July 2003
- Hackers Put 'Bane' in Shadowbane vladimir cole
- Display Cheats [Was MMO Launch issues...] Phillip Lenhardt
- Display Cheats [Was MMO Launch issues...] Owen Matt
- Display Cheats [Was MMO Launch issues...] Thomas Tomiczek
- Display Cheats [Was MMO Launch issues...] ceo
- Display Cheats [Was MMO Launch issues...] Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Display Cheats [Was MMO Launch issues...] Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Corba + pvm for servers? + UML + case tools Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Material state transformations Yuri Bazhukov
- Material state transformations Chris "Diamonds" Stewart
- Material state transformations Zach Collins {Siege}
- Material state transformations Yuri Bazhukov
- Material state transformations Nicolai Hansen
- Material state transformations Jason Murdick
- Material state transformations Travis Casey
- Material state transformations McDonald, Stephen
- Material state transformations Zach Collins {Siege}
- Material state transformations Richard A. Bartle
- Material state transformations Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Programming Languages. Matthew Estes
- Programming Languages. Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Programming Languages. Matthew Estes
- Programming Languages. J C Lawrence
- Programming Languages. Christopher Kohnert
- Programming Languages. J C Lawrence
- Programming Languages. Christopher Kohnert
- Programming Languages. Bruce Mitchener
- Programming Languages. Roy Trubshaw
- Programming Languages. Richard A. Bartle
- Programming Languages. Roy Trubshaw
- Programming Languages. Richard A. Bartle
- Programming Languages. Roy Trubshaw
- Programming Languages. Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Programming Languages. MIKE MacMartin
- Programming Languages. Kwon J. Ekstrom
- Programming Languages. Mike Shaver
- Programming Languages. MIKE MacMartin
- Programming Languages. Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Programming Languages. Bruce Mitchener
- Programming Languages. F. Randall Farmer
- Programming Languages. Kwon J. Ekstrom
- Programming Languages. J C Lawrence
- Geographical space paritioning ceo
- Geographical space paritioning Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- R: The Price of Being Male Ghilardi Filippo
- Autumn books ceo
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) J C Lawrence
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Michael Tresca
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Michael Tresca
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Marc Bowden
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Michael Tresca
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Paul Schwanz
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Jeff Cole
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Michael Tresca
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Jeff Cole
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Michael Tresca
- [NEC] 2.8: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (fwd) Crosbie Fitch
- Architecture (Cell Rebalancing) - working-sets ceo
- Internationalisation: The effect of Tongues in virtual societes Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Internationalisation: The effect of Tongues in virtual societes Michael Chui
- Internationalisation: The effect of Tongues in virtual societes Ghovs
- Internationalisation: The effect of Tongues in virtualsocietes David Kennerly
- Internationalisation: The effect of Tongues in virtual societes Shu-yu Guo {Laptop}
- Internationalisation: The effect of Tongues in virtualsocietes Peter "Pietro" Rossmann
- Internationalisation: The effect of Tongues in virtualsocietes Amanda Walker
- Internationalisation: The effect of Tongues in virtualsocietes Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay? Daniel Anderson
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? David Kennerly
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get originalwiththe gameplay? Derek Licciardi
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? Paul Schwanz
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? Matt Mihaly
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? Matt Mihaly
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? Sasha Hart
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? kennerly@sfsu.edu
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? Sasha Hart
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? Daniel James
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get originalwiththe gameplay? David Kennerly
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? Michael Tresca
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay? Martin Bassie
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay? Daniel James
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get originalwith the gameplay? Daniel Anderson
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay? J C Lawrence
On Sat, 05 Jul 2003 20:15:40 +0200
Martin Bassie <martin@lyrastudios.com> wrote:
> Daniel Anderson wrote:
>> After seeing game after game being an almost exact clone, when will
>> things start to change? Most developers know what works, so they
>> will implement the same design, ( i.e. the D&D clone) but needless to
>> say, how long will it be before people are sick of these clones?
>> When do you think we'll start to see the majority of MMORPGs more
>> original?
> When the target audience pays attention to the smaller names out
> there.
