I still like this. Eat a dick if you don’t like Cars with Guns.

Dream games. All developers and designers have them. In fact, everyone has them.

But we never make them. We all want to but don’t have the time or the resources.

So all designers have dream games. We bandy them around but tend not to talk to them while employed as there’s always a fear of “losing your idea” to your parent company.

But we tend not to make these.

Especially with massively multiplayer development.

Currently nobody’s making anything new for MMO development. There’s a smattering of small developers pushing the envelope but the majority of the big publishers out there (Except Blizzard) isn’t doing shit.

There’s a palpable sense of fear and terror amongst mmo developers right now. They’re scared shitless of WOW. They see it, believe it’s insurmountable, tuck their tails and go the opposite direction.

What does that mean?

It means you’re going to have company after company fucking around with smalltime, smallscale free products. Myspace Killers, Habbo Killers, Runescape Killers, you name it.

It’s going to be reactive, marketing driven, and for the most part, failure after failure.

It’s going to be company after company saying things like “We’d like to focus on the Casual market instead of the hardcore”.

You know what I think about the myth of the casual gamer already (I think these casual friendly mmo’s are a fine idea if that were part of a concerted broad spectrum effort.

But they’re not. They’re indicative of a larger and more endemic problem. Everyone looks at MMO development as “Competing” with WOW. And nobody wants to do it. They’d rather scrabble for the detritus that falls from their pockets. They’d rather go for spillover and for some fucked up reason, focus on the Non-Gaming market.

And once again, I ask “What The Fuck?”. We haven’t figured out how to reliably create and sell games to the people who buy games and we’re fucking around trying to sell games to people who don’t even play games?

It’s very frustrating to see this on a bunch of levels.

We’re once again not using the strength of the medium, once again not asking the questions that need to be asked. The people who hold the purse strings aren’t interested. They’ve retreated into their developmental shells in an attempt to go for the “untapped potential” market.

The thing is, we’ve seen this happen over and over historically. If you single track your product lines like this you’re going to end up fucked. You’re might see some short term success but long term you’re going to end up in very bad financial shape.

We’re not in a static environment of game players, game developers, game sales, game platforms. There’s an ever evolving sense of tastes and ever shifting marketplace. Our marketing efforts and development dollars tend to use history as the basis for choices. Unfortunately this is only part of the equation.

We should be looking historically as well as looking forward for future trends and desires.

Companies should be developing a broad spectrum profile of online products. We’re going to need the smaller scale, free, “simpler” style products. We’re also going to need the game oriented solutions.

In fact, long-term we’re going to need far more game oriented solutions because if we do our jobs right, the simpler products are simply gateways to turning a passing interest in online products into a burning desire for more interesting gametypes.

But all we’re doing now is focusing on the preliminary entry into gaming. Everyone’s piling into that rowboat because we’ve convinced ourselves that WOW is insurmountable.

And to a degree we’re right. WOW is not something you can ever compete with. So DON’T.

I will bold this yet again.

STOP TRYING TO MAKE THAT SAME FUCKING GAME.

Raph made a comment a few years back that WOW was going to set our industry back 10 years. It wasn’t meant as a derogatory statement about WOW but instead about the reactive, bullshit nature of us.

And you know what? He was right about that too.

This might seem like just me bitching abou the state of the industry without any solutions.

And so far, yeah that’s all it’s been.

But there are plenty of solutions. There are plenty of new games that we COULD be making.

Assume these use the game structure I defined here

Autoduel Online

So the main arguments you’ll hear against this one are as follows:

Not Casual Friendly – Bullllllshit. You’re fucking telling me that a GTA driving model, Driving rock soundtrack, semi-apocalyptic setting, full car customization, PVE and PVP combat, extenisve missions in a fully realized online world with FPS and driving combat would be a failure?

Total fucking bullshit.

You craft the experience, you focus on the dream realization, you focus on the ease of play, focus on the CONCEPT, focus on the presentation adn you’re golden.

And if someone so much as MENTIONS the failure of Auto Assault, you are permitted to punch them in the mouth. I’ll leave it at that.

Start with your cars. For fucks sake, use real car designs. Look back at the 1968-1973 muscle car designs to start. GTO udge, Mustang Fastback. Interstate ’76’s car designs were a great example of a solid linkage between real world and imaginary.

Mix in some more modern designs, the Lotus Exige/Elise, Lamborghini Gallardo, BMW M5. Toss in Pickups, SUV’s from all eas, add in Trucks, Buses, and Vans.

License your music. Skynyrd, AC/DC, Gone Jackals. You want driving music. You want evocative moments derived from reality. You want to build on the dream of owning a muscle car. You want to build on that shape, build on the visceral and raw appeal of cars such as that. Add in more modern fare for the more modern designs. You’ve got a weird dual appeal model going. You’re building off of the techno-lust that cars inspire. You’re layering the appeal of raw, unadulterated violence on top of that. You want music that builds on that feel. This means all eras, but each song should have a tone you want to build off of.

Hire Steven Wright to do your Radio Djing.

Build your Control Scheme. You need full FPS and driving capabilities. BF2 is a fine example of this. You want to be able to move/fight on foot and move/fight in a vehicle.

You want a fast, fun, accessible driving model. GTA is a great starting place for this. You need to maximize driving flexibility because of the customization options available for the cars. If you use FWD/RWD/AWD as a seprator, coupled with the larger vehicles, you’ve got a HUGE amount of control variability while keeping it playable for all skill levels.

For your camera, go with FPS on foot, go with third person/FPS in the cars. The newer driving games use a variable camera for steering that makes it easier to maneuver while driving, but I’d be concerned about the limited FOV. This is a place you’ll have to prototype and play extensively.

Add in your weapons, armor, engines, wheels, car accessories. Vulcan Machine Guns, Lasers, Rocket Launchers, Oil Slicks, Flamethrowers, Tire Spikes, Mines. Front/Back/Left/Right firing. Add in pros and cons for all. Play extensively.

Make sure this all works in multi-play for coop PVE and PVP.

Build your first town. On-foot controls only with shared spaces. Add in your bars, arenas, shops, construction bays, cloning facilities. Turn on PVP for the Arena. Add in your Mission givers.

Build your first road. Focus on Highways, on-ramps, off-ramps, abandoned ghost towns. You want to maximize the driving/gunning play while mixing in your fps style obstacles. Give players a reason to get out of the car, give them even more reasons to want to get back in.

Go with a SOFT itemization model. Items are not permanent. They’re liquid, fluid, and must be repaired and replaced. Think UO, think Jagged Alliance 2, think item turnover.

Put your content on another server than your social spaces. Run it at 3X the server framerate and minimize your total number of players. Build around an 8-16 player PVE content limit for these missions. Maximize the usage of your AI and minimize your development time. Put your Arenas on a different server. All PVP combat goes here and can run with a larger playerbase because there are no AI.

Build your gang social structure. Enable Extensive living space customization. Turn players into a valuable commodity for gang construction. Add in living space customization, car customization, indirect competition between gangs. Add in tour of duty content for gangs that occurs over a larger timescale than singular missions. Focus on maximizing the social play within gangs as the end game. It’s more maintainable and deeper than pure direct pvp but allows you to use direct and indirect pvp where appropriate.

Toss in a tiered gameplay pricing model. Free to start, free to sample, free to play in amateur night in the arena. Want a garage bay? 2 bux a month. Want to run your own gang? 5 bux. Soften the barrier to entry. Offer value added services.

Port to Xbox 360 and PC, offer a free playable version for everyone involved. Sell it in stores, on Steam, on Triton.

Sell gamecards and monthly fees via phone, credit card, check, in 7-11s, online, offline, you name it. Offer the maximum number of methods to pay for the product.

Name the product, come up with a cool taglined and release.

There. You’ve made a game that’s unique amongst the current marketplace.

Some will say that this doesn’t actually appeal to a large demographic. I’m going to call bullshit. You’re telling me that this has less appeal than something like Chromehounds, Midnight Club, or any other games that share stylistic details?

I think that’s crap. If you build your world correctly, if you spend the time to maximize the emotion of play for this kind of game you can fucking nail this type of experience.

And you know what?

If we don’t make this type of games, someone else will.

And they’ll be succesful, and we’ll react and start chasing them around the same way we’re chasing WOW around.

 originally posted July 2006