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General: ... But Then They Changed What "It" Was
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
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.
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.
Read ... But Then They Changed What "It" Was.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
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?
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
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".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
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.
PvE, RP, and casual players in mind (So no FPS only controls, friendly fire - Some standard auto-attacking is necessary for MOST gamers)
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
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?
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
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!
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
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.
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"
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.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
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.
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
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."
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Jon, take it easy man... At 30 and ranting like this that we're getting old doesn't do your heart any good
...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.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP