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An Indie MMO revolution WILL happen!
JIUBHUNNY420
Member Posts: 131
We have to look at this whole lot of befuddled MMO Marketeers, these displaced pioneers sucked into the genre exploding Gold Rush we have seen over the past decade and just let their time pass.
Companies like Cryptic, Zenimax Online, Trion Worlds, and yes Even Bioware have all tried to cash in on the freak success of World of Warcraft, in oddly the same way as the famous California Gold Rush of the 18th century. They all charged towards an unknown market with hopes of generating the same results of success, bringing no experiance or ingenuity to make their dream a reality.
The MMO Market became flooded with Gold-Diggers, trying to scrap the surface of this foreign soil with thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of high tech equipment and manpower only to turn up a soot covered embarrassment with no money and no supporters. Theres no love and community within the genre anymore, and thats not because of Linear Games running rampant or solo-themeparks overcrowding the market, its because no one is making MMO's for the fans anymore.
You can put up a thousand polls a day asking your fan-base what they want to see in your game, but at the end of the day when you shovel out the same crap and try to tell someone its Gold...You either have to have the best line in business or sell it to a blind man, because either way your not going to see a customer return to you once youve sold it; and companies like Bioware realized that.
They shoveled out a game like The Old Republic, an MMO that isnt an MMO, and gave it the best line in marketing and guess what? It worked! They sold a million subs, until they stooped into a sullen decline which barred them from ever entering the MMO Arena again. But where they failed to support their future MMO propagations,they satisfied their investors enough to a least break even (Or one would assume since Bioware hasnt gone bankrupt after spending 100mill on TOR).
So then Why is there an indie MMO Revolution coming? Because eventually there wont be any money left to throw at what is so obviously a failed genre for so many companies. How many companies have we seen go under? How many MMO's Cancelled or gone F2P? The end is looming around the corner for Big Money MMO's. And once the money is out of the MMO system, it will be like poison being sucked from a wound and the genre can actually breathe life again for the first time in almost a decade.
What we wont see in this revolution is Figure-Heads, which have tormented this genre since Richard Garriot decided he was God and spent his fortune to get to space just so he could finally look down upon all of us as God (Again Garriot) truely intended. If Richard Garriot truely is part of a God-trinity than Brad Mcquaid would be his mary, the two of them practicully exist in the same realm of mythos for zealot-charged developers with more money than common sense.
No the Revolution will bring people who care about the game, as Garriot and Mcquaid once did, and will provide it at the sake of their own livelyhood rather than staking it on a company of human beings like the Current Generation of MMO developers have. I say this only with the certainity of someone who has watched the slow decline and see no other path for this genre to go, as well as what has happened with the current Revolution of Indie PC games. With Systems like Steam, and Kickstarter, people are finally making their choices based on their intrests rather than a Mega-Corps, and I only hope that we find more developers with Big Dreams instead of Big Wallets in the near future.
J-Hun Lookin to Creep Yall!
Comments
Reality check: Steam is owned by Valve, makers of Half-Life... perhaps not a mega-corp, as you put it, but a far cry from indie.
Kickstarter just gives me bad flash-backs... I think I'm allergic to crowdfunding, or something. It's... become a way for idea-people to set up some smoke and mirrors in order for hard working people to throw money at them. In one or two cases yes, it has served its intended purpose, but it's not what I see as the future for indie game developers.
Potential pioneers would do themselves a favor by looking up and understanding the concept of Kaizen.
/steps off soap-box
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
I have no doubt that indie games are becoming common place. Heck, i just finished a great indie adventure called "Gone Home" and i am waiting for Shadowrun Returns, the iOS version.
But MMOs? MMOs cost a LOT more to make than many other type of games. "Gone Home" is great drama, but it is 3 hours long, and everything happened in one (though big) house. That kind of budget (or even 10x that budget) is not enough to make a proper MMO.
What i see is that indies can make very high quality but small amount of content. That is quality (of content) over quantity (of content). MMOs don't have that luxury. It needs a lot more content to even be a complete game compared to most indie games.
Now when some indie MMOs are produced, i will take a look and see if i like it. But i wouldn't be holding my breath waiting for a huge wave of indie MMOs.
I am kind of happy to read your post. I'll share that I am doing some "indie MMO work". Though I wouldn't want a Kickstarter because I feel a campaign could easily over promise a concept. Also, a hype needs infrastructure support - if that fails then a rocky release could potentially ruin the overall experience, no matter how good the game is. Not to even mention the cost overhead to support that hype in game.
I think you misunderstood why OP mentioned Valve in the post (or maybe I did?). I think he refers Steam to the context that it increases "ease of access", despite of hype or the billion supported marketing.
I will argue that you're wrong in some sense. If we're talking about a full "solo experience" (where lots of lore has to be implemented), then sure you need boat-loads of cash. But I believe there are other ways to create an MMO - it's a matter of how you interpret the genre.
