All jokes aside, I completely agree with you. I have 0 expectations for this game. Enter the Matrix was mildly amusing for the first 15 minutes, but that was it.
I suspect this game is not only going to fail but be a big money loser for the developers. On the positive side, it may help to expand the MMORPG market share by exposing casual gamers to online gaming... but I doubt it.
With the huge number of new and very promising number of MMORPG on the horizon, is there anything that sets the Matrix Online apart, other than the name? A name can move a sloppy game off shelves, but it can't get people addicted and keep paying month after month.
Hell, lets not forget The Sims Online. With a name that big I thought it would be another megahit, and damn was I wrong. Final Fantasy Online isn't even doing that great relative to the projected sales. (Hmm, perhaps the word "online" actually negates the number of sales you'd otherwise get.)
Wow, nice to see someone mention Skynet, much less say they enjoyed it! I could never figure that one out. For a game based off of a movie it was absolutely amazing at the time and completely sucked me in.
Sadly for me, my gaming timeline has a huge gap between the release of Quake and Q3A. I was stuck on a p100 with win3.1 until late 1999! I really missed out on alot, especially considering I was stuck with an aweful internet connection for years until I got broadband.
I have to agree with you on Duke Nukem 3D as well. While in Doom you were just kind of wondering around, Duke Nukem 3D had areas and a storyline that really pulled you in. And strippers. Oddly enough, I bought very few games at the time and was limited to shareware and demos. Duke Nukem 3D just happened to be one of the full games I had. (friend of a friend bought the PC version when he had a mac and never returned it, and somehow I got ahold of it.)
Instead of being called the top ten FPS titles, it should be called Ten Years of Doom Clones!
Hmm, read an article the other day where the guy called the police, they said they were understaffed, so he called back and told them that they didn't need to come because he had already shot the intruder -- multiple cops were their in minutes. Too bad I lost the url, funny story.
Its really sad that the best guys in our legal system are too busy making sure than a billionaire doesn't illegally make a couple thousand extra bucks in order to ensure the longevity of their own careers. Unfortunately for these kids, theres also a good chance that they won't even make it to the system -- they'll get shot dead by a homeowner that owns a gun.
The highly the learning curve, the more amazing the creation (relative to other skills such as creativity of course.) I'd rather have something complex and amazing than simple and kind of cool. I've been in Second Life, and I was impressed. I haven't been in There yet, but from what I've seen I haven't really been motivated to check it out yet.
I think Second Life is going in the right direction. I think that if they don't screw anything up financially they have more of a future than There.
I predict that the next "big thing" for gaming is going to be the immersive experiance. Sure, you can go out and buy some big goggles with a 640x480 resolution displaying a 3d screen for $4000, or you drop $20,000+ on a piece of military equipment. However, just like 3d cards used to be only for high-end graphics workstations, this technology is going to mature and come down in price. Whichever company successfully and cheaply can produce fully immersive technology is going to make a killing (hint: time to start looking into stocks.)
Yes, someone please explain to me how forcing users to divert capital to a $ product rather than a use a free product and spend that capital elsewhere has *anything* to do with "making the world safe for capitalism."
If there were more posts as insightful as this one, I'd finally have an excuse for spending time reading/.games!
I'm currently working with a friend on a project that involves a 2D online world. More chat/community based than being an actual game.
I found it very interesting that you listed promotion as your main obstacle. I've been doing allot of research and promotion over the last few weeks and I concluded publicity would probably be the biggest hurdle myself.
While I'm constantly hearing about how independents cant keep up with the big guys any more, I'm just not sure everythings so bad. Sure, if you want a game that looks like a Hollywood movie, expect to spend a Hollywood budget. However, if your goal is to create an addictive, enjoyable, niche game, the times could never be better. The quality of games created by independents today surpass the big budget games of yesterday. If my friend and I were working on what we are doing 10 years ago, we'd probably need Xerox Parc behind us!
So, how does one get headline space? Interestingly enough, internet porn might hold the answer. Heres a product which there is certainly no shortage of, free or otherwise. For the most part, allot of it is the same. Yet, there are guys that have millions off of it, and others who have moved from flipping burgers to enjoying a middle class lifestyle driving BMWs (forget real estate ads, in a couple years we'll have infomercials on making big bucks in online porn.) Without getting into the details, these guys have managed to master traffic flow, and carefully balance paying users verse free-loaders, in the end turning a profit (and btw I think the music industry has alot to learn from this, but anyways.) So whats the key? Here's what I think -- affiliate programs. That is, a website owner pushes your product, and for every user that signs up they get a percentage, add in recurring billing and they'll be more than happy to help out. Of course there are strings attached, that being a serious cut into your revenues. In the end, you've got to figure away to make that bigger volume payoff without incurring greater expenses.
So, maybe I haven't the faintest clue what I'm talking about as I admittedly have slightly more than 0 experience in this field. None the less, I hope it helps!
Drop me a message and perhaps we can discuss this some more.
Your comment really doesn't make much sense, Bangbus is a commercial site (sounds like you get your porn off of p2p heheh...) Anyways..
The thing is, today, theres a very fine line between homegrown and the big guys. There are alot of new millionaires today who started from scratch. Fuck that, the big guys barely even exist anymore. Just look at how the sales of the major magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse have collapsed in recent year. Alot of mags have had to fold.
We have *alot* to learn from the porn industry today other than "they have been a driving force behind technology." If the Record and major media industries lacked the obscene amount of power they have today -- they'd already be gone, just like the big players in the porn industry. But guess what, suprise! Porn isn't dead, in fact its more alive and well than its ever been before in human history! Yes, those lobbyists who say "give us protection or such and such industry is going to die" are completely full of bullshit.
$50million or not, the market is distorted. The same could be applied to sports figures. Public Stadiums just mean more money in the pockets of the sports teams owners, which translates into more money for the players. And I'm not even going to get in to the supposed "economic benefit" of building all these stadiums on public money.
The same could be said of the movie industry. Theres alot of money in it simply because they get the US (and other countries) government and tax payers to foot the bill for copyright enforcement. In the business world, I'm not footing anyone's bill unless I have an invested interest in the company. Not to mention what these copyright enforcements, or lack there of do to international trade.. then again maybe its the only leverage these poorer countries have.. reguardless they are spending someone elses money too.
No point for me to pirate a movie.. I have friends who work at theaters, I usually get front row opening night if the movies good enough. Fuck some shit-quality pre-release being watched on a 19" computer screen.
Tax money? Sure, they spend that until they run out.. then they just print more (federal deficit anyone?) Ironic, its the Federal Reserve that should have this feature, not the average user who at most might be able to pass off a little funny money before getting caught.
Hmm sounds just like software companies that are conned into spending boatloads of money on elaberate copy-protection schemes which are broken in days instead of hours.
Ever notice that inputing cheats into a game to give you powerful or all items makes the game a whole lot less interesting? Decrease the price artificially (which isnt really the correct word to use -- since the scarcity of the item in a virtual world too is artificial) and eventually the player will loose interest.
"Hey look I got this cool, rare xxxx!" "Oh yah? I got it too" "So do I" and eventually its not so "cool" anymore.
Hm.. perhaps this explains why fads and clothing styles don't hang around very long. Forget implications to the virtual world.. its really just a mirror of ourselves.
Fascist, socialist, communist, nationalist, whatever. Forget the details, to test a political party all you need to do is ask this: How many individual rights must be traded away in order to form a "perfect society"? (and i'm talking about honest-to-goodness rights here, not some psuedo-right to appeal to disgruntled voters)
God forbid you actually have to think to derive any meaning out of GTA3! I have a better idea, lets sue the company that publishes the game and make millions of dollars!
Does anyone actually think that the lack of a single format is scaring consumers away from ebooks, and solely because of this they've been a flop? I'd wager to guess that ebook sales are going to be pretty dismal for quite a ways into the future.
Alot of people don't seem to care about Kazaalite. To some degree I don't either; it certainly doesn't effect me. This does, however, set a very bad legal precident.
