. My personal soapbox is for indie computer games, being an indie online RPG developer. People complain about the crap put out by the big companies, but they still buy that crap so it continues to be profitable. People complain about all sorts of things in games, especially online games. Yet, most people won't even go try out a game and give it an honest chance. They fear games that don't have the most prettiest graphics, just as they shun programs or movies without big-name actors. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of great stuff gets overlooked. In all honesty, the indie developer is usually much more interesting and willing to please. When WoW had server troubles, they gave people a few extra days of playtime. When Meridian 59 had a weekend of downtime, we gave everyone a full month free. Since we don't have box sales to counteract this, this really impacted our bottom line. But, we wanted to make it up to our players and show that we were willing to take responsibility for the downtime; let me tell you, there hasn't been significant downtime since then.
The answer is not to say, "Fuck the man!" and download content on the internet. The answer is to find someone that is honestly willing to entertain you and make a good product and support them. Only then will you see the end of bullshit legislation, "broadcast flags", and all that stupidity. Only then will you see real entertainment being done.
The problem is that a download-only game doesn't look as legitimate. When you buy something in the store, most people view that as more legitimate. They're more willing to give credit card information to that company instead of giving it to some company where you just downloaded a client.
The second issue is one of investment. Let's say someone buys a $50 box and take it home. If that person finds the game to be confusing at first, they are generally going to stick with it. They don't want to believe that their $50 is wasted. On the other hand, if you pay $10.95 for the same thing, you're usually much more willing to set it aside of it's a bit confusing at first.
My own game, Meridian 59 allows you to download the client for free and just pay a fairly low monthly subscription. We run into these two issues all the time since we're a small, relatively unknown company. People are (rightfully) scared to give out CC information, and this works against us. Plus, our game isn't a cookie-cutter D&D clone where you can just pick a race and class and go. It requires a bit of thought and is complex, which doesn't make for an easy newbie experience. Not significantly worse than other games, but the other games have the $50 investment to rely on.
To summarize: Development costs are high, especially for more recent games. WoW and SWG each cost tens of millions of dollars to develop, which is a lot of money in game development. They employed large teams of people, much larger than your typical standalone game charges.
Now, running the game is an ongoing cost. The biggest expenses are bandwidth, network support, and customer service. People get very cranky when they can't log onto the game, and will post mean things if they cannot. (See other posts in this very thread for examples.) Network administrators don't come cheap, and when you're talking about hundreds of machines running these games, you're going to need a large number of these administrators. And for those times when your service is unavailable, you need CS representatives to handle the crushing wave of calls you will undoubtedly get. All this doesn't come cheap. Now figure in the cost of things like development of bug fixes and expanded content (including content you can't just charge for in an expansion), and you have a lot of expenses.
In all honesty, the price paid is probably too low. As someone pointed out, playing 1 hour per day means you're only spending about $.50 per hour to play the game. Compare this to watching a Pay-per-view movie where you'll probably pay $2-3 per hour for that entertainment.
Further, low subscription rates hurt the smaller developers. Meridian 59 is significantly cheaper that other games (only $10.95 per month instead of $15 like other large games) and doesn't charge for expansions. However, we make much, MUCH less money than a large company does and it is harder to maintain and expand the game on that much smaller of a budget. We mostly run M59 as a labor of love, though, so this isn't as big an issue for us. But it's unrealistic to expect an online RPG that is run on centralized servers with as much uptime as possible and that is expanded on a regular basis to be free or even significantly cheaper that current rates.
One thing to keep in mind is that most of us here aren't "average" gamers. Hell, I develop games for a living so I'm automatically disqualified. Now, Katamari Damacy is well-known to the hardcore gamer crowd, but it doesn't really have mindshare with the more mainstream audience. However, a game like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 are going to be covered in mainstream magazines. (One could argue this has more to do with the "realistic graphics" being more interesting to the average person than trippy Japanese games about rolling stuff into a ball.)
On the larger topic, I think that review scores are garbage for the most part. It's hard to find people that are unbiased and independent. It's well known that publishers brow-beat magazine editors, holding the threat of losing advertising revenue over their heads. (Okay, okay, 3DO is a bad example due to the fairly reliable lack of quality there, but rest assured other large publishers have paid money [directly or indirectly through "press junkets"] to have good reviews done of games that are real turkeys.) It's hard to find an unbiased source.
One site I really like that breaks the trend is GamersInfo.net. (Full disclosure, I've written a few reviews for the site, but that's mostly because I really enjoy and appreciate what they're doing.) The games don't have number scores, and every reviewer has a profile you can look at. You can find reviewers that like the same types of games you do and follow their reviews. Or, you can figure that the FPS review by the hard-core RPG fan might not be exactly the same as an FPS fan's view of the game.
I highly recommend checking the site out if you want good reviews.
My point is that you need to do something besides burn out folks.
I agree with you, but a walkout won't do that.
I used to work for 3DO. It was a meat grinder. The company was a spin-off of EA from several years ago, so a lot of the company culture was still there. 3DO is now bankrupt, thanks to the terrible working conditions and the equally terrible games being developed. But, I have some street cred here; I know what I'm talking about from seeing the beast on the inside.
The games industry is a hit-driven industry. The oft-quoted figure is that something like 90% of games lose money, and 10% of the games pay for the other 90% and then some. So, if a team walks out it's treated like one of those 90%. They'd likely fire everyone, write off the loss, and hope that one of the other games does well. In order to have an effect, a significant portion of the company has to walk out. If 50% of the teams walk out of EA, then they might notice something. But, there's enough bright-eyed newbies that this is unlikely to happen. In addition, more bright-eyed "scab" workers are waiting right outside the door, chomping at the bit to get into the "glamorous" industry without knowing what a meat grinder it really is.
I have sympathy for your position. My father was a Union worker and I know that unions can do good things. But, it will be an uphill battle given the nature of the industry. It's not as simple as a team walking off a project, unfortunately.