No there won't be. Anyone who thinks so is deluded.
Anytime, in any industry, an indie becomes successfull, they alter the mainstream and now become the mainstream perpetuating the cycle of big devs over indie.
I suppose that is fair. I suppose some MMO world generated by procedures will be possible with a low budget although i would not be interested.
So let's just say that i doubt there will be indie MMO with content that i am interested in.
At the same time, if you look at KS, there are just not that many MMOs. The biggest one seems to be Chris Robert's space game. I doubt that kind of thing will become a norm. Moreover, unless indie devs want to make MMOs that look like minecraft, i doubt they can make enough proper art assets, even if you discount the world, and solo missions, to populate a MMO.
Steam may have great ease of access, but all the content on it is still controlled somewhere by a Valve executive. To me, that means that every game dependent on Steam is more "not-indie" than indie.
I feel like indie is almost a brand these days, so much that people forget that it stands for "independent". From my perspective, the OP is encouraging people to have dreams but isn't encouraging them to dream big enough.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Aye, we agree on that. Art and assets carries with it huge pre-production costs, and usually these days, if it doesn't like Rift it might as well just look as Minecraft because that gap in between doesn't matter. (Minecraft =lower cost, expected to look "bad". No body cares to comment about it, you either like it or not. Rift = high cost, expected to look good - but if it doesn't, it's a huge public disappointment. In example, while EQ:N have fancy character models and tech, the alpha footage wasn't impressing me personally).
But as I replied earlier (not to you), MMO + indie + Kickstarter doesn't really match I think. Kickstarter brings promises and hype, which brings with it potential release date expenses. You need stay within the spending limits of campaigns success).
Procedural (which I believe you were referencing to) generated content is one way, another is dynamically generated content (which is the way I'm building my project on). But sure, if it doesn't tickle your happy spot it doesn't
.
I have read two things in this thread that I think are "true".
MMORPGs are incredibly expensive to make compared to other games. It's just outside the range of what most indie developers can even think about doing.
If an indie developer does hit it big with an MMORPG, it will either destroy them or move them from the "indie" class to the "big time" class. They will no longer be indie, and big developers will be doing what they did.
I think eventually there will be a lot of indie MMORPGs, but it won't be until the tools to create MMORPGs are a commodity item and readily available for most anyone who wants to try their hand at MMORPG development.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I think the art assets would be too expensive, even with the right tools.
I suspect it is more likely that "indie" MMO effort would be directed in creating content in existing MMOs that allows user content like the Foundry in STO, and the user dungeon modules in NWO.
What would probably happen is by the time the tools/art assests... become cheap enough that enough indie's can use them to cause a revolution, technology would have moved beyond that into some other category (more 3d, hologram....) that again is out of reach of most indie devs.
Darkfall, Fallen Earth, Eve, all made by indie companies, all successful by their own standards.
3 of the MMO's I've been keeping an eye on currently in development are indie (Repop, Embers of Caerus, and of course World of Darkness).
I'm sure there are plenty more, these are just the ones I played/plan on playing.
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
-The MMO Forum Community
Its odd that you would say this,ether you are unfamiliar with the system steam has for indie games, or your misinformed.
Steams Greenlight Program put out by Valve is for the Steam users to vote on which tiles they would like to see get the Green Light and be placed on steam for future purchase once their game is complete (Or in some cases - like indie game "Kenshi" while still in early beta".
The reason I am disagreeing with you and your knowledge of this system itself stems from the executive comment. Although Steam does have to approve the game once its been voted for, there is no executive who decides whether it will sell or not, just a roundtable that agrees to put the game on Steam.
The funny thing about your post is that alot of controversy has come from Steam: Greenlight, simply because people claim there ISNT enough imput from Steam Executives, and that many titles can be misleading simply because the developer is putting out the description of each game and Steam has no control over whether or not they delivery one said features.
J-Hun Lookin to Creep Yall!
It reminds me of a sci-fi book I read where in the "near future" a standard API for MMORPGs has been established and developers can simply rent servers from providers and then plug in their assets and story lines into the system without having to develop the backbone code themselves.
In some ways we already see this with some of the newer game engines but it is also clear that they need extensive customization for them to produce something that gamers want to play. SWTOR got burned because the Hero Engine was not really up to snuff for what they wanted.
No matter how much you standardize and refine the devopment tools, the users will still want an extra level of customization that becomes really expensive to add.
Lots of indie games look great.
Dear Esther. Gone Home ... looks like decent FPS quality graphics (these are NOT FPS though, more like 1st person adventure and drama).
Testament of Sherlock Holmes looks BETTER than most AAA games although it is from a small company.
The key is that indie games usually are smaller with less content. It does not mean that the content is always worse or less polished than AAA games.