MMO Developers.
You are officially all on notice.
Everyone except Blizzard…
They don’t count because they’re off in some magical alternate universe where nobody ever goes hungry and the king of the Mushroom people writes all of your design documents and you get to ride a giant squid to work.
Oh yeah.. Raph isn’t included either. He’s pushing the envelope in a different way, so he gets a free pass.
But the rest of you.
Every last one of you.
YOU
ARE
ON
NOTICE.
Yes, even you POTBS.
And you LOTRO.
Every last one of you motherfuckers is in big big trouble.
You see, I came to a realization that in the past 2 years since I left SOE, none of you motherfuckers have done anything different.
Absolutely
Nothing
Different.
Every game, Beta, Alpha, Preview and whatever for these new releases and upcoming games is almost identical to every other fucking game before it.
The conversations are the same, the arguments are the same, the systems are the same, hell.. Even the graphics are the same (HELLO BLOCKY FANTASY CHARACTERS!).
What the fuck people? You’ve had plenty of time to impress us. You’ve got the technology, you have the know-how..
Why the same shit different day syndrome?
Yes, I know it’s hard. Yes, it’s difficult to design, yes, it’s also expensive.
But for fucks sake people.
You’re not even trying. Your development process and designs are insular. MMO’s today are the equivalent of Asian styled game designs.
Stagnant, insular, nichey and fucking weird. You cater to the edges of society and playstyles.
You focus on the dregs when you can be reinventing the actual state of play.
Social dynamics when combined with cutting edge AAA gameplay will elevate simple play to a level never reached in game development.
Leverage the console streamlining for gameplay, combine it with the social dynamics knowhow pushed by Raph and Co, and BAM.
You can make something far greater than the sum of it’s parts.
But Noooooo…
You’re content not even trying. You spend AAA game money on niche products. The 30 million dollar game for weirdos.
Long-tail shit is fine, but don’t spend 30 mil. Spend 5. Spend 2. Spend 30 on the real deal, spend 50 on the real deal.
So. You’ve all been warned. I want some better fucking games out of you people. Quit dicking around in the past and get to work.
I don’t want to have to come back there. I’ve got too much other shit to work on here.
If anything, give Freeman and Crew some cash so they can kick some life into this stupid market.
Oh yeah, addendum.
If you continue to refuse to acknowledge consoles as the de-facto standard for AAA gaming, you will go out of business.
Quit making PC games. It’s a waste of time and money.
Second Addendum : Also, I know APB is pushing the envelope but until I can play it, I don’t believe they can do it the way they are doing it.
Most MMO developers would LOVE to put out games on consoles, but it hasn’t been practical. It take 4-5 years to make one of these games, which is about the amount of time it takes for a console to go from “horribly unstable dev kit” to “about to be replaced.” Add to that the absurd percentages platform owners collect from the games on their platforms, and you end up in a world where only Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo can make a console MMO that actually makes money. SOE is doing just that with The Agency and DC Universe. Microsoft was doing it with Marvel until they cut Cryptic loose. I haven’t heard anything from Nintendo, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they have some kind of MMO in the works as a first part title.
Nintendo’s possibly doing Animal Crossing as an MMO, Joe.
As for the rest…I believe this is what’s contributing to a growing feeling of “meh” from the MMO community regarding new game releases.
The new game smell has worn off the MMO market, to some extent.
C’mon Dan, anyone can rip. Offer some solutions.
Crap, All my old solution posts got lost in the hostswitch. Lemme see what I can dig up.
I wrote up a few choice rants and warnings for years, hence the ultimatum.
I’d start by following the basic rule:
Make a great game that happens to be multiplayer.
Use commonly accepted best practices for experience design.
Focus on high-fidelity experiences instead of the numerical approximations that are used now.
It’s not rocket science, hence the frustration.
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Developers no longer call the shots, investors do, and investors want to be on the ground floor of another WoW and be able to wallow in benjamins like those Blizzard guys do nowadays.
So the developers will be ordered to keep churning out the same old crap blindly until the investors finally, at long last, get a clue that they’re not going to get in on the ground floor of the next WoW this way. They will learn, eventually.
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Check out this game, It seems to offer the innovation you desire, though its more a question of when:
http://www.darkfallonline.com
You do know that you’re asking for the impossible here. Proposing that these companies who make this crap already to stop making it and make something good. It’s just not going to happen. If they were capable developers than the games they’ve made already wouldn’t be a huge collection of suck. MMO’s are always going to be associated to a big sac of cash, and general appeal will win in the end, if not on the developer end, then on the publishing end.
It’s not rocket science, hence the frustration.
It might as well be to the monkeys in suits who call the shots, Lord Pall.
These people are, in general, CLUELESS about the product their companies produce, and clueless about what their customers actually want. It’s not a new phenomenon, either.
Funny how you give Blizzard a pass when all they did was took the same shit, gave it more polish than any MMO before and dumped it on the masses to play.
Don’t get me wrong. I love WoW. Always will. I just wouldn’t call it innovative by any stretch of the imagination.
You-are-a-moron
Ok, so I’m a wierdo. I’ve known that for years. I’ve played WoW and it was pretty much a chat room with bright, cartoonish colours. No real difference to Diablo, Neverwinter Nights, et al. RPG games are all similar.Take a breath, step back. Remember “there is nothing new under the sun.”
Oi! We’re doing something different, and we’ve been doing it for 7 years now! I can’t blame the lack of success on that difference tho; but the fact that the game has lasted 7 years sort of underlines that players are looking for something different. They just aren’t looking to have their fingers grated on a cheese-board while enjoying the difference, or else WWIIOL would probably be more successful, and since I joined 5 years ago, they’ve been struggling for the investment necessary to actually apply what they’ve learned and turn the game around.
Mh… Did it ever occurt to you thatit is not the question how fast you make something, but how well you did it?
Whole world is saying “do it right, and do it on first time, because you can only make best first impression on a first time”. You made bad first impression and no matter how often you will try to make it look better, it will still be bad… very very bad first impression.
Live with it!
G.
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