The industry needs to change. In the words of a friend of mine, it needs to stop "eating its young" in order to gain big profits. There's a huge drain on experienced developers as they burn out and leave the newbies wondering how to make a game. This is the whole reason why I started my own self-funded, independent game company. I hope things will change in the industry in general, but I don't think this is the key to that success.
I think this story is good and important. It's important to see what the inside of the industry is like. Other people have already post how they turned down jobs in the industry, so hopefully this continues the trend. As soon as there isn't a line wrapping around the block of people willing to replace the burnouts, then we might see some real change in the industry.
I think the big question is, how can we get small game studios back?
Start by supporting the ones out there. My own game company is a small, independent company that runs the game Meridian 59; we're entirely self-funded in order to maintain creative freedom. But, with limit funds comes limited ability to make a game "pretty" enough and to get really effective advertising.
Don't take my word for it, look at how people react. I recently submitted a story to Slashdot talking about the new M59 free trial server we're offering. Out of the 30 comments, about a quarter of them are people complaining about ugly graphics or how the story is just an ad for my game. Yes, another quarter of the comments are me trying to clarify and defend some points. But, this is how people react to a game with less-than-modern graphics trying to get a bit of marketing on a site that talks about games!
Until people take a different attitude, things won't change. Until people are willing to put up with graphics that are a little behind the curve, we're going to see EA make even more profits and pump out even more derivative (yet highly profitable) yet pretty games. Until people realize that an indie developer posting a story on Slashdot is about as sophisticated as our marketing budget allows us to be, you're going to continue to see large ad campaigns from large companies continue to get mindshare and the little studios are going to continue to be ignored and go out of business.
There's also issues of distribution; no store is going to carry my game because I'm "too small" and I can't afford the bribes, er, I mean, "Market Development Funds" that the stores require. There's a lot of reasons why independents aren't all that easy to find, but we are here if you choose to look a bit.
I've been harping on this issue a long time. Professional independent game developers like me are out here, but we keep getting ignored in favor of the larger games with flashier graphics and slicker advertising. All we have to offer fun with occasional innovation, but you can't take a screenshot of that, unfortunately.
Er, a late reply to an AC.... But, just in case someone else comes along and sees this.
You can choose to decline an auto-update if you want. But, that means your client will be out-of-sync with the game server and you won't be able to connect.
Sorry your tinfoil hate prevented you from enjoying a great gaming experience. But, the defining feature of an online game is that it's regularly updated, and that means downloading things to your computer.
The problem is that in the games industry, there's no end to the number of twenty-somethings that are willing to take the job. The industry has been burning through talent as fast as it can, and an organized walkout like this would just force this round of burnouts to leave a bit earlier than projected. But, I guarantee that you'd have a new crew of fresh faces in to replace the ranks by the next Friday.
No, it can't last forever, but the major game publishers are willing to profit heavily while it does. Unfortunate, but true.
Thousands of players on the live servers. This is a (now) 4-day old demo server, so of course things are going to be a bit slow. You must have logged on at a strange time, because there were about 20 people logged on most of the time I was online yesterday. There's even more today. We already have nearly 1,000 signups. Not bad for a smaller game with this article as the main marketing.
Anyway, the game is still fun. Thousands of people think so, regardless of the graphics.
We relaunched the game in 2002. The game was originally launched in 1996. So, yeah, the graphics aren't super-modern. However, the game is fun. Would you rather have a pretty game that's boring or a plain game that's fun? A game is meant to entertain and no amount of good graphics is going to make up for a game that isn't fun.
We still have thousands of players that play the game despite the graphics. That should tell you how fun the game really is.
Eh, good a place as any to give comments. Allow me to respond....
I realize graphics aren't the main course but an upgrade sure would help catch a new user's eye.
Funny enough, we did give the game a pretty major upgrade. Take a look at these screenshots and you'll see what the game was like before the most recent upgrade. It's an improvement, but we know we're not going to compete in terms of eye candy with the other games coming out. We did the rendering engine update in order to not look quite so hopelessly outdated.
But, honestly, we've focused on making the game fun to play. M59 might not be better than sex, but it is a quite fun game to play. And, if a game isn't fun what's the point? Good graphics doesn't make up for a boring game.
I was disappointed by the character creation... in the sense that I had no idea whether I was going to create a useless character, a limited character, an uber character...
A novel complaint. I, on the other hand, personally hate class-based systems because they are too restrictive. Perhaps you're too battered down by other games where it's easy to make a lame character. We've worked to make the current M59 system into something you can really make nearly any type of character with without much fear of making a "gimp" character. Decide what you want to do and learn it! The only thing I don't particularly like about M59's system is that you have to pick your stats at character creation and they're relatively inflexible. Unfortunately, that was a design decision made before I started working on the game. After learning the system (which is what the trial is for, right?), it's easy to make a wide variety of characters. Make a character that fits your playstyle and ability, instead of making a character that is pigeonholed into a specific role.
The one thing that did catch me was that nearly as soon as I logged on, an admin offered his assistance (he could tell I was new... maybe the way I kept strafing left and right or bumping into doors game me away?). I didn't meet many people, but the people I did meet were very friendly and helpful.
We've been making sure people feel welcomed into the game. The server's only been up a few days, and we're trying to get the word out best we can, but things will be thin the first few days. But, I enjoy talking to players so I'll often greet newbies on the regular servers as well.
One thing to keep in mind is that M59 focuses a lot more on a smaller, tighter community. You'll get to know most of the people that play on your server, and you'll know many people by reputation. This is really a cool aspect of the game that often gets lost in other "massive" games. I like being known for my actions, even though it makes it harder for me to play an "unknown" mortal character.:)
Anyway, the server will be around for a month. It's a fun game if you give it a chance. It's not initially pretty and we aren't a clone of other games, so often people overlook the game. But, if you give it a real chance, you might find something you've been missing.
Anyway, the game didn't "fail". In fact, for a while it had a large number of people paying nearly $30/month per account to play. How many people do you think would play other games if they tried to charge $30/month? Obviously there's something to the game that keeps people interested in it.
The game is alive and thriving, really. We have a core of fans that enjoy the game and are happy to pay a lot less than $30/month to play the game. The game has been changing and improving through our work. Our latest free expansion includes a rather nice graphical client upgrade as well as a lot of nice UI improvements.
