Just because an imitation of American Idol won't draw in the crowds doesn't automatically mean that a remake of American Gladiators will be a success. And just because an imitation of WoW doesn't get millions of subs doesn't imply that a remake of UO will be successful.
When something *isn't* being made anymore it may be because it's just not in demand...
I find no more challenge in sandboxy games than what you call themepark-ish. Only more timesinks and other nuisances. People want challenge, yes, but sandbox is not the answer. Some are stuck in the thought that "themeparks" (god, I hate that label) are all somehow shallow and simple when they can be just as deep as sandboxy games. Vice versa sandboxy games can be shallow and easy aswell.
I say "sandboxy" because none of the games I've seen have been a true sandbox and I don't think a sandbox makes a good game.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Just because an imitation of American Idol won't draw in the crowds doesn't automatically mean that a remake of American Gladiators will be a success. And just because an imitation of WoW doesn't get millions of subs doesn't imply that a remake of UO will be successful.
When something *isn't* being made anymore it may be because it's just not in demand...
True this.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
For the same reason, after American Idol came on TV, there came a ton of other similar shows trying desperately to siphon off AI's audience. That's how *ALL* markets work, like it or not! Everyone wants a piece of what's popular, they always have and always will. If something hits it big, all the other networks or studios or whatnot will come out with a clone right after. It's the way business works, not only in the U.S. but worldwide.
Huh? ALL markets are immitators? If that were the case you'd never get anything new, and you'd never get progress. If all we had were immitators trying to do what UO did, we'd never know the term 'themepark' for example. Clearly, markets are motivated by more than just immitation. This 'thought' of 'the way' business 'works' is entirely one-sided and ignores many different motivating factors in play.
Apparently people are not tired of WoW, it's still the biggest MMO out there by far. You may have some people who are, especially on a forum like this, but this forum represents jack shit in the real world. I do think that it's very misguided for companies to just make WoW clones and have said so before. If you're targetting people who are already satisfied with WoW, making an identical game isn't going to attract them away from WoW, they already have it. If you're targetting people who are dissatisfied with WoW, making another WoW isn't going to attract them, they already don't like it. However, that's not what investors think and developers have to fight hard to get any funding at all, they'd rather eat than be innovative and I don't really blame them. Starvation isn't fun.
What you're talking is the ideal. I'm talking reality. Reality eats idealism for breakfast.
Reality? Your proof beyond your 'claim' that it is reality? I've offered examples of how people who try what WoW tried have failed, and that *even people who play WoW* have had enough of it. This forum is but one location, and as previously mentioned, sites like EJ, AJ, Ensidia, gamedev etc have offered a slew of screen names that echo 'challenge' as an example. You seemingly have selective reading in terms of what you allow to register, considering the points you fail to refute but instead insist that your perception, unbacked, is reality.
What i'm talking about are real-life examples of how the market has reacted to elements of 'new school' and the 'current state of the union' with regards to the industry's titan, which arguably 'ushered in' the 'new school'. I'm not talking about ideals at all. I'm talking about hard data. Reality eats misperceptions for breakfast, which might explain why you went hungry this morning.
I don't know. EvE is the only real sci-fi game out there so I can see people who are getting sick and tired of the fantasy genre moving there because they have no real choice. Of course, while EvE does have some old school elements, you'd have to demonstrate that those elements in particular are part of the draw for new players, instead of things like genre, PvP, etc.
So the only reason why people move from fantasy to sci-fi is that they are tired of fantasy and have no other choice? But yet I need to demonstrate that it is the elements of EVE that are 'old school' that have attracted their growth in numbers? That's a little uneven don't you think?
Using your own logic: if people are playing EVE, that means they enjoy it enough. Then in that case, they 'enjoy enough' of the 'old school' elements to make it worth their while. Additionally, you only attempted to refute the example for EVE. Nothing for FFXI? After all, it *is* fantasy, heavily group-centric and all 'old-schooly' and everything...