Alot of the spyware out there is destructive. It can and does slow your computer down, mess with your system settings, and in some cases completely disable your computer. Perhaps if Kazaalite was making money off this (i think they might have been..maybe it was diet kazaa) it would be a slightly different matter. Regardless, users of their own computers should have the right to disable software which causes their computer to do things which they don't want it to. Hell, forget doing it for a profit. A car manufacturer can't prevent me from buying a modified or refurbished car from a private dealer.
Alot of people out there want to pass consumer rights laws to combat the DMCA and other intrusive laws. This is not a good solution -- its only an eternal game of cat and mouse. These laws need to be repealed. Sure, let microsoft use copy-protection and other schemes for their xbox, but don't stop me, as the owner of that piece of equipment, from modifying it so that it does what *I* want it too.
RR really beats SBC here too. I get 3.5mbits, good usenet server, little to no downtime. After being on dial-up for just about a decade, broadband was like moving to heaven. Fuck it if costs $50 a month, $50 would have been a bargain when I started years ago.
Assuming that no wack jobs in the government decide VoIP needs to be regulated, broadband is really going to give people more bang for their buck.
And all this time, it appears that 90% of slashdot (last time the topic was posted), openly embrace a government-operated (excuse me, user "owned") internet provider. For the record guys, theres one way to really fuck things up right now and thats the use of force, granted by the power of the government, to artificially "fix" the downsides of private internet providers.
In other news the NAAFP (National Association for the Advancement of Fat People) is suing cows for "aiding and abetting" the exploitation of obese Americans.
In an unrelated case, a New York City woman is suing a concrete manufacturer for providing a pavement in which a Manhattan man had grounded himself whil illegally blowing a puff of cigerette smoke in her face.
Slashdot Mirror
All jokes aside, I completely agree with you. I have 0 expectations for this game. Enter the Matrix was mildly amusing for the first 15 minutes, but that was it.
I suspect this game is not only going to fail but be a big money loser for the developers. On the positive side, it may help to expand the MMORPG market share by exposing casual gamers to online gaming... but I doubt it.
With the huge number of new and very promising number of MMORPG on the horizon, is there anything that sets the Matrix Online apart, other than the name? A name can move a sloppy game off shelves, but it can't get people addicted and keep paying month after month.
Hell, lets not forget The Sims Online. With a name that big I thought it would be another megahit, and damn was I wrong. Final Fantasy Online isn't even doing that great relative to the projected sales. (Hmm, perhaps the word "online" actually negates the number of sales you'd otherwise get.)
Gator to Claria, Philip Morris to Altria? I think we should avoid companies with the "ria" suffix!
How about a device that censors everything non-b00bie?
Who said that the money doesn't flow back? If you cut off all the money the US makes from exports, there would be *alot* of unemployed people.
Wow, nice to see someone mention Skynet, much less say they enjoyed it! I could never figure that one out. For a game based off of a movie it was absolutely amazing at the time and completely sucked me in.
Sadly for me, my gaming timeline has a huge gap between the release of Quake and Q3A. I was stuck on a p100 with win3.1 until late 1999! I really missed out on alot, especially considering I was stuck with an aweful internet connection for years until I got broadband.
I have to agree with you on Duke Nukem 3D as well. While in Doom you were just kind of wondering around, Duke Nukem 3D had areas and a storyline that really pulled you in. And strippers. Oddly enough, I bought very few games at the time and was limited to shareware and demos. Duke Nukem 3D just happened to be one of the full games I had. (friend of a friend bought the PC version when he had a mac and never returned it, and somehow I got ahold of it.)
Instead of being called the top ten FPS titles, it should be called Ten Years of Doom Clones!
Hmm, read an article the other day where the guy called the police, they said they were understaffed, so he called back and told them that they didn't need to come because he had already shot the intruder -- multiple cops were their in minutes. Too bad I lost the url, funny story.
Its really sad that the best guys in our legal system are too busy making sure than a billionaire doesn't illegally make a couple thousand extra bucks in order to ensure the longevity of their own careers. Unfortunately for these kids, theres also a good chance that they won't even make it to the system -- they'll get shot dead by a homeowner that owns a gun.