No, it's not as pretty as other games and it doesn't have as many subscribers, but it's still a great game. McDonald's sells lots of hamburgers in brightly colored paper wrappers, too, but that doesn't mean it's the best possible food you can eat.
Which isn't an issue if you really thing about it. First of all, the game has a lot of content. There's secrets in the game that people that have played for 8 years still are finding. Look at EQ and see how much more content has been added since they launched. Of course, in EQ you would have had to buy expansions, whereas in M59 we have free content patches on a regular basis. Meridian 59 has a lot of depth of gameplay. It's also amazingly stable, too, since we've worked out the bugs in the game a long time ago. So, being "old" means we have a lot of content and we have a stable game. Oh no!
Admittedly, the game isn't packed full of eye candy like newer games are. But, the graphics are "good enough" and the gameplay is very fun. No other game offers the blend of open PvP, player skill-based gameplay, and game balance that M59 offers. If you like PvP combat, this is the game to check out. And, now we're offering a month long free trial to check it out.
As for alternative OSes, we're looking to see if there is a demand. Since M59 has had a lot of content added to it, especially the recent upgrades on the client side such as the new rendering engine, porting is a non-trivial effort. We're an indie game developer, which means we have limited resources. Sitting down and writing a port to another OS means that we're taking away time from adding new content to the game and keeping existing players happy.
If I recall correctly this game was the first 3d mmorpg to *I think*.
There's some disagreement about who did what first. Meridian 59 uses a first-person 2.5D engine (similar to DOOM); now it has an engine that uses 3D hardware acceleration and adds in neat things like dynamic lighting. It can reasonably make the claim to be the first modern online RPG to use 3D.
M59 was the first game to offer a box in retail and it established the current subscription-based business model. The game also had terrible marketing at the hands of 3DO, creating shameful ads that probably scared off more people than they attracted. This is one reason why it languished under the shadow of other games while often presenting a more technically accomplished and interesting game.
Anyway, the game is still around and going strong. We've worked hard to update the game, and we've added a lot of new features, notably the new rendering engine. It looks very nice, if I say so myself.:)
It's not an ad, it's marketing. It's funny how people get bent out of shape when an independent developer mentions his or her game, but when a story is just a copy and paste of a press release no one cares. Yeah, I posted up about the free trial, but that's because we don't pay a marketing department several million dollars to market the game less obviously.
For example, look at the Ilovebees.com stories lately. People know that this is marketing for Halo 2, but I didn't see as much outrage when Slashdot posted news about that site. That's because Ilovebees.com is an interesting, free game. Well, the M59 trial is an interesting free game that just happens to be marketing for the commercial servers.:)
Realistically, what am I going to get out of this? Not much. I willingly labeled my post as a Games section, and even after several hours of being posted, there's less than two dozen replies to the thread. Perhaps I should have had one of my events people role-play a sexist bastard so we could have gotten on the front page like A Tale in the Desert did?
Anyway, you can check my posting history to see that I usually write insightful posts, mostly in the Games section. It's not like I'm coming around astroturfing. I actually contribute to the community. At the very least I try to spend my moderator points modding up posts in the games section.
Anyway, Allaran, I'll have to check out your games. I'm a big believer in independent developers. Marketing is a very important aspect of getting people to notice your game. We independents can't spend millions of dollars on big magazine 2-page ads and TV spots. We've spent our money on developing our game, and if we don't pimp our own games no one is going to know about them. Don't let the people tell you otherwise. Wish I could have modded you up instead of having to reply to people here.
It's about time to show these corporate bullies that we will not take this any more.
The problem is, as other people have pointed out, that hype sells. People get excited about hype, and unfortunately gamers don't cut through the bullshit very often. "FANTASTIC MULTIPLAYER!" is a check box that developers and publishers check in order to sell more units.
The problem is, if you don't hype you don't sell units. I run an independent online RPG, Meridian 59. We don't hype our product. What little advertising we've done has been focused on trying to get our name out. We have great PvP, an aspect which appeals to a niche. But, other PvP games have come out with giant hype and so our game gets lost in noise. It's hard to compete with "OMG 100% ORGASMS!" when you try to stick to honest advertising. (Of course, those other PvP games quickly prove to be overhyped and full of bugs. But, still, people buy into the hype.)
So, what can a game player do? As the parent suggests, start doing a bit of critical thinking about the game you want to buy. Unfortunately, it's really hard to find good information about games. The sad reality is that most reviews are forced to be good in order to guarantee advertising income and to meet a deadline. A few sites, such as GamersInfo.net try to give honest reviews of games. (Full disclosure: I've written reviews for the site.) But, how do you really find out how good multiplayer is in a game, or if it even exists?
My personal soapbox is to speak in favor of independent games. Garage Games has a good selection of indie games, including the quite original game Gish. Indie games tend to be more honest, because they often have to rely on great gameplay instead of super-spectacular graphics and production values. You won't see much hype for these games, because they can't afford the carpet-bombing advertising campaign in print magazines. Unfortunately, this means you'll have to work a bit harder to find out about them.
I'd recommend that instead of trying to "stick it to the man" in court, spend that energy in finding indie developers to support. Most of us just want to create cool games which people enjoy. We're not concerned with hype or lying about our product. We do the best we can, and try to get an honest word out about our games. We're not looking to sell millions of copies, just enough to feed ourselves. Honestly, I cared that much about money, I would have gone into some other line of work.
I wouldn't cry too much - piracy is going to hurt the publishers of weak games worst, 'cos everyone can find out that it sucks before it goes on sale;-)
The problem is that this also hurts legitimate small, independent game developers as well. In non-game terms, every time someone gets the warez version of Photoshop, that's one less person buying the significantly cheaper yet high quality Paint Shop Pro.
There are a lot of great independent games out there that are really fun. (I highly recommend watching for the game "Zap" to come out soon, it was a real blast to play at the Indie Games Conference.) This is just one site out of many with quality indie games at a good price. Instead of spending time warezing a big-name commercial game, people should try looking into the alternatives. If people start supporting independent game developers, you'll start seeing a wider variety of games being developed independent of the restrictions imposed by publishers. It always boggles me how people can justify pirating games because "games suck these days" without putting any real effort into finding alternatives to play.
Have fun,
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
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Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually, a better solution is to get out there and find independent artists that you enjoy. Think the latest "teen diva" CD is crap? Don't download it off of P2P to "get back at the system", go out and find music you do like. Find a local band or even a band on the internet and support them by going to shows and/or buying their CD directly. More money goes into the pocket of the artist you enjoy instead of to fuel the machine that enforces the status quo.
Illegally downloading songs (or any other entertainment) off of a P2P network only gives more power to the RIAA(/MPAA/whatever). They can bloat their piracy numbers and complain about lost sales; common people will believe the figures because everybody downloads music! But, if you go support an independent then you REALLY do something subversive. You go outside the mainstream, into the areas that aren't controlled by the large industry organizations. Most importantly: You give the indies that don't sell their creative freedom for a long shot at "stardom" a chance to live off of their abilities. As an indie computer game developer, I can attest that it's often hard to make a serious living off of providing entertainment to people.
Supporting the independent artist is the best way to beat the system, something that intrigues all hackers both old and new. Unfortunately, too many people want to be entertained for no effort, and are willing to do whatever they can to justify their illegal activities. Let that "do-it-yourself" hacker attitude shine through and go look for the alternatives. We're out there if you choose to look past mainstream advertising.
I run an "MMO", Meridian 59, so I have a bit of insight into what it takes to make one of these games.
There's two main reasons why there's no sports MMO games:
1) Teamwork. It takes team chemistry to really work together as a sports team. You'd have to get a regular team to work together. Playing on a "pick up" team isn't going to be as effective as playing on an organized team that has trained together. The online medium doesn't help.
2) Offline is better. You can go down to the park and play a real game of football if you want. You can't go down to the park and slay orcs and engage in PvP. Well, you can, but there's laws and drugs to stop people that try. Getting outside and actually playing the sport will likely never replace virtual sports. The reason why console sports do so well is because it's easy to pick up and you only need one person to play. This is the complete opposite of what an online sports "MMO" would be like.
My own game, Meridian 59, was purchased from 3DO, the original publisher, when we started our company Near Death Studios, Inc. The game was one of the first modern online RPGs to be released in retail. It's never been as big as other online RPGs, but it's had a dedicated fanbase. We recently did an upgrade to the rendering engine, bringing the game to the world of 3D hardware acceleration.
Another smaller game that was saved from death is The Realm. It was purchased by a number of players and is still running today.
As I've posted before, most online games will never die. There are too many people committed to keeping them alive. It's good to see that Horizons will get a new lease on life and that the fans will continue to be able to enjoy the game.
Have fun,
Agree with the idea
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I also think this was one of the biggest problems with the dot-com boom. Everyone was falling over themselves to make everything mass-market in order to gain the most "eyeballs" and sell more ad revenue. It's been shown that people prefer more "niche" content aimed at their interests. It's interesting to note that you can often sell more expensive advertising since you are delivering a targeted audience instead of a wide, undefined audience.
I've been doing this in my professional life, too. I'm a developer of Meridian 59, a classic online RPG. The game focuses a lot on player vs. player (PvP) combat, with the advantage of having a long time to develop a very balanced system. We've targeted the game to the niche that is interested in this type of game, and we make enough money to get by.
I think we'll see another large, sustainable boom once people realize that servicing a niche can be very profitable.
You didn't specifically say "no bars" when you asked how to find music. You asked how bands could promote themselves "without involving ethanol". This is not quite the same. But, the recommendation stands. Bars will sometimes have "all ages" shows where they don't pour drinks.
Since you're geeky enough to say "ethanol" instead of "alcohol", I'm also surprised you didn't think of googling for the answer. A quick search of local music Indiana gave me over a million hits. Some of them on the first few pages look particularly promising.
Again, searching for indie artists (in this case music) isn't going to be as easy as visiting your local Virgin Megastore and buying whatever's been playing on the radio the past month. It will require a bit of effort on your part. But, in the end you'll be doing a lot to help the independent that truly wants to make music and make it available at reasonable prices and reasonable terms, and you won't be helping out the large companies that have gotten us into the sad situation we are currently in.
Slashdot Mirror
One problem with soft dates is that the games industry is hit-driven and still relies largely on print media. That means you have to buy ads 3 months in advance in a print magazine. If your product slips a few months, then you've wasted a lot of advertising money. People don't have attention spans to keep track of a game for months. Look at how big a joke Duke Nuk'em Forever has become.
Prototyping is done in the industry, although probably not as often as it should be. As you point out, though, a complex game like an online RPG is much harder to prototype for than a simpler game. Plus, sometimes the "fun factor" depends on other parts of the game; part of the enjoyment of Katamari Damacy, at least for me, is the silly art style.
Have fun,
There's a further problem in the games industry in that you can't really schedule for "fun". We're still trying to understand this mysterious beast from a logical point of view. Or, to put it another way, there's no test harness for "fun factor". You can plan out the game with a high degree of detail, implement everything on schedule and under budget, but if the game isn't fun it doesn't matter. Yet, the money people hate to think that all that work went for nothing, so they usually want a game to ship by the deadline no matter what state it's in. That's why you sometimes see games that are absolutely unplayable and obviously not finished; the developers weren't able to get the game to a "fun" state before the money dried up.
This gets worse when you have business people willing to exploit the eagerness of people developing games. I eagerly worked 60-80 hours at 3DO working on one project I enjoyed (the project I bought from 3DO after they closed it down, Meridian 59), but I hated working even 50 hour weeks on another game that only had a 6 month development cycle. Usually the managers just say, "Hey, you're making games. Suck it up and have fun!" if you complain about the hours. It doesn't help that many people have a completely misguided idea of what it's like to make games (even without the bullshit you have to tolerate at large companies); they don't realize that making games is different than playing games.
Enough of a rant for now. Some thoughts from someone who has seen the inside of the beast.