I doubt you're going to find a AAA studio willing to make a game with a potential audience of 100k. They couldn't find investors who would be willing to throw the money into the project, especially in this economy, for just 100k. Everyone shoots for 500k+ and would want a potential pool of players much, much larger. If your potential pool is only 100k, then the number of players who are actually going to join and stay playing is going to be much smaller. You might end up with 50k who actually pay a continuing fee month after month. That's why people keep making mindless fantasy games, they know that most people like fantasy and will play them. That gives them a potential market of millions, even if their end-result is only 100k or so.
I offered solid evidence between two examples that have either repeated themselves with each 'new school' launch, or sustained and growing evidence for 'old school' existence. Your comeback is 'i doubt you're going to find a AAA studio willing to make a game for 100k'. Newsflash: WARHAMMER 40K. Explicitly, the aren't aiming anywhere near 1 million subs. UNLIKE the AOC's, the WAR's of yore, they aren't targetting the giant, or its numbers, and understand reasonable expectations. Where do support the claim that 'everyone targets 500k'? Obviously people hope for more than they expect. And obviously you lose subs after initial launch. You seem tunnel-visioned on this 'fantasy' criteria, like it's the only one that exists or something. I say that it is one element to a vast matrix of criteria that defines the success or failure of a product. I don't ignore possibilities based on personal bias.
James Cameron made a ton of money off Avatar, but honestly it was nothing but eye candy with virtially no substance. But you can expect tons of new Avatar-clones to come out because everyone wants a piece of the action. Hopefully Cameron, like Lucas, owns the rights to all of the technical aspects of the process so he can laugh all the way to the bank like Lucas did back in the 80s. But had it not been James Cameron with his track record of making absurd amounts of money, nobody would have given him the hundreds of millions of dollars (and decades of time to develop the technology) he needed. Joe Blow wouldn't have gotten the funding because he didn't have the track record. Right now, the only company in the MMO marketplace that has the record for making that kind of cash is Blizzard. Nobody else would get the funding.
Huh? James Cameron put down all of his own money because he couldn't secure funding because his ideas were too 'out of the box'. He developped the cameras along with his buddy, the way the shooting would need to be done, and foot the bill for the operation. Investors came into the picture late, shaky, and underprojected budget. This is directly from a magazine interview from April. It didn't matter in the slightest that he didn't do anything new but make people 'ooh' and 'ahh' at the visuals. The fact of the matter is that he broke the mold. People saw, after he made it a success, that it could be done, and the dividends it could yield. As is typical form and fashion, the 'market trends' improperly predicted it, but following his success, will suddenly reflect it was the right thing to do.
Nobody knows for certain if there is a market or not. If there is, great, find a developer to capitalize on it. If not, don't. However, there are lots of people arguing that there is a market when they've done nothing to justify that claim. Developers are going to need hard data that indicates that spending the next 5 years and $50 million dollars is worthwhile and so far, nobody has done more than wave their arms around and screaming "It's true, it's true!" That's just not impressive. You want to know what would be impressive to developers? If 500k "old-school fans" wrote to a developer and asked for a game. Or an online poll that had 500k independent voters asked for an old school game. That would be impressive, but it's not happening. If you expect anyone to act, you need to put up your evidence that they ought to act. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Ah, nobody knows. In this sentence you are entirely right. No one knows... until it is tried by proper means and is proven to either succeeed or fail. Which, in that case, proves that at the point in time, by those means, the market wasn't there. Markets, after all, are ever-changing.
I've offered directly why those 50million investments have proven failure records. I've also offered examples of 'old school' games that have proven track records of sustained subscriptions... and climbing ones at that. Between these two, very founded, large-scale market examples, I'd venture to bank on my perception being correct. Correct, because it considered the facts and found logical strings between them. Bias be damned.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
Just because an imitation of American Idol won't draw in the crowds doesn't automatically mean that a remake of American Gladiators will be a success. And just because an imitation of WoW doesn't get millions of subs doesn't imply that a remake of UO will be successful.
When something *isn't* being made anymore it may be because it's just not in demand...
Bing Bing Bing! What a simple, clear answer.
I think what you're describing is called binary thinking. Slice something down to a core element("A") then judge its success in a cookie cutter comparison...
