Most freemium MMOs and MMOs in general, take months to finish (especially if you raid or want highend items).

What about an MMO that can be completed within a week. The MMO would, instead of relying on release content...come out with DLC every week or multiple times a week (preferably). The DLC could vary in price, depending on how much content it has. Preferably this DLC content could be finished in a day or less.

If they released enough DLC to match a 15-20 dollar subscription, with a bunch of a dollar or whatever DLCs...and the game itself was free (or buy to play)...the company could get new players rather easily, and keep people playing with constant updates.

As it is...it takes months to finish an MMO (way too long)...and you tend to wait 3+ months for a major content update to come out. There are a couple companies that release monthly updates, but they aren't very common. And SOE releases major expansions quite often, but they are on the pricy side. Most are nearly the full price of a game. And again, they take far too long to complete. In this case, there would be a lot of DLC...but quick to finish and cheap to get.

You want a game to be done in a week?  It took me two weeks to get far enough that I could draw a test pattern on the ground.  And that was even though I reused some code that I made before I started writing a proper game engine.  And there were lots of holes in the ground because things didn't line up properly.

The problem is that there's a ton of code that gets used in many places in the game, and that has to be done before you can launch.  And it will probably be horribly buggy when you first do it, which forces you to massively change things later.  Your first content is just token stuff to see if other code works.  And when it doesn't, to try to figure out why it doesn't so that you can fix it.

Furthermore, before a game launches, you can make radical changes to the game.  And you'll have to on many occasions, as you realize that a different approach is far more efficient, or you can't actually do what you wanted to do, or whatever.  Radical changes like that are a no-no after launch.

Well, there's no avoiding the initial time and effort it takes to make the game, but churning out content every week would require some damn sophisticated and powerful tools and a pretty unique game design. It would really put pressure on the development team too.

Originally posted by Quizzical

You want a game to be done in a week?  It took me two weeks to get far enough that I could draw a test pattern on the ground.  And that was even though I reused some code that I made before I started writing a proper game engine.  And there were lots of holes in the ground because things didn't line up properly.

The problem is that there's a ton of code that gets used in many places in the game, and that has to be done before you can launch.  And it will probably be horribly buggy when you first do it, which forces you to massively change things later.  Your first content is just token stuff to see if other code works.  And when it doesn't, to try to figure out why it doesn't so that you can fix it.

Furthermore, before a game launches, you can make radical changes to the game.  And you'll have to on many occasions, as you realize that a different approach is far more efficient, or you can't actually do what you wanted to do, or whatever.  Radical changes like that are a no-no after launch.

So? What does amount of work have to do with entertainment duration?

A movie took months to shoot, and a year to finish, and yet two hours to watch.

A novel took months to a year to write, and in general can be read in a few hours.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Well, there's no avoiding the initial time and effort it takes to make the game, but churning out content every week would require some damn sophisticated and powerful tools and a pretty unique game design. It would really put pressure on the development team too.

It wouldn't be that hard to release some new content every week.  The problem is that it would typically be something like "we added two new kill ten rats quests".  Oh, and you can't do them very well that week because so many players are rushing to try out the new content.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Quizzical

You want a game to be done in a week?  It took me two weeks to get far enough that I could draw a test pattern on the ground.  And that was even though I reused some code that I made before I started writing a proper game engine.  And there were lots of holes in the ground because things didn't line up properly.

The problem is that there's a ton of code that gets used in many places in the game, and that has to be done before you can launch.  And it will probably be horribly buggy when you first do it, which forces you to massively change things later.  Your first content is just token stuff to see if other code works.  And when it doesn't, to try to figure out why it doesn't so that you can fix it.

Furthermore, before a game launches, you can make radical changes to the game.  And you'll have to on many occasions, as you realize that a different approach is far more efficient, or you can't actually do what you wanted to do, or whatever.  Radical changes like that are a no-no after launch.

So? What does amount of work have to do with entertainment duration?

