Darkfall may release and be great, it may release and suck, or it may not release at all.
You know how this makes Darkfall different then every other MMO that has or will come out, it doesnt. Agreed. This genre group of players have become a bunch of spoon fed brats. Where is the rule that a company has to put out X amount of information on a game or it is a scam or vapor? I remember days gone by when we didnt have to know every detail about a game before we bought it. Good point. You know some other things people lived with in the past?
Washing their clothes in the river, getting their drinking water from the well, taking days to travel a few miles. My point is, things change. When the MMO genre first started it was the norm to not have much information about a game before it was released but today even games months/years from release have at least basic information available about them. Trying to say that Aventurine is doing a good thing by not releasing information about their game is like saying traveling used to be easier before GPS devices.
If you are worried that the game will not produce then dont buy it at release, wait some time and see how it does. Dont camp out on these boards bitching because you arent seeing enough info. These forums are for discussion of the game. That means anything that people want to talk about is welcome here. If someone has concerns that there is not enough information about the game that's 9 days from being released this is exactly the place they should be voicing their concern. They can put out as much or as little info as they want, they can advertise as much or as little as they want. Unless you are a backer or stockholder in the company it should not matter to you at all. Personally, this is one of my last hopes for a good MMO game. I have played and been disappointed by every single MMO game to be released since UO. I have a vested interest in my hobby, and in my enjoyment of that hobby. If the game turns out to not be everything Tasos has said it is, or it does not get the subscription numbers it needs and they have to shut down then it does matter to me.
And get off the 7-8 year development cycle already. Who cares. There are plenty of games that were in development for 5 years and launched as a steaming pile so they can take as long as they want to develop the game. It isnt costing any of us anything.
If it releases afer 8 years and is a steaming pile then yes, that was a waste of 8 years, if it releases and is good then it was time well spent. Exactly. Just because the game has been in development for 7 years does not mean it will be good or bad. What it does mean, however, is that Aventurine should have had ample time to MAKE it good so the pressure is even higher on them then on a studio that released a game after only 4 years. Dont hate Darkfall because it is different, embrace it because it is different. The norm in this genre has become pretty craptastic. Agreed.
I agree with every point you made here. Im all for people coming on here and making real posts that actually talk about what they are skeptical of or worried about, i am certainly no blind fan boy and i do that as well. Im not even sure i will play the game but i am intrigued so i come here to get any information i can.
And of course i would like more information but that doesnt mean Aventurine has to give it to me. Nor do they have to give it to me just because other games now give it to me. Especially when said other games give me tons of info that turns out to be a load of crap.
People often dont come on this thread to make real points or even real threads though. They come on here and say
"8 YEARS, that is way to long and it is going to suck big time!"
"No information, game is no way complete, will not release!"
"EPIC FAIL!" (My favorite)
They come here and say this because they want to start a fight with the people salivating over Darkfall, and they usually get their wish. Which turns nearly every thread on this forum into crap.
This game may fail and it may not, but i have no idea why ANYONE would want it to fail. If you cant see that it is important that a smaller company puts out a popular game, or that a game that breaks away from the norm and is well received is important then you dont care at all about this genre.
Are you all guys try to take the credit of "YOU SEE I TOLD YOU SO". This is so boring watching probably 13-14 years old mommy boys trying to prove themselves masterminds of the game industry.
What do you know about a company whith 30 devs trying to bring in life their dream when companies with 300 devs or more just trying to just rip off your money so they can take the milk home ?.
Instead of giving a credit to them for agonizigly trying to bring something new to this genre, you pathetic creatures burry them at startline.
You remind me of all those noobs running around in games like WAR, L2 and the other shit, killing whatever and when they fall in a perfect trap they all press the 'Mr GM THEY EXPLOITED ME' button. Well reality check noobs if Aventurine is trying to scam 50k ppl in Europe it will be your fault not theirs if you fall in.
They bluff -----> you call ----> you lose. If not then shut your milk-fed mouths and beg your daddy for monthly subscription.
See you in 22nd Pot.
"Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom. (Death)” ― Terry Pratchett,
Originally posted by erevus Are you all guys try to be fortune tellers. Are you all guys try to take the credit of "YOU SEE I TOLD YOU SO". This is so boring watching probably 13-14 years old mommy boys trying to prove themselves masterminds of the game industry. What do you know about a company whith 30 devs trying to bring in life their dream when companies with 300 devs or more just trying to just rip off your money so they can take the milk home ?. Instead of giving a credit to them for agonizigly trying to bring something new to this genre, you pathetic creatures burry them at startline. You remind me of all those noobs running around in games like WAR, L2 and the other shit, killing whatever and when they fall in a perfect trap they all press the 'Mr GM THEY EXPLOITED ME' button. Well reality check noobs if Aventurine is trying to scam 50k ppl in Europe it will be your fault not theirs if you fall in. They bluff -----> you call ----> you lose. If not then shut your milk-fed mouths and beg your daddy for monthly subscription. See you in 22nd Pot.
LMAO....your funny, go make another alt why dont ya
Are you all guys try to be fortune tellers. Are you all guys try to take the credit of "YOU SEE I TOLD YOU SO". This is so boring watching probably 13-14 years old mommy boys trying to prove themselves masterminds of the game industry. What do you know about a company whith 30 devs trying to bring in life their dream when companies with 300 devs or more just trying to just rip off your money so they can take the milk home ?. Instead of giving a credit to them for agonizigly trying to bring something new to this genre, you pathetic creatures burry them at startline. You remind me of all those noobs running around in games like WAR, L2 and the other shit, killing whatever and when they fall in a perfect trap they all press the 'Mr GM THEY EXPLOITED ME' button. Well reality check noobs if Aventurine is trying to scam 50k ppl in Europe it will be your fault not theirs if you fall in. They bluff -----> you call ----> you lose. If not then shut your milk-fed mouths and beg your daddy for monthly subscription. See you in 22nd Pot.
^^golf clap^^
I will give credit where credit is due, I see nothing to give credit too. And that is not my doing.
You give credit to something you know so little about...Your praise is cheaply given sir.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
That's because you WERE NOT in AThens presentation of DF to Public dude. And i'm not blaming you for not giving credit to something you havent seen but i praise you for also not burying it.
"Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom. (Death)” ― Terry Pratchett,
And for all those who are doubting Aventurine's lack of promoting the game read the following article posted by JON WOOD mmorpg editor.
"Editorial Commentary
I really have to tip my hat to the folks over at Aventurine on an impressive and to some, unexpected win in this year's 2008 Reader's Choice Awards. Not so unexpected though to those who have been following the game, which I would classify as one of the most hotly anticipated MMORPGs in recent memory. No other game has caused more of a stir here on MMORPG.com with each and every piece of information that becomes available, bringing people out of the woodwork to debate and discuss.
I have to admit, while I am honestly looking forward to every nominee's launch, Darkfall has to take the cake for me as well. I think it's probably the overall concept that grabs my attention more than any of the nitty-gritty design details. After all, Darkfall is attempting to build an audience for a new, fantasy-based sandbox style game. It's a bold choice for this indy development studio, but one which will certainly allow them to corner the niche of the market that has been screaming for a change from the theme park style that seems to have taken industry precedence since the launch of World of Warcraft. I also think that, given a solid game and release, Darkfall's influence could spread beyond the niche and pick up some of the much sought-after general gaming population crowd.
I won't say that all of the lead-up to Darkfall's impending launch has been positive, but nor has it been overwhelmingly negative. In fact, people on both sides of the Darkfall discussion seem eager to find out just what Aventurine has up its sleeve. It's easy to say that while the anticipation is sometimes mixed, no other game has more eyes on its launch this year than Aventurine's Darkfall Online."
I Rest My Case.
"Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom. (Death)” ― Terry Pratchett,
Try putting yourselves in Aventurines shoes at the moment.
I dont claim to have the perfect knowledge. I do have experience in the business for working on one of the widely regarded failures of the MMO world as a story/questtext/dialogue writer, and thus have seen many of the issues first hand. You guys are expecting WAY too much clairvoyance. The market is NOT easy to predict at all, yet investors (primary source of budget for development usually) demand fairly precise predictions.
I think Aventurine suffers from the same thing that most companies suffer from it seems: Taking too long, and looking too hard at the competition (read: WoW). The game I worked on had this problem, and a good friend of mine ,she worked at Funcom until half a year before AoCs release, claims its the same there either: You are constantly outrun by the changes in the market.
For example, you build a great dungeon, Old-Sebilis-style (EQ1) because when you started working on it, these garnered a lot of good rep and seemed popular. Now, a successful MMO comes along an shows off "Stratholme", a semi-linear, instanced, non-respawning somewhat story-driven dungeon. It really takes off, so your boss/project manager/whoever is in charge comes to you and tells you the world has changed, we now do instanced semi-linear dungeons, and to top it off, we try and be better than "Stratholme" and have dynamic scripts for every boss.
Thats a shitload of work and that takes time. So while you chew on this, and a dozen other dungeons now being reworked, discarding hundreds of man-hours, a new game comes along, and it introduces 3-man-Dungeons with adaptable difficulty and cutscenes. You can already hear the knock on your door when your boss comes calling and tells you the 3-people group is now the future, because its more casual friendly, and please rework your instanced linear dungeon into a 3-man.
Basically, if you have little or no confidence in your designers ability to do something that works on its own merit, but constantly try to be on the very edge of current mainstream tastes (and believe me, that is the norm today. Innovation is actually a surefire way to get budget cuts), you never finish.
Thats what happened to Darkfall I think, before someone put down their foot and said "screw this, we go with what we believe in, and lets see". That immediately will turn off a lot of potential investors. And it defines your target audience a lot more narrow, because now you arent going after the Mainstream Mass Audience anymore.
You are now going for the people who like this nonstandard gameplay, and HOPE that in turn the game attracts the mass audience DESPITE being different.
At that point, if you start dumping cash into advertising instead of development, you got a huge problem. Darkfall has a lot of buzz in the veteran MMO community. That also is the community that will make or break it through their word-of-mouth, through their willingness to play it. If you take money sorely needed to leave the best possible impression with this crowd, a crowd you dont have to advertize so anymore, and dump it onto a public ad campaign for the unaware mass audience, you ll likely have the same problem of overhype leading to disappointment.
Darkfall is already sold, or not sold, to those it needs as its base. It is not a game that can, right now, keep a mass audience. A mainstream player is far more likely to accept a game at its own merits if he reads good stuff about it, about the REAL game, and then buys it. At that point he has accepted what the game is. Ad campaigns just hype up the expectations, especially of the mass audience addicted to easymode, convenience and mainstream, to unfulfillable levels and cost you customers.
Let me repeat: The primary target audience of Darkfall is not one you reach with a huge ad campaign. Its on thats already there, but for which you need every penny, cent and dollar to provide the best possible game.
Bravo you took the words out of our mainstream heads and put it on paper (or screen) to be more accurate. !
"Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom. (Death)” ― Terry Pratchett,
Try putting yourselves in Aventurines shoes at the moment. I dont claim to have the perfect knowledge. I do have experience in the business for working on one of the widely regarded failures of the MMO world as a story/questtext/dialogue writer, and thus have seen many of the issues first hand. You guys are expecting WAY too much clairvoyance. The market is NOT easy to predict at all, yet investors (primary source of budget for development usually) demand fairly precise predictions. I think Aventurine suffers from the same thing that most companies suffer from it seems: Taking too long, and looking too hard at the competition (read: WoW). The game I worked on had this problem, and a good friend of mine ,she worked at Funcom until half a year before AoCs release, claims its the same there either: You are constantly outrun by the changes in the market. For example, you build a great dungeon, Old-Sebilis-style (EQ1) because when you started working on it, these garnered a lot of good rep and seemed popular. Now, a successful MMO comes along an shows off "Stratholme", a semi-linear, instanced, non-respawning somewhat story-driven dungeon. It really takes off, so your boss/project manager/whoever is in charge comes to you and tells you the world has changed, we now do instanced semi-linear dungeons, and to top it off, we try and be better than "Stratholme" and have dynamic scripts for every boss. Thats a shitload of work and that takes time. So while you chew on this, and a dozen other dungeons now being reworked, discarding hundreds of man-hours, a new game comes along, and it introduces 3-man-Dungeons with adaptable difficulty and cutscenes. You can already hear the knock on your door when your boss comes calling and tells you the 3-people group is now the future, because its more casual friendly, and please rework your instanced linear dungeon into a 3-man. Basically, if you have little or no confidence in your designers ability to do something that works on its own merit, but constantly try to be on the very edge of current mainstream tastes (and believe me, that is the norm today. Innovation is actually a surefire way to get budget cuts), you never finish. Thats what happened to Darkfall I think, before someone put down their foot and said "screw this, we go with what we believe in, and lets see". That immediately will turn off a lot of potential investors. And it defines your target audience a lot more narrow, because now you arent going after the Mainstream Mass Audience anymore. You are now going for the people who like this nonstandard gameplay, and HOPE that in turn the game attracts the mass audience DESPITE being different. At that point, if you start dumping cash into advertising instead of development, you got a huge problem. Darkfall has a lot of buzz in the veteran MMO community. That also is the community that will make or break it through their word-of-mouth, through their willingness to play it. If you take money sorely needed to leave the best possible impression with this crowd, a crowd you dont have to advertize so anymore, and dump it onto a public ad campaign for the unaware mass audience, you ll likely have the same problem of overhype leading to disappointment. Darkfall is already sold, or not sold, to those it needs as its base. It is not a game that can, right now, keep a mass audience. A mainstream player is far more likely to accept a game at its own merits if he reads good stuff about it, about the REAL game, and then buys it. At that point he has accepted what the game is. Ad campaigns just hype up the expectations, especially of the mass audience addicted to easymode, convenience and mainstream, to unfulfillable levels and cost you customers. Let me repeat: The primary target audience of Darkfall is not one you reach with a huge ad campaign. Its on thats already there, but for which you need every penny, cent and dollar to provide the best possible game.
Nice to have someone that actually knows about the game business stopping by. Your post will probably be ignored by most though, trolls (ie 14 years olds) don't have enough attention span to read it.