If "A" is false/bad, then "-A" must be true/good.
A game may not be successful because it's a sandbox, or failing because it's a themepark, or inversely. Most people don't play and enjoy games based on ideological concepts of sandbox or themepark. I luvved me some Eve and pre-cu SWG back in the day, and I luv me some LotRO, now.
Personaly, I'd like to see an MMO that captured the spirit of the old time graphical MUD's.
I think what you do see alot today with MMO's is a lemming effect. The genre has been around long enough that there is a "conventional wisdom" that has developed around what people find attractive in an MMO. Whether the wisdom is accurate or not for any given feature is pretty much pot luck. Simply put X game that had X feature was successfull, so "conventional wisdom" assumes that x feature was popular.
The reality is alot more complex though. Science tells us that correlation is not causation. Meaning that just because X game was successfull doesn't mean that any particular feature of that game was responsible for contributing to that success. Nor does it mean that such a feature taken out of that particular context will continue to be successfull. Very often there is very little hard data or research on the popularity of a given feature. It's even harder to get data on how popular on how some hypothetical feature would do in an hypothetical context.
Since most large investors are risk averse... they'll try to push for features that seem to match conventional wisdom...and it can be tough to get funding support for things that break conventional wisdom. However, there is such a thing as market saturation... which is why I think alot of recent titles have been less successfull then they hoped. Realisticaly there are only so many consumers that are interested in a particular feature set... even if it is the most popular feature set around..you have to share those consumers with every other title that is going for that feature set...and very often there isn't much to differentiate your product from your competitors.
Looking at an analogy. It may be factualy true that Pizza is 10 times more popular then Japanese food. However, if there are already 30 Pizza joints in a given town and 0 Japanese resturants, if you are looking to start up a new resturant your chances of success are actualy far greater if you go for Japanese rather then opening up the 31st Pizza place, even though that choice is much less popular.
This is easy to see when you are dealing with geographicly based business.... a little tougher when looking at internet based business...and seems especialy tough when considering things like MMORPG's....but I think it holds true.
Even if the "conventional wisdom" is largely correct about popular preferences, I believe that there is a significant enough market out there for a successfull AAA MMO with many "old school" features. I do believe it's going to be alot harder to get funding to try to make one though. I don't believe it's impossible though....especialy as the market on advanced tool sets and engines mature...and alot of the things that can provide advanced functionality and streamlined development starts becoming more affordable for indie or small budget studios.
The market is there so is the demand. Its just some publishers continuing to buy out former great studios and forcing them to make crappy "the game that shouldnt be named" copies. Last example: Mythic - Warhammer. Had they sticked to the Daoc 2advantages and just added the War skin into it -->this game would have become a winner and a moneymachine.
Just think about what Aventurine could do with more money, they made a massive massive game with all the freedom in the world and now think about them with more money. DF would rock even more. It speaks volumes that the best games nowadays are either from japanese studios or independent companies. The point in which dumbed down games having reached their peak will soon come :-)
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Ignore these retards, old school games are far better than todays games, and the communities were much better because everyone had to interact unlike in modern games where everything is instanced and you may never see someone you grouped with before because there on another server( WoW example). But seriously older games had more character and were much more challenging... Personally i feel after WoW got the mmo genre to the mainstream which is a very good thing for the genre, a different breed of MMO's started playing that never played the genre before so everyone is working on making the masses happy to make money, hopefully a niche game will come out with good graphics, open world, fun interface/UI, and good mob encounters. Once this happens i think both new and old players would be able to play it.. most new players dont like the older games UI or the graphics are terrible and people like to see pretty things. just my opinion, and im not a complete WoW hater. I used to play and enjoy the game alot until they ruined it with xpacs and massive instancing and what not.
They are punch drunk on catching Wow at its own game. They aren't doing market research for anything else except for "what do you like/dislike about WoW?".
I find this an interesting statement as I've been employed as a market researcher before. Which is just a fancy way of saying I'd poll consumers. We did it for Major Brands, Hospitals, Phone service providers (such as sprint) etc...