These kids need to play more Grand Theft Auto 3.
The highly the learning curve, the more amazing the creation (relative to other skills such as creativity of course.) I'd rather have something complex and amazing than simple and kind of cool. I've been in Second Life, and I was impressed. I haven't been in There yet, but from what I've seen I haven't really been motivated to check it out yet. I think Second Life is going in the right direction. I think that if they don't screw anything up financially they have more of a future than There.
I predict that the next "big thing" for gaming is going to be the immersive experiance. Sure, you can go out and buy some big goggles with a 640x480 resolution displaying a 3d screen for $4000, or you drop $20,000+ on a piece of military equipment. However, just like 3d cards used to be only for high-end graphics workstations, this technology is going to mature and come down in price. Whichever company successfully and cheaply can produce fully immersive technology is going to make a killing (hint: time to start looking into stocks.)
Yes, someone please explain to me how forcing users to divert capital to a $ product rather than a use a free product and spend that capital elsewhere has *anything* to do with "making the world safe for capitalism."
If there were more posts as insightful as this one, I'd finally have an excuse for spending time reading /.games!
I'm currently working with a friend on a project that involves a 2D online world. More chat/community based than being an actual game.
I found it very interesting that you listed promotion as your main obstacle. I've been doing allot of research and promotion over the last few weeks and I concluded publicity would probably be the biggest hurdle myself.
While I'm constantly hearing about how independents cant keep up with the big guys any more, I'm just not sure everythings so bad. Sure, if you want a game that looks like a Hollywood movie, expect to spend a Hollywood budget. However, if your goal is to create an addictive, enjoyable, niche game, the times could never be better. The quality of games created by independents today surpass the big budget games of yesterday. If my friend and I were working on what we are doing 10 years ago, we'd probably need Xerox Parc behind us!
So, how does one get headline space? Interestingly enough, internet porn might hold the answer. Heres a product which there is certainly no shortage of, free or otherwise. For the most part, allot of it is the same. Yet, there are guys that have millions off of it, and others who have moved from flipping burgers to enjoying a middle class lifestyle driving BMWs (forget real estate ads, in a couple years we'll have infomercials on making big bucks in online porn.) Without getting into the details, these guys have managed to master traffic flow, and carefully balance paying users verse free-loaders, in the end turning a profit (and btw I think the music industry has alot to learn from this, but anyways.) So whats the key? Here's what I think -- affiliate programs. That is, a website owner pushes your product, and for every user that signs up they get a percentage, add in recurring billing and they'll be more than happy to help out. Of course there are strings attached, that being a serious cut into your revenues. In the end, you've got to figure away to make that bigger volume payoff without incurring greater expenses.
So, maybe I haven't the faintest clue what I'm talking about as I admittedly have slightly more than 0 experience in this field. None the less, I hope it helps!
Drop me a message and perhaps we can discuss this some more.
Your comment really doesn't make much sense, Bangbus is a commercial site (sounds like you get your porn off of p2p heheh...) Anyways.. The thing is, today, theres a very fine line between homegrown and the big guys. There are alot of new millionaires today who started from scratch. Fuck that, the big guys barely even exist anymore. Just look at how the sales of the major magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse have collapsed in recent year. Alot of mags have had to fold. We have *alot* to learn from the porn industry today other than "they have been a driving force behind technology." If the Record and major media industries lacked the obscene amount of power they have today -- they'd already be gone, just like the big players in the porn industry. But guess what, suprise! Porn isn't dead, in fact its more alive and well than its ever been before in human history! Yes, those lobbyists who say "give us protection or such and such industry is going to die" are completely full of bullshit.
$50million or not, the market is distorted. The same could be applied to sports figures. Public Stadiums just mean more money in the pockets of the sports teams owners, which translates into more money for the players. And I'm not even going to get in to the supposed "economic benefit" of building all these stadiums on public money.