Have fun,
Haha! Exactly. I'm a 3DO survivor and know exactly how well ol' Trip's Magic 8 Ball works.
:P)
(Side note, why not mention him as founder of 3DO instead of EA? It's more recent, and oh, yeah, out of business!
Seriously, this is the man that for years said online gaming wasn't ready for prime time, that it wasn't profitable, etc, despite the obvious successes of online games. It sucked for me, because my team working on Meridian 59 got almost no resources since online games couldn't be profitable, according to Trip's Magic 8 Ball. So, it's not a surprise that it faded into oblivion only to be resurrected by a much smaller company that cares. And has made the game profitable with few resources.
Ah, well. Hopefully one day I'll have a fluke success so people will listen to me no matter how irrelevant I become.
Have fun,
GOD, this attitude pisses me off.
Yes. It's not just TV and movies, either. My personal soapbox is for indie computer games, being an indie online RPG developer. People complain about the crap put out by the big companies, but they still buy that crap so it continues to be profitable. People complain about all sorts of things in games, especially online games. Yet, most people won't even go try out a game and give it an honest chance. They fear games that don't have the most prettiest graphics, just as they shun programs or movies without big-name actors. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of great stuff gets overlooked. In all honesty, the indie developer is usually much more interesting and willing to please. When WoW had server troubles, they gave people a few extra days of playtime. When Meridian 59 had a weekend of downtime, we gave everyone a full month free. Since we don't have box sales to counteract this, this really impacted our bottom line. But, we wanted to make it up to our players and show that we were willing to take responsibility for the downtime; let me tell you, there hasn't been significant downtime since then.
The answer is not to say, "Fuck the man!" and download content on the internet. The answer is to find someone that is honestly willing to entertain you and make a good product and support them. Only then will you see the end of bullshit legislation, "broadcast flags", and all that stupidity. Only then will you see real entertainment being done.
Have fun,
The problem is that a download-only game doesn't look as legitimate. When you buy something in the store, most people view that as more legitimate. They're more willing to give credit card information to that company instead of giving it to some company where you just downloaded a client.
The second issue is one of investment. Let's say someone buys a $50 box and take it home. If that person finds the game to be confusing at first, they are generally going to stick with it. They don't want to believe that their $50 is wasted. On the other hand, if you pay $10.95 for the same thing, you're usually much more willing to set it aside of it's a bit confusing at first.
My own game, Meridian 59 allows you to download the client for free and just pay a fairly low monthly subscription. We run into these two issues all the time since we're a small, relatively unknown company. People are (rightfully) scared to give out CC information, and this works against us. Plus, our game isn't a cookie-cutter D&D clone where you can just pick a race and class and go. It requires a bit of thought and is complex, which doesn't make for an easy newbie experience. Not significantly worse than other games, but the other games have the $50 investment to rely on.
Some information for you.
Have fun,
Has Blizzard or any of the other MMORPG guys ever posted the actual cost of running such a service vs. how much money they are taking in on it?
m l which was written by Raph Koster of UO and SWG fame.
FWIW, I run a smaller online game called Meridian 59. My costs are a bit different since we're a smaller company. I'll talk about that later.
Anyway, you can find a discussion on this topic at http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/busmodels.ht
To summarize: Development costs are high, especially for more recent games. WoW and SWG each cost tens of millions of dollars to develop, which is a lot of money in game development. They employed large teams of people, much larger than your typical standalone game charges.
Now, running the game is an ongoing cost. The biggest expenses are bandwidth, network support, and customer service. People get very cranky when they can't log onto the game, and will post mean things if they cannot. (See other posts in this very thread for examples.) Network administrators don't come cheap, and when you're talking about hundreds of machines running these games, you're going to need a large number of these administrators. And for those times when your service is unavailable, you need CS representatives to handle the crushing wave of calls you will undoubtedly get. All this doesn't come cheap. Now figure in the cost of things like development of bug fixes and expanded content (including content you can't just charge for in an expansion), and you have a lot of expenses.
In all honesty, the price paid is probably too low. As someone pointed out, playing 1 hour per day means you're only spending about $.50 per hour to play the game. Compare this to watching a Pay-per-view movie where you'll probably pay $2-3 per hour for that entertainment.
Further, low subscription rates hurt the smaller developers. Meridian 59 is significantly cheaper that other games (only $10.95 per month instead of $15 like other large games) and doesn't charge for expansions. However, we make much, MUCH less money than a large company does and it is harder to maintain and expand the game on that much smaller of a budget. We mostly run M59 as a labor of love, though, so this isn't as big an issue for us. But it's unrealistic to expect an online RPG that is run on centralized servers with as much uptime as possible and that is expanded on a regular basis to be free or even significantly cheaper that current rates.
Some information for you.
Have fun,
One thing to keep in mind is that most of us here aren't "average" gamers. Hell, I develop games for a living so I'm automatically disqualified. Now, Katamari Damacy is well-known to the hardcore gamer crowd, but it doesn't really have mindshare with the more mainstream audience. However, a game like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 are going to be covered in mainstream magazines. (One could argue this has more to do with the "realistic graphics" being more interesting to the average person than trippy Japanese games about rolling stuff into a ball.)
On the larger topic, I think that review scores are garbage for the most part. It's hard to find people that are unbiased and independent. It's well known that publishers brow-beat magazine editors, holding the threat of losing advertising revenue over their heads. (Okay, okay, 3DO is a bad example due to the fairly reliable lack of quality there, but rest assured other large publishers have paid money [directly or indirectly through "press junkets"] to have good reviews done of games that are real turkeys.) It's hard to find an unbiased source.
One site I really like that breaks the trend is GamersInfo.net. (Full disclosure, I've written a few reviews for the site, but that's mostly because I really enjoy and appreciate what they're doing.) The games don't have number scores, and every reviewer has a profile you can look at. You can find reviewers that like the same types of games you do and follow their reviews. Or, you can figure that the FPS review by the hard-core RPG fan might not be exactly the same as an FPS fan's view of the game.
I highly recommend checking the site out if you want good reviews.
Have fun,
My point is that you need to do something besides burn out folks.
I agree with you, but a walkout won't do that.
I used to work for 3DO. It was a meat grinder. The company was a spin-off of EA from several years ago, so a lot of the company culture was still there. 3DO is now bankrupt, thanks to the terrible working conditions and the equally terrible games being developed. But, I have some street cred here; I know what I'm talking about from seeing the beast on the inside.
The games industry is a hit-driven industry. The oft-quoted figure is that something like 90% of games lose money, and 10% of the games pay for the other 90% and then some. So, if a team walks out it's treated like one of those 90%. They'd likely fire everyone, write off the loss, and hope that one of the other games does well. In order to have an effect, a significant portion of the company has to walk out. If 50% of the teams walk out of EA, then they might notice something. But, there's enough bright-eyed newbies that this is unlikely to happen. In addition, more bright-eyed "scab" workers are waiting right outside the door, chomping at the bit to get into the "glamorous" industry without knowing what a meat grinder it really is.
I have sympathy for your position. My father was a Union worker and I know that unions can do good things. But, it will be an uphill battle given the nature of the industry. It's not as simple as a team walking off a project, unfortunately.
The industry needs to change. In the words of a friend of mine, it needs to stop "eating its young" in order to gain big profits. There's a huge drain on experienced developers as they burn out and leave the newbies wondering how to make a game. This is the whole reason why I started my own self-funded, independent game company. I hope things will change in the industry in general, but I don't think this is the key to that success.
I think this story is good and important. It's important to see what the inside of the industry is like. Other people have already post how they turned down jobs in the industry, so hopefully this continues the trend. As soon as there isn't a line wrapping around the block of people willing to replace the burnouts, then we might see some real change in the industry.
My thoughts as an industry insider.
Have fun,
I think the big question is, how can we get small game studios back?
Start by supporting the ones out there. My own game company is a small, independent company that runs the game Meridian 59; we're entirely self-funded in order to maintain creative freedom. But, with limit funds comes limited ability to make a game "pretty" enough and to get really effective advertising.
Don't take my word for it, look at how people react. I recently submitted a story to Slashdot talking about the new M59 free trial server we're offering. Out of the 30 comments, about a quarter of them are people complaining about ugly graphics or how the story is just an ad for my game. Yes, another quarter of the comments are me trying to clarify and defend some points. But, this is how people react to a game with less-than-modern graphics trying to get a bit of marketing on a site that talks about games!
Until people take a different attitude, things won't change. Until people are willing to put up with graphics that are a little behind the curve, we're going to see EA make even more profits and pump out even more derivative (yet highly profitable) yet pretty games. Until people realize that an indie developer posting a story on Slashdot is about as sophisticated as our marketing budget allows us to be, you're going to continue to see large ad campaigns from large companies continue to get mindshare and the little studios are going to continue to be ignored and go out of business.
There's also issues of distribution; no store is going to carry my game because I'm "too small" and I can't afford the bribes, er, I mean, "Market Development Funds" that the stores require. There's a lot of reasons why independents aren't all that easy to find, but we are here if you choose to look a bit.
I've been harping on this issue a long time. Professional independent game developers like me are out here, but we keep getting ignored in favor of the larger games with flashier graphics and slicker advertising. All we have to offer fun with occasional innovation, but you can't take a screenshot of that, unfortunately.
Have fun,
Er, a late reply to an AC.... But, just in case someone else comes along and sees this.
You can choose to decline an auto-update if you want. But, that means your client will be out-of-sync with the game server and you won't be able to connect.
Sorry your tinfoil hate prevented you from enjoying a great gaming experience. But, the defining feature of an online game is that it's regularly updated, and that means downloading things to your computer.
Have fun,
The problem is that in the games industry, there's no end to the number of twenty-somethings that are willing to take the job. The industry has been burning through talent as fast as it can, and an organized walkout like this would just force this round of burnouts to leave a bit earlier than projected. But, I guarantee that you'd have a new crew of fresh faces in to replace the ranks by the next Friday.
No, it can't last forever, but the major game publishers are willing to profit heavily while it does. Unfortunate, but true.
Have fun,
Thousands of players on the live servers. This is a (now) 4-day old demo server, so of course things are going to be a bit slow. You must have logged on at a strange time, because there were about 20 people logged on most of the time I was online yesterday. There's even more today. We already have nearly 1,000 signups. Not bad for a smaller game with this article as the main marketing.
Anyway, the game is still fun. Thousands of people think so, regardless of the graphics.
Have fun,
We relaunched the game in 2002. The game was originally launched in 1996. So, yeah, the graphics aren't super-modern. However, the game is fun. Would you rather have a pretty game that's boring or a plain game that's fun? A game is meant to entertain and no amount of good graphics is going to make up for a game that isn't fun.
We still have thousands of players that play the game despite the graphics. That should tell you how fun the game really is.
Have fun,
Eh, good a place as any to give comments. Allow me to respond....
:)
I realize graphics aren't the main course but an upgrade sure would help catch a new user's eye.
Funny enough, we did give the game a pretty major upgrade. Take a look at these screenshots and you'll see what the game was like before the most recent upgrade. It's an improvement, but we know we're not going to compete in terms of eye candy with the other games coming out. We did the rendering engine update in order to not look quite so hopelessly outdated.
But, honestly, we've focused on making the game fun to play. M59 might not be better than sex, but it is a quite fun game to play. And, if a game isn't fun what's the point? Good graphics doesn't make up for a boring game.
I was disappointed by the character creation... in the sense that I had no idea whether I was going to create a useless character, a limited character, an uber character...
A novel complaint. I, on the other hand, personally hate class-based systems because they are too restrictive. Perhaps you're too battered down by other games where it's easy to make a lame character. We've worked to make the current M59 system into something you can really make nearly any type of character with without much fear of making a "gimp" character. Decide what you want to do and learn it! The only thing I don't particularly like about M59's system is that you have to pick your stats at character creation and they're relatively inflexible. Unfortunately, that was a design decision made before I started working on the game. After learning the system (which is what the trial is for, right?), it's easy to make a wide variety of characters. Make a character that fits your playstyle and ability, instead of making a character that is pigeonholed into a specific role.
