Jon Wood: ... But Then They Changed What It Was
MMORPG.com's Jon Wood writes this week's column on how many gamers are dissatisfied with the current crop of MMOs because the kind of game they like are things of the past.
Column By Jon Wood on February 11, 2010
I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me. - Abe "Grandpa" Simpson.
2010 will mark my 30th year on this planet, and depending on who you ask and who's reading this, that's either going to be met with wonder at how old I am (get a real job grandpa, move aside for someone younger), or thoughts that I have no right to be complaining (I'd give my good knee to be 30 again).
Personally, I'm choosing to approach this milestone in a contemplative mood and it's gotten me thinking. I actually sat down recently with friends and discussed things that "kids today" would never know, or have never known. That, I fear, is the first sign that you're getting older. When you start to really notice (and worse start talking about) how different the world is today from "when I grew up," you just know that what "it" is has changed. You're just not in the demographic the world revolves around anymore.
That, I think, is part of the reason that many of us old MMORPG players are having trouble finding a new virtual world to call home. We're dissatisfied with just about every new MMORPG release, describing them with words like shallow and linear, accusing them of not being "real" MMOs, and just being generally cranky when the game that's been hyped up for the last few years, that we hope might be our new game, simply isn't. Generally speaking, we're the ones that complain when a game is F2P (damn item shops), or when a game is heavily instanced (what am I paying a fee for?), or when a game is too soloable (how is this an MMO?), or when a game doesn't have enough options, or a game is too easy, etc.
Now, in all of the complaining that we're seeing recently, there is a large and vocal part of the crowd that feels that these changes are happening because developers and publishers have given up on trying to make games and are instead trying to make a profit. I submit though that businesses looking to turn a profit is nothing new to the world of games. Do people honestly believe that Mythic, as a company, was any less concerned with making money when they released Dark Age of Camelot than they were when they released Warhammer? How about SOE? Did they develop pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies out of some kind of dedication to the art while the NGE was brought in to make money? No. Pre-NGE was designed to make money. It didn't so they tried the NGE (with limited success). With very few exceptions, contemporary game making has been about money.
The point that I'm trying to make is that it isn't that game developers, studios or publishers are trying to cram their own personal ideas about how MMOs should be made down our throats, the gamers (or at least current market research) are doing that. The motives behind game development haven't changed, the customer base has. It used to be that the way to make money making an MMO was to create a sandbox-style experience, the kind of game that today's "complainers" are clamoring for. That just isn't the case anymore. The generation that has come up behind us, as a whole, is looking for a different kind of gaming experience and unfortunately, catering to their whims and wants is more profitable than catering to ours.
I could spend all day pointing fingers about how this happened, and why this happened, but the sad truth is that there are more of them spending their money on games than there are of us. In "the old days," there was a much smaller audience of people looking to play MMOs. That smaller audience created an average gamer who was more "hardcore," wanted a challenging, open concept world in which to play and make their own adventures. As the market has widened, the average shifted to a more casual style of gamer that was more inclined toward a theme park experience than a sandbox.
)
Fortunately, there will always be companies and developers who look at the old target audience and see at least a small profit to be had. As long as there are a sufficient number of players who want the old kind of game, there will be smaller studios whose profits don't need to be quite so large making games for us. I'm afraid though that our days in the sun with AAA studios and publishers are over. They belong to the new folks now.
In the end, it really comes down to the fact that what "it" is has changed and now what "it" is seems weird and scary to us.
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I agree that "it" has changed, but I don't agree that it's changed into something weird and scary. Rather it's changed into something simplistic and repetitive.
What I don't understand about developers and publishers is why no one will try making a throwback virtual world and charging a premium fee for it.
Yes a lot of sandbox fans are older and may not be the target demographic, but I submit that the target demographic doesn't always have to be the young. Thirtysomethings are in the prime of their professional lives and generally have much more disposable income than your average teen.
Why not make UO2 and charge $49.99 a month. I'd pay it, and I doubt I'm alone.
Well John, I have to disagree with you. Granted many of these MMO's have gone the simplified EQ route, but I don't believe they have avoided the skill based sandbox games simply because that is what the general game playing populace wants. The developers are lazy and a level based game is far simpler to design and maintain than a sandbox. Given, it costs more money to design a sandbox because there are a lot more intangibles that have to be considered and it is much harder to balance a skill based game verses a level based one. The investors want a quick turn around on their money too, hence whatever they can get out quicker is usually the choice.
I also disagree that SWG was losing money at the time of NGE. They had close to 300,000 subs when they initiated NGE, most games can make it on a third of that. I think SOE saw the success of Wow and thought they could do better with their IP if they simplified it. They wanted Wow like numbers and knew that the existing complexity of SWG would prevent that.
Change is a given, in any field today. Wishing for what was is a waste of time. Wow is not sacrosanct, there will be a game that will dethrone it. Who knows what it will be. Could even be a decently designed skill based sandbox game. Could be that someone in the future will be casting darts at the level based games on how simple they are and old fashioned.
What people are really irritated at these days is the cheapskate developers like Cryptic who basically took their Champions MMO, threw a Star Trek front end on it and released it as a full fledged MMO. What are investors for other games going to think when they see a million fools throw money at this thing when it hardly deserves a passing comment?
I don't envy any developer trying to balance investor's wants with the teams desire to put out a good game. I think the money men are driving this genre into the ground, not the developers.
appart from your assessment that pre-cu swg was loosing money, i have come to the same realisation you have of what the gaming industry has become and the reasons for doing so (wheather in fact its true or not i don't know).
one only needs to remember the "old games" (i'm 30 too btw) such as monkey island, maniac mansion or the sierra games which pretty much laid the ground for the first mmorpg's - and our generation was brought up with games which were less so about fast action and more about thinking.
counter-strike and what came after has changed the way people view games in general: "i play games to relax and not do much thinking".
regardless, i have thoroughly enjoyed your article because its precisely what i feel and concluded by looking at the mmo trend and the discussions on the various mmo forums out there.
well done!
I have to disagree also.
You go on any mainstream MMO forum or here at MMORPG.com and it isn't just the old school who are looking for something more challenging the playerbase WOW brought to the table also are.
I strangeley actually had this discussion this morning with a gaming pal and we decided that the problem was age.
I am 1 year older than yourself and as children growing up in the 80s we where of a age when D&D and Warhammer where sweeping the world by storm i would hedge my bets that very few of our generation didnt at least have a fleeting fancy with the old board and die 80s MMO and movies like Conan, Hawk Beastmaster etc where all the rage.
When we hit our late teens early 20s and the internet was just booming we where looking for those childhood memories in a virtual form and the natural thing was a MMORPG designers took this and began to create, the designers knew the players they where attracting would have a rudimentary knowledge of the fantasy genre of the fantasy classes and the mechanics of this bygone era so they could be far more in depth with the game as we knew a lot of it already.
Fast forward a few years and LOTR comes to the cinema the kids think hey thats cool and go off searching for a gaming equivelent but there is none that is easily accesible that can teach them the fantasy genre and the mechanics as we got taught in dingy Church halls with our friends back in the 80's.
Wow saw this and capitalised and brought the masses to the genre just like warhammer and D&D had done with us.
These WOW players have now learned the trade they have spent their time rolling there die, painting their figures and being called a geek by their school friends they are now seeking that natural advancement so have actually caught up with us "old" folk.
The question to ask is will a design team look to this 500k from the EQ era that has been bloated by 12m WOW players as a audience or will they pander to the next crop of kids coming along who need to learn their trade in the RPG/MMO space.
I'm not a grandmother yet, but I am old enough to be one, and there's been one scare already from the 23 year old son. Whatever City of Heroes does, is "it" for me, its the perfect game. Sadly, I don't expect to see anything else like it ever again, and I think its starting to change out from under me as it goes along. Before much longer, I will probably find myself out of MMOs altogether, waiting for the Mass Effect 3 or Fallout: New Vegas to provide what I'm looking for and using social networking sites to stay connected. The gameplay paradigm of the MMO will have abandoned my kind.
This is it exactly and, given the amount of money involved in developing a game, I'm not surprised nor can I blame them. Now, clearly, their intention is not to drive this genre, any genre, into the ground as it would hamper their returns on future projects. However, with the genre as large as it is now, there are always hundreds of thousands of people looking for a game to call home at any given time. That alone allows them to release a product, sell a bunch of boxes in the first couple months, recouping development costs, and put the game on life support to milk a little money from. Why bet on making money from subs when you make your money off the box, particularly when you've funding another game coming out in 6 months?
I completely agree with the sentiment that "it" has changed. Heck, I'm 22 and I feel like the out-crowd. I prefer games that make me think, or I will come up with something in the game that will make me think. This kind of action often deviates away from the point of the game, usually falling into the RP catagory.
I believe there will be studios that develop games for the "older" generation. Just because we're part of this group, though, doesn't mean we're not significant. I think if enough people with our mindset come along and bend together a quality MMO can be created that not only recreates some of the sandboxy elements we loved, but present them with new enhancements that make use of the technology at our disposal today.
Yes, I think the tension between money-men and developers causes many well-meant endeavors to fall short, but I also think this can be overcome if the mission statement is very direct in its approach that the MMO is a long-term investment that takes time and money, but has the capacity for fantastic long-lived returns. I mean, WoW did this when it came out; who says it can't be done again?
I agree completely with the article. And no, developers aren't lazy, especially when one looks at what it takes to make any of these games come to frution.
This type of thing has been going on since generations of different people have been pouring out.
Went on with movies which then brought trepidation with the advent and inclusion of sound.
Certainly went on with Classcial music. Yes, "classical music" (which is a fairly general term for somethng that is actually a specific type of music) was actually the pop music of its day. Suddenly we get 12 tone music and the introduction of jazz and blues and things start changing. then rock music hits and has my mother said "when I first heard it I thougth it was a joke record".
There are very few companies that don't care about money. To add to this, non-profit insitutions who care more about what they are doing than making a profit for profit's sake, still care about their funds or else they can't do what they are doing. Has anyone ever worked for a non-profit? A good part of their discussions is how to increase the money they have available or add to their endowment. Solid non-profits have departments that are dedicated to bringing in money.
I mean, people scream about how vapid and constructed pop music and its trappings are and I'm sure there are people who scream that if people heard "better music' they would drop pop music in an instant. But that just isn't the case and the audience for pop music is quite vast and profitable.
The history is there. But people just don't look at it. And so we are doomed to repeat the same discussons over and over again where people are incedulous that what they love and desire and value is no longer the status quo.
If what they liked in the first place was ever "quo".
Weeeeell not one of my knees to be 30, but if you threw in late teens or twenties, independantly wealthy, and a guarenttee about getting a new knee replacement before I hit 27... well then I'll come back to the negotiating table and iron out the details....
just a second...
"Hey you kids!!! Get off my MMO!!!1!!"
;-P
I have to say this article really resonated with me, and expressed the feelings ive been having these last few years. I'm 26 and a half, and I try new mmos and feel like they don't fit the way they used to. At first i shrugged it off, everyone says you have fond memories for you r first mmo. But I have to say I agree with everything you said, it has changed and I'm not that hot 18-25 demographic anymore.
Good post.
May I purpose a hypothetical question?
If Blizzard's next MMO (Which we know is not based on any previous IP.. In fact it's all we know) just HAPPENS to be a sandbox like UO was, but done with Blizzard's finances and widely known sense of polish...
Do you think it will be successful?
Do you think it will turn a profit?
Do you think more of the "newer" generation of gamers would play it than currently play other existing sandboxes?
Why or why not?
I suspect the answers to all three would be "Yes", and the REASON I think this newer generation of gamers doesn't like sandboxes or more immersive worlds is because one hasn't been done (compared to older ones, and even DF) with:
A) Newer graphics
B) PvE, RP, and casual players in mind (So no FPS only controls, friendly fire - Some standard auto-attacking is necessary for MOST gamers)
C) A Budget
Pick 2.
Think back - When games like UO came out, they were at the height of computing knowledge.. They now lag behind, in terribly obvious ways from graphics to netcode to outdated concepts.
Darkfall is a great sandbox, and I'm loving it right now. It has decent graphics, but AV is a small company, and it's locked in first person mode, with little or no thought given to RP and largescale PvE (From my experience). It is transparently biased to PvP, everywhere, all the time. Plus, the fact that there is no opt-in or protection from PvP makes it a problem when reds come ganking new players in starter areas, not to mention a UI and perspective shift that doesn't allow for third person anymore. Add to that the fact that it's all twitch based, with no auto-attack, and it's a major deterrent to casuals and the bulk of the market. And while I'm thoroughly impressed with what they've done with the resources they likely have, it doesn't touch a Blizzard or an EA's budget for an MMO.
Mortal Online, same thing. They even seem to have a worse budget, because they apparently have overworked programmers who are having a hard time resolving NPC and Lag issues.
If someone did it RIGHT, and I suspect Blizzard or maybe Bethesda (Or is it ZenniMax .. The Elder Scrolls MMO makers) can do it, I think it'd do amazingly well, even with the youngin's..
Half of these kids don't even know what it's like to be able to customize a home, from the structure itself to the furniture.. Or have player vendors.. It saddens me.
what you say is very true.
I was really looking foward to STO hoping it was going to be the new scifi place for EVE refugees to settle and (spend our money) but it ended up as a heavy instance hack and blast game,, more a first person shooter than a MMO.
I have gotten very wary of games over the years not trusting the hype or the montage videos.
I have money to spend but nothing out there is worthy to spend it on.
LOTRO was my fall back but the last two expansions moria and mirkwood were both hack and slash raiding and skirmishes.
yawn that kind of combat just bores me to tears just because the rats got 50k hitpoints and hit like a meteor is boring no let me rephrase that... BORING id swear they are still using the same AI brain that EQ used like 15 years ago mobs wether they are land sea or air all attack the same exact way percieve,, advance,, attack spiders rairly climb walls or celings birds rarely if ever fly more than 6 feet off the ground swamp dwellers never ambush your canoe from below.
and the quests are preboxed way to predictable
I guess it would be best to just describe my grievences globally:
non-organic feel to the world
static world predictable world its been yeas since a MMO has suprised me druids never have animal NPCs
not being able to change the world in a meaningful way.
having variable choices as to how much if any i participate in PVP
combat based economies lack of a realistic economy sith supply and demand and caravans and shipping routes
public works projects: one of the funest times i had in a game was participating in building a massive bridge to a new island the devs foolishly thought it would take the players 6 months+ to assyemble the THOUSANDS of components it ended up taking about a month roads bridges aquaducts
resources that are sprinkled evenly over the entire server, no motherloads or localized resources. craft system that makes only masters important
ENDGAME = raid or PVP hell why cant a player at this level be more than just a grunt? why cant a cleric become a pope of a church and get followers and tythes ect? why cant a mage be in charge of their own tower? or a warrior be captin of the guard or even a noble incharge of a village or city?
the real question to ask yourself when you leave a game and look back did your presence make a difference? or were you just digging a hole in the ocean?
i turn 30 next month so
Git off mah lawn! it's my mmo or the highway wipper snapper
sorry it had to be said
ouch babe! that last bit got me choked up!
ouch babe! that last bit got me choked up!
HULK SMASH PUNY OCEAN!
http://picklejuice13.deviantart.com/art/Hulk-Fights-The-Ocean-11-142324873
"You're just not in the demographic the world revolves around anymore."
This, I think, pretty much hits the nail on the head for the article. The "original" batch of gamers have hit the 30+ age range and instead of paying for games they like nowadays, they are paying for games their kids like. Unfortunately, our kids don't care for the style of games we played, but I don't see that as a bad thing necessarily. Innovation and new ideas spring up from what they desire. Instead of pining for what was we should encourage and teach the younger, newer gamer generations to what may be about the joys of "oldstyle" gaming. Eventually they will seek it out and gaming companies will respond and bring some of those innovations with it. However, if we consistantly complain, whine and moan about gaming today and shut ourself out to any and everything new, developers and gamers alike will tune us out and those "good old days' will be gone for good.
Is it just me, or does this apply to more than just MMO's lately, too? By that, I mean the other genres - shooters, RPG, RTS, etc.. I can't for the life of me even find single-player experiences that are worthwhile anymore, and it isn't because I'm burned out on it all because I can still find fun in my old favorites.
I get that things change, but really... did the whole world go stupid or something to need the style of play that's offered in the more recent games these days? It seems that even in the strategy genre everything is automatic and spoon-fed to the point of needing minimal micro-managing and actual strategy anymore. RPGs are just a matter of being hand-held through a story (interactive movies ftw?) and shooters have de-evolved through time worst of all. I can't help but wonder am I the only one who feels that way.
No.. No, you're not the only one.
heres a game idea for you: it partly refers to SEED: seed was a great idea but TERRIBLE implementation. it died shortly after its premature birth.
your planet is being destroyed either (fantacy or other) and you have to exit your world the basic method is a teleporter but the trick is your limited in the equipment you can bring and have to pick and choose (this is done so one player arrives with an ax and another arrives with a shovel)... the alternate mode is a ship that crash lands a teraformer or an ark and you wake up and prety much dont know any thing about where you are or about anything.
the basic premice is to learn and discover and explore and overcome chalanges if you do the ship route you usually start by trying to fix and clean up and salvage what you can cnd then slowly move out into the strange new world the key is the unknown is huge in this example you dont even know if the air is breathable what is safe and what will kill you I would also have a wide range of creatures (plant animal and other) some maby be easy to kill and others may take a whole squad or more. the key is you start by knowing nothing not even if there are other inteligent life or even other colonies and will they be friendly or hostile there would be growing crops,, fishing,, boats, ranching even astronomy depending on the theme there could be magic to learn alchemy definatly mining and smithing i would also have weather climates storms disease pestilance that would effect the world id have arctic areas deserts jungles yes this would be skill based and sandboxed.
if anyone is aware of a game like this (that isnt 20 years out of date) please let me know.
Jon I totally feel your pain. Although this year I'll be hitting forty, yes, the big 4-0. I am starting to feel the same way you are. Except ten years too late, late bloomer, but it is starting to settle in regardless.
I think the problem is that the average gamer is getting older like we are. As an adult, which can only be classified due to our age not maturity, we tend to think about our sense of fun differently. And manage our time differently. the casual gamer might just not have the time to dedicate as we did when we were really young.
Today, I find myself more critical and somewhat cynical about the new games being released. I often ask myself, "Oh, how are they going to mess this one up?" If it does interest me I read blogs, forums and reviews. I long for the "old days" when I would run to the store and buy that new game just because, oh, just because.
I think over the years we have gotten seasoned. Too many dust collectors, too many letdowns and also we finally find out what we really like. What did we really have to choose from? UO, MUD's? Maybe a handful of games over the early 2000's but it didn't really explode until '04. Games evolved as technology evolved and we evolved with it.
Down the road we might be saying, "remember when we had to use a keyboard and mouse to play...."
...uphill in the snow, both ways, with no shoes on?
thats the thing though......
you see it as "innovation and new ideas", some of us see it as dumbing-down, spoon-feeding, meaningless fast-paced action and gameplay.
not saying that this is precisely what it is, but that is how i would describe it comparing it to my past playing experience.
lol, it applies to EVERYTHING.
There is not a piece of media or social movement that has not experienced these waves of change.
On a larger scale, in the U.S. you can look at the 80's. People hate the 80's (lol, I was in a musical that my girlfriend at the time wanted me to join and it was set in the 80's. When the older people were giving dress and makeup tips to the younger people the younger people scoffed "people didn't really dress this way".) but the 80's are a rebellion to the 60's and 70's. 60's and 70's are a change from the 40's and 50's. We had to have the 40's and 50's because of the horrible 30's.