The questions asked are routinely vague, not to mention the disqualifiers that are put into every poll. In a case such as game research these could be simple questions like do you play Sandbox MMO's or do you prefer Themeparks?
How long are you likely to play etc. etc.. etc.. If it's a WOW based game they're making they will automatically disqualify the opinion of a sandbox preferred consumer, as their opinions will contradict the aims of their product.They hand the results to investors knowing they say exactly what they want them to.
As an aside...Here's the major catch regardless of those disqualifiers, that person is still counted as polled. Even though they aren't using their opinion within the results. The world of market research is a shady one.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
They are punch drunk on catching Wow at its own game. They aren't doing market research for anything else except for "what do you like/dislike about WoW?".
I find this an interesting statement as I've been employed as a market researcher before. Which is just a fancy way of saying I'd poll consumers. We did it for Major Brands, Hospitals, Phone service providers (such as sprint) etc...
The questions asked are routinely vague, not to mention the disqualifiers that are put into every poll. In a case such as game research these could be simple questions like do you play Sandbox MMO's or do you prefer Themeparks?
How long are you likely to play etc. etc.. etc.. If it's a WOW based game they're making they will automatically disqualify the opinion of a sandbox preferred consumer, as their opinions will contradict the aims of their product.They hand the results to investors knowing they say exactly what they want them to.
As an aside...Here's the major catch regardless of those disqualifiers, that person is still counted as polled. Even though they aren't using their opinion within the results. The world of market research is a shady one.
Ah, now that the truth is out about the credibility of market research... I don't feel so bad for having lied after my initial couple forms said I wasn't 'fit' to offer 'feedback'.
Hey! I needed Favor Points in Castle Age!
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
Originally posted by Khorian The mantra of todays MMOs is: "Achieve much, fast". I think this is a short sighted idea. Because those achievements are shallow. This mantra leads to the leveling race to a faster burnout or a raidcore expirience. Or to a "what now" expirience in alot of new MMOs that don't deliver content in the end game at release. Which I think is total idiocy, because by design of most new MMOs, reaching the end game fast is all there is to do. That shows me, that alot of developers have no idea what they are doing and focus on the bling bling to increase initial sales than on quality to hold subscriptions. Nowadays, alot of people play an MMO for 6 months and then move on to the next. They basically are waiting for a new MMO while they play their current one. They don't even plan to stay for longer than a half year because they have seen and done everything there is in those 6 months. Can you blame them? No. It's the developers fault for releasing the boring, unoriginal, repetive crap that todays MMOs are. Yes, I want to have some Old School elements back. Not all, but some. Because not everything was good back then, but it wasn't all bad either. The feeling of value is missing in alot of todays game. Leveling to the top in EQ could take months. But the journey was fun. You met people and socialized with them. You made friends that would then group again with you the next day and maybe raid with you a few years later still. In todays MMOs you usually don't even care who just autojoined your group. It doesn't matter because you don't have to talk to them for the 5 minutes it takes to complete a quest. Awesome! Lastly, heavy instancing of WORLD zones is total crap. It sucks, there is no good reason for it except saving money in production. Even most dungeon instancing is crap. How cool was it when you walked through a forest, and you knew that deep below you, in the depths of the earth, there were people fighting monsters. In the same zone as you. If you had a showel you could dig yourself down to them! Or you could try and reach them without a loading screen. And when you were down in that dungeon and hadn't seen the sun for hours you knew that up there the sun was actually shining. But you were stuck in that hell hole and would have to fight out... Face it, todays MMOs are for the new generation. Little princes and princesses that want to have everything, NOW! Who then run around hold in a ultra rare item up and screaming "look what I have!" and around them 100 people say: I have that too... yawn. In todays standards, The Lord of the Rings would have been finished in about 10 minutes. Frodo would take the ring, talk to a travel NPC, get portet to the mountain, run past a few orcs and throw the ring into the fire. Quest done.
Thank you. Well put indeed.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!" ............... "I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. " __Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__ ...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
Comments
Just because an imitation of American Idol won't draw in the crowds doesn't automatically mean that a remake of American Gladiators will be a success. And just because an imitation of WoW doesn't get millions of subs doesn't imply that a remake of UO will be successful.