The one thing that did catch me was that nearly as soon as I logged on, an admin offered his assistance (he could tell I was new... maybe the way I kept strafing left and right or bumping into doors game me away?). I didn't meet many people, but the people I did meet were very friendly and helpful.
We've been making sure people feel welcomed into the game. The server's only been up a few days, and we're trying to get the word out best we can, but things will be thin the first few days. But, I enjoy talking to players so I'll often greet newbies on the regular servers as well.
One thing to keep in mind is that M59 focuses a lot more on a smaller, tighter community. You'll get to know most of the people that play on your server, and you'll know many people by reputation. This is really a cool aspect of the game that often gets lost in other "massive" games. I like being known for my actions, even though it makes it harder for me to play an "unknown" mortal character.
Anyway, the server will be around for a month. It's a fun game if you give it a chance. It's not initially pretty and we aren't a clone of other games, so often people overlook the game. But, if you give it a real chance, you might find something you've been missing.
Have fun,
Troll in BOB! (Old M59 humor.)
Anyway, the game didn't "fail". In fact, for a while it had a large number of people paying nearly $30/month per account to play. How many people do you think would play other games if they tried to charge $30/month? Obviously there's something to the game that keeps people interested in it.
The game is alive and thriving, really. We have a core of fans that enjoy the game and are happy to pay a lot less than $30/month to play the game. The game has been changing and improving through our work. Our latest free expansion includes a rather nice graphical client upgrade as well as a lot of nice UI improvements.
No, it's not as pretty as other games and it doesn't have as many subscribers, but it's still a great game. McDonald's sells lots of hamburgers in brightly colored paper wrappers, too, but that doesn't mean it's the best possible food you can eat.
Have fun,
Meridian 59 is soo old.
Which isn't an issue if you really thing about it. First of all, the game has a lot of content. There's secrets in the game that people that have played for 8 years still are finding. Look at EQ and see how much more content has been added since they launched. Of course, in EQ you would have had to buy expansions, whereas in M59 we have free content patches on a regular basis. Meridian 59 has a lot of depth of gameplay. It's also amazingly stable, too, since we've worked out the bugs in the game a long time ago. So, being "old" means we have a lot of content and we have a stable game. Oh no!
Admittedly, the game isn't packed full of eye candy like newer games are. But, the graphics are "good enough" and the gameplay is very fun. No other game offers the blend of open PvP, player skill-based gameplay, and game balance that M59 offers. If you like PvP combat, this is the game to check out. And, now we're offering a month long free trial to check it out.
As for alternative OSes, we're looking to see if there is a demand. Since M59 has had a lot of content added to it, especially the recent upgrades on the client side such as the new rendering engine, porting is a non-trivial effort. We're an indie game developer, which means we have limited resources. Sitting down and writing a port to another OS means that we're taking away time from adding new content to the game and keeping existing players happy.
Have fun,
If I recall correctly this game was the first 3d mmorpg to *I think*.
:)
There's some disagreement about who did what first. Meridian 59 uses a first-person 2.5D engine (similar to DOOM); now it has an engine that uses 3D hardware acceleration and adds in neat things like dynamic lighting. It can reasonably make the claim to be the first modern online RPG to use 3D.
M59 was the first game to offer a box in retail and it established the current subscription-based business model. The game also had terrible marketing at the hands of 3DO, creating shameful ads that probably scared off more people than they attracted. This is one reason why it languished under the shadow of other games while often presenting a more technically accomplished and interesting game.
Anyway, the game is still around and going strong. We've worked hard to update the game, and we've added a lot of new features, notably the new rendering engine. It looks very nice, if I say so myself.
Have fun,
It's not an ad, it's marketing. It's funny how people get bent out of shape when an independent developer mentions his or her game, but when a story is just a copy and paste of a press release no one cares. Yeah, I posted up about the free trial, but that's because we don't pay a marketing department several million dollars to market the game less obviously.
:)
For example, look at the Ilovebees.com stories lately. People know that this is marketing for Halo 2, but I didn't see as much outrage when Slashdot posted news about that site. That's because Ilovebees.com is an interesting, free game. Well, the M59 trial is an interesting free game that just happens to be marketing for the commercial servers.
Realistically, what am I going to get out of this? Not much. I willingly labeled my post as a Games section, and even after several hours of being posted, there's less than two dozen replies to the thread. Perhaps I should have had one of my events people role-play a sexist bastard so we could have gotten on the front page like A Tale in the Desert did?
Anyway, you can check my posting history to see that I usually write insightful posts, mostly in the Games section. It's not like I'm coming around astroturfing. I actually contribute to the community. At the very least I try to spend my moderator points modding up posts in the games section.
Anyway, Allaran, I'll have to check out your games. I'm a big believer in independent developers. Marketing is a very important aspect of getting people to notice your game. We independents can't spend millions of dollars on big magazine 2-page ads and TV spots. We've spent our money on developing our game, and if we don't pimp our own games no one is going to know about them. Don't let the people tell you otherwise. Wish I could have modded you up instead of having to reply to people here.
Have fun,
It's about time to show these corporate bullies that we will not take this any more.
The problem is, as other people have pointed out, that hype sells. People get excited about hype, and unfortunately gamers don't cut through the bullshit very often. "FANTASTIC MULTIPLAYER!" is a check box that developers and publishers check in order to sell more units.
The problem is, if you don't hype you don't sell units. I run an independent online RPG, Meridian 59. We don't hype our product. What little advertising we've done has been focused on trying to get our name out. We have great PvP, an aspect which appeals to a niche. But, other PvP games have come out with giant hype and so our game gets lost in noise. It's hard to compete with "OMG 100% ORGASMS!" when you try to stick to honest advertising. (Of course, those other PvP games quickly prove to be overhyped and full of bugs. But, still, people buy into the hype.)
So, what can a game player do? As the parent suggests, start doing a bit of critical thinking about the game you want to buy. Unfortunately, it's really hard to find good information about games. The sad reality is that most reviews are forced to be good in order to guarantee advertising income and to meet a deadline. A few sites, such as GamersInfo.net try to give honest reviews of games. (Full disclosure: I've written reviews for the site.) But, how do you really find out how good multiplayer is in a game, or if it even exists?
My personal soapbox is to speak in favor of independent games. Garage Games has a good selection of indie games, including the quite original game Gish. Indie games tend to be more honest, because they often have to rely on great gameplay instead of super-spectacular graphics and production values. You won't see much hype for these games, because they can't afford the carpet-bombing advertising campaign in print magazines. Unfortunately, this means you'll have to work a bit harder to find out about them.
I'd recommend that instead of trying to "stick it to the man" in court, spend that energy in finding indie developers to support. Most of us just want to create cool games which people enjoy. We're not concerned with hype or lying about our product. We do the best we can, and try to get an honest word out about our games. We're not looking to sell millions of copies, just enough to feed ourselves. Honestly, I cared that much about money, I would have gone into some other line of work.
Some thoughts from an indie developer.
Have fun,
I wouldn't cry too much - piracy is going to hurt the publishers of weak games worst, 'cos everyone can find out that it sucks before it goes on sale ;-)
The problem is that this also hurts legitimate small, independent game developers as well. In non-game terms, every time someone gets the warez version of Photoshop, that's one less person buying the significantly cheaper yet high quality Paint Shop Pro.
There are a lot of great independent games out there that are really fun. (I highly recommend watching for the game "Zap" to come out soon, it was a real blast to play at the Indie Games Conference.) This is just one site out of many with quality indie games at a good price. Instead of spending time warezing a big-name commercial game, people should try looking into the alternatives. If people start supporting independent game developers, you'll start seeing a wider variety of games being developed independent of the restrictions imposed by publishers. It always boggles me how people can justify pirating games because "games suck these days" without putting any real effort into finding alternatives to play.
Have fun,
Actually, a better solution is to get out there and find independent artists that you enjoy. Think the latest "teen diva" CD is crap? Don't download it off of P2P to "get back at the system", go out and find music you do like. Find a local band or even a band on the internet and support them by going to shows and/or buying their CD directly. More money goes into the pocket of the artist you enjoy instead of to fuel the machine that enforces the status quo.
Illegally downloading songs (or any other entertainment) off of a P2P network only gives more power to the RIAA(/MPAA/whatever). They can bloat their piracy numbers and complain about lost sales; common people will believe the figures because everybody downloads music! But, if you go support an independent then you REALLY do something subversive. You go outside the mainstream, into the areas that aren't controlled by the large industry organizations. Most importantly: You give the indies that don't sell their creative freedom for a long shot at "stardom" a chance to live off of their abilities. As an indie computer game developer, I can attest that it's often hard to make a serious living off of providing entertainment to people.
Supporting the independent artist is the best way to beat the system, something that intrigues all hackers both old and new. Unfortunately, too many people want to be entertained for no effort, and are willing to do whatever they can to justify their illegal activities. Let that "do-it-yourself" hacker attitude shine through and go look for the alternatives. We're out there if you choose to look past mainstream advertising.
Have fun,
I run an "MMO", Meridian 59, so I have a bit of insight into what it takes to make one of these games.
There's two main reasons why there's no sports MMO games:
1) Teamwork. It takes team chemistry to really work together as a sports team. You'd have to get a regular team to work together. Playing on a "pick up" team isn't going to be as effective as playing on an organized team that has trained together. The online medium doesn't help.
2) Offline is better. You can go down to the park and play a real game of football if you want. You can't go down to the park and slay orcs and engage in PvP. Well, you can, but there's laws and drugs to stop people that try. Getting outside and actually playing the sport will likely never replace virtual sports. The reason why console sports do so well is because it's easy to pick up and you only need one person to play. This is the complete opposite of what an online sports "MMO" would be like.
Some thoughts from a professional.
Have fun,
My own game, Meridian 59, was purchased from 3DO, the original publisher, when we started our company Near Death Studios, Inc. The game was one of the first modern online RPGs to be released in retail. It's never been as big as other online RPGs, but it's had a dedicated fanbase. We recently did an upgrade to the rendering engine, bringing the game to the world of 3D hardware acceleration.
Another smaller game that was saved from death is The Realm. It was purchased by a number of players and is still running today.
As I've posted before, most online games will never die. There are too many people committed to keeping them alive. It's good to see that Horizons will get a new lease on life and that the fans will continue to be able to enjoy the game.
Have fun,
I also think this was one of the biggest problems with the dot-com boom. Everyone was falling over themselves to make everything mass-market in order to gain the most "eyeballs" and sell more ad revenue. It's been shown that people prefer more "niche" content aimed at their interests. It's interesting to note that you can often sell more expensive advertising since you are delivering a targeted audience instead of a wide, undefined audience.
I've been doing this in my professional life, too. I'm a developer of Meridian 59, a classic online RPG. The game focuses a lot on player vs. player (PvP) combat, with the advantage of having a long time to develop a very balanced system. We've targeted the game to the niche that is interested in this type of game, and we make enough money to get by.
I think we'll see another large, sustainable boom once people realize that servicing a niche can be very profitable.
Have fun,
You didn't specifically say "no bars" when you asked how to find music. You asked how bands could promote themselves "without involving ethanol". This is not quite the same. But, the recommendation stands. Bars will sometimes have "all ages" shows where they don't pour drinks.
Since you're geeky enough to say "ethanol" instead of "alcohol", I'm also surprised you didn't think of googling for the answer. A quick search of local music Indiana gave me over a million hits. Some of them on the first few pages look particularly promising.
Again, searching for indie artists (in this case music) isn't going to be as easy as visiting your local Virgin Megastore and buying whatever's been playing on the radio the past month. It will require a bit of effort on your part. But, in the end you'll be doing a lot to help the independent that truly wants to make music and make it available at reasonable prices and reasonable terms, and you won't be helping out the large companies that have gotten us into the sad situation we are currently in.
Have fun,