The general rule in analysing such problems is, "follow the money". It
fits well:
Commercial game engineers/artists/etc want to eat and pay their
mortgages/rent etc -- they want their salary cheques to clear.
Commercial game development companies not only want to write
non-bouncing pay cheques, but to even make some, any, profit.
Publishers and Venture Capitalists are very very big on that profit
idea. They like that stuff. They also tend to have a commanding say
in the business decisions made by the company for that very reason.
So the people making the business decisions, the decisions that define
where budget blocks get spent are explicitly profit oriented. In
their ideal world they want massive return for no risk. They're
willing to settle for reasonable return against minimum risk.
Given the very high failure rate of game companies and game titles,
they're not enthused about any risk in the first place.
Okay, so we have critically risk averse decision makers operating in a
violently risky field. These are happy people by nature.
The easiest/most_obvious way to minimise risk in such a market is to
follow almost exactly in the footsteps of a prior successful
title/model/brand/etc. "Just do the same as XYZ but with bigger tits,
more blood, or bigger numbers!" Its a pretty obvious computation on
the trade-offs.
Doing something original is risky. There are no clear grounds on
either how to evaluate the risks, or what the potential market is for
an original product. Further, original products have an industry-wide
(nay, humanity-wide) history of failing, with the second or third
generation products being the ones to strike big
commercially/financially -- not exactly music to an
investor's/publisher's/etc ears.
Further the player base is explicitly conservative. Familiarity
sells. There can be "new factors", but they have to be small, easily
digestible, and well primed so that they are acceptably and
understandably surprising -- after all if the player doesn't
understand the new thing (for whatever reason), or just doesn't feel
comfortable with it, then you, as a game, as a game vendor, and as a
company have failed to communicate with the person that matters most:
The player.
Thus the money people, of which the programmers, artists, designers
etc are part as they want non-rubber pay cheques, are understandably
loathe to accept to risks of original products.
Originality is always nice, especially when it happens over there and we
can get to survey it at a comfortable distance and wait around a bit to
see what it does before having anything to do with it.
So when are companies going to do "original" work?
When the arguments on the risk/reward returns of that original work
are sufficiently convincing to not only get funded, but to retain
funding across the development lifetime of the product.
Player demand and the efficaciousness of player demand is a fallacy.
Player demand is merely a signal that a potential market may exist, and
provides *some* (poor) hooks for attempting to guess the size of that
possible market. The problem is that player demand only comes from
noisy people, and noisy people are a) rarely representative of the
player base at large, b) even more rarely really know what they
actually, honest to goodness, actually want in the real world.
"Here you are, a vorpal sword!"
"But that's not what I wanted, now I can kill everything with one hit
and everybody hates me! There's no game left! This is boring!"
"But its what you asked for..."
Of course none of this is unique to MUDs.
So, are you willing to front your money, your house, and your
financial future, along with your spouse's and kid's financial futures
to do an "original game"?
Why not? Why would someone else?
--
J C Lawrence
---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. - When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get origi nal with the gameplay? Christer Enfors XW {KS/EIN}
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay? Snicker Furfoot
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get origi nal with the gameplay? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? Jason Smith
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay? Matt Mihaly
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get origi nal with the gameplay? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay? J C Lawrence
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay? Brian 'Psychochild' Green
- When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original withthe gameplay? Christopher Allen
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- RE:When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get original with the gameplay? Mike Mormando
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- Understanding MMOGs ceo
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- Academic rejection of male/female paper Castronova, Edward
- Academic rejection of male/female paper Tess Snider
- Academic rejection of male/female paper Castronova, Edward
- Academic rejection of male/female paper Richard A. Bartle
- Academic rejection of male/female paper Castronova, Edward
- Academic rejection of male/female paper Richard A. Bartle
- Academic rejection of male/female paper Marian Griffith
- Academic rejection of male/female paper Amanda Walker
- Academic rejection of male/female paper Ren Reynolds
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- Metrics for assessing game design Ron Gabbard
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- Metrics for assessing game design katie@stickydata.com
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