Of course the 30's happened because of the 20's. Culturally as well as the financial downfall.
I feel like it is a part of the wheel of time series:
"The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the age that gave it birth comes again."
Jon, take it easy man... At 30 and ranting like this that we're getting old doesn't do your heart any good :D
...yes, I said we... I'm even 10 year older than you... Though I didn't plau UO or any of the other "real old" MMORPG's (I was busy raising a family at the time), I am one of the older generation in gaming. I remember playing the Level 9 adventures on my old Atari 800XL. I loved those (and I'm sure the current generation will hate them for the same reason).
When I started BBSing in 1990 I hopped from one MO adventure to the other. I found a couple I loved a lot. Still no high graphics (LOL it was ASCII graphics and later on an EGA interface that sucked balls), but they were fun!
As said... With the start of the WWW, I skipped most of the hype for a couple of years (that's about 5 years) and came back to the net around 1998 to find everything changed in MO's. Didn't try a lot, because I still had dial up and found mostly Quake II and other FPS games (something I was already too old for then)..
In 2005 I found Lineage II and went into MMORPGing.
I think I liked Lineage II more than everything I found since mostly because of the complexity of the game. Story, character development, crafting, exploration, PvE and PvP. When I quited Lineage II early last year I tried a lot of other games, including WoW.
So far I haven't really found anything that really is to my likings (prolly because I'm too old for the current market). I do like FFXI and EVE, which are like Lineage II not your average game for the younger generation.
The future..? Though we're getting old, it does look bright... Look at Bioware aiming on the MMORPG market now. They have the knowledge to make great RPG games. If they succeed with SW:ToR (I won't play it since I'm no SW fan), I hope they'll make more MMORPGs of the same quality of their single player RPGs.
Then there is Bethesda and the persistent rumor of Elder Scrolls V being an MMORPG (I'd buy it blind)
...and last but not least... Final Fantasy XIV is around the corner.
You see, we might be getting old, but we're still not left out...
i completely agree that newer mmos are all about box profit. they hype the crap out of them and fall way short. Aion and STO are good examples.
What are we the old gamers supposed to do?
I don't want to leave the genre.
I try my best to see positive aspects of themepark games but I still want more.
I guess were doomed to deal with indy devs that release unfinished buggy products with small communities.
... Oh well.
Wizards first rule: People are stupid
So sadly you are correct they will cater to the lowest common denominator.
Someone pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease make a new MMO using the old SWG system. Then make that system 1000x more difficult and we'll be good to go.
well i have gone back to playing spg's in my free time....
just holding onto the belief that some decent developer out there will produce a decent mmo for us the new "niche" market based on true sandbox kosterian ideas.
i considered puting fallen earth in this catagory but its missing far too many pieced.
they dont even have functoning water!,, no costume clothing window or toggles.
no vehicle physics,, no grenade physics, no shotgun physics just to name a few of the missing core systems
they do have nice scopes and a halfway decent crafting system and resources.
but for an after math game its not very aftermathy save for the occasional mutant or zombie
keeping my eye on this title wil prob subscribe once some of these issues are addressed.
This is possibly the most intelligent thing I've read on this site in a while (coming from a user, anyways). I see people shooting down new themeparks ("WoW clones"?) because they want more sandbox games. I've also noticed that most of those people tend to be older gamers who all started with UO or possibly SWG. That's why I've come to think of them as old farts complaining about young whippersnappers and their newfangled ("dumbed down") MMOs. That's fine, they have a right to complain, but I like how you phrased it. I enjoy (some) sandbox games, but I won't attack a good themepark just because it's a themepark. So what if it does things similar to WoW? As long as it has some justification - some new features or a different spin that might be fun - I'll consider it. TOR being the prime example.
/agree
Fallen Earth is at least more on the right track than most though.
I am starting to think that a lot of us are all looking for the same thing - the first mmo we ever fell in love with, just with better graphics.
I just can't help but disagree with most of this.
People buy and play what's available. Short of being an actual part of the business, none of us have control other than to buy and play what we like, but that only goes so far when so little is available that fits that category. For little Johnny, however, there's a plethora of games out there, all of which are "amazing" when you've never had better, so Johnny will continue to buy the crap that's given without knowing better. At the end of the day, the companies still profit, and whether or not we continue to pay, they'll still prosper (WoW ftw!).
At the end of the day, saying that "kids don't care for the style of games we played" accomplishes nothing, because of course they don't. The games we played had crappy graphics (in comparison to today's games) and much more clunky gameplay in many cases. Why would a kid this day in age give Fallout 1 (for example), in all its 640x480 glory, with its turn-based 2D combat a try when instead they can run Fallout 3 in all its HD glory at 1920x1080 widescreen, with full 3D effects, guns that they fire and control, and silky smooth animations and blood flying everywhere? I'd still play Fallout 1 and 2 all day any day over the current option, but that's kinda the point. I'd love to be given the chance to play the games I once (and still) loved in a completely up-to-date form, given the gameplay stayed as near to the original as possible, but they're not making that game. They throw some flashy new graphics around, give it a similar theme, and then funnel you (the player) down a narrow road of crap where all you do is shoot stuff, beat the game, and go "yee-haw, that was fun... gimme the next one!"
If you ask me, the problem IS that games are no longer made by gamers. I always refer back to Counter-Strike. The game started out as a simple mod for Half-Life, made for free, by a team of players of the game. They made what they wanted and what was fun for them. Of course it took off, and became one of the biggest franchises in shooter history, all because the people making the game knew how to make a fun game. Anymore, it's entirely too much market research, and a bunch of execs trying to pin down exactly what they think the market wants. Couple that with cheaply made, rushed out the door, under-developed, over-hyped garbage games that live on life support (read: initial box sales) for years and people start to realize how hard it is to actually fail in this industry, much like movies these days. Ever hear of movies that lose money in the cinemas anymore? I don't, and I'd bet the same can be said about most titles these days released for any gaming platform. Given how little there is in the way of consequences for shitty games, it's no wonder they continue to pump out their crap, and then capitalize on their latest crappy release with a "new and improved!" game to follow, that the dissatisfied consumers merrily trudge onto.
Looking at all I just wrote, I think it's time to hit post and end the rant :O Whoooooops!
TL;DR: It's absurd what the entire gaming market has become.
every concern and little thing that has every old gamer upset, including me and my old online gaming buddies, is due to WoW.
The games that were developed before that curse were to our liking. Blizzard came along and made the easiest game on earth, sucked in the b.net crowd with it being warcraft and completely dominated and destroyed everything i loved about mmo's.
Blizzard has corrupted this entire genre down to the core with its 244 billion trillion subscribers. Go back in time, destroy that game from ever being created. Then return, bet you will find this genre in a much better state.
and yes, i know, i dont like wow. yeah i played it for awhile because all my friends hopped on the bandwagon. and where they go i usually do because playing mmo's alone sucks.
ive been playing mmo's since 98'. ive played every single one of them thats launched, literally. wow is to blame, like it or not.
what really gets my goat is that STO was THE platform for imbeded learning!
get a charting misson,, go to a planet and do scans in different locations and get a display of orbital diameter temperature, length of day, life forms ect depending on which type of scanner you use and where.
HUGE HUGE potential for imbeded learning but they made it into a fan fleecing hack and slash !!! cryptc totally missed the boat on this public relations possibility. parents would have loved it but currently its yet one more game on the alter of violence in videogames.
when you goto SOL system there is a prety picture of the earth and the moon but currently no other planets the sun is basicly painted on the wall of the instance (which are really small)
I would have loved to visit the moon and seen apallo? neil armstrong memorial or gont to mars and took the lunar rover tour
they could have hit educational themes for biology geology astronomy physics archelogy just to name a few.
it would have been one of the first fun learning games since oregon trail.
i could have done most of my game play doing nothing but charting and exploring much better than seek out new life and shoot it .
We last gen gamers just have vary little chose anymore it come to 4 options. 1. Quit gaming turn to the new gamer take the torch put it out then hand it over 2. Accept the fact todays games are here for a good 10 years+ 3. Go back to the games we called home even tho they have changed somewhat they still have most the core they had 80% of the time. 4. Sit around hoping one day a game we can get behind fully is born like in the golden age of true mmorpg. I for one am a mix bag of 4 and 1 and after I take option one ill smile when the new gamer has to face there next gen gamer. Something tells me there next gen will get the video helmet and gloves.
you left out dodgy business practices such as microtransaction abuse and you are spot on.
in general terms the "execs" don't look at the long term today. the concept of "lets make a good, solid game and we will reap the rewards in the future by our loyal fanbase and their word of mouth" has been replaced by "let's hype the hell out of the game, start working on paid expansions before its rushed out the door and brainstorm new ways of sucking the people's money once they bought the game".
This might be slightly off topic, but this is a great idea! Endgame that is something to look forward too. EVE somewhat has implemented that, even more indepth in the recent Dominion expansion. It now gives large alliances in zerosec that change to develop their space, not just own it.
The game started out as a simple mod for Half-Life, made for free, by a team of players of the game.
Very true. What about the crew that made DoTA, now they developed League of Legends? Games made by gamers for gamers always seem to hit the nail on the head cleaner. Although they usually lack the big studio marketing power to make any money on it. It usually isn't about the money, it's about fun.
LOL!!
It seems funny that of you people who are less that half my age, including the OP, are developing a nostalgia for the "old days".
Haha, don't I have a case if I say what the heck do you know about the old days? The days when a computer game meant four player PONG!?
Oh, well, good points though. One to add ---- it's not whether a game is making money. It's how much money compared to what the investors put in. Viable means a good return, not just any return. That's just the way it is.
Cheers, I DONT have a good knee!
Won't be long since I hit 40... yet below some thought:
- I play MMOs and laugth/cry at this supposedly heroic feeling and based storyline
- I remember how fun it was to have something else to do than just killing mobs in SWG
- I miss all players that never ever lifted a weapon in SWG. They are long gone away from MMO madness.
- I look at MMO and see how ugly they are compared to any single player game, yes AOC and LotRo alike
- I wish Freespace, Privateer 2, and SWG economy systems would someday merge into a MMO
- I'm still looking for MMOs that lets you rebind every key, mouse button, functionalities to your liking
- I'm sad when I see rushed out poorly designed MMO UI, makes me remember Privateer 2 awesome one
Yet I had fun playing Diablo 2.9 (read WoW) but it isn't THE mmo I'm looking for. Funny thing my wallet might be heavyer than more younger audience... like in SWG many of us had multiple accounts.
In a way too many MMO have become Diablo on steroids, and while I like Diablo & Dungeon siege gameplay, they aren't MMORPG
And well: I remember how fun was Pong on a black and white TV. ;)
I have to disagree too ...
It was either here or on Digg that they just released the average age of the gamer is 25 to 30. That would suggest that the target audience should fall somewhere in that range. I'm operating under the assumption that 50% of gamers aren't over 45 with the other half under 10.
Let's face it. It IS cheaper to make a simple game. They ARE charging more for those games. They ARE using labels from games that paved new ground in server design, code design, multi-user connection design. They AREN'T living up to those names. They ARE the only games on the market.
To put it in a drug context ... old schools devs gave you the real stuff. Now they give you lawn mower trimmings, charge you more for it, but tell you its the same old stuff. And "we" as a gaming group believe them.
Vote with your money.
Stop pre-ordering. Ever. Even if it is the most awesome looking game ever.
Stop getting life time subscriptions. Yes they save you money if you play more than 18 months. So they don't make a game that's worth playing for 18 months. They don't have to cause you've already paid them for it.
When you leave a game, write a calm, professional letter as to why. Then post it on every game forum you can. If even 1 person reads it and agrees, you've just saved a fellow gamer $50 AND helped talk to the devs.
If you make them ask why their games are failing, It won't take them long to figure it out. You keep buying chocolate covered vomit labeled as truffles and they're going to keep giving it to us.
I think your right but along with my reskinned Pre-CU can I have the 2003-05 SWG Eclipse server community as well pwetty pwease :)
You make a lot of interesting points about generational change, but I am not so sure the sandbox versus themepark dichotomy is causally determined by age. Although age may be one factor, so are these:
1. How serious are you about gaming? Is it a major or minor part of your identity and lifestyle
2. How much time in a week are you prepared to commit to playing an mmorpg
3. Are you a casual player (by casual I mean what most "normal" non-gamers would consider casual btw, as a gamers definition of casual is usually pretty close to "hardcore" lol) or a hardcore player
I am 37 and started out on old paper & dice games, then onto the good ol ZX Spectrum etc. Played my share of both sandbox and themepark mmorpgs and these days I prefer so-called "themepark". Actually, I don't even like the defintions "themepark"/ "sandbox" as those terms are extremely loaded against themepark and tend to butter up sandboxers with a rosy self-congratulating confetti of adjectives like "intelligent", "skillful" etc ; but I will avoid the semantics for this post and move on.
I prefer so-called themepark because I am simply too busy for what "sandbox" stands for or usually entails. In terms of gaming I play one "themepark" mmorpg (used to play two) and always have a single-player game or two on the go. Now I have played sandbox in the past but I have gone more themepark as I got older because my job, family and a renewed commitment to exercise/the outdoors means I simply don't have the time/energy to play it old-school as with earlier mmorpgs.
If it is a game that is going to demand hours and hours of my time and thinking every day or at weekends, or if it is a game where casuals get raped because only hardcore players can excel, or if it is a game that is so group orientated that I have to schedule 2 evenings of my week to satisfy some guild requirements etc and so on, then these are the factors that put me off games. My current game of choice doesn't fall into any of those traps and that's why I play it, even though it is criticised as a "themepark" by many posters on this site.
To sum up: nothing to do with my age and everything to do with the extent that "gaming" impacts my current identity and lifestyle.
Regards
Melmoth
ed for typos
I think there is more then one dynamic at play....however I think there is an important one that often gets over-looked.
"Back in the day", so to speak.... when MMO's were fairly new to the scene... it's not that companies didn't have a desire to make money of them. It's that they didn't know HOW to make money of them.... or I should say that they didn't enter into building them with preconcieved notions of what they needed to do to make them financialy successfull. Today's games have become much more "formulaic" because the companies that are building them... basicaly are trying to follow the "magic success formula" that they believe is common knowledge for how to make money with MMO's.
Problem is that formula's are great for mixing chemical compounds....not so great for truely high quality creative works/entertainment..... the best you are likely to get by following a set formula in that venue is "medicore".... Which is exactly why we see such a plethora of mediocre games coming out.
This dynamic happens with many products...not just games, btw.... but essentialy there are some REAL advantages that come with companies not already "knowing" how to make money off of something.
- Investment capital that is willing to tolerate higher risks. This is a big one. If you're doing something that doesn't have any track record as to whether it will be successfull then the investment capital that you get will naturaly be of a type that is tolerant of risk. That means that they are going to be willing to let you have free-er reign over how you make the product. It also means that they are going to be looking for an outstanding success rather then just a minimal success... you don't put capital into high risk investments if you aren't looking for the chance of really high returns. That means that the investor is also going to support you as much as possible to really put together a very high quality product...rather then just a mediocre product.
- The Engineers are the ones designing the product....not the suits. I can't stress this one enough. When you have a product type that hasn't been built before.... the people in charge of making the important design decisions are likely to be the game designers/developers/engineers.... people with real expertiese in the nuts and bolts of designing things. The "suits" are likely to be pretty hands off....because they have nothing to go on when making design mandates..... essentialy they are likely to "know they don't know how something should work" ...... as opposed to "thinking they have a clue" about how something should work because "everyone knows that Company X does it this way and they're successfull". Problem with that is, that things that there tend to be very subtle differences in products....and things that work well in one will often fail very horribly in another for reasons that only some-one who really understands the nuts and bolts of how something is put together. "Suits" don't really understand or want to understand those nuts and bolts....but they do understand how to exert thier authority to make Dictates & Mandates.... often disasterous ones.
- There is alot of variety in the Product offerings. Again...no one knows how something is "supposed" to work....so everyone is willing to experiment with thier own methods to see if they work.
- Designers/Developers/Companies are willing to pay alot more attention to detail. This is something pretty much every Engineer or Technical person can understand. If you've absolutely never done something before...and have absolutely no clue as to what you are "supposed" to be doing.... You are going to actualy pay alot more attention to what you are doing..... You are going to spend alot more time thinking about the rationale behind why you are doing something a certain way....and you are likely to put some effort into thinking about ways you can test to see if something "works". In short you're putting a higher quality effort into your product.
If you are doing something very similar to something you've done a million times before (or that there is an industry SOP for).... you're likely to fly through those things without paying alot of attention to what you are doing.... you may not spend ANY effort what-so-ever thinking about WHY you are doing things the way you are...it's simply "That's How Things are Done.".... and you may not even bother really testing to see how it works....because you already "KNOW it's going to work." In short, you get sloppy....it's just human nature.
Something else of note
This article has sparked the best discussion I have seen on these boards in I dare say years. So far troll free, people engaging with each other in a nice calm civil and generally well written manner.
Is it because the article is attracting a older breed of gamer ?
This is typical of a geat deal of the arguments I see in these forums. I hardly think anyone would enjoy a game that was 1000x harder...it would be impossible!! This and a demand for more/open bla bla bla pvp/ harder content. The best tactic is to race to max level and rule. Sounds more like a job than a game.
As many folks have already said here, games lack depth....rofl, some aren't evem as deep as a puddle. There is nothing to compel one to continue.
It is getting near impossible to find a game with a good storyline today. I've gotten to a point in several games where going on just didn't make sense. There were a number of embarasingly weak storylines, a problem we see more as a result of people puffing up thier chests cause they are soooo leet.
Ever consider that we as a community have gotten better? I can remember starting in one of the earlier games and thinking wow, this is hard, only to go back some time later and finding it was actually quite easy. The game didn't get easy...the players just got better.
Things are indeed different today and they will be different 30 years from now. Been thru both and the more things change the more they stay the same
My rules:
1 be real. don't ask for something because it makes you look good on a forum. ( Developers read forums.)
2 remember rule 1
Wow, great reply. Color coded per section:
People still buy what they like to play, its just the games today are not what most of us like. As its been said several times already, the older gamers are not the market anymore. There are more titles, genres and selections of games out there now then there ever was when we were gaming. Stores completely devoting to gaming were unheard of and most of it was confined to a rack or two in the electronics section of a general store. Also, what you define as "crap" is what Little Johnny is acutally looking for. Where we any different? Did we "know better? Hardly. Video gaming was in it's infancy and we had no other option than to take what was handed to us. We didn't have the luxury of 3-5 different consoles, PC's, MMO's, etc.
Maybe its me, but I don't remember Fallout 3 funneling us down anywhere. Sure you could play the storyline, then again you had the choice not to, it is completely up to your playstyle. How many older games gave us the freedom to do whatever the heck we wanted compared to games today? You did bring up an interesting point though and one I was trying to reinforce earlier, kids today don't know what Fallout 1 or 2 was like. Maybe they've never heard of Elder Scrolls: Morrowind or others but thats where we should step in show them what it was like. Sites like GOG.com are great tools to get them involved in older styles of games and gameplay and let them see and experience what they may be missing.Could it spark an interest in some older styles of game play and a desire for more similar to it with today's technology? I think it could.
I have to disagree with part of your last paragraph. I would argue that we have more gamers developing games today than we ever had before. These are the guys and gals that grew up on gaming and were inspired by the original games designers of the past and want to put their unique spin on the genre. There are a ton of fun and unqiue games ot there today. Yes there is crap but that has been around since video gaming started.