When something *isn't* being made anymore it may be because it's just not in demand...
I find no more challenge in sandboxy games than what you call themepark-ish. Only more timesinks and other nuisances. People want challenge, yes, but sandbox is not the answer. Some are stuck in the thought that "themeparks" (god, I hate that label) are all somehow shallow and simple when they can be just as deep as sandboxy games. Vice versa sandboxy games can be shallow and easy aswell.
I say "sandboxy" because none of the games I've seen have been a true sandbox and I don't think a sandbox makes a good game.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
True this.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
@ Cephus404
For the same reason, after American Idol came on TV, there came a ton of other similar shows trying desperately to siphon off AI's audience. That's how *ALL* markets work, like it or not! Everyone wants a piece of what's popular, they always have and always will. If something hits it big, all the other networks or studios or whatnot will come out with a clone right after. It's the way business works, not only in the U.S. but worldwide.
Huh? ALL markets are immitators? If that were the case you'd never get anything new, and you'd never get progress. If all we had were immitators trying to do what UO did, we'd never know the term 'themepark' for example. Clearly, markets are motivated by more than just immitation. This 'thought' of 'the way' business 'works' is entirely one-sided and ignores many different motivating factors in play.
Apparently people are not tired of WoW, it's still the biggest MMO out there by far. You may have some people who are, especially on a forum like this, but this forum represents jack shit in the real world. I do think that it's very misguided for companies to just make WoW clones and have said so before. If you're targetting people who are already satisfied with WoW, making an identical game isn't going to attract them away from WoW, they already have it. If you're targetting people who are dissatisfied with WoW, making another WoW isn't going to attract them, they already don't like it. However, that's not what investors think and developers have to fight hard to get any funding at all, they'd rather eat than be innovative and I don't really blame them. Starvation isn't fun.
What you're talking is the ideal. I'm talking reality. Reality eats idealism for breakfast.
Reality? Your proof beyond your 'claim' that it is reality? I've offered examples of how people who try what WoW tried have failed, and that *even people who play WoW* have had enough of it. This forum is but one location, and as previously mentioned, sites like EJ, AJ, Ensidia, gamedev etc have offered a slew of screen names that echo 'challenge' as an example. You seemingly have selective reading in terms of what you allow to register, considering the points you fail to refute but instead insist that your perception, unbacked, is reality.
What i'm talking about are real-life examples of how the market has reacted to elements of 'new school' and the 'current state of the union' with regards to the industry's titan, which arguably 'ushered in' the 'new school'. I'm not talking about ideals at all. I'm talking about hard data. Reality eats misperceptions for breakfast, which might explain why you went hungry this morning.
I don't know. EvE is the only real sci-fi game out there so I can see people who are getting sick and tired of the fantasy genre moving there because they have no real choice. Of course, while EvE does have some old school elements, you'd have to demonstrate that those elements in particular are part of the draw for new players, instead of things like genre, PvP, etc.
So the only reason why people move from fantasy to sci-fi is that they are tired of fantasy and have no other choice? But yet I need to demonstrate that it is the elements of EVE that are 'old school' that have attracted their growth in numbers? That's a little uneven don't you think?
Using your own logic: if people are playing EVE, that means they enjoy it enough. Then in that case, they 'enjoy enough' of the 'old school' elements to make it worth their while. Additionally, you only attempted to refute the example for EVE. Nothing for FFXI? After all, it *is* fantasy, heavily group-centric and all 'old-schooly' and everything...
I doubt you're going to find a AAA studio willing to make a game with a potential audience of 100k. They couldn't find investors who would be willing to throw the money into the project, especially in this economy, for just 100k. Everyone shoots for 500k+ and would want a potential pool of players much, much larger. If your potential pool is only 100k, then the number of players who are actually going to join and stay playing is going to be much smaller. You might end up with 50k who actually pay a continuing fee month after month. That's why people keep making mindless fantasy games, they know that most people like fantasy and will play them. That gives them a potential market of millions, even if their end-result is only 100k or so.
I offered solid evidence between two examples that have either repeated themselves with each 'new school' launch, or sustained and growing evidence for 'old school' existence. Your comeback is 'i doubt you're going to find a AAA studio willing to make a game for 100k'. Newsflash: WARHAMMER 40K. Explicitly, the aren't aiming anywhere near 1 million subs. UNLIKE the AOC's, the WAR's of yore, they aren't targetting the giant, or its numbers, and understand reasonable expectations. Where do support the claim that 'everyone targets 500k'? Obviously people hope for more than they expect. And obviously you lose subs after initial launch. You seem tunnel-visioned on this 'fantasy' criteria, like it's the only one that exists or something. I say that it is one element to a vast matrix of criteria that defines the success or failure of a product. I don't ignore possibilities based on personal bias.
James Cameron made a ton of money off Avatar, but honestly it was nothing but eye candy with virtially no substance. But you can expect tons of new Avatar-clones to come out because everyone wants a piece of the action. Hopefully Cameron, like Lucas, owns the rights to all of the technical aspects of the process so he can laugh all the way to the bank like Lucas did back in the 80s. But had it not been James Cameron with his track record of making absurd amounts of money, nobody would have given him the hundreds of millions of dollars (and decades of time to develop the technology) he needed. Joe Blow wouldn't have gotten the funding because he didn't have the track record. Right now, the only company in the MMO marketplace that has the record for making that kind of cash is Blizzard. Nobody else would get the funding.
Huh? James Cameron put down all of his own money because he couldn't secure funding because his ideas were too 'out of the box'. He developped the cameras along with his buddy, the way the shooting would need to be done, and foot the bill for the operation. Investors came into the picture late, shaky, and underprojected budget. This is directly from a magazine interview from April. It didn't matter in the slightest that he didn't do anything new but make people 'ooh' and 'ahh' at the visuals. The fact of the matter is that he broke the mold. People saw, after he made it a success, that it could be done, and the dividends it could yield. As is typical form and fashion, the 'market trends' improperly predicted it, but following his success, will suddenly reflect it was the right thing to do.
Nobody knows for certain if there is a market or not. If there is, great, find a developer to capitalize on it. If not, don't. However, there are lots of people arguing that there is a market when they've done nothing to justify that claim. Developers are going to need hard data that indicates that spending the next 5 years and $50 million dollars is worthwhile and so far, nobody has done more than wave their arms around and screaming "It's true, it's true!" That's just not impressive. You want to know what would be impressive to developers? If 500k "old-school fans" wrote to a developer and asked for a game. Or an online poll that had 500k independent voters asked for an old school game. That would be impressive, but it's not happening. If you expect anyone to act, you need to put up your evidence that they ought to act. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Ah, nobody knows. In this sentence you are entirely right. No one knows... until it is tried by proper means and is proven to either succeeed or fail. Which, in that case, proves that at the point in time, by those means, the market wasn't there. Markets, after all, are ever-changing.
I've offered directly why those 50million investments have proven failure records. I've also offered examples of 'old school' games that have proven track records of sustained subscriptions... and climbing ones at that. Between these two, very founded, large-scale market examples, I'd venture to bank on my perception being correct. Correct, because it considered the facts and found logical strings between them. Bias be damned.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
Bing Bing Bing! What a simple, clear answer.
I think what you're describing is called binary thinking. Slice something down to a core element("A") then judge its success in a cookie cutter comparison...
If "A" is false/bad, then "-A" must be true/good.
A game may not be successful because it's a sandbox, or failing because it's a themepark, or inversely. Most people don't play and enjoy games based on ideological concepts of sandbox or themepark. I luvved me some Eve and pre-cu SWG back in the day, and I luv me some LotRO, now.
Personaly, I'd like to see an MMO that captured the spirit of the old time graphical MUD's.
I think what you do see alot today with MMO's is a lemming effect. The genre has been around long enough that there is a "conventional wisdom" that has developed around what people find attractive in an MMO. Whether the wisdom is accurate or not for any given feature is pretty much pot luck. Simply put X game that had X feature was successfull, so "conventional wisdom" assumes that x feature was popular.
The reality is alot more complex though. Science tells us that correlation is not causation. Meaning that just because X game was successfull doesn't mean that any particular feature of that game was responsible for contributing to that success. Nor does it mean that such a feature taken out of that particular context will continue to be successfull. Very often there is very little hard data or research on the popularity of a given feature. It's even harder to get data on how popular on how some hypothetical feature would do in an hypothetical context.
Since most large investors are risk averse... they'll try to push for features that seem to match conventional wisdom...and it can be tough to get funding support for things that break conventional wisdom. However, there is such a thing as market saturation... which is why I think alot of recent titles have been less successfull then they hoped. Realisticaly there are only so many consumers that are interested in a particular feature set... even if it is the most popular feature set around..you have to share those consumers with every other title that is going for that feature set...and very often there isn't much to differentiate your product from your competitors.
Looking at an analogy. It may be factualy true that Pizza is 10 times more popular then Japanese food. However, if there are already 30 Pizza joints in a given town and 0 Japanese resturants, if you are looking to start up a new resturant your chances of success are actualy far greater if you go for Japanese rather then opening up the 31st Pizza place, even though that choice is much less popular.
This is easy to see when you are dealing with geographicly based business.... a little tougher when looking at internet based business...and seems especialy tough when considering things like MMORPG's....but I think it holds true.
Even if the "conventional wisdom" is largely correct about popular preferences, I believe that there is a significant enough market out there for a successfull AAA MMO with many "old school" features. I do believe it's going to be alot harder to get funding to try to make one though. I don't believe it's impossible though....especialy as the market on advanced tool sets and engines mature...and alot of the things that can provide advanced functionality and streamlined development starts becoming more affordable for indie or small budget studios.
The market is there so is the demand. Its just some publishers continuing to buy out former great studios and forcing them to make crappy "the game that shouldnt be named" copies. Last example: Mythic - Warhammer. Had they sticked to the Daoc 2advantages and just added the War skin into it -->this game would have become a winner and a moneymachine.
Just think about what Aventurine could do with more money, they made a massive massive game with all the freedom in the world and now think about them with more money. DF would rock even more. It speaks volumes that the best games nowadays are either from japanese studios or independent companies. The point in which dumbed down games having reached their peak will soon come :-)
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Ignore these retards, old school games are far better than todays games, and the communities were much better because everyone had to interact unlike in modern games where everything is instanced and you may never see someone you grouped with before because there on another server( WoW example). But seriously older games had more character and were much more challenging... Personally i feel after WoW got the mmo genre to the mainstream which is a very good thing for the genre, a different breed of MMO's started playing that never played the genre before so everyone is working on making the masses happy to make money, hopefully a niche game will come out with good graphics, open world, fun interface/UI, and good mob encounters. Once this happens i think both new and old players would be able to play it.. most new players dont like the older games UI or the graphics are terrible and people like to see pretty things. just my opinion, and im not a complete WoW hater. I used to play and enjoy the game alot until they ruined it with xpacs and massive instancing and what not.
I find this an interesting statement as I've been employed as a market researcher before. Which is just a fancy way of saying I'd poll consumers. We did it for Major Brands, Hospitals, Phone service providers (such as sprint) etc...
The questions asked are routinely vague, not to mention the disqualifiers that are put into every poll. In a case such as game research these could be simple questions like do you play Sandbox MMO's or do you prefer Themeparks?
How long are you likely to play etc. etc.. etc.. If it's a WOW based game they're making they will automatically disqualify the opinion of a sandbox preferred consumer, as their opinions will contradict the aims of their product.They hand the results to investors knowing they say exactly what they want them to.
As an aside...Here's the major catch regardless of those disqualifiers, that person is still counted as polled. Even though they aren't using their opinion within the results. The world of market research is a shady one.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Ah, now that the truth is out about the credibility of market research... I don't feel so bad for having lied after my initial couple forms said I wasn't 'fit' to offer 'feedback'.
Hey! I needed Favor Points in Castle Age!
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
Thank you. Well put indeed.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...