A movie took months to shoot, and a year to finish, and yet two hours to watch.

A novel took months to a year to write, and in general can be read in a few hours.

Oh, there are two ways to read the title, and I think I hit the wrong one.  He probably meant "players can play through everything in a week", while I read it as "from the start of production to launch is a week".

But there's still the problem that there are bugs in your code that the early content doesn't expose, but then some later content triggers them and causes problems.  And then you have to track down the bugs and fix them, and that may sometimes cause major problems elsewhere because your fix just broke something else.

Originally posted by TheScavenger

 

it takes months to finish an MMO (way too long)

Why do you play MMOs ? it's not your genre. I know it's cool, everybody is doing it but...it's not for you.

Yeah, I meant played through in a week. Not developed in a week.

As for the above comment. There is room for all types of players. Many people these days don't have time to sit for hours looking for a raid group, and then spending more hours doing a raid. There is room for people that just want to hop on, and see all the game in a week or whatever. Every player is different...some may want a longterm experience. Others (like myself), like to hop from game to game and playing a week or two and moving to the next.

Originally posted by TheScavenger

Yeah, I meant played through in a week. Not developed in a week.

 

As for the above comment. There is room for all types of players. Many people these days don't have time to sit for hours looking for a raid group, and then spending more hours doing a raid. There is room for people that just want to hop on, and see all the game in a week or whatever. Every player is different...some may want a longterm experience. Others (like myself), like to hop from game to game and playing a week or two and moving to the next.

Then what would the point of this game be? If you are just going to hop it wouldn't matter if they released content every day for all it mattered to you, you said it yourself you are done in a week or two anyways. =

hopping from game to game is a playstyle that every single mmo that tried to cater to has failed.

this alone doesn't mean it's not doable...but it does mean an investor is probably not going to bank on it very eagerly.

sadly it simply doesn't work for MMOs. it contradicts some very fundamental MMO concepts, primarily that an mmo is a virtual world that you want to be immersed into, for as long as possible (real life constraints). If you WANT to hop from game to game, the MMO genre probably isn't the best choice.

there are great multiplayer games who can do this much easily. they don't have to create persistent worlds since you're not going to persist in these worlds. Afterall, why should a world be persistent if the players aren't ?

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Quizzical

You want a game to be done in a week?  It took me two weeks to get far enough that I could draw a test pattern on the ground.  And that was even though I reused some code that I made before I started writing a proper game engine.  And there were lots of holes in the ground because things didn't line up properly.

The problem is that there's a ton of code that gets used in many places in the game, and that has to be done before you can launch.  And it will probably be horribly buggy when you first do it, which forces you to massively change things later.  Your first content is just token stuff to see if other code works.  And when it doesn't, to try to figure out why it doesn't so that you can fix it.

Furthermore, before a game launches, you can make radical changes to the game.  And you'll have to on many occasions, as you realize that a different approach is far more efficient, or you can't actually do what you wanted to do, or whatever.  Radical changes like that are a no-no after launch.

So? What does amount of work have to do with entertainment duration?

A movie took months to shoot, and a year to finish, and yet two hours to watch.

A novel took months to a year to write, and in general can be read in a few hours.

Oh, there are two ways to read the title, and I think I hit the wrong one.  He probably meant "players can play through everything in a week", while I read it as "from the start of production to launch is a week".

But there's still the problem that there are bugs in your code that the early content doesn't expose, but then some later content triggers them and causes problems.  And then you have to track down the bugs and fix them, and that may sometimes cause major problems elsewhere because your fix just broke something else.

Yeah .. just put out fixes. It is not like that is not happening with SP games that last for a week or two.

The point is .. if a SP can be fun for a week or two, so can MMOs.

To be honest, sounds like you're looking for something like Star Trek Online's Foundry. (Or the incoming Neverwinter)  Where you have an endless supply of new content, while the main game itself could be finished in a week. (Okay, not really, but its the closest thing to what is feasable to releasing new content every week..)