I do agree that there appears to be too much research to try and find that "end all be all game " and the tweaking of games after the fact. For some reason I still don't understand, gamers and gaming developers have this utopian idea that if this one game launched with all of the features THEY liked and thinks everyone else likes then everyone would play it alone and we would all be a happier community. Thats just nuts. Look out there today in anything we have or do. How much variety do we see in the food we like, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to or the movies we see. If there is all of that out there, why dosome gamers insist that we have to be universally set in one style of gaming. Look on this site, how many new posts do we see about the right wrong way a game is, PVP vs PVE, level vs skills, no death vs corpse run or the countless "if only they would do <X> it would save gaming"? Why can't we accept that everyone has different tastes, styles and desires in gaming? Whats crap to me might be great to you and vice versa. Different strokes for different folks.
As much as I would love our attitudes to change, I think it won't and many 30 something gamers will become so frustrated that they drift away from gaming all together, taking all of that gaming knowledge, passion and desire with them.
Give it ten years and those 20 somethings will be right here writing similar articles about how their gaming has "changed" from "when they played" and they don't understand or like it.
Very interesting article. I'd have to say that what many of us older gamers (i.e. those that have "been around the block") are looking for is NOT what the "WoW generation" has turned most of this genre into, which to me, is repetitive, cookie-cutter themepark games that only vary by look, classes, game world, and races, with very, very few differences between them all.
We're looking for a working sandbox.
We're looking for a challenging game with risk vs. reward.
We're looking for player freedom.
We're NOT looking to ride the same damn roller coaster ride that is found in themepark games, that only varies by, again, graphical design, class system, the game world itself, the races that inhabit the game world, and a few usually non-important game mechanics that the developers claim are "new" and "exciting".
THANK GOD for games like EvE, Darkfall, soon to be Mortal Online, Earthrise, Fallen Earth. These are the game that will hopefully revitalize this genre for us "old schoolers", and hopefully will provide the fix that many of us have been missing for quite some time now.
An excellent, honest, no-nonsense article that clearly sees the history of MMORPGs and admits the truth about where they are going and the real reasons for it.
No wonder there are many posts disagreeing with the article.
Denial won't change the truth of the article anymore than complaining will induce large developers with substantial budgets to go back to old-school mechanics. It is, however, amusing to see people trying to re-write history in their attempts to disprove the article's points, like the protests over this part:
Did they develop pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies out of some kind of dedication to the art while the NGE was brought in to make money? No. Pre-NGE was designed to make money. It didn't so they tried the NGE (with limited success).
Stars Wars Galaxies was a financial failure. It sold over a million boxes but never kept more than 1/3 of those customers (300k estimated at BEST). Here are reminders for all those Abe Simpson types whose memories seem to be failing.
www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/star-wars-galaxies-sales-top-a-million-units
www.lucasarts.net/company/release/news20050819.html
Then you have a blog by a SWG developer who worked on the game for 5 years STATING the game was bleeding subscribers before NGE ever came out.
rubenfield.com/
The article rightly points out that people always view the good old days of the past as being better even when they weren't. That is not an excuse to try to change the past. That's how the mistakes of the history get repeated.
I'm seeing a thinly veiled reference to STO here...
I like STO. A lot of people seem to be complaining that STO isn't more like EVE, but if you like EVE so much GO PLAY EVE. I think the recent article by Jon Wood was correct: maybe it shouldn't call itself an MMO, but it's still a good game.
Poor article. Waving assumptions with no backing facts other than claims.
Has the demographic changed? Absolutely. What was small and nerdy and good ol' boy is now commonplace homogenized and universal in nature.
But this in no way indicates the need to regress into less creativity, much less the desire to.
It's a question of the devs knowing what the lowest amount of effort on their part that yields the best results is. Why does this work? The MMORPG genre has been inundated with people who don't know any better. They don't know the history, the roots, the non-AAA titles that originally influenced the AAA titles. So they don't know what the genre is capable of, not that they don't want it.
I agree with the article. I too am hitting 30 years of age this year. I started MMO gaming in 2002, when the old generation of MMO's reigned and the hardcore gamers were the average. It was a great time then and I miss it. However, I am not the same person now that I was when I was 22 years old. I can't consciously spend 8+ hours gaming like I did before without feeling guilty of neglect, much less not be bored out of my mind, because let's face it, the gameplay hasn't changed since the early days, so those of us that started back then have long since mastered the skills needed to blow through MMO's of old.
Anyways, you'll meet a lot of resistance on this website, because most of the population here fits into the category that believes the genre and the developers are out to get them. They think that because the first 3 games in a genre did things a certain way, they define what the genre is supposed to be, and any game that deviates doesn't belong. Imagine if we approached everything in life with such narrow mindedness.
Everyone will be much happier as gamers if they check their expectations and baggage at the door before trying a new MMO out. Each game should be judged on their own merits, and if the game isn't fun, then it isn't for them. I for example think STO is a pretty fun game. Will it keep me subscribed for a while like DAOC or SWG did? No, but that's not the way the genre works anymore. Whether a MMO lasts 1 yr + or 1 month+, they both offer more bang for the buck than any single player game on the market. As gamers, fun should be what we're after, so the most fun for our money should be our goal. It seems that gamers have lost sight of that goal, and have replaced it with finding a "true MMO" without ever asking if the game they passed up was fun regardless of missing features that the founders of the genre offered.
I almost spit mountain dew across my screen when I read the part about the NGE being a limited sucess. ROFL
OK here it is in a nutshell. Back in the day we got real content, lots of stuff to do. It took months to level, and even more months to gear your toon out. Then we had lots of end game stuff that was fun to do.
The NGE was the start of the end. At that point all the game companies were like "Hey folks will buy crud lets give it to them cheaper" And guess what they do. So as long as folks settle for the cheep way out so the companies will give it to them.
Take a look at LOTRO, good case study here. We had a game that was diverse. This game was great, until somebody in marketing thought hey we need to come up with all this raid instances and rad armor and stuff. We got Moria, it was a dismall abiss. Now we got SOM a ver small xpac. After that really small book update with even more instances. Once again Turbine taking the cheap way out, going down the track of re-usable instances. Oh and I will say this folks will call me crazy, as it was such a big hit for the ADHD crowd there going to continue this route so there goes a lot of open world content.
I have to note that yes the gaming comunity has changed. A lot of us are getting older. Im 45 now. A lot of the younger crowd clammers for the quick got to have it fix, and the game companies give it to them. Level to max level in under a month, then they get board. The only problem is the make it so easy it makes the game booring.
I don't blame the devs, the real villian is the bean counter, with his hand up the devs rear end so far they lack any real creativity.
I was talking with my 2nd in command the other night about the fact I had noticed he had not bough the som xpac nor had he logged in since october. He said "I am really discontent, and I don't seam to find any mmo experiance out there to be deap and meaningfull gameplay, gone are the days of relaxing after I get home, now its all rush rush rush." he then said he was playing dragon something as it was more fun than logging in.
Highlighted selections for emphasis. Comment below:
RTS terms? DOTA- which became, of course, LoL. There are parallels in every aspect of industry. The 'innovation' is often nothing more than a 'return to roots' that is void of marketing practices and full of actual content.
I see people make this accusation a lot when they're dissatisfied with a game. Well you know what? WHY DON"T YOU GO SHOW US HOW FUCKING EASY IT AND MAKE YOUR OWN GOD DAMN GAME.
Stop calling developers lazy if you've never written a line of code (or designed a map, or skinned a model) for an MMO (or any other game) in your life. A lot of people have these really grand ideas of what the ideal game should be but they have no idea how much effort it would take to actually build that game. Some of the ideas I've heard are completely impractical or unrealistic.
I disagree.
The things that many older/sandbox gamers ask for are not impractical or unrealistic. They have, in fact, been done before. Current developers choose to ignore many of the features that made UO, AC, and SWG such beloved games and instead churn out repetitive linear game after repetitive linear game.
If deep non-combat sandbox gameplay is so difficult, how did certain development teams manage to pull it off over a decade ago?
There are probably some talented developers working in mmo's today, but you'd never know it because just about every game is the same carrot-chasing exercise, over and over again.
So, call it lazy, call it short-sighted, blame the publishers instead of the coders, whatever. The reality is that mmo design has regressed over the last few years.
Bring back Corpse run!
Bring back SWG type skill leveling!
Bring back stun hits with your character spinning out of Control!
Bring back "you are hungry" "you are thirsty"
Bring Back TRAINS!
Bring back zone wide aggro until zone to reset!
i disagree wholeheartly.
THIS is the reason why swg didn't retain the million subs, and the reason it was bleeding subs when they revamped the game.
however claiming that pre-cu was a financial failure i find very hard to believe of any mmo with 300k subs.
there is and was no evidence to suggest that it was a failure due to the nature of the game as you seem to suggest.
Nice article that rings true, in most aspects, however not ALL corps have as their primary concern to make a profit. The MMORPG industry has become a very profitable industry and as such has attracted alot of companies with main, and maybe only, priority to make a killer profit.
However I am convinced that out there, there are still those visionaries who wants to primarily create a virtual world, to break new ground and not to, primarily, making a profit.
So I, as an old time MMORPG player, am waiting for the next Eve, the next Asherons Call and the next UO which sees beyond making "just a game" but rather will try to make a world. That is the new frontier, not space, but rather the virtual universe where only the imagination sets the limits. Unfourtunately the imagination of the majority of devs is limited to how they can make alot of money.
"I submit though that businesses looking to turn a profit is nothing new to the world of games."
Ok yes, glib and true but not the point. Yes, all business exist to make a profit. No one disputes it or begrudges a company for doing it. What the complaints are about is that it seems like publishers made money by making a great game. It was part of their project plan that the money to be made was dependent on the game being great.
That is no longer the case. Now publishers just want to make money. It doesn't matter if the game is good. Coming up with a good marketing plan for a crappy MMO is probably a hell of a lot easier than designing a great MMO and probably generates more short term returns on the investors' money, which is all they care about.
When someone says something along the lines of "...they just want to make money" its not the 'make money' part that is the focus. The key word is 'just' as in they have no real interest in their customers or product.
QFT! All corps want to make a profit, otherwise they go bankrupt, the issue is that most current MMO corps are much more interested in making a killing profit and not at all interested in creating an innovative and interesting game.
I hate to say it, but the original batch of gamers are actually now in the 40+ range. It's true. If you remember being absolutely captivated by the kaleidoscope of visual stimuli that was 8-bit graphics (when compared to the monochrome fare we were accustomed to), chances are you're now closer to the end of the road than the beginning of it. And I think it's the fact that we, the old (decrepit) guard, remember that appreciation of such simple pleasures, that makes us so much less forgiving of those games that don't meet our expectations.
Arguably, we are a jaded lot, which makes us hard to please. But mostly, the problem stems from the fact that what we demand is harder to provide than what the majority of today's gamers demand. Namely, something that will again captivate us. We've seen the evolution of games from the point of a single cursor being representative of your character, to some of the most visually stunning character creators imaginable. We've watched computer games throughout the majority of their evolution, and quite simply, little surprises us now. It's hard to be satisfied when everything you see seems to be simply an iteration of what you've already experienced countless times before.
And really, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Being jaded comes with the territory. We'll complain, but we'll still pony up our share of the development fees through box sales and subscriptions. I've had a hoot over the last 30+ years of playing games when the industry was tripping over itself to cater to *my* every whim. Let it now cater to the next generation. Eventually they'll be sitting right here on the same stump, wistfully remembering the good old days of WoW and LotRO and Guild Wars. They sure don't make games like that anymore ....
Of the posts I read I tend to agree with this the most.
I find it difficult to believe that the human race has changed so much in ten short years. Demographics be damned, people are people. Fun is fun.
The only reason us old geezers are doing most of the complaining is because the younger gamers don't know that they should be complaining. They don't know what they missed. It's not their fault. They aren't mutants they just don't know any better.
But then again, maybe they do sort of know that something isn't quite right because look at how few games have done really well since WoW. All these games have come out and how many have made a big splash? How many have done just "ok" and how many have dwindled to just barely surviving?
I don't think people want a new WoW either. I think they are ready for something different but untill something different comes along which is fun and polished they'll just stay with the comfortable old shoe. The door is wide open for someone to make a killing but the idiot development houses are too scared to step up and do it. Instead they try to play it safe by being cheap and sticking to the formula. It looks to me like that hasn't been working out so well for them.
QFT! All corps want to make a profit, otherwise they go bankrupt, the issue is that most current MMO corps are much more interested in making a killing profit and not at all interested in creating an innovative and interesting game.
here's an analogy for those who fail to understand the "wants to make money" concept:
you open a new restaurant and you are so passionate about food that you make sure your food is quality, well preserved and handled; your menu is clear to read and understand in terms of what you offer and the pricing involved. you put a great deal amount of effort to train your staff in the best serving ways you can afford.
you are confident that people will appreciate the service, enjoy the food and won't complain about the bill. these people will tell their friends and your restaurant will be full of happy customers in the future.
OR
you open a new restaurant. you put a great deal of effort in marketing campaings and decorate the outside to get people to walk in.
when your customers are inside you offer them a nicely presented menu with fancy wording and description; so they order their meal and when it arrives is not exactly what they thought it would be - or what was described on the menu. then they get the bill with some "add-ons" such as extra prices for the condiments or the live music which was never explained but since you are now in the restaurant and ordered you'll have to pay for... on top of that the food was not stored at the correct temperature and you feel sick the next day.
It is true that the original enthusiasts are now 40+..............................count me in the 50+ group.
Anyone remember gaming on the Genie Network where you biggest expense was the online fees?
How about the Sierra Network....................hmmm what was the name of that game..Yeserbius!
There is a lot of folks looking for something deep and modern that they can sink into for 4 or 5 years.
But for some odd reason seems that publishers are churning out games that will keep you interested in the 3 to 6 month range?
Wow was a lot of fun for a long time.................dang I am ready for something new
Its after midnight here and I was getting ready to log but I just wanted to jump in and say
. Well said.
Same goes to Shiymma, great response back and I'm glad we all could keep this thread civil and very constructive. A true miracle on this site at times.
Hopefully this conversation will continue to tomorrow and I can pick up from here after I get off of work.
Of the posts I read I tend to agree with this the most.
I find it difficult to believe that the human race has changed so much in ten short years. Demographics be damned, people are people. Fun is fun.
The only reason us old geezers are doing most of the complaining is because the younger gamers don't know that they should be complaining. They don't know what they missed. It's not their fault. They aren't mutants they just don't know any better.
But then again, maybe they do sort of know that something isn't quite right because look at how few games have done really well since WoW. All these games have come out and how many have made a big splash? How many have done just "ok" and how many have dwindled to just barely surviving?
I don't think people want a new WoW either. I think they are ready for something different but untill something different comes along which is fun and polished they'll just stay with the comfortable old shoe. The door is wide open for someone to make a killing but the idiot development houses are too scared to step up and do it. Instead they try to play it safe by being cheap and sticking to the formula. It looks to me like that hasn't been working out so well for them.
This. Screw the talk about demographics, I'm 23 years old and precisely where all the "market research" wants me for current game offerings, and I find them all stale and lackluster. Sure, I can recognize the inherent fun in certain games, but I started out with EQ1 a decade ago. My first understanding of an MMORPG was a game that had fun in all aspects, that could be enjoyed regardless of what part of the game you were presently engaged in, and that had longevity to keep me entertained consistently for upwards of a year or more. That is the standard I judge my MMOs by.
As far as I'm concerned, the argument of sandbox or themepark or precisely what features a game does or does not include are irrelevant. I can have fun with all sorts of systems and concepts, the question is for how long and whether or not its worth being considered "massive". When I sign on for a Massively Multiplayer game, I expect to be engaged in something huge that combines elements of economy, community, and global interaction. The genre to me fails when those things are cheapened or forgotten, in which event I just have to ask myself, why bother shelling out $15 a month?
Dear Jon,
relax. Your "it" will change again in the near future. You are going to look for a gaming experience that fits in with your family lifestyle: That lets you play for a half hour or an hour between household chores, kids, work and wife (or husband, significant other, lebens-abschnitts-partner, child-rearing commune - happy to be inclusive, Sir :)) and rewards you for it. That doesn't charge you a monthly bill, so you don't have to explain that recurring charge to your spouse (*). (Frugal is, after all, the new "hip" again). That allows you to bow out for a bit to look after the slow-cooker before coming back to the game.
If there's a market brewing that fits the "up-and-coming" generation as well as both the "family" and "geezer" generations, that's excellent news in my book. Sure, you "in-betweens" are in the lurch for a little bit. No fear - start thinking in 5 and 10 year increments instead of quarterly updates, and you'll fit in this new demographic before you can say "honey where'd you put the soccer bag".
And no, I wouldn't give my good knee to be 30 again. What do you know at 30, anyway. My knee surgeon did a great job.
"Yorick"
(*) Add same inclusive disclaimers if you feel like it
i believe that in an open market economy, demand will control the supply.
so unless you are living in venezuela or any other country which decides to limit what sort of games you can purchase; the producers will make what they think its in high demand.
Of the posts I read I tend to agree with this the most.
I find it difficult to believe that the human race has changed so much in ten short years. Demographics be damned, people are people. Fun is fun.
The only reason us old geezers are doing most of the complaining is because the younger gamers don't know that they should be complaining. They don't know what they missed. It's not their fault. They aren't mutants they just don't know any better.
But then again, maybe they do sort of know that something isn't quite right because look at how few games have done really well since WoW. All these games have come out and how many have made a big splash? How many have done just "ok" and how many have dwindled to just barely surviving?
I don't think people want a new WoW either. I think they are ready for something different but untill something different comes along which is fun and polished they'll just stay with the comfortable old shoe. The door is wide open for someone to make a killing but the idiot development houses are too scared to step up and do it. Instead they try to play it safe by being cheap and sticking to the formula. It looks to me like that hasn't been working out so well for them.
i find your statement surprising;. when some would claim that human behaviour has had the most profound change in history over the past 20 short years, technology being the prime contributor to the change.
"fun is fun"... hmm what is fun? i enjoy fishing - do you?
i won't dispute this and i think that's the essence of the article.
i disagree wholeheartly.
THIS is the reason why swg didn't retain the million subs, and the reason it was bleeding subs when they revamped the game.
however claiming that pre-cu was a financial failure i find very hard to believe of any mmo with 300k subs.
there is and was no evidence to suggest that it was a failure due to the nature of the game as you seem to suggest.
Wow, I went through this but having everything tied together hurts.
GJ writer, this article hit every point square on the head. Best article iv read in some time.
Like when twenty-five cents would buy a sixteen ounce bottle of soda, a candy bar and a bag of chips, cigarettes were forty cents a pack, a loaf of bread was a quarter, a box of cereal thirty-nine cents, etc..
Make it so the even the worse player can get to max level and then make it run on very low spec machies so that everyone can play no matter what and there is the state of todays MMOS, sad sad sad, oh and RIP SWG!
I started to write a long post expressing my view of this subject, but then my guild leader called me up and asked WTF R U! We RAIDZ tonight!!!
I so wish I could "train to the zone".
Completely agree. But now you have two homeless groups...those who were brought into this world by WoW and those that existed before WoW and have this "nostalgia" complex. I am the latter.
I do think the era of our "wants" in MMO gaming are over. Regardless of what neat or inventive new company brings to the table, WoW has set a bunchmark of globalized themes that will be replicated in one manner or another. For me that means just about every game will "almost" get it right. Of course the outlook for the other people is much better. I think the 2nd group..or those that came upon MMO's due to WoW and are now looking for something...I think they will find it sooner or later. But the rest of us...the days of waiting 10 min for a port or on a 15 min boat ride are over. It's a Wal-Mart world...and we're just remember how nice those mom and pop stores used to be.
Weak and tendencious article that fails to convince the target audience or add anything to the discussion.