Your mind is like a parachute, it's only useful when it's open. Don't forget, you can use the block function on trolls.
Try putting yourselves in Aventurines shoes at the moment. I dont claim to have the perfect knowledge. I do have experience in the business for working on one of the widely regarded failures of the MMO world as a story/questtext/dialogue writer, and thus have seen many of the issues first hand. You guys are expecting WAY too much clairvoyance. The market is NOT easy to predict at all, yet investors (primary source of budget for development usually) demand fairly precise predictions. I think Aventurine suffers from the same thing that most companies suffer from it seems: Taking too long, and looking too hard at the competition (read: WoW). The game I worked on had this problem, and a good friend of mine ,she worked at Funcom until half a year before AoCs release, claims its the same there either: You are constantly outrun by the changes in the market. For example, you build a great dungeon, Old-Sebilis-style (EQ1) because when you started working on it, these garnered a lot of good rep and seemed popular. Now, a successful MMO comes along an shows off "Stratholme", a semi-linear, instanced, non-respawning somewhat story-driven dungeon. It really takes off, so your boss/project manager/whoever is in charge comes to you and tells you the world has changed, we now do instanced semi-linear dungeons, and to top it off, we try and be better than "Stratholme" and have dynamic scripts for every boss. Thats a shitload of work and that takes time. So while you chew on this, and a dozen other dungeons now being reworked, discarding hundreds of man-hours, a new game comes along, and it introduces 3-man-Dungeons with adaptable difficulty and cutscenes. You can already hear the knock on your door when your boss comes calling and tells you the 3-people group is now the future, because its more casual friendly, and please rework your instanced linear dungeon into a 3-man. Basically, if you have little or no confidence in your designers ability to do something that works on its own merit, but constantly try to be on the very edge of current mainstream tastes (and believe me, that is the norm today. Innovation is actually a surefire way to get budget cuts), you never finish. Thats what happened to Darkfall I think, before someone put down their foot and said "screw this, we go with what we believe in, and lets see". That immediately will turn off a lot of potential investors. And it defines your target audience a lot more narrow, because now you arent going after the Mainstream Mass Audience anymore. You are now going for the people who like this nonstandard gameplay, and HOPE that in turn the game attracts the mass audience DESPITE being different. At that point, if you start dumping cash into advertising instead of development, you got a huge problem. Darkfall has a lot of buzz in the veteran MMO community. That also is the community that will make or break it through their word-of-mouth, through their willingness to play it. If you take money sorely needed to leave the best possible impression with this crowd, a crowd you dont have to advertize so anymore, and dump it onto a public ad campaign for the unaware mass audience, you ll likely have the same problem of overhype leading to disappointment. Darkfall is already sold, or not sold, to those it needs as its base. It is not a game that can, right now, keep a mass audience. A mainstream player is far more likely to accept a game at its own merits if he reads good stuff about it, about the REAL game, and then buys it. At that point he has accepted what the game is. Ad campaigns just hype up the expectations, especially of the mass audience addicted to easymode, convenience and mainstream, to unfulfillable levels and cost you customers. Let me repeat: The primary target audience of Darkfall is not one you reach with a huge ad campaign. Its on thats already there, but for which you need every penny, cent and dollar to provide the best possible game.
Very interesting write-up.
Let me get this correct, you were a writer for a failed game.
You have no experience as an ad exec, middle or any level of management for that matter, the game you worked on failed and you know that Aventurine is doing things correctly?
If your devs had to drop everything and throw away hundreds of hours of work everytime a dungeon needed changing then you needed 1) better development tools 2) better software 3) better writers 4) better management.....ad naseum. and therefore nothing would have helped your company.
Did your company work on their game for 7 years with 30 people? I bet not and since you have "experience" do you honestly believe that 30 people could write a game that is worth a tinkers damn?
Isn't it interesting how investors want concrete facts before they piss away their money and all you low level peon workers seem to think you have the right answers and know more then they do. Well hell they should just throw C-notes your way and let you make the greatest game in the history of the world and never expect any return on their investment.
Talk about having your head in the clouds.
BTW I hope that you weren't too upset when Brad McQualude didn't show up personally to lay people off since V:SoH is the only true failure in recent memory that would have been changing their dungeons to match WoW and "failed" so to speak.
I have no clue. But if it is a scam then it's already over and it wasnt aimed at the players but the investors.
Maybe Darkfalls future will be something like this:
* No open beta will be released and the 22 of january will pass by with no news for the DF community.
* A few days or weeks later Aventurine will claim they have stumbled upon problems upon which they have no power.
* Aventurine will announce staff changes. Especially higher employees will leave the company and fresh faces will take over.
* The new faces will say that it was the old staff was the reason for Darkfalls delay. More news will be announced at a later stage.
* Aventurine will merge with a small unknown game company