The same could be said of the movie industry. Theres alot of money in it simply because they get the US (and other countries) government and tax payers to foot the bill for copyright enforcement. In the business world, I'm not footing anyone's bill unless I have an invested interest in the company. Not to mention what these copyright enforcements, or lack there of do to international trade.. then again maybe its the only leverage these poorer countries have.. reguardless they are spending someone elses money too.
No point for me to pirate a movie.. I have friends who work at theaters, I usually get front row opening night if the movies good enough. Fuck some shit-quality pre-release being watched on a 19" computer screen.
Tax money? Sure, they spend that until they run out.. then they just print more (federal deficit anyone?) Ironic, its the Federal Reserve that should have this feature, not the average user who at most might be able to pass off a little funny money before getting caught.
Hmm sounds just like software companies that are conned into spending boatloads of money on elaberate copy-protection schemes which are broken in days instead of hours.
Ever notice that inputing cheats into a game to give you powerful or all items makes the game a whole lot less interesting? Decrease the price artificially (which isnt really the correct word to use -- since the scarcity of the item in a virtual world too is artificial) and eventually the player will loose interest.
"Hey look I got this cool, rare xxxx!"
"Oh yah? I got it too"
"So do I"
and eventually its not so "cool" anymore.
Hm.. perhaps this explains why fads and clothing styles don't hang around very long. Forget implications to the virtual world.. its really just a mirror of ourselves.
Fascist, socialist, communist, nationalist, whatever. Forget the details, to test a political party all you need to do is ask this: How many individual rights must be traded away in order to form a "perfect society"? (and i'm talking about honest-to-goodness rights here, not some psuedo-right to appeal to disgruntled voters)
God forbid you actually have to think to derive any meaning out of GTA3! I have a better idea, lets sue the company that publishes the game and make millions of dollars!
Does anyone actually think that the lack of a single format is scaring consumers away from ebooks, and solely because of this they've been a flop? I'd wager to guess that ebook sales are going to be pretty dismal for quite a ways into the future.
Interesting how corporations always give us a choice..governments don't.
What is important is that we have that choice..right now.
Alot of people don't seem to care about Kazaalite. To some degree I don't either; it certainly doesn't effect me. This does, however, set a very bad legal precident.
Alot of the spyware out there is destructive. It can and does slow your computer down, mess with your system settings, and in some cases completely disable your computer. Perhaps if Kazaalite was making money off this (i think they might have been..maybe it was diet kazaa) it would be a slightly different matter. Regardless, users of their own computers should have the right to disable software which causes their computer to do things which they don't want it to. Hell, forget doing it for a profit. A car manufacturer can't prevent me from buying a modified or refurbished car from a private dealer.
Alot of people out there want to pass consumer rights laws to combat the DMCA and other intrusive laws. This is not a good solution -- its only an eternal game of cat and mouse. These laws need to be repealed. Sure, let microsoft use copy-protection and other schemes for their xbox, but don't stop me, as the owner of that piece of equipment, from modifying it so that it does what *I* want it too.
RR really beats SBC here too. I get 3.5mbits, good usenet server, little to no downtime. After being on dial-up for just about a decade, broadband was like moving to heaven. Fuck it if costs $50 a month, $50 would have been a bargain when I started years ago.
Assuming that no wack jobs in the government decide VoIP needs to be regulated, broadband is really going to give people more bang for their buck.
And all this time, it appears that 90% of slashdot (last time the topic was posted), openly embrace a government-operated (excuse me, user "owned") internet provider. For the record guys, theres one way to really fuck things up right now and thats the use of force, granted by the power of the government, to artificially "fix" the downsides of private internet providers.
Last I checked, Microsoft is the one thats been getting dumped by both corporations and governments, not vice versa.
You forgot the part about hotgrits, natalie portman, and beowulf clusters.
In other news the NAAFP (National Association for the Advancement of Fat People) is suing cows for "aiding and abetting" the exploitation of obese Americans.
In an unrelated case, a New York City woman is suing a concrete manufacturer for providing a pavement in which a Manhattan man had grounded himself whil illegally blowing a puff of cigerette smoke in her face.