Sad but true article, most of us dinosaurs (30+ UO/EQ/AC vets) are past our prime and may just have to seek out smaller niche games or just go ahead and play single player games.
To the deluded people playing developers, calling them lazy and the such, well apprently you have never worked in the corporate world for multi-million dollar companies and had a team of bosses calling the shots, developers are not the bosses.
Weak responses to the article sounds a little hypocritical don't you think? I don't know, maybe its just me ;) (BTW all opinions carry some form of bias in one form or another, this isn't FOX News, oh wait...that's more biased than all the other news networks)
In regards to the article, I do agree with it to an extent. I wouldn't attribute everything to whats older though and I had this opening blog entry all laid out in regards to a topic that was very familiar. I think a lot of negativity floating around especially in these forums are personal expectations and disappointment of particular games. I think everyone carries an ideal of their perfect game and tries to find something that meshes with it, but game development (at least what portion I have learned) never works perfectly especially when hundreds of people are working on the same project and then you got the voice of the customers that also sway the direction these things are going, which very much agree with these games being designed for the bigger portion of the current population. It's sad to see such pessimism and lack of understanding in regards to the development of a genre as unique as MMO's.
I mean look at all the different ways people apply some of the defining words and features of the genre like Massive and Immersion. Apparently to some its important enough to spend time arguing what should be counted as an MMO and what shouldn't (what is this, some kind of cool kids only club?). I guess these are some other things to consider.
Edit: There, I finally started my blog. I just wish I beat Jon to the punch on a similar topic. Oh well, thanks Jon for giving me a reason to quit procrastinating and rush it out ;)
Relatively younger people are characterized by higher levels of egoism. Relatively older people are characterized by more complex thoughts. Read that in a psychology book.
I think there's a lot of truth in that article. I'm 30 turning 31 at the end of this month. I've been hopping from game to game for at least 2 years now. None of those seem to hold my interest for 2 month straight. Right now i'm playing Final Fantasy 1 and i'm having more fun than i've had in months. I don't know what makes that game different. Maybe it's just another new factor in the sense i haven't played it in a long while but right now, i'm actually looking forward to progression instead of just killing time.
I think there's a market for older gamers. Something with more complex gameplay.
I disagree. Creating open, sanbox worlds is very complex and very costly. Creating newer next-gen games is also complex and costly. The two combined can be staggeringly prohibitive when a studio is looking to make a quick profit so the game can be published. The other avenue is a small-zone, content-packed game following the successful WoW formula. The decision is one most studios would pick: develop the lower-cost solution, make quick bank, and enhance if successful; scrap if not (losses minimized). Wash, rinse, repeat (ala Cryptic).
Another thing you fail to recognize is that those of us in our 30's, 40's and up tend to have more disposable income than those in their late teens and 20's. Even if I believed the argument that the industry is targeting the youngsters because there more of them than us (which I don't), I don't think you can argue there is more money in that demographic. Those of us who have been around for a while know what an MMO can be, what an MMO SHOULD be, and we're here waiting with our disposal income for one to meet our expectations...
It's funny you mention Cryptic as the guys who are making quick bank and if not successful leaving the IP to die out. They actually are trying despite all odds to appeal to everybody to make their bank.
Not so the case with NCSoft who seem to drop an IP like a hot potato should it not meet or exceed WoW numbers...Any MMO companies out there reading this next statement I say should take it to heart
"YOU ARE NOT BLIZZARD! YOU DO NOT HAVE AN ETERNAL IP LIKE BLIZZARD OR TURBINE (DDO:U , LOTRO)! YOU DO NOT HAVE TABLE TOP TURNED REAL TIME GAME (WAR)!" I think these gaming companies are failing miserably at making new MMOs because they just don't go out on limbs to find Visionaries who launched EQ or WoW or DDO or LotRo
They don't even have captivating stories like EQ, WoW, and the now long dead TR
They don't TRY to give us additional content or FIX what the heck is the PROBLEM with the game, instead they sell us a box of stale crackers and charge us for Refills until we're SO sick of the stuff that we cannot accept Stale Crackers anymore instead we want their crackers to have THAT particular Flavor whether it be Fantasy, SciFi, or some other Genre or mix in between.
P2P Games just focus too much on their bottom line and if it dips below a certain amount they throw the game in free mode and tell us to Get out a couple weeks later when they shut the game world down permanently leaving alot of us Die hard fans of the IP Homeless and Gameless (See Tabula Rasa).
F2P Games seem to go one way or another these days either it's Grind your brains out til you puke Asian gold farmer style or a graphically intense game that is Pay2Win.
I think it's about HIGH time we started letting the money talk for us again and tell these game companies what's expected of them to have a paycheck paid via us.
You don't go and REINVENT the Toaster and have it exactly the same as the first one except it's just shinier NO!
You make it do other things while borrowing what the FIRST toaster got RIGHT, So if you Developers of Any New MMOs SEE another game doing THIS Right or THAT right What do you think YOU should do? Something entirely different or something similar? I wonder which will earn you more bank in the long term?
This is pretty much right on target. Using the argument that there is more of "them" and less of "us" just doesn't hold in any other industry. As other products target more sophisticated audiences, they charge a premium for quality and specificity. Cars, houses, clothes, food...these products all target a variety of demographics and charge accordingly. Sadly, with gaming, there is an entire generation of gamers out here that is terribly underserved. This "one size fits all" philosophy in newer gaming design is missing out on an untapped opportunity.
Of the posts I read I tend to agree with this the most.
I find it difficult to believe that the human race has changed so much in ten short years. Demographics be damned, people are people. Fun is fun.
The only reason us old geezers are doing most of the complaining is because the younger gamers don't know that they should be complaining. They don't know what they missed. It's not their fault. They aren't mutants they just don't know any better.
After reading some of these responses, I feel bad for you old farts. I'm surprised (well, not really) that you tell me that I'm only having fun in a dumbed-down themepark like LotRO instead of a massive, open world because I don't know any better. I'm glad that I wasn't around for the "glory days" so that my opinions aren't tainted by nostalgia. I'm glad that I can enjoy both sandboxes (EVE) and themeparks (LotRO) because I don't spend my time blaming developers for creating shallow, stupid games that I have no interest in, in order to "save the genre" or whatever other righteous cause you think you have.
After reading some of these responses, I just had to let it out. I like where the MMO genre is today. I like that we're getting quality themeparks (TOR) and, hopefully, quality sandboxes (Earthrise). Plus new types of MMOs that I'm sure you'll still shoot down because they're not like the games you remember (APB, Global Agenda, etc). But, hey, you guys have a right to complain, like I said earlier in this thread. Perhaps it's time to move on, aye?
Eh, I think the article greatly exaggerates this phenomenon. I have encountered people who were like "we had to camp mobs for 3 days straight in Everquest AND WE LIKED IT!!!!", but those people are the minority. Overall I think this "old people" thing regarding a genre that's barely over a decade old is overblown. The generational gap is something you'd expect to see over bigger time spans, not something so short. All we are seeing here is that there are a small number of people that were very fond of a particular thing and are upset there isn't a lot more essentially just like it. That happens, but it isn't something huge.
Look at a lot of what the community has called crap recently. Those games ARE crap. They are hastily put together with all the problems rushing brings (they're linear, they shallow, etc). There's no surprise that those games don't do nearly as well as games like LotRO, FFXI, and WoW in the market (yes, even the "kids" don't like the bad titles). People generally don't complain about micro-transactions alone, but when they provide in-game benefits or are for content that should already be in the game in a P2P game, then people complain.
Games where the proper time was taken are being made though. FFXIV and SW: TOR are being made by companies that value quality AND have taken a long time to produce those titles. TOR is going to be having beta testing for OVER A YEAR (FFXIV for many months). I expect these games will be good even if they aren't quite for me (though I expect I'll probably like TOR). I expect there will be other good games that come out. I also expect there will be many crappy games that come out.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. In the regular game market there are so many bad titles we don't even keep track of them all. You should expect something similar with MMOs; it is certainly what we are getting. Because there are fewer MMO titles made, it means that the market is a bit more prone to noticeable streaks of bad, and that's been the only problem we've had in the last few years....just some bad luck.
"Remember to follow our Rules of Conduct"... Awe shucks, cause I had some down right nasty thangs to say about the state of the gaming industry today... Ol' fashioned like. If you catch my drift.
It's been years since I've played a game I truly enjoyed, I feel like Ned Beatty in "Deliverance". Really.
I think alot of today's MMO's have a lot of potential, but they just seem lack some basic understanding of human instincts. And that might have alot to do with the age of the people who are developing them. It seems they are only feeding the extreme emotions.
It's seems as though everything is about chaos, there no real balancing act between good and evil. Sure they say it's about good and evil but it doesn't play out that way.
There's alot of very simple things they could do to or add to modern MMO's that could be more appealing to older gamers, but it's like they're on this bad trip about sticking only with what works, and not giving players what they really want. Almost as if they are using anxiety to sell games. And by that I mean that they get people to buy games hoping that the game is good when it's basicly the same ol', same ol'. They're not really experimenting, the only things that really seem to be getting better are graphics and developers tools.
Now this kinda ticks me off because they got me on this horse making me believe that mature games was going to be their throughline through all of the future of gaming. And then all of a sudden that just drops out from under us all, and we're sitting here sitting on our hands to keep the jitters away because we can't find a reasonably good game that older gamers like to play. It's not that hard to figure out.
So there's really only a couple of things I as and aging gamer can really do, 1. Is i don't buy games like I used to (But I would if there were some that clicked). 2. I express my feelings like I am now and hope and pray. and 3. I try to conceptionalize idea's and make them public, and again hope and pray someone with enough sense catches wind of them and uses them.
At the moment there's only one game that I can play on my system that I am looking forward too. ONE!... Out of all these games, just one! And my favorite game of all time is getting ready to disappear from existence.
I'm not gonna beg and plead with developers anymore, and eventually i'm gonna stop conceptionalizing and sharing, and stop buying my grandchildren video games. I'm gonna stop talking to people about videogames, and eventually games won't even matter for me anymore.
You know the sad part about that is, they're just gonna say "Don't let the door hit yer butt on the way out". It's like nobody gives a rats patooie about anyone. Dog eat dog.... All I can do is shake my head... Yeah, oh yeah I can see 2012 being our date of demise...very easily.
Several years back I started writing a novel similar to that. I think it would have made an awesome game. It didn't have fishing and all that, but everything else is very similar. Almost scary similar.
Originally posted by brenth
heres a game idea for you: it partly refers to SEED: seed was a great idea but TERRIBLE implementation. it died shortly after its premature birth.
your planet is being destroyed either (fantacy or other) and you have to exit your world the basic method is a teleporter but the trick is your limited in the equipment you can bring and have to pick and choose (this is done so one player arrives with an ax and another arrives with a shovel)... the alternate mode is a ship that crash lands a teraformer or an ark and you wake up and prety much dont know any thing about where you are or about anything.
the basic premice is to learn and discover and explore and overcome chalanges if you do the ship route you usually start by trying to fix and clean up and salvage what you can cnd then slowly move out into the strange new world the key is the unknown is huge in this example you dont even know if the air is breathable what is safe and what will kill you I would also have a wide range of creatures (plant animal and other) some maby be easy to kill and others may take a whole squad or more. the key is you start by knowing nothing not even if there are other inteligent life or even other colonies and will they be friendly or hostile there would be growing crops,, fishing,, boats, ranching even astronomy depending on the theme there could be magic to learn alchemy definatly mining and smithing i would also have weather climates storms disease pestilance that would effect the world id have arctic areas deserts jungles yes this would be skill based and sandboxed.
if anyone is aware of a game like this (that isnt 20 years out of date) please let me know.
I'd really like the opportunity to discuss your point with you Jon. You see, I think if your premise was correct then the new games catering to the new audience would be remarkably successful. I don't see that, however. Many of the "new" games have struggled incredibly.
What I see are games with less polish, less content, less depth, less immersion, fewer ingame options, less development time, more fees, and more "innovative revenue generating strategies" (i.e. behaviour modification strategies that prime people to spend more on virtual goods). Are customers really clamouring for this, even the next generation of gamers?
I think you make a very logical point that game companies have always been interested in revenue. I agree; that's what business does. However, what you may be missing (probably because you don't think like this yourself, which is a good thing), is that there are at least two vastly different business philosophies that both have the same end in mind--fiscal growth.
One philosophy says the customer is always right. Money is earned "the hard way" via excellence in product, service, marketting and support. I think WoW and EvE are two games that have historically been driven by this philosophy. How they continue to respond to the lure of the other philosophy is something only time can tell.
The other philosophy is this: a fool and his money are soon parted. Some companies base their revenue on this cornerstone. They see customers as dupes, and making money as a shell game. There is less interest in providing a good service, and more interest in marketting psychology, or how to get people to hand over their cash, preferably for very little (or even nothing) in return.
I'm a social science professor, head of my department actually. I see all kinds of behaviour modifications strategies built into games based on the latter philosophy. The games are not viewed as an entertainment service, and gamers are not viewed as valued customers. The game's are merely a revenue generating vehicle. The less development and support, and the more psychological manipulation, the better.
Tbh, I'm starting to think that most of the people motivated by the first strategy now have jobs with Blizzard or CCP. That leaves others to congregate in other MMO houses. churning out sub-par games as quickly as possible, with as many cash grabbing strategies as they can cram into them.
So, I agree that "it" has changed. I think, however, that "it" is the philosophy that development houses base their revenue generating strategies upon. Actually I saw a Dilbert comic that illustrated this nicely. A CEO of a failing company said something like this: "Well we can't compete in quality, service or price, which leaves us with fraud--get me the marketting department." That may be a bit overstated, but I think it highlights an important concept.
Id pay for an updated eq/uo style game that offered a "real" world and challenge. I spend roughly 5k a year on games/computer equipment to support my hobby and thats a bargain compaired to other hobby's. So 50 bucks a month or even up to 100 would be no sweat for me. Theres a market out there and they have more money than your avg "i want it now" generation.
Just to clarify something folks. I didn't say that all of the ills of the MMO industry come down to this one, single thing. It's a contributing factor, but of course bad games are going to fail. A bad game is a bad game, a game without polish lacks polish. That's why i didn't make any specific reference to any game in particular. It's because this is an underlying issue. The article refers to people who are just generally dissatisfied with the core designs of today's MMOs. Issues like polish and implementation are topics for another day's column.
Personally, I don't share your pessimism about business philosophy. doing the whole "pull the wool over your eyes" thing works when you're talking about businesses that rely on single purchases for their primary source of revenue. The appeal of going to all of the trouble to make an MMO, however, is the idea that there might be a continued revenue stream. I would suggest that an MMO company looking to maximize its revenue would look at ways to entice people to stay over the long term, not to fool them into buying the box. The box is just the beginning, the real money's in the subs.
Just my opinion though.
Some of my best friends and most interesting people I knew never lifted a weapon in SWG. It gave me time to wind down after a large PvP battle or after hunting down Jedi with my Bounty Hunter.
So glad you mentioned Freespace. I was a huge fan of Freespace and Freespace 2. Spent a lot of time fighting in Squad Wars with that game. I would surely play an MMO with a Freespace theme.
Oh?
compare new music today to new music that hit 10 years ago. Do the same with movies and books.
Keep going back in 10 year spans. So compare 1989 to 1999 and then 1979 to 1989., etc.
I think 10 years is more than enough time to see vast differences in how things have been made and what was considered popular and desirable.
as an example:
1969:
Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid
Midnight Cowboy
Italian Job
Wild Bunch
1959:
Some like it hot
Ben Hur
North by Northwest
Pillow talk
movies in 1969 are far grittier than 1959 and directors and writers aside one can feel the difference quite palpably as you will easily feel the zeitgeist of the time.
1949?
On the town
Sands of Iwo Jima
Tokyo Joe
The third man
The differences are palpable.
Music?
1959 bobby darin, paul anka, and frankie avalon as compared to 69 with Temptations, rolling stones, sly and the family stone and Elvis.
I am getting near 40, and there is one thing i haven't seen mentioned that really makes me feel my age. Seems every game put out these days has their end game geared toward pvp. Maybe it's just cheaper to do that than put in a ton of pve content for people to go through. A large part of pvp in games these days seems to depend more on reaction time and keyboard skill rather than strategy. Things like circle strafing , staying out of line of site or keeping you target in line of site. When i watch my nieces and nephews play , they are very good at these things. They never have to look the their keyboard and rarely use their mouse. They have been taught how a use a keyboard since elementary school. When i was in elementary school a computer was called a calculator and in high school they still used typewriters. I just never learned how to effectively use a keyboard, so i lose precious seconds glancing down at the keyboard. This makes my reaction time slower (which is already getting slower with age). I still do ok in some games at pvp , but i'll never really excel at it. If you don't feel you can excel in the end game , your probably not going to stick with the game long. This is a big reason why i lean toward pve games with lots of content.
Ok putting the pvp thing , and my lack of dexterity aside. The thing that has changed the most for me (and what i miss the most) in MMO's are the communities. This being influenced by both how games are developed and of course by the people playing them.
The new MMO's that have been coming out don't promote strong communities at all. They are all quest based , which makes grouping much harder. Also games these days are all button mashing games. This makes it very hard to type and hold a conversion with people. Peoples solution for this was vent / teamspeak but it has so many draw backs. People wont use it for a variety of reasons , causes lag , don't have a mic, or my reason i like to listen to music when i play. So you are leaving people out of conversations. You constantly have people talking over one another and people who don't join the conversation because they can't seem to get a word in. You'll lose conversations when for any reason you have to leave your PC. All of this fixed if people could just type in chat instead. I know 99% will disagree but "for me" vent was one of the worst things to happen to gaming.
I started EQ in 1999 when MMO's were still a very new concept. Just a guess but there were probably around 2000 people on the server i played and I'd bet , in the 3 years i played, I had conversed with over 75% of them. That's pretty much unheard of in games today. People rarely socialize outside of their guild. EQ as a game made it really easy to be social though. There wasn't many buttons to hit and a lot of time was spent medding or waiting to melee a mob down. So you had plenty of time to converse with people.
I often hear of people talking about how slow and difficult EQ was in the beginning. Yes xp was slower and death penalties were a bit more but that's not what slowed me down the most. It went slower because you couldn't go through a zone without seeing someone you knew. You'd then sit and talk or perhaps help them with something. There was never the huge rush that everyone is in today. The only rush was the one you were in to get home from work. Not because you wanted that next level or because you wanted that nice new shiny item. It was because there was a very large community of people you missed and you wanted to get back to them. This is a feeling i have never been able to recapture.
I left EQ after 3yrs because i thought the game had lost something. I tried many different games trying to find it again. It took a long time but i finally realized the game never changed. The people playing it was what changed. Gone were the friendly and helpful people who were in awe of a new game concept. Now you had hackers, exploiters, and scammers stealing from you. People were getting greedy and conceited. You weren't allowed in groups cause you didn't have high end gear , or because you didn't play your character or spec how they wanted you to.
I don't put myself above this criticism. I changed also and am guilty of a couple of these things. I do my best now to watch out and realize if I'm doing these things.
I kinda feel sorry for the new players of today that never got to experience how it was when online gaming was new, but i guess the upside to that is they also don't miss it.
I've seen so much talk about the games and how poorly they are made. I can only think of 1 game i ever left because i just hated the gameplay. That was LotRO because i found the combat really boring/bland. Recently i have been leaving games because i can count the number of people who have talked to me on one hand, for the entire free month i played. Yes gameplay is important but i could probably play almost anything if i just found a friendly community to play with. Even a pvp game. ;)
Sorry this was so long, thanks to the people who take the time to read through it. 8)
Since most of my gaming years was in Taiwan, I couldn't shed light on the changing expreince in US or EU.
But as one of the first people playing computer games on this small island(windows 3.0 OS playing red alert, and one of the first Taiwaneese guys on the Diablo US battle.net server)
We went to a far more worse results than you eastern folks.
When PC games rocketed in the 90's, tons of great singel player RPG games flourished with great stories that seemed to last forever in our teen minds. But then there came the internet boom that push pirating sky high, and game companies couldn't make profit.
The end result is there are no delicate and meaningful games anymore, the market is dominated by F2P games in Asia(Taiwan, China, Korea). Nowadays, it's just more about comparing gear and outfits than actual game experience. The majority of MMO players care more about how fast they can reach cap and buy or get the huge sword that glows light and dragon mount, than really diving into a good fantasy world experience.
Sigh...
Being a game developer myself, I'm already wondering everyday "who plays these kind of games that is utterly no fun at all", and the said reality is we have to make them because the majority consumers want them this way.
I said it in a lot more detail, with suggestions on what I would like, over in this thread, But I copied the non suggestion parts to here:
No MMO is completely linear (themepark) and it would be impossible to create an all themepark MMO. You simply cannot make content faster than people progress through it. The difference between "themepark" and "sandbox" is really a very fine line. In sandbox games from day one you have to choose what you want to do be it raids, pvp, crafting or whatever. People who are self-motivated (or part of groups who are) will have the most fun in open-non linear environments because they will find ways to have fun on their own and don't rely on the game to lead them to fun things.
In themepark games you have a linear part of the game (leveling, doing the story arc or whatever) during which the game leads you to things to do and occupy your time with and (hopefully) have fun doing these things. But once you have completed all the linear parts of the game you have to choose what you want to do and find ways on your own to spend your time in ways that are fun for you which is the same as what occurs in sandbox MMOs. In either case if you are cannot, or are unwilling to, find things that make the non-linear parts of the game fun then you're probably not going to enjoy your play time.
As I see it the real problem with recent "themepark" games is that their linear content is fairly limited and they failed to add enough good non linear content for people to do once the linear content has been completed. While the recent "sandbox" games suffer from having no direction for people who aren't highly self motivated to get into the game and meet people who are self motivated and can help the previous to find things to do and have fun.
Looking to the future I think the next big MMO will be a blend both styles and not try to cater too much to one or the other.
This, exactly. $50 a month for a fee is nothing to me if a company can deliver an experience I enjoy. I drop that on lunch for my wife and I. There are more of "them" perhaps, but "we" have more disposable income.
The key is finding a way to pry it from our aging hands... ;)
I'm waiting for a "premium" sandbox style game to come along eventually, with an extreme focus on customer service, perhaps a fee of something like $49.95 a month, no "item shop" or "ala carte" fees, catering to a more mature audience. I'm sure some indie developer will figure it out eventually if the larger developers don't.
The cell phone companies certainly did, which is why I pay $230 a month for an "unlimited" plan now as opposed to the old nickel-and-dime fees of the past. Unlimited text, voice, and data. Do I always get my "money's worth" from such a plan? No, but it's nice to not have to worry about additional fees. The phone bill is the same; every month. No matter how much I use it.
Some of my best friends and most interesting people I knew never lifted a weapon in SWG. It gave me time to wind down after a large PvP battle or after hunting down Jedi with my Bounty Hunter.
So glad you mentioned Freespace. I was a huge fan of Freespace and Freespace 2. Spent a lot of time fighting in Squad Wars with that game. I would surely play an MMO with a Freespace theme.
Many of mine also and a few really stand out for me.
! guild member had been in a bad accident in his youth resulting in amputation of 1 arm and very little functionality in the other but SWG became a graphical chat system for him he thoroughly enjoyed being a entertainer and would often put on comedy performances he was a great SWG stand up comedian.
There where many like the above who lived for the pure crafter or the entertaining side of things.
Contrary to some of the comments throughout the thread SWG did indeed sell 1 million copies, SWG did around February 04 have 450k active subscriptions these had bled down to 300k-350k by 2005 and then took a large dip with the first disaster of 05 the CU this was further compounded in November that year with the NGE.
Pre CU sure it was bleeding subs every MMO does but there where a number of factors played a large role in SWG bleeding out in its infancy.
SWG was a very popular game with the military MMO players in 03 the second gulf war began then with a vast increase in troops in 04 I still believe to this day that this accounted for the loss of thousands of subs as our troops headed of for 6-12 month tours.
Despite WOW's release in 04 SWG was still very healthy and that 300k-350k mark was very respectable for its time then the CU hit and it took a nosedive I don't have figures but 25% of my friends list dissapeared overnight.
Then November that year arrived and "it was like a million subscribers all cried out and then where suddenly cancelled" well OK perhaps not 1 million but again basing on friends list within that first month around 50% of the active base at that time.
SO SWG 1 million sales, 03 -early 04 450k subs steadily decreased to the point of WOW and EQ2 release to around 325K, CU 05 - 250k, NGE - bordering on 100K.
So to the point of the changes made to the core game SWG had a very healthy retention rate of 30%+ based on 1 million sales any MMO in the world would snap your hand of for that kind of retention rate 18 month post launch but it obviously wasn't enough for SOE.
The playerbase didn't change the genre didn't bring something these players suddenly wanted the game was stripped from under them which forced the number crashes.
Anywhoo not to turn this into a Pre-CU SWG thing I do still believe a market is there for the type of game SWG was or UO was but it is going to take a studio with a AAA budget to truly convert the masses as much as DF, MO etc are trying to pave the way again they just don't have the production values and polish that a AAA can offer.
I have to disagree John.
The new target audience might not be as hardcore as it used to be.
It doesn't change the fact that the new target audience doesn't want longlasting games.
What is the point of making an MMO, push it out of the door fast, and have over 80% quit already in the first month?
If Publishers and Studios cannot be arsed to create MMO's with a longlasting appeal. Then why bother in the first place?
Then they should just stick to single player or multiplayer games instead.
Cryptic is a prime example in that. Champions Online and Star Trek Online are just horrible games from MMORPG perspective.
They are fun, but the longlasting appeal doesn't last longer then the first month.
Cryptic should have released them as single player RPG games with Multiplayer option. And then push out DLC stuff to gain extra profit.
No one would complain then. As that is how those games feel. And then price is more justified.
Cheers
I don't have an issue with companies trying to make a profit. I don't really contest that previous companies, many of which are no longer in existence, were doing the same thing. I do take an issue with the companies that pump out as much crap as they possibly can, sitting behind the safety that no one can actually return their purchase once they found out how crappy it really is, and/or who milke a franchise to death for a short-term cash grab.
Activision pumped out 25, 25 GH titles last year. The industry managed to get consumers burned out on music games pretty quick and that benefits who exactly? Pumping out sub-par medicore MMO each year with no chance in longevity and the very high likely hood of yanking servers when everyone burns through the content benefits who exactly?
Sure, the publishing companies at first but when consumers fork over their hard earned cash and they can pay off their debt and line the pockets of their investors, but what about the next group that puts out a quality game and the market shies away from it, what about the next time someone creates an MMO with long-term prospects and the gut reaction of the consumers is I am not going to pay 15 dollars a month for a game that intends to fold in 2 years and micro-tran me to death right up until the end?
There are a lot of publishers who really don't care about the long-term health of the industry at all, and it really shows.
No, it is not just you, this is pretty much it. I really agree with the OP and this is also why we won't ever see a game like Deus Ex (which is in my opinion still the best game ever made) or System Shock.
I'm sorry, but if letting the world devolve into simplistic stupidity is "where things are just going" forgive me if I continue to rage against clouds.
When I try talking to friends about the magical times I had playing EverQuest, I feel like some old man explaining to FallOut Boy fans why Led Zeppelin was the shit back in the day.
Let me clue you in. If you could play pre-trammel UO, or pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies, IT WOULD SUCK.
You all are looking at crap through nostalgia. Nostalgia blinds people to the negatives and makes the postiives seem almost mythical. Memory is selective and biased, and the games back then were no better (and often worse) than the games we have now. This is why no one makes them, because players wont play them now if they did (Darkfall has what? 10k subs? EVE had to trammel itself with empire to survive) and they wont be fun.
Just get over the castles in the sky you make out of past games, and accept the current ones for what they are.
I think you completely missed the point.
If the current day MMO's are so good as you say it is. Then why are they continue to fail? and fail? and fail again?
Why did Champions Online lost over 80% of the players within the first month?
Why is Star Trek Online going to lose over 80% of the players this first month?
Ever thought about it, that maybe these new MMO's just suck?
That they don't offer any challenge?
That they are so simplified, that you don't even have to use more then 2 braincells?
That they offer an attention span and have content that won't last beyond it's first month?
Just think about that, before blaming people to be stuck in nostalgia and being blind.
God forbid us, if all we ask is a MMORPG that has any form of challenge, make us use our brain just a tad little bit more and have an attention span and content / features that last us beyond the first month!
Cheers
This is a take on our MMO complaints that we have looked at in the forums. I would point out, that to be commenting on games that came out ten years ago you have to be older than most of the new players who have not played them. Being older is a requirement to comment, not an explanation for the comments as Mr Wood is proposing.
Yes it is true that you can be jaded, I feel I am but that does not stop me forming a reasoned opinion. Otherwise we might as well also dismiss the comments of anyone under twenty as too juvenile and naïve. This argument works both ways, most of the fanboys are naïve teenagers so lets ignore their comments. You reach the stage where you listen to no ones opinion other than, strangely, those in you own age bracket. You can be as parochial about our age as the importance of where you live for example.
If you think concerns about F2P, the linear nature of MMO’s, item shops, instancing, soloing and easy mode are as logical as a man shouting at a cloud; then I beg to differ. If you cannot see there are real issues here, as many of our younger members do, you are living in the land of gaming comany PR.
As to the statement, “I submit though that businesses looking to turn a profit is nothing new to the world of games.” He is quite right, but misses the key trend. The corporate nature of MMO companies has increased drastically since the early days. Developers led the field because no one was sure what would work in a MMO. Now they think they know what works and it is all about marketing it to as many people as possible. Many of the heads of old MMO companies were designers, now they are nearly all corporate types.
It is common at thirty to question who you are, what you stand for and where you are going. Based on Mr Wood’s previous articles I think he like most of us has made some mistakes but on the whole does a fair job. Yes you do have a real job no matter what they tell you. :)
Haha, that made me laugh and it's true.. put any game aside and take a look at most of the people that are playing it, all the childish nonsense really makes me feel like that grumpy man down the street chasing kids off his lawn, but instead i'm now just without the paitents to acknowledge they are even there anymore lol.
I'm glad this is being brought up by a frontpage writer.
I honestly do think there is more then enough market for what we oldies want though, it's just the current wave of belief in the industry, that it isen't.
I say we should become more vocal in fact, and let them know this.
I wrote a lil piece on this verry subject not to long ago:
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs.cfm/blogId/1436/entry/5643
I disagree with this article. I do not believe the linear nature that games have gravitated towards has anything to do with the wants or desires of the new generation of gamers.
Ultimately what gamers want is quality and content.
Whether that pill is delivered in the form of a linear or sandbox variety has very little to do with whether a game is successful or appeals to a larger crowd. Eve, LotRO, and WoW are examples of games like this. WoW or LOTRO's linear nature has nothing to do with the success those games have. That success is totally contributed to excellent quality and outstanding content. Eve is the only sandbox game left that delivers a high level of quality and content (or tools in the case of a sandbox), yet its sandbox nature doesn't hold it back in the least.
Bottom line is, the reason we're seeing tons of linear, instanced, shallow games is because they are cheap to produce and develop, You'll notice companies that make this type of game oftentime have multiple franchises (ie Cryptic). Their focus isn't long-term subscriptions. They don't design games that are meant to entertain people for years and years. They design games that will sell boxes/digital-downloads, and which will provide an influx of short lasting subscriptions that will fund their next project... thus continuing the cycle for the next shallow and linear game.
At the end of the day, there will always be more cheaply produced games flooding the market. And that means instanced, linear, shallow games. It's not because thats where the gamers hearts are, its because of corporate pocketbooks. At the end of the day, if any game is going to be successful, its going to be because of its quality and content levels... and that has zero to do with its linear or sandbox nature.
*another thing to keep in mind is that the average age of an MMO player is mid 20s, and getting older.
SOE did make money off pre-NGE and pre-CU SWG, alot more than they ever made from post NGE SWG. Not sure how you formed and opinion that they didn't make cash off pre-cu and did the NGE. All that happened was is that $OE got greedy, Smedley got greedy. He plays WoW not SWG and wanted a slice of that pie, he tried turning SWG into Everquest with the C/U/R/B and that didn't work so 6 months later he tried turning into WoW. Because he plays WoW and is a greedy man that wanted more money, despite the damn good takings he was already getting.
Before 2006 SWG had a playerbase for over a year that most big AAA companies would step over their own mothers for today! But Smedley trashed it in the quest for more, more, more bucks and ended up with the pathetic turd that has about 5k subscribers left. It was greed nothing else, I don't begrudge a profit. Why would I? I want the company that makes the game I like to make a good profit, but when people get greedy you end up where we are now. A few indepenant companies making the true MMORPGs and all the other greedy scumbags making AoC, WAR and STO and other crap like that.
If you couldn't make enough money out of 200k - 300k subscribers like you said then there'd only be 3 P2P games to choose from!
i feel the same.
I'm 26 and started playing mmos from about 8-9 years ago or so. really loved old mmos where you could easly mess up your first chars and had to start all over again. Every new mmo now seems to be on easy mode..no real penalty for not doing a bit of research ahead for your chosen class.
I'm reading everyday the gaming news with the hopes a game like the old Anarchy Online, but a bit updated and without the messed up launch...it's being developed. No luck so far. Although Fallen Earth reminds me of the feeling I had when starting AO, it still needs some polish...and maybe some more people.
I think this topic is good, it can also mean what happens when a game you used to like to play has changed too much since launch and has become a completely different game that you may not like anymore. The primary example would be World of Warcraft, back then instances/raids were not as easy as they are today and Epic gear actually meant something in those days, there was no emblem system and you actually had to really work for your epics, also there was 40 man raiding. Mounts were another thing, originally it was levels 40 and 60 and they used to cost more but now it's levels 20 and 40 and they don't cost as much, god dam it, I want my gold back... Leveling up wasn't fast and easy nether, in fact in those days you could level faster while in a group doing dungeons, nowhere days you just solo your ass without ever meeting a soul.
Speaking of souls, the worse thing that changed in WoW imho was the game's own community, most went from being friendly helpful people into brain dead forum trolls who say "N00b" to anyone new who wants helpful advise, they don't bother to help anyone and among other stupid things, it's really not fair, Blizzard have made the game too easy and most players have no mind at all now...obviously the stupid people thing was the final straw for me but I guess that's what happens when a game becomes too popular and old.
Nevermind I guess, all I can do now is move on, there are better games now and the best thing to do is ignore WoW and leave it to dust away in the shadows.
That's why I support companies like ICARUS. Fallen Earth is a good game. With a solid foundation. It has it's issues ofcourse. But it's a very solid game overall, with lots of content and features (a ton more then STO and CO alltogether) that can keep the average gamer busy for months.
Star Trek Online is still in the honymoon period. So you got lots of rabid fans defending it with every breath they have (after forking out over 300 bucks I cannot blame them really).
Just give it another week or two and even they will start to see for what STO really is (its already happening). Rushed, unfinished, shallow and broken core mechanics. And above all. No community.
The bulk of players (IMO) want quick in, quick out. Get to the end game, have the biggest and flashiest and create the biggest booms. Questing is there but no longer the same 'rush' when you find a good group and spend time just poking around, chatting and having a good old time killing stuff.
*shrug*
Box sales (and online stores for F2Ps) drive the market. Companies have to have a return in capital to survive. Give the masses what they cry for and (French Revolution anyone?) live another day.
There is a phenomenon in the movie industry which still bothers me. Gather a couple million bucks (or less) and make a truly crappy movie. Print a mass of DVDs and sell the crappy movie for $5-$10 on all the bargain racks in all the junk stores of the world. Make a profit in the millions of dollars. Pretty good for such a small effort overall. A lot of MMOs are taking this same tack.
That is not to say that none of the software marketers don't aim for a quality product. They do (sometimes). They have to to maintain longevity. But overall, more money comes in by faster turnout and quick deaths (of the games, not players). Thus we have a few good long term games that maintain a higher level of subs and a glut of 'soft' sometimes good, sometimes not so good games saturating the market.
I've always valued the ability to solo in an mmo when I choose, but I've always felt that mmos should reward group efforts, as well.
What we're starting to see is mmos penalizing group efforts. THAT is what scares me.
lol, it applies to EVERYTHING.
There is not a piece of media or social movement that has not experienced these waves of change.
On a larger scale, in the U.S. you can look at the 80's. People hate the 80's (lol, I was in a musical that my girlfriend at the time wanted me to join and it was set in the 80's. When the older people were giving dress and makeup tips to the younger people the younger people scoffed "people didn't really dress this way".) but the 80's are a rebellion to the 60's and 70's. 60's and 70's are a change from the 40's and 50's. We had to have the 40's and 50's because of the horrible 30's.
Of course the 30's happened because of the 20's. Culturally as well as the financial downfall.
I feel like it is a part of the wheel of time series:
"The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the age that gave it birth comes again."
Trends also recycle around. Using your example, kids today are wearing 80's fashion. It has been around for about 5 years now. It is slowly turning into early 90's neon fashion, since the last year or so.
I wouldn't be surprised to see someone attempt a 3d uo-like game soon.
Well THAT and if they forget to put in something to make you strive to stay alive it's usually a knee jerk reaction and the debuff SO Severe it makes you want to go strangle them (see Allods Online and FoD)
Plus I'll tell all of you right now Ever since Tabula Rasa took a nose dive (since it lost funding to continue and the devs got lazy)
I've been looking for something similar ever since, I got lost in WoW 1.x as it had fun combat, a great quest system, and a wonderful storyline I was familiar with after playing all their RTS titles for Warcraft. Unfortunately when they allied themselves with Vivendi Universal they got rid of two greats of the IP and things progressively went downhill Ultra fast. So now WoW is nothing more than a watered down Warcraft themed EQ. When WAR hit I had hopes it would be good as I recognized that IP as well and generally liked Warhammer Fantasy alright but it's not my favorite GW product. IT was ok but still not what I'm after and while Fallen Earth is a nice title it's Nuclear Apocalyptic and I just can't get into radioactive wasteland games lol
Tabula Rasa was great to me in the fact it had a superb storyline and you weren't some super soldier just some average person who got recruited into the Resistance of Humanity to fight the bane and someday reclaim Earth. You met various aliens along the way whom you helped and helped you, the game was great graphically and soundwise. Just too bad they got their rug pulled out from under them and they crashed and burned...I guess sometimes you DO need a bigger dev team than just 6 people. Sometimes I wonder if it wasn't all just to fund Richard Garriott's trip to space.....
Well I agree, sick of looking for a challenging MMO that is more "like the good old days". I seem to have strayed back to single player games in the meantime, simply because I'm not paying for a game that you can play while not in front of the computer (EvE), a super bloating marketing piece of crap (WoW), or something that keeps getting watered down and unbalanced (War).
The most fun I have had lately was LAN play of Borderlands and FPS are not my thing but there was fun to it.
Another Cash Cow (F2P) game called Battlefield Heroes was fast Furious action shooter that could quite easily have filled the void until something fit what I want comes out. That was until I gave up trying to get resolve the PunkBuster issue of being kicked every 3 minutes.
They then decided to upgrade the game and I now get kicked out of the game by PB because it simply won't run properly.
I think apart of your article misses one BIG piece of the puzzle, the Devs always point to your machine being "broken" and speaking down to you as if you don't know even where the power point switch is let alone having a stable system. Now I've been into computers for 30 yrs and know how to tell things to run. I am heading back to University for another degree (3 years long) and have a new $15k PC, you'd think that they would ask for my help in resolving their issues instead of passing to another moron who is reading a script written back when the game was in concept, bah.
My point is until We the People stop lining the pocket of these Morons, we won't get close to a Older Style Game!
There are only two games on my maybe list atm, Mortal Online and Earthrise, as they "seem" to give something I'm after. Who knows if they'll do the trick because so much can screw a game.
Besides, with all the big publishers loosing so much (I'm glad) I think the focus shall shift into the hands of smaller teams of independant devs once again. Big boys forget that they get too big for their boots and someone else out there is better than they are. All they need to do is make something good and we shall have a look, try, and maybe, just maybe, stick around to see it grow and flourish into something memorable....
Just to clarify something folks. I didn't say that all of the ills of the MMO industry come down to this one, single thing. It's a contributing factor, but of course bad games are going to fail. A bad game is a bad game, a game without polish lacks polish. That's why i didn't make any specific reference to any game in particular. It's because this is an underlying issue. The article refers to people who are just generally dissatisfied with the core designs of today's MMOs. Issues like polish and implementation are topics for another day's column.
Personally, I don't share your pessimism about business philosophy. doing the whole "pull the wool over your eyes" thing works when you're talking about businesses that rely on single purchases for their primary source of revenue. The appeal of going to all of the trouble to make an MMO, however, is the idea that there might be a continued revenue stream. I would suggest that an MMO company looking to maximize its revenue would look at ways to entice people to stay over the long term, not to fool them into buying the box. The box is just the beginning, the real money's in the subs.
Just my opinion though.
The last paragraph - ending with "the box is just the beginning, the real money's in the subs" - is it only an opinion, or are you privy to some hard data?
I think you must be wrong. It must be the case that you *can* make box sales of an MMO the primary source of revenue, since that is how single-player games make profits. In such a case, any income from retaining subs can be viewed as the icing on the cake and you would increase the investment in marketing that aims to maximise initial profits (strategy A), and decrease the investment in sustaining the MMO by balancing it just with the income from the players that do actually stay (strategy B).
I know it is trendy to pick on STO at the moment, but offering lifetime subscriptions based on the expectations and hype, and not experience of the actual game you are buying a lifetime subscription for, is an example of strategy A. Introducing MT into a subscription game, as is also happening in STO as well, is kind of an example of strategy B.
In fact now that I think about it, both these things about STO I have mentioned are great examples of profiteering from the fact that a fool and his money are soon parted. Buying a lifetime subscription for a game you've never played is foolish. Participating in MT while paying a subscription too, is not as clearly foolish but it is certainly getting there.
Now, you might argue that this is no good because people wont stand for it in the long run. I think you might be surprised. And I think there might be a lot of gamers out there that don't feel "fooled" if they buy an MMO that they only play for a month or two, if it was fun while it lasted. And maybe it is unfair to call them fools, because they felt they got their moneys worth.
The bottom line though is your premise that "the box is just the beginning, the real money's in the subs" is only one strategy that is championed by WoWs success, a success which publishing houses are finally perhaps beginning to realise is not repeatable.
/applaud
Well put, sometimes these devs think you're an idiot and what's funny is that sometimes just a few weeks later they feel like total asses when low and behold it WAS their problem. Point in case the original PB Fiasco over at EA/DICE's F2P BF:H, They told us NON-STOP "Well it must you guys cause we have no problems at all!" "Well it must be because you're using Windows 7...We only support XP and only SP2" "Well we now support Vista and Windows 7 but it's cause your using this or that or because your system is inferior" Then "Well everyone we found out the problem, it was a line in our code that was causing everything to go haywire"
If only companies would just FRICKEN FESS UP to making a mistake instead of being like a five year old when asked "Who did this?" "I dunno"
Well THAT and if they forget to put in something to make you strive to stay alive it's usually a knee jerk reaction and the debuff SO Severe it makes you want to go strangle them (see Allods Online and FoD)
Plus I'll tell all of you right now Ever since Tabula Rasa took a nose dive (since it lost funding to continue and the devs got lazy)
I've been looking for something similar ever since, I got lost in WoW 1.x as it had fun combat, a great quest system, and a wonderful storyline I was familiar with after playing all their RTS titles for Warcraft. Unfortunately when they allied themselves with Vivendi Universal they got rid of two greats of the IP and things progressively went downhill Ultra fast. So now WoW is nothing more than a watered down Warcraft themed EQ. When WAR hit I had hopes it would be good as I recognized that IP as well and generally liked Warhammer Fantasy alright but it's not my favorite GW product. IT was ok but still not what I'm after and while Fallen Earth is a nice title it's Nuclear Apocalyptic and I just can't get into radioactive wasteland games lol
Tabula Rasa was great to me in the fact it had a superb storyline and you weren't some super soldier just some average person who got recruited into the Resistance of Humanity to fight the bane and someday reclaim Earth. You met various aliens along the way whom you helped and helped you, the game was great graphically and soundwise. Just too bad they got their rug pulled out from under them and they crashed and burned...I guess sometimes you DO need a bigger dev team than just 6 people. Sometimes I wonder if it wasn't all just to fund Richard Garriott's trip to space.....
Really loved TR gameplay but tbh got lvl 50 on a thrax guardian in 1 month playing about 2hrs/day maybe a bit more during weekends. TR was fun but really one of the easy mode mmos of which almost everyone here complains about
I just wish they had kept up with the development of the game and did what they SAID they would do instead of going half arsed and RG running off into the stars.
i find your statement surprising;. when some would claim that human behaviour has had the most profound change in history over the past 20 short years, technology being the prime contributor to the change.
"fun is fun"... hmm what is fun? i enjoy fishing - do you?
Technology has changed but people haven't changed. When I grew up there were no cell phones. Kids today never knew a world without cell phones. Does that mean the kids today have a different brain structure? A <cell phone lobe> in their brains which I lack? I hardly think so.
No, I don't particularly enjoy fishing. But just because my mother did (and she did) it doesn't automatically mean that I would be unable to enjoy it. If your parents enjoyed fishing would that mean that your generation would be unable to enjoy it? That's the point I was trying to make.
Some people are making the assumption that just because the first wave of mmorpg players enjoyed certain styles of games it means that the younger players today would automatically find those styles of games unenjoyable just because they are younger. The sorts of things which were popular then could be popular again if given a facelift and started over fresh. And yes, maybe correct some of the mistakes.
Exactly
Don't reinvent the car it's fine as is with the way it works
Newer techs though mean you DO HAVE to put in a better engine give it a better paint job a nicer radio and possibly put in a more economical tank (Engine - Game mechanics, Paint Job - Graphics, Radio - Sound/Music, Economical Tank - More payment options than just a CC#)
Your tears are like Gypsy Wine.
You nailed it on the head and i was actually about to type this up and then ran across yours. The MMO community is what makes playing MMO's fun. I started with a game called The Realm in '97 and the community was small, probably less then 1000 total people played and payed just $5/mo. You knew people, you looked up to people, you knew when some one did something..etc. I was then invited into a early beta version of EQ. Again the community was small, you pretty much knew everyone on the server within 15 levels of you.
EQ came out and again at the beginning you knew everyone on your server, not just your guild. You talked to people in chat. The zone chat would have conversations between different parties in that zone. You some times had to work with the other groups to clear out other peoples problems(trains). If you were a dumb ass then everyone knew it and no one grouped and you left the game or rerolled and changed your attitude. You helped people and they helped you. Corpse recovery runs well after you should be in bed would occur. It was overall a great community.
When I played AC and AO, they also had great communities. I'm not for sure where it changed, but all of a sudden you started to play a game and if you weren't in vent then no one spoke to you. There was no community, you only knew the people in your vent which was probably also your guild, no one typed in chat. In my EQ guild everyone typed in chat all the time, now you join your guilds vent and you either have some 15 your old that wants attention and talks non stop or some ex marine telling everyone they know the best way to do what ever and for everyone else to shut up. They have rules that if your in game you MUST be in vent or you'll be kicked (and I've been in the same guild 6+ years), so I end up rolling a alt so know one knows i'm online because I don't want to hear the B.S. in vent.
I have tried pretty much every major MMO out and tons of these shitty ass Asian influenced F2P games. I believe that I could play any of them for a length of time given the correct community.
Overall I think the gaming that we remember is over. Technology has surpassed it. I hate hearing about how great UO was because no one would play it now. To do anything you first had to do something else. Chop Wood, Mine...etc. Want to learn to use a certain skill? Use it and the more you use it the better you got with that skill. Darkfall has that and no one played it because they wanted to spend their time playing the game, not getting things ready to play the game. So the Dev's then make it easier to gains skills, instead of taking months to be able to use a giant fireball, they make it take weeks... People think they want something in games, but they really don't.
People want a good community when they play a MMO, otherwise they'd stick with single player games. SWG had a good community at the start, I enjoyed that game. I enjoyed chilling in a watering hole in some player made town talking to others while some one played music to buff us up before we went out on a hunting trip to gather material for the doctor to make buffs...etc. Give me the same experience with no one talking and zero community and I'd been bored.
This, exactly. $50 a month for a fee is nothing to me if a company can deliver an experience I enjoy. I drop that on lunch for my wife and I. There are more of "them" perhaps, but "we" have more disposable income.
The key is finding a way to pry it from our aging hands... ;)
I'm waiting for a "premium" sandbox style game to come along eventually, with an extreme focus on customer service, perhaps a fee of something like $49.95 a month, no "item shop" or "ala carte" fees, catering to a more mature audience. I'm sure some indie developer will figure it out eventually if the larger developers don't.
The cell phone companies certainly did, which is why I pay $230 a month for an "unlimited" plan now as opposed to the old nickel-and-dime fees of the past. Unlimited text, voice, and data. Do I always get my "money's worth" from such a plan? No, but it's nice to not have to worry about additional fees. The phone bill is the same; every month. No matter how much I use it.
Agreed.
I'm surprised that with all these wunderkind developers, genius marketers, and MBA executives in this business, no one can do simple math and figure out that more than one market exists, and that people will pay a premium for services tailored to their liking.
Maybe someday these guys will wake up and the industry will expand in multiple directions instead of one.
Yes, i would give my good knee to be 30 again....
Still stop sometimes to think what fun it was to play Tir na Nog on the Spectrum.
"it" will never be the same, just face it.
40 man raids in WOW is as good as life gets.
I'll keep waiting. I've got my $50 a month ready right here to go to the first game developer to make an MMO that caters to the more mature set... ;)
(And in the meantime, I play the best sandbox style game I have found for us oldsters - Fallen Earth with the occasional dash of WAR! PvP when I feel like it. Two subs to games, $30 a month, plus my wife's - that's $60 a month in my household spent on MMO's alone. I'd happily pay more, too, because you know something? This is the best entertainment value for the dollar you will ever get. An expensive dinner out for 2 and a movie with drinks can cost me $200, easy. Think people my age won't pay that for a premium, everything-included MMO game? I'd cream my... you know what. :) )
Just to clarify something folks. I didn't say that all of the ills of the MMO industry come down to this one, single thing. It's a contributing factor, but of course bad games are going to fail. A bad game is a bad game, a game without polish lacks polish. That's why i didn't make any specific reference to any game in particular. It's because this is an underlying issue. The article refers to people who are just generally dissatisfied with the core designs of today's MMOs. Issues like polish and implementation are topics for another day's column.
Personally, I don't share your pessimism about business philosophy. doing the whole "pull the wool over your eyes" thing works when you're talking about businesses that rely on single purchases for their primary source of revenue. The appeal of going to all of the trouble to make an MMO, however, is the idea that there might be a continued revenue stream. I would suggest that an MMO company looking to maximize its revenue would look at ways to entice people to stay over the long term, not to fool them into buying the box. The box is just the beginning, the real money's in the subs.
Just my opinion though.
Thanks for thinking out loud with me about this. It's fun. I'd like to continue a bit if you don't mind ^_^. I agree that the "pull the wool" over your eyes approach has traditionally been found in one-shot marketting scams. Playing this out over the long term is vastly more complex, but I believe it is happening, in some instances.
I believe this not just because of the b-mod principles I see in bad games, but because I'm currently looking at the slides for an online game training seminar that teaches people how to string people along and milk them of their cash over the long haul. I'll lay out the strategy for you. (All of it is not contained in the one training seminar, btw, it's just one of many examples I have to draw from).
So, it begins with a marketting splash. Something needs to get people's attention and draw them to the virtual environment. A good IP is helpful with this. Flashy marketting also plays a role. I'm looking at some just to my left actually. Then when people enter the world, it needs to tap into core social-emotional needs. The game needs to give people opportunities for connection, accomplishment, identify, emotional expression etc.. Virtual goods can easily be plugged into these needs. Initially, these goods are made available for free. The training explains that this is done in order to "prime" people. In other words, they become accustomed to the goods and attached to them--or dependent upon them to have their social-emotional needs met. Then, you monetize the crap out of every aspect of the virtual world that you possibly can.
Some people will put up with this. Why? They're hooked, and they don't recognize what's happening. They now rely on the game and its virtual items to maintain friendships, express their feelings, feel good about themselves etc. They may also have already purchased an extended subscription, so they feel hooked monetarily as well.
On top of these hooks, some companies intentionally use intermittent positive reinforcement strategies connected with the marketting of their virtual goods. Gamers pay money and are sometimes rewarded in ways that meet social-emotional needs ingame. The fact that they are only sometimes rewarded is pivotal. This keeps them trying, and spending, more and more cash, hoping that (a) they'll be rewarded again, and (b) that the money they've already spent (wasted) will somehow seem justified. This is hard sciece btw, and anyone familiar with the strategies can spot them at a glance.
With these strategies in place, an MMO company can milk vulnerable gamers for months or years before the gamer ever realizes how badly they're being taken for a ride--if they ever wake up to it at all. Quality, customer service, depth, all become secondary concerns. The bad MMO is like a bad drug.
Do I think that all MMO companies are doing this? Absolutely not. Some are, however, and some of their CEO's even brag about it at their summits and seminars. I've seen and heard it first hand.
It may be that you and are are both correct in our observations. I can accept that some new gamers want things that differ from my preferences. At the same time, I see this other issue as having an important impact--for the negative--on the MMO genre.
Loved the article! Amen brother.
This article identifies the problem precisely. However, i think it falsly assumes the new strategy developers are taking is working...
I dont think it is. And i dont think the developers are seeing the subscriptions they were hoping for.
Granted, yes, teenagers are the prime market. Its alot easier to get money out of them than it is the 30-40 year old people. We are alot more discriminating. We work for our money so we dont want to waste it. Whereas a teen has a parents credit card to pay and play at a whim.
The developers have given up trying to create a "Great" game, and instead are working franticaly to try and ismply devise some tool for hitting those teenagers with whatever will make money fall form their pockets.
Ive heard all the arguments and im convinced now, it is money it is greed. Its one thing to say "Its a business, people want to make money". Ok fine, but so did Banks and Real Estate lenders. And look where that got us. Its a totally different thing for an industry to go down the drain because everyone is frantically trying to dig more pennies out of the rotting pile of corpses.
I think its time we put our foot down and say enough is enough. Its not ok to just do whatever you want ismply because youve laid down the "But its business, not personal" card.
Its not ok to keep developing crap games simply because Blizzard is your new god.
What really amazes me is how many people are just ok with the mmorpg industroy producing crap games. All you have to say is "But its a business, they want to make money" and all of a sudden its like anythign they are doing is ok.
They are gettign away with it because there are enough teen market people who just dont know any better. They dont know that mmorpg's can be really really good. They think WoW is like the epitome of mmorpg design, and so antyhing that even comes remotely close to wow is a success in their minds. And so they are willing to keep paying their subs.
Those of us who have played UO, and the greatest of sandbox mmorpg's Asherons Call, and many others, know there is a better way to make an mmorpg. Unfortunately, we are outnumbered by the throngs of new players with their parents credit card numbers.
I see the problem, i dont liek it. But at the same time i dont see it resolving itself any time soon. Once an indsutry gets in that frenzy state they keep going over and over and over until it literally destroys the industry and burns everything down to the ground. Then they try and mkae money off the ashes, and until there literally is nothign left in existence, they wont change.
I look at games like LOTRO, created by the same developers who made Asherons Call. AC was an awesome game. It was sandbox, open ended, dynamicly changing world, character customization was outrageously good in comparison to any mmorpg out today. The loot generator was like a Rolls Royce to a skateboard compared to WoW or any other game. It was just a far better game in every aspect.
Then WoW is released, 48 trillion people play it over night, and the entire industory lit up into a frenzy of themepark meyhem.
From what ive heard, Turbine originally was creating Middle Earth online. Which was going to be a sandbox style game set in the Middle Earth realm. Massive landmasses, open ended gameplay, character developm,ent, the whole massive multiplayer online game we were all wanting to play.
Then when WoW released and had instant success they scrapped the project and set to work creating a themepark ride with Middle Earth costumes and banners and called it Lord of the Rings ONLINE.
It only takes a couple weeks playing the game to see how its a dead end linear path. Almost like reading a book. Every moment of your characters life is carefully planned out, and rigidly enforced. Your only allowed to be in themepark area alpha, and then when you level you move to this other area because instantly everythign in the old area is worthless. Its so stupid.
With each patch they have automated more and more of character development. Reember the old days when character leveling meant you were given say 15 points, and then you assigned points to make your character the way YOU wanted it to be. Nowadays all of your character development is done by the game istelf, and most people dont even know they are missing out. WHen i bring this up in game they just sit there O.o "What do you mean..."
They removed all difficulty from quests/activities. And basically turned it into an insta win hotkey fest. No matter how hard you try your character will never fall behind or get ahead of any other character of the same class. 7000 Hunetrs in the game wear the exact same armour from head to toe, and have the exact same weapon, or are looking for their own exact copy of it. And if you mention any of this in game people cry like they are hippy cult children angry because you insulted their god.
I see their reasoning, "We dont want anyone to feel like they are left behind, or their characters are less than someone elses". But in the process of doing th is, extreme socialism, they have removed any and all motivation to play your character. Log in for 30 a night doing a single raid run, any time spent above this is wasted time because your character has no means of gaining any sort of benefit from playing longer or doing anything else.
In LOTRO each wepon use to have a speed raiting. So it had a damage rating, say 100 damage, and then a speed rating say 2.00 speed. This together gave you your dps. Dif weapons had dif speeds, dif damages, etc etc. Well some Turbine develper reasoned "A burglar might equipt a club, which isnt the best option for a burglar, and then no one will play with him...." And so they removed all speed variance from ALL wepaons and put them all on one static speed. This way, if someone equipts a dagger, or a club, or a sword, it wont matter, its the same weapon, just a different name... How fricken stupid is that.
That issue in itself sums up what they are doing tot hat game...
Im hoping the industory will learn their lesson. It would be one thing if they were making all these changes and people were flocking tot heir games. But the oens doing this are driving players away in masses and they dont get why its happening. Lotro recently released their "Skirmishes" system. Which, in concept, is a great idea. But then they went and remove any possibility of improving your character through it, removed ALL loot from ALL mobs in the skirmishes, and basically turned them into the perfect grind with zero reward....
Then they stand around shaking their heads wondering why people arent playing them.
Are they that disconnected form the playerbase that they just dont see it? No. I think the problem is market research and Questionaires.
They put out a quesitonjairre asking the playerbase what are 3 things you like about the game what are three things you dont like about the game. And of course the majority of people say "I dont like to grind, i dont like working to get items, i dont like that aspect x about my character isnt the best in the game".
And so they take this information and turn around and make the game so that every player regardless of time investment or work put into the game walks away witht he best armour, the best sword, the best anythign there is available.
The market research is asking people What do you like and what dont you like about the games. And of course people are answering "I want more reward for less work.". But this is comig from the same place that drives people to download cheat codes and trainers. And eventually causes them to stop playing the game the instant they get to the "end". Which happens immediately since there is no more work/time involved in getting there. The peoples feedback is ritually "I want more reward for less time/work committed.".
Anyone who has played AC will tell you "End Game" wasnt even in our vocabulary. Seriously, we didnt even know what that meant. There was no end game. In fact, end game seems outrageously opposed to what an mmorpg is suppose to be. This isnt some stupid single player game that has a start and finish. This is a living breathing world that my character lives in.
End game is the "I want it all and i want it now" mentality. Those people who salavate all over themselevs wanting the best whatever ti is and they want it now, and they have money so they demand they get it.... Those people commercials have created.....
Hopefully all these games will fail miserably, and then the next generation will fail miserbaly. And then, when enough development teams go out of business and bakrupt from doing it, someone somewhere will create an actuall mmorpg and renew the industry.
Until then.... this is it folks, pay for it or not.
It's only a crap game if someone thinks it's a crap game.
As an example using the same statement: "What really amazes me is how many people are just ok with the music industry producing crap music".
Well ok, but people aren't looking at their music as crap. They are looking at it as something that warrants their attention for whatever reason. One can lay down any number of reasons why most popular music is crap but all those reasons are instantly deflated by someone else saying "well I don't think it's crap".
You can't really argue personal taste and the things that made earlier games (subjectively) great might not be of any importance for other people.
One can bring the discussion to video games. I can very easily look at video games as "crap" entertaiment. The stories are derivative at best bordering on silly and ridiculous at times. MMO's tend to have levels of repetition that border on the ridiculous.
Of course one could then say "well early games didn't have this" yet it seems to me that camping mobs was a very popular thing in these games. Or waiting around for boss spawns. Or what a friend of mine said of early swg crafting "it was like a 2nd job that I wasn't getting paid for".
Yet in the end I really like video games. I don't have to qualify that statement to my friends because it is what it is.
I imagine for players of today's games it's the same thing. You can tell them that it's crap all you want but they will just nod and smile and have fun because in the end "they are having fun".
Of course I've seen people try to trivialize players/fans of more contemporary games as "sheep" or "stupid" but quite frankly I could never get behind such sentiments.
I've never met a person who was a self proclaimed lover of 'high brow" entertaiment who didnt' like something that was considered low brow or ridiculous by some other group.
edit: lol, oh and "welcome to the forums"
Exactly!
And i think this is exactly what the people's need :)
A way to actually tell the developers, this isnt ok. All of us do matter. mmorpg.comn posting this type of forum prompt is hint enough. WHy do we matter, because we are the maintay. We are the players who buy 3 accounts and leave them active for 5 straight years. We are the ones who anchor the kins. We are the ones digging thruogh content and bringin itout into the limilight. We are the ones most vocal to people not playing the game. Blizzard owes its success to word of mouth. People played the game and then got their buddies to play, who in turn got their grandparents to play, and grandchildren, and everyone.
The teen market kids are doing this too, but they are extremely whimsical. My youngest son will retart his wow account, play for a day, cancel it, and not return for 12 months. Whereas we "whatever we call ourselves" are the ones who activate subs, often more than one, and continue playing.
The developers are after the quick easy money. But they also know they cant do it without the masses of US clapping and preachign their game along the way. This thread in fact seems like a research market tool of its own.
I could full on see some developer paying mmorpg.com some sum of money to post such a thread, fuel it, and then dig out the information. What are the older crowd so angry about. What can we do to appease them. What are they really upset abnout. Is it possible to make them think they are outdated and that THEY are the problem, try and embarrass them into conforming. Maybe we can make them believe the new games are innovative, and the older crowd just arent hip to this new exciting way of gaming.... pfffft
Burn the house down. Blizzard got away with it because the hid the end of the tunnel far enough out of sight. You didnt see the linearity of it or the themepark of it right away. But that was a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" situaiton.
It isnt going to happen twice. Developers the world round are finding that out right now the hard way. Millions of investor dollars ar ebieng lost by development teams that tried to do the same thing blizzard did...
Exactly!
And i think this is exactly what the people's need :)
A way to actually tell the developers, this isnt ok. All of us do matter. mmorpg.comn posting this type of forum prompt is hint enough. WHy do we matter, because we are the maintay. We are the players who buy 3 accounts and leave them active for 5 straight years. We are the ones who anchor the kins. We are the ones digging thruogh content and bringin itout into the limilight. We are the ones most vocal to people not playing the game. Blizzard owes its success to word of mouth. People played the game and then got their buddies to play, who in turn got their grandparents to play, and grandchildren, and everyone.
The teen market kids are doing this too, but they are extremely whimsical. My youngest son will retart his wow account, play for a day, cancel it, and not return for 12 months. Whereas we "whatever we call ourselves" are the ones who activate subs, often more than one, and continue playing.
The developers are after the quick easy money. But they also know they cant do it without the masses of US clapping and preachign their game along the way. This thread in fact seems like a research market tool of its own.
I could full on see some developer paying mmorpg.com some sum of money to post such a thread, fuel it, and then dig out the information. What are the older crowd so angry about. What can we do to appease them. What are they really upset abnout. Is it possible to make them think they are outdated and that THEY are the problem, try and embarrass them into conforming. Maybe we can make them believe the new games are innovative, and the older crowd just arent hip to this new exciting way of gaming.... pfffft
Burn the house down. Blizzard got away with it because the hid the end of the tunnel far enough out of sight. You didnt see the linearity of it or the themepark of it right away. But that was a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" situaiton.
It isnt going to happen twice. Developers the world round are finding that out right now the hard way. Millions of investor dollars ar ebieng lost by development teams that tried to do the same thing blizzard did...
To quote:
"When you leave a game, write a calm, professional letter as to why. Then post it on every game forum you can. If even 1 person reads it and agrees, you've just saved a fellow gamer $50 AND helped talk to the devs."
This, exactly. If you hate a game, tell me why. I'm already staying the Hell away from Mortal Online because of the horrific customer service I've seen in their forums - mods get away with murder there. They aren't getting my disposable income.
Shrug.
I imagine for players of today's games it's the same thing. You can tell them that it's crap all you want but they will just nod and smile and have fun because in the end "they are having fun".
The threead s filled with people who are seeing the same thing. Ask a Turbine developer if they are happy with the amount of subscribers they have. They havent added any new servers asince launch, ever. I hardly feel like they are sitting there saying "screw the older crowd, we are so happy with all this money..."
Blizzard... maybe. The Frnech company who owns them and takes all the profits... perhaps. But as far as everyone else? They are frantically trying to throw these games together and find that magic stick that knocks the money from the markets pockets. I feel comfortable in what im saying becasuse i know none of them are succeeding, with the noted exception.
I said earlier, it woudl be one thing if the games were just becoming massive successes, filled to the brim with players and just doing great. Thats not the case. The ones i have played go through routine mass exoduses. Players log in when theres a new patch, check it out, and then move on. And each time that happens its less and less. The hard core crowd is there, sure. But somethign tickles me when i think about the disproportion between the amount of subs they were thinking they could get doing it, versus the amount of subs they currently have..
If mmorpgs were succeeding and doing so great, yeah, i woudl probably rethink my position. I would probably start thinking about just getting along with the way things are now. But thats not the case. Teh games start up, like STO, and they are total complete empty facades. Its not even an mmorpg development, its like those movie title games that are released. You know what i mean, some popular movie comes out and then the producer sells the title rights to some developer who already has a game made on some shelf, and simple repaints the names and colors it in the same light as the movie and releases it.
You sound like you want us all to just shut up and like it. Like as if 3 trillion people are playing the new innovated awesome way of mmorpging and we few scraggly elders are grumpy off our meds. That isnt the case. And we arent going to be won over by the tactics.
My position stands. Im amazed at how many people are willing to just roll over and act the fanboi simply because... because... well i dont know, why is that?
Hey Hey
I just recently turned 30, and i called my dad up and said , you know you where correct the music i listend to when i was 16 really did suck. It does not matter how hard i try to like listing to bleach it will never be the same, as when i first heard it sitting behind the supermarket, sitting in my friends jeep, on break. With FFXIV on the horizon i recently went back to FFXI , lets just say my memories of the game , and the realities did not match up. (nothing against the current ffxi players , but the UI is a bit clunky)
What i would like to see are more games, that have a similar learning curve as chess. Chess is very easy to pick up , there are a few piece with a set amount of rules for each piece. However wile the rules of chess are very easy , mastering the game is very difficult. A game does not need to break you in order to be challenging, and some of the most complex games i know of, have the least amount of rules.
Gofor instance, is another great example of this.
A while there was a great article about scope, alot of us "older gamers" seem to be in the same place as the "younger" ones. We sure as hell know what "we" want and do not give a shit about what others want.
Welcome Home
Rev
/off topic STFU about SWG , it was along time ago most of us have gotten over it.
This seems to be the common strategy developers are taking to combat the problem of producing weaker and weaker games. Instead of spending the money and hiring the talent, they just spend twice as much money on PR. They figure its a lot easier to force people to like the game than it is to try and create a game people will like.
So they come up with these strategies of "Its innovation, let go of your VCR and embrace your dvd player..." Or the music analogy because everyone is a teen at some point and likes crazy music, then grows up. So now the industroy wants to try and bill their weak games as somethign we just arent hip enough to enjoy.
Britney spears is Britney spears, its not crappy music because im not hip, its just crappy. Teens like it because it plays into the scientificly devised sounds they have associated with the feelings and emotions teens are ging through. Teens arent set in their ways. Teens are malleable, whimsical. This is why marketting in general is aimed at younger people. Their taste in products isnt rigid yet, its still in clay form. So its a lot easier to get teens to like somethign than it is to get anyone else to like somethign.
The music analogy that keeps showing up on this thread is testament to the opposing argument. Its on jst about every page, on que, someone makes a good argument that the development teams arent putting as much work and resource into the games, and then right after that someone says "remember how you use to like pink floyd...."
The developers are trying to get away with spending less and less money developing the games while turning as much profit as they can. And until gamers get fed up with it and stop buying their games, they will continue.
Turbine completely got rid of all their creative talent and replaced it with business model developers. Spend an initial chunk of money developing the game, spent twice as much marketting the game, then strip the crew down to skeleton crew size maintaining the game, rinse repeat pocketing as much profit as possible.
If i were a businessman that didnt play mmorpgs and could care less about the people playing them, and could care less what happens to the industry, then sure, i could see myself doing the same thign. Lets just create somethign that looks spectacular, market it like mad, get people to sign up, sucker them into lifetime accounts or 6 month accounts, or hidden hard to cancel month to month accounts. Reduce our maintenace down to nothing, and soak it for all we can get out of it. In the mean time we start anew profescting our method along the way.
You see it happen in the movie industry all the time. Some producer gets his hands on a red hot IP. The Hulk comes to mind. And then they have 2 options. Get large investment and try to make a really good movie. Or go cheap on every aspect, spend the least amount of money possible making the movie, spend twice as much on marketting it as they did making it, and then just see how much money it can pull in. If it flops, well, we didnt invest all that much money from the start. And we can try again with this other IP we already are working on.
This would work TREMENDOUSLY well if not for one simple thing.... the interwebs! I cant count the amount of movies i didnt waste my money on after reading real people reviews on the web and finding out the movie was a low budget high marketting pos.
These forums, and many more like them have also saved me countless sums of money. STO for example. I was really excited when i first heard about it. Then i started to pick up bits and pieces. How long it wa sin development. Who was working on it. And then aspeople started to play it and came to the web "Its 2 dimensional space... pos game..." I went to the website, watched the movie trailers of it, and sure enough, you could see what people were talkign about... cha-ching just saved 50 bucks and a troublesome cancellation process.,..
Then there is the learning curve. Sure, a game shouldnt take a degree in philosophy to learn and enjoy playing it. But at the same time it shouldnt be themeparked and linear, while touting on the cover MASSIVE DYNAMIC EVER CHANGING GAMEWORLD THAT YOUR CHARACTER LIVES AND GROWS IN, ETC ETC ETC. Take a look at any game box, they ALL tout themselves as being the most exciting SANDBOX STYLE, OPEN ENDED, FULL CHARACTER CUSTOMIZABLE GAME, ever created.
Every box touts the game as being exactly what all these people are wanting. Then the actual game ends up ebign themeparked, end game orientated, canned character design. pos.
Its failry obvious the Developers know EXACTLY what each and every one of us are complaining about. Its no secret. I was amazed when i started finding these articles around the web. Forum threads, Etc etc. They dont spring up like this when its just one or two disgruntled nostalgics. It happens when there is a significant important element of the playerbase unhappy with the compromises developers are making for the sake of quick easy turn arounds.
Sandbox v Themepark is a whole lot more than just styl;e and taste. Its about quality products versus profitable products. As a consumer i want to do whatever i can to ensure my money doesnt get lifted from my wallet by marketting and post production tactics.
All of us older gamers remember all the times we got burnt by computer games back in the single player days. Awesome looking box, magazine company says its phenomenol... then we shell out $$$ for it, take it home and find out it sucks bad. Try and take it back and "doh! You actually opened the box? You cant return it if its been opened....".
Seriously, this was actually part of the early computer game business model. The non-return was an actual business model element. With the advent of the interwebs you dont need to own a magazine corporation to get the word out anymore. Anyone with a laptop and internet connection can scream across the world about how bad a game sucks. And within minutes millions are on to the scam.
What amazes me to no end though is why business continue to do this. I mean sure, you might get lucky and get a kajillion subscribers, but he odds are against you. Why not sink all your creativity and resources into a good game. And then just enjoy your work. Why does everythign have to be a sell out, quick money making scheme.
Would it really be that awful to just create a good game. So what if you dont reach WoW style subscriptions. None of these themepark wow clones are doing that either. Just make a good game. Support it with a post production budget. And let it be what supports you and your families. Your doing what you love. Your earnign a good living doing it. Do we all really need to be warren buffet and donald trump? Why cant we just settle into what we love best, be it writing code for mmorpg, or developing quests and storylines. And then enjoy a good living doing so.
Too many companies get sucked into the Google/Aol/WoW frenzy and end up destroying everythign in its path along the way.
Yeah, at the beginning of online gaming everything was about the choices players made. Today it's all about graphics and who has the best sword or armor or in some cases rifle. I'm actually considering swearing off anything with graphics all together, except single-player and hub and instance, though I'm not very good.
Responding to this comment from Scot:
"As to the statement, “I submit though that businesses looking to turn a profit is nothing new to the world of games.” He is quite right, but misses the key trend. The corporate nature of MMO companies has increased drastically since the early days. Developers led the field because no one was sure what would work in a MMO. Now they think they know what works and it is all about marketing it to as many people as possible. Many of the heads of old MMO companies were designers, now they are nearly all corporate types."
I think you've identified what I see as a key behind the scenes trend that shows up in the quality (or lack thereof) in many new games. It's push it out fast and monetize the hell out of it, as opposed to take the time to get it right, and earn customer loyalty.
I don't think gamer preference or developers are steering the ship anymore; it's marketting psychologists and suits trying to hook people on bad online crack. I think they hook fewer of us than a quality game like WoW or EvE, but they suck a lot more cash out of each player by stimulating, perpetuating and escalating demand for virtual goods.
OP!i dont mind the fact that EA or blizzard decided to sell mo(multiplayer online)game instead of massive multiplayer online game .more money there cool they can all go make mo!what i feel is illigal is branding a game because they got multiblillion people on the server
come on!am i the only one seeing somethingwrong here!does this means that if i strart server about chess and that i have have billion of player on server i will be an mmo!
fi thats ALL it take to be an mmo is a huge amount of player (who cares if they are 1vs1,grin)then we might as well leave the mmo name to them and find a new term defining what truelly is a massive
i dont mind about instance ,i dont mind whatever ways they go at it
but me i consider AIKA a mmo
farmville (facebook)is a mo,wow,is ,as coutless other are
eve IT IS A MMO
now can somebody help me and all the massive player find a new term for what we play since noW
MULTIPLAYER ONLINE AND MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ARE ONE AND THE SAME
we need a new term for our segment of gaming (massive)
“I don't think gamer preference or developers are steering the ship anymore; its marketing psychologists and suits trying to hook people on bad online crack. I think they hook fewer of us than a quality game like WoW or EvE, but they suck a lot more cash out of each player by stimulating, perpetuating and escalating demand for virtual goods.”
I don’t want to sound like a mutual appreciation society, but you have summed up where the industry is headed now.
I mentioned the change from designer/programmers as the heads of gaming companies to corporates being the CEO’s. To give you some examples the founder of EA Trip Hawkins did his degree in Strategy and Game Theory. The current CEO is John Riccitiello who has a Business degree.
Lets take a look at Mythic Entertainment’s two founders; Mark Jacobs was a desginer and programmer, Rob Denton was a communications engineer who beame a lead programmer. Mythic was taken over by EA and lost Jacobs. So the CEO is now Riccitiello, a buisnessman.
This is a trend in it’s self, smaller companies taken over by larger ones who do not have a designer or programmer leading the company. But even some businessmen are more in touch with gaming than others. The medical students who began the small gaming company that was Bioware wanted to form a gaming company which shows where their interets lay. Bioware, now owned by EA ends up being run by a buisnessman who has a background in Pepsi Cola and Haggan-Dazzs, but enough about EA.
Cryptic Studios were conceived by Michael Lewis and Rick Dakan who describe themselves as roleplayers who wanted to continue what they had done in their youth online. I could not find anyone to be named as the first CEO, but essentialy it was founded by roleplayers. In the summer of 2008 John Needham became the CEO, an excutive from SOE. The company was now being run by a corporate, in the winter of the same year Cryptic was sold to Atari. I do not know if Needham was brought in to pave the way for that move, or as a corporate the new CEO could only see a benifit in joining a larger company; but I really doubt that is a conicidence. David Gardner is the CEO of Atari, he started in sales and marketing and moved on to management. Cryptic now go on to produce the disaster of Champions Online. Need I say more?
I have backed up my statements about the gaming industry by doing a little digging on the internet. It would be nice if the staff writers occasionly did a bit of journalism as well instead of just telling us we complain because we are old crusties, without anything to back up their point of view.
I am not saying you must have a creative person as the CEO to get a good game, but it sure helps and now we are entering an era where the only only people at the helm of MMO’s will be suits.
Its not only the MMO genre, its seen everywhere and ofcourse its the suits that is ruining the gaming industry
Just look at another popular genre, the FPS genre. There is either the futuristic doom/quake kinda FPS, The alien/experiment Half-Life kinda FPS or WW CoD FPS.
As soon as the suits sees these games sells good they tell their developers to make 1045,6 games just like it. It doesnt matter if its good or not, as long as they can sell the boxes with marketing.
Its really easy to sell "Box sale mmos". Either just get a big name (Warhammer,Lotro, Star Wars) or have alot of female chars with big boobs and skimpy clothes ( and make that the box cover)
Why make mmos that will last longer when you can make one mmo, sell some boxes, put it on life support and then make a new mmo so you can sell some more boxes. There is alot of companies that does this (NCsoft, Codemasters etc)
Even one of my favorite companies Bioware is doing it now. They even said before they released Dragon Age that they have 2 years of content to release, but do they add that in the box? no they make a short game not nearly as good with content as Baldurs Gate, just so well have to pay for the DLC content (damn you EA!) same thing with Mass Effect 2.
One thing you can look for in new mmos is if they have lifetime subscriptions, then calculate how many months that would be in normal subscriptions, that is pretty much how long the developer thinks the game will last. Just look at Lotro, we now have to pay for so called "expansions" with very little content that we got for free before and gets boring after 1 week of play. Lotro ahs outlived its lifetime subscription but many is still playing it becouse theres nothing better to play.
Its not really like games before had better storyline, but i still enjoy taking out my old consoles to play some SMB, GunSmoke or Punch-Out much mroe then playing most of the new mmos.
I also think that while many people say the want "casual games" that is solo friendly and whatnot is becouse most mmo players have only played WoW and dont know what they were missing in UO, DaoC, AC etc
Truth is not so much that they do not make games for the older crowd they do what every other money making company does. Go after the new flavor of the month and try and push a game out before it is no longer The IT thing.
Games that are bulit on another Media is the thing to do or so the game Dev's think, I for one think that SWG/LOTR/D@D/Warhammer ect, ect, are all junk. Wow was the downfall of the MMO world by bringing in people who never played an MMO before but could easly be brought into one so that your 75 year old grandmother could roll faces.
Until we see more games that are made from scratch with new ideas every company will follow blizzard in the quest to make a MMO as easy as they can to attrack old and new players to the game so they can see the $$$ going into thier bank account.
Look at the upcoming games and see the top 3 are all made from another media Final fantsy in my opnion should have never been made into a MMO, Lucas Arts has shown us in the past that they care not for the player playing the game only what will drive in more money. I for one am tired of seeing games pushed out from another media and not living up to the hype. So really for me I try MMO's that maybe have 100 players in them and some of those MMO's out there are fun but without players feels like a huge single player game to me. Until the pattern stops and people quit paying for these games we will never see a MMO that has it all.
So in ending we are to blame for this more so then anyone else cause we give money to Companies to pre order a game we think will be great and turns out to be nothing more then a medicore game, for ex, warhammer/STO/CO/aion/ ect ect.
Funny I had the exact same feeling in my first MMO regarding tons of bugs it had. And I was a QA in single player games at the time, wondering why did people pay for such crappy games.
I'm always puzzled with the end game concept but I guess it IS the hindrance that comes with levels based games. Remove levels and there you go, no more need for end content.
Soon or later they will understand that the word of mounth is a killer.
At least blizzard brought quality to the genre. Before that studios didn't really care publishing a game bugded to hell. Their excuse was it wasn't possible to make polished MMO as too complex.
I concur, I do think LA is at least responsible for 50% of SWG failure. We arlready can see the trend in SWTOR.
I always thought playing MMO was to:
1) Have Fun
2) Experience a living world
3) Evolve / customize my character the way I want to
4) Play / group with anybody no matter of levels, classes, gear...
What a great article, and I will keep my response short since there are so many down the list. I'm 29 and this also resonated with me. Yes, games have become way too easy for me, but age has little to do with it. Anyone that started playing games, even MMO's in the late 90's or very early 2000's realizes this. What those players have been exposed to is drastically different than what players are doing now.
The difficulty and the depth of the game is a big builder of it. I read way back on the earlier pages about priests becoming high priests or popes of a town and warriors command guards or etc. The RPG element has died for the seemingly immediate rewards. WoW was going to create hero classes without levels based off of quests and RP, but that went to the wayside due to trying to cater to their massive crowd. I can't blame them either!
So, here is where older gamers that have experienced the evolution of gaming are being left out. We are indeed like old war veterans saying "I remember the day when there was no LFG channel, or tab. I remember when there was no thottbot." One could say we created this huge monstrosity. Imagine what WoW would be like if they prevented add-ons, if there were no sites that shared how to beat a boss, where the awesome gear is, or etc. I can garauntee you that it would be a world of different right now, just like it was when it first launched. The genre is adapting to the speed of the gamers themselves (or is it the other way around?).
The only way to do this is to build a totally dynamic, fluid, and highly adaptive game. I can't see that happening anytime soon, the depth to it would require a set of GM's always changing the world, but that would be a great job! I would love to mess with thousands of players every day, no, don't kill them but give them some world events to deal with. If there's any hope for a return to what "we" enjoyed, it is a move from data mining these poor games to death to creating a world where the players cannot command it.
Dang, my response got long.... haha!
After reading some of these responses, I feel bad for you old farts. I'm surprised (well, not really) that you tell me that I'm only having fun in a dumbed-down themepark like LotRO instead of a massive, open world because I don't know any better. I'm glad that I wasn't around for the "glory days" so that my opinions aren't tainted by nostalgia. I'm glad that I can enjoy both sandboxes (EVE) and themeparks (LotRO) because I don't spend my time blaming developers for creating shallow, stupid games that I have no interest in, in order to "save the genre" or whatever other righteous cause you think you have.
After reading some of these responses, I just had to let it out. I like where the MMO genre is today. I like that we're getting quality themeparks (TOR) and, hopefully, quality sandboxes (Earthrise). Plus new types of MMOs that I'm sure you'll still shoot down because they're not like the games you remember (APB, Global Agenda, etc). But, hey, you guys have a right to complain, like I said earlier in this thread. Perhaps it's time to move on, aye?
Well said!!!
Old does not equate to maturity. I to enjoy some of the newer games and have no desire to go back to mudding,UO, Whatevergame. While I enjoyed Adventure in the Big Cave, Zork, Gladiator and a few others there is no way I want that now.
People have learned to be overly harsh on line. Its safe and oh yeah, very leet. Some feel that the problem is no games are being made by gamers....not true! Just look at LIv ( Aion). She is a gamer as are many folks on saff. They made a game they like. Iplay it. albeit less and less. Its just not my game.
Another game by gamers in Guild Wars. Check out an interview on utube with Jeff Grubb of the GW2 team. He is just giddy about the game. I will definetly give it a seious look. Great storyline including 3 books so peeps can be up to date on the lore and what has passed to change the world since GW1.
I'm 62 and hope to live to be 100 to see what games are like in the mid 2000s.
I hope all kinds of people make games in the hope one of them will be a 'home' for me for as many years possible.
Add Global Agenda to that list of Made by/For Gamers
The folks at HiRez Studios told me one time I went up there that alot of them played UT3 for a few years and that some were even Ex-WoW/Ex-EQ Players.
Funny, I am upset on the modern MMOs because of the opposite reason: Nothing freaking changes. The graphics is better but otherwise are things basically the same since EQ came out.
I want something new and fresh, not playing the same old junk as I had since Meridian 59 came out.
I don't think this is true. To a certain extent games have always been a labour of love, more on the art side of the spectrum than the profit side. The reason for this is that games traditionally had a very limited audience. Back when DAoC was made there was a far, far smaller market than when Warhammer was made, thus it stands to reason that when DAoC was developed the developers weren't concerned with gaining as many subscriptions as possible, or making as many items that could be sold in an item mall as possible.
Games are much, much more mainstream now than they were even just 5 years ago, they're a billion dollar a year industry. It's wrong to assume that game companies wanting to make a profit over all other considerations is an on/off switch, it's actually a spectrum, and it's naive to assume that corporate greed hasn't started lusting after the lucrative gaming industry.
I agree with this assessment, I've read posts about how the "new" mmo player is "polluting" the genre but was forced to look at that statement in context, yes for that poster we are but truth be told nothing to be done about it now but realize what side of the fence one stands on and react from that. My thought is many of the people who played the first crop of mmo's are at what I call a "move on" point, there aren't enough of them out there to make a highly successful and profitable game anymore atleast not as far as the suits are concerned so instead of having a game to play we are forced to here constant dino whines about how the entire genre is borked to no end. This makes me think personally if these games keep launching and finding success who is really wrong then? Is it all the complainers who feel STO,DF,AOC,AION don't reach there expectations or is it the players who keep these games going? I think though we are in a middle ground right now as I see it game survival is not different enough to say but for certain sub numbers across the board are only time will tell though.
But MMO’s don’t keep launching and find success, that is the litmus test they keep failing. What is a success? Well it is being able maintain a viable player base after launch, one that generates enough income to update the game with a reasonable amount of content and keep those players in the MMO. While generating the comapny a decent profit as well. None of your examples is doing great numbers wise apart from Aion which already had a huge eastern following. STO is just out, you can’t use that as a judge of success or failure as yet.
Even gamers who I tend to think of as rather naïve; that is teenagers (yes I know we were all new to gaming once) are starting to catch on. Go and check out the forums for FPS games, where they are more strongly represented than here, check the player reviews. They are starting to talk about the easy mode, the online cash tie ins, the way games are getting smaller with dlc left out so it can be sold later.
Those with passion for the gaming industry like programmers, designers and writers are being removed from the helm of gaming companies and being replaced by business suits. What do you think is more likely to happen? An explosion of creativity and gameplay styles, or the remarketing of the same old products redesigned to milk as much cash out of players as they can?
Jon Wood's giving them too much credit. What's "it" these days is basically just a cop out to appeal to a broader casual audience. It's an ill-conceived cop out because even casuals aren't going to be in a hurry to pay $15/mo for what's being delivered. Most MMORPGs released these days are made by people who have no idea what's so great about one.
The thing is, you have done your research. You have clearly shown that a massive shift has taken place in the MMO industry. Gamers turned developers used to be the driving force behind the games. Now the bean counters and marketters are calling the shots.
It's no wonder that many of the recent games have been disasters with more and more opportunities to spend money on virtual junk.
Is the next generation of MMO gamer really asking for this? If they were, 2009 wouldn't have been such a dismal year for MMOs.
I think this article makes a fair point about developers doing what they think will make them money...
But if there's all this "clamouring" for sandbox games of yore then there's clearly still money to be made from them.
CCP seems to be doing quite well with Eve,
And while recent mmo crops have been disappointing EQ-clones, there are quite a few sandbox-type mmos nearing release. Earthrise will be out this year and they've predicted a modest 70-80k subscribers. So they've made a sandbox game that can cater to a relatively small number of subscribers and still make a profit.
There's clearly still money to be made from sandbox mmos, so my response to Jon Wood is....
We can say "we like X in mmos and not Y" and that's a matter of personal taste, not our age or inability to keep up with the times. It's just fine for eg. a company to make a KOTOR mmo that's more single-player and less mmo. While I really enjoyed the KOTOR games, this online version isn't mmo enough to satisfy me so I won't play it and it's ok for me to say that. There are plenty of other games on the market.
And FYI, I never played Ultima Online or any of those other games back in the "good old days". I started out in City of Heroes and have played WoW and a bunch of others. I know from playing those that the linear, story elements aren't what I enjoy most - it's other players, and the more sandboxy the game environment the more scope for fun there is.
Well back when MMOs were picking up, and before WoW, I recall new games comming out were few in number and seemed more "Original" Think about when AO came out, it was really cool, but broken and buggy, SWG was really cool as well, but still buggy and in the end could have had more thought behind it, Then Planet Side came out, that was a really neat game for its catagory.
So From UO, a sanbox open PvP(Top down view), SWG a sanbox Sci Fi 3D First person/3rd person, AO had many cool things when it came out, And somthing a little off the wall, Planetside
Seems that most companies not just the ones I metion above were looking to make something that would catch on
Then WoW came out and it was "WoW"
After that, every game mostly was a clone of WoW
I think most of the games comming out now and over the last few years are low budget or tight wad when making anything new, WoW is a Fourmla that is repeated and modfied over and over. Its a safer and predictable business model
Look at Warhammer, the graphic engine is subpar for the year it was released. (face it, its a cheap game)
Aion has nicer graphics but its a WoW clone (If its not, then tell me what is)
Global Agenda is using the Unreal Engine seems like the original one....guess they didnt want to make their own modern engine (anyone Ever Play Tribes Vengeance? Or BattleField 2142) And the world is not even open like Planet side was, and when did Planetside come out?
Im Still Playing STO, but common guys, is it really that hard to make outer space seemless in 2010?, %99.99 of space is nothing! Granted I can undestand If I go from Space mode to Ground mode, but thats it
All I see now really is rather simple, MMOs have a "WoW Formula" that they go by, thus allowing more MMO companies to start on a low budget with low man power, Doing anyhitng in depth or original is a waste of their money, And I think its going to get worse
Micro transactions on cheap games, Games made with half of normal content and the other half sold as DLC (not Full games with %50 more as DLC) and alot of Reused Programming Engines that are sold to low budget companies to make fast garbage with alot of hype, and MMORPGs that are released 2 years to early....(aka Age of Conan) Originality and innovation will be on hold for a long time I fear
I find the generational analogy hard to swallow, as this doesn't seem to be a matter of resistance to progress, but rather conflicting ideas of the direction in which progress ought to be made. A political analogy would be more apt than a generational one, yes?
Jon, that is what happens as we get older. We see what was and how what is is so much different. As with life the gaming world is no different.
Hopefully we will find something out there we can play and enjoy . 30? wait till you get past 50 and pushing 60 like me. ;)
The thing is... It hasn't changed that much. Most MMOs are STILL facing the same technical issues they had 5-8 years ago. Most MMOs are released half done and many dont really have the funds or the tech to acomplish what was promised. Lets take Mythic for example since John mentioned them. They are trying to acomplish unrestricted RVR in WAR but JUST like in DAOC - they will always have problems on both server and client side while doing that. Then we have other companies trying to create "massive" siege battles as instanced version. Pretty much same thing happens. Even with long loading screens they still struggle like AOC is probably the best proof of.
Nothing has changed in this regard. Massive means Lag. And ppl will not pay for that. Its that simple. Even WOW is now turning into smaller and smaller units to prevent technical issues dominating the gameplay. Partly because the hardware has not been updated to follow the added fluff that has been put into the game.
For me "it" will never chance. Its just the gamers that change. A MMO gamer that ends up realising that the MMO they are playing is dominated by buff/nerf method (like WOW for example) will never look at any other MMO the same way again. And he will never find a new released MMO that hasn't got even bigger balance problems and there for - will NEVER find another MMO that isn't ruined by the feel of "devs" balance.
The word "niche" comes out quite often in MMOs now adays. That ususallyh happens when the devs that were trying to create the next WOW realised they dont have the funds - the technical ability or the basic ruleset to acomplish it. It was not they were not trying to create it. They just failed in it.
Here is the thing about MMOs. A true MMO is the product of the GAMER. Not the developer. The best example of this is addons in WOW. There are litterally thousands of ppl that create addons to change alot of things in the game. You can totally recreate the interface and give it more personal style. And alot of ppl do this. Even the casuals play around with it since quite frankly - the basic interface in WOW is pretty bad. Now.... thats quite intresting when you see all the other MMOS copying WOW interface.... Instead of creating easy to use tools to allow the gamer to make the interface their own....
Like I said... IT is still the same - look at the LOTRO interface tools to realise how naive the devs can still be when it comes to MMO gaming.
The thing is - Very few of the games released today are really copying the CORE of WOW. THey are not copying the gameplay - the Co-op part - the animations over detail "screenshots" - the free mods and addons to create their own interface.
No... most of these games are still stuck in the same issues MMOs had before WOW. Bugs and technical problems. And the devs are stuck in fixing piles of these instead of thinking further.
SImple is ususally better. Then its eaiser to change it when you find out doesn't really work. Most MMOs today are stuck in creating something complex that turns into pile of bugs and Lag and heavy instancing and long loading screens. Thats simply not what gaming is about.
Even turn based MMOs would probably have better gameplay than many of the so called higly "graphical" MMos that have been released in the last 2-3 years. And ppl are not stupid. They will rather have fun PLAYING a game than watching pretty screenshots inbetween the loading screens.
To be honest this has been the way it is for almost a decade now. Not a lot has changed since the rise of WoW and the fall of games like UO and EQ1. If anything in the last year there's been more hope, with a lot of interest being generated for more classical MMOs like Darkfall and Mortal Online. These games may be flawed but the fact they've had large followings (much larger than Shadowbane had when it tried to bring back some classical MMO philosophies 6-7 years ago) shows a trend for a sub-genre of MMOs on the horizon that return to old values.
i hear ya john i turned 32 just a few weeks ago
i started with FFXI and bounced around from mmo to mmo till a guild member from ffxi told me about swg at first i followed the G4 reviews of it and ignored the game then finally i broke down and tried it
i joind SWG some point after what is known as the CU happen and about 6-8 months before the NGE hit
its upon my joining of SWG i realized i shouldn't rely solely on G4 lol :P (no offense to them but they dropped the ball when they based there review solely on SWG's state in its release and decided never to update it)
so to keep it short let me say SWG pre-NGE was the ideal game for me when it existed then they took it away
and ever since i have bean pining for a smiler in depth gaming experience be it scifi or fantasy I dont care
my question is this are you saying that its because im old that i am not happy with a generic experience like most new mmo's offer and that i will never see another in depth gaming experience again ?
or are you saying its just a mater of time before they try to toss us older players a bone ?
more and more these days im also noticing mmo company's are more interested in the bigger better graphics then they are in game play or there game world in general and this too just gets to me in a bad way
A large part of the problem with some of the current games is that its extremely expensive to build a game in the US (and takes forever) and games developed overseas are created for an entirely different audience. If you look at blizzards current move to add micro transaction pets to their arsenal its clear that even the North American companies are trying to be open to new ways of monetizing their games. As long as accounts and gold have been available to be bought and sold there have been those who are willing to sell their in game goods for real world money. These days the audience is just larger and the size of the internet has made it even easier to find buyers.
Technology has changed but people haven't changed. When I grew up there were no cell phones. Kids today never knew a world without cell phones. Does that mean the kids today have a different brain structure? A <cell phone lobe> in their brains which I lack? I hardly think so.
No, I don't particularly enjoy fishing. But just because my mother did (and she did) it doesn't automatically mean that I would be unable to enjoy it. If your parents enjoyed fishing would that mean that your generation would be unable to enjoy it? That's the point I was trying to make.
Some people are making the assumption that just because the first wave of mmorpg players enjoyed certain styles of games it means that the younger players today would automatically find those styles of games unenjoyable just because they are younger. The sorts of things which were popular then could be popular again if given a facelift and started over fresh. And yes, maybe correct some of the mistakes.
you are completely missing the point.
even though i can understand your theory which tries to put all "enjoyable" excercises into one universal box; tastes, habbits and expectations change over time.
sure some people from the "second generation" of mmorpgs might find some of the older mmorpg models appealing. sure there are some people in their 20s which might prefer going to a nightclub and listen to pop music from the 80s than to current R&B or electronic music.
The fact remains that MOST of the people in the 20s, whilst they might still have "fun" going to a 70s pop nightclub, they'd rather go someplace else.
for older mmorpg gamers, freedom, realism, immersion and simulation was their idea of fun. yet, whilst surely a younger gamer will still prefer playing a game with such features than doing his homework, he'd probably rather be playing a game with balance, limitations, powerups, and action. that's the point the OP is trying to make.
Sorry to say, hardly the gamers fault that the developers have become sloppy and lazy, and yes I remember the days when thing's weren't claimed as wow clones, but eq clones, ironically wow was a clone of eq basically. It's to be said developers are doing things based on not giving two anus wanks about the customer who pays for his food his old college bills and his condoms when he finally gets laid after long periods of being a douche. But at the same time I see the point, a lot of new age gamers aren't really informed and extremely ignorant of the history of mmorpg's I was there when it was birthed, though at the time I was only 13, and now I am 21, and when an idiot hands money over for something useless they feed that useless developer. But on the top side there has been a price to pay, so much it ends the game, it appears while mid-way people were stupid, now it seems they're finally getting smarter, maybe there is hope for the world.