Can Spore possibly meet expectations? With all that I hear, it should be Sim City, Civilization, Master of Orion, and whatever games the first two phases are. The fanboy backlash could be horrifying if it does not actually cause the Rapture.
: Zubon
Monthly Archive for February, 2008
I woke up this morning and was stunned to see an article on gamesindustry.biz where the CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick, is quoted as saying some pretty insane things at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium earlier this week.
“We don’t think that even if we made the USD 500 million or billion-dollar investment to get a product out [to compete with WOW] that we would even be successful doing it,”
This is ludicrous on a massive scale and demonstrates that Kotick (and by association, Activision) literally has no clue when it comes to MMORPGs. Spending 500M to a billion dollars on a single MMORPG would have the same level of historic stupidity and waste as the Atari E.T. game (if you don’t know about that, look it up). Not only that, but for a company like Activision to spend that much, it would pretty much guarantee its sheer and absolute failure on an epic scale. It is ABSOLUTELY possible to create a MMORPG with a tenth of that amount and be competitive with WoW (and profitable).
“When we first started looking at it, it appeared to us like a game in an insurmountable product category… EA, Microsoft, Sony and scores of venture capital investments had been put to work unsuccessfully in trying to develop massively multiplayer games as a product opportunity,”
Why is that, do you think? The problem is the management of those companies, old misconceptions of what an MMORPG is or how to make one, and a lot of really, really bad design. Why is it that the companies that are most successful in the MMORPG space are the small or independent developers working with original IP? Why is it that the big publishers screw things up when they acquire these developers, or they throw massive amounts at a game that is just craptastic and then either cancel it or blame someone else on the failure?
“When you… Look at all the money that’s already gone to these businesses that have failed, there didn’t seem a likelihood that even a well-managed company like Activision would have the prospect for profit any time soon in this category.”
Oh, please. This was a pretty narcissistic and arrogant comment. “even a well-managed company like Activision”, bah! Considering a half billion for an MMORPG is not well-managed at all. You might as well be smoking the money in the bathroom. My advice to Kotick…if you want to make money on an MMORPG, give your money to someone that knows what they are doing. It isn’t hard making a MMORPG profitable if the people making it are halfway intelligent and not monkey drones working in your generic game development factory.
Ok, so why am I so pissed about this? The audience that Kotick was talking to was the attendees of a technology investment symposium. If any of those people were looking at investing in game developers or funding new MMO ventures or even financing publisher expansion, Kotick just made it look like anything related to MMORPGs was a fat waste of time and not worth the risk. He single-handedly spit in everyone’s eye and effectively torpedoed someone’s chances at getting funding. This will have a subtle backlash effect on gamers too. If it is harder to find funding for new titles, you will see fewer games, less innovation (in a market where there is barely any to start with), and more games based on dumb Hollywood licenses (the argument being that a license lowers risk). Even worse, his comments have hit the press now and will probably hit mainstream market analysis and research reports.
Great job Kotick. Thanks a lot. I’ll be sure and dedicate my next MMORPG design project to you. I hope you don’t get punched in the face by an independent studio exec at the next game conference.
Speaking of which…this is an open request to everyone in the industry out there…if you have a funding pitch that gets nerfed because of Kotick’s asinine comments, please let me know.
Kotick, I think you owe us an apology and a retraction or at least a damn good (and detailed) explanation at why you think it would take $500-$1B to compete with WoW, and why you think MMORPGs are an “insurmountable product category”. Who has been feeding you your information?
Orin Kerr has posted a draft on an essay for University of Chicago Legal Forum, with above title. Abstract:
When does conduct by an online player in a virtual world game trigger liability for a real-world crime? In the future, will new criminal laws be needed to account for new social harms that occur in virtual worlds? This short essay considers both questions. Part I argues that existing laws regulate virtual worlds with little or no regard to the virtual reality they foster. Criminal law tends to follow the physical rather than the virtual: it looks to what a person does rather than what the victim virtually perceives. This dynamic greatly narrows the role of criminal law in virtual worlds. Existing law will not recognize virtual murder, virtual threats, or virtual theft. Virtual worlds will be regulated like any other game, but their virtualness normally will have no independent legal resonance from the standpoint of criminal law.
Part II turns to the normative question: Are new laws needed? It concludes that legislatures should not enact new criminal laws to account for the new social harms that may occur in virtual worlds. Virtual worlds at bottom are computer games, and games are artificial structures better regulated by game administrators than federal or state governments. The best punishment for a violation of a game comes from the game itself. Criminal law is a blunt instrument that should be used only as a last resort. The state’s power to deny individuals their freedom is an extraordinary power, and it should be reserved for harms that other mechanisms cannot remedy.
Online virtual worlds may seem real to some users, but unlike real life, they are mediated by game administrators who can take action with consequences internal to the game. Internal virtual harms should trigger internal virtual remedies. It is only when harms go outside the game that the criminal law should be potentially available to remedy wrongs not redressable elsewhere.
Feel free to say words there or here.
: Zubon
Anyone on our blogroll without a gaming-related post yet this year has been removed. We still have your info, we are just not displaying it. If you become live again, please let us know.
: Zubon
Most of you know that I have a pretty dim view of the MMORPG sector and I like to whine and moan about how everything is being done wrong or poorly, and there is such a huge lack of innovation and original content, that I have a hard time sleeping at night. There is pretty much nothing out there in development that has me more than slightly interested. Certainly nothing that has me biting my nails in anticipation and bouncing around in my chair with excitement.
Except for THIS. You have GOT to check it out. Right now. Stop what you are doing and click the link. Indulge yourself for a few moments on those screenshots. Luscious. Dreamlike. Evocative. Moody. Unique. Surreal.
What is it? It is a mini-MMORPG of sorts in development (apparently by ONE guy) called LOVE. There isn’t much information available about it, but the screenshots are jaw-dropping. The graphics are all procedurally generated and they look like a live water color painting (or reminiscent of digital concept art from artists like my friend Koshime).
I honestly didn’t think this would happen anytime soon, but damn. I’m pretty impressed. I’m officially excited about getting my grubby hands on this game and checking it out.
PS. For all you industry folks out there that think you need a content license to make a successful MMO, you are about as smart as a turnip farmer trying to whack a rat with a bent rusty spoon. Don’t make me list all of the “licensed” MMOs that have gone down in flames.
Thanks to Andrea for the heads up on this title.
But they still have a few more to learn.
Old:
New:
One down, two to go.
- Ethic
and is mutating into EA-Land. Habbo Hotel-ish? I don’t know this part of the industry well, and I actively avoided The Sims Online back in the day. It came up twice in the past week, I Googled it tonight, and it looks like the original The Sims Online is shutting down right now, re-opening as EA-Land.
It is going free, with paid decorations and whatever else that revenue model provides. If you had a paying account at some point, you can go reclaim it and get some perks.
It has a fun history link. The game went live in 2002, was supported for about a year, and then ignored until a couple of guys got the go to revamp it last year. Good luck with that.
: Zubon
I am hereby planning to compare MMOs’ character customization options to Spore. I won’t really be able to do so until September, but I am okay with that, especially since games frequently promise the moon and stars in just a year or less. If we are going to play paper dolls/Mr. Potato Head, let’s get serious about it. Sure, you say your characters are completely customizable, but where are my options to change calf length, alter patterns of fur tinting, or become non-bipedal? I want to see MMOs beating Second Life on this.
Because you see where low standards have gotten us. Oh look, a slider for nose length, that will look great under my helmet. And I can make her breasts any size from large to mammoth!
: Zubon
“The people who remain, you can’t get rid of them… it’s absolutely impossible to do it because they’re so used to the pain and agony of the gameplay that they love it.”
Someone who was there, was this (1) played straight; (2) a humorously exaggerated line being unfairly taken out of context; (3) a fake humorously exaggerated line intended as a shot at what is now the competition. The Onion explains that last one.
: Zubon
Quote from Gamasutra, with a hat tip to Broken Toys.
As you may have heard, Cryptic is making Champions into an MMO. Cryptic, in case you don’t know, made City of Heroes, now owned and run by NCSoft. They also were making the Marvel MMO before it was cancelled. I presume that most of the code was recycled into Champions, which will get content and appear in 2009ish. For me, this is exciting, because Champions is basically what I wanted City of Heroes to be. I still love my big blue book, although I could see how a player might want a computer to do all the math for the game. Viola, MMOs solve that problem.
To explain the appeal of Champions, it is a generic system (Hero Games). It recognizes that damage is damage, and whether it is a club or a fireball is just a special effect. It becomes a fireball because you declare it to be fire damage, you bought an AE effect, and maybe you also bought a small DoT or having the enemies blinded by the flash. It simplifies so much of the game when the crunch and fluff are explicitly severable. Haktar has a flamethrower, Dul’kash is a fire-breathing demon, and Torchy McTorcherson is a mutant, but you don’t need three sets of rules for energy blast (8d6, cone, special effect: fire). Champions is also (character) skill-based rather than class based, so I pictured its in-game character sheets being something like Asheron’s Call or EVE, where you assign points to whatever categories you want.
I usually describe City of Villains as what City of Heroes would have been if they had another year to develop it. Really, publishing CoH one year later would not have yielded CoV, because it also shows confidence in getting away from the standard MMO holy trinity. I expect Champions Online to be what City of Heroes would look like starting from scratch with the experience of having made City of Heroes. Which is pretty much what happened. Big things like moving away from classes (though I am told they will still exist; I have yet to research much myself), smaller things like letting you have purple fireballs. Of course, if you prefer the direction that CoX has taken under the new lead developer, you might not want to see the Vision made flesh. But my sparse Champions reading does show things from the original CoH plan that were missing from the published game; perhaps Champions’ class system will be like the original origin plan.
In a way, this is a sequel. To a game they sold to what will be a competitor. I expect many similarities between the two games, and it feels odd to me. If it were an explicit sequel, no worries, lift as much as you like. Since NCSoft now has City of Heroes, it feels kind of like plagiarism to re-use chunks. Wait, no, that’s stupid, every MMO looks a lot like other MMOs, so it does not matter that WoW and The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ have rather similar character creation screens. But that costume designer in CoH is a big selling point… but how can you rip off the game that you made? I have many buts here. Toss in your thoughts. We have a long time to discuss.
: Zubon
Lest we forget, “The Orcs [in Middle Earth] were obviously stolen from PC game maker Blizzard and its Warcraft series. Too bad Blizzard is apparently too scared to sue New Line over it.” Let’s not even get into how AE Mythic is ripping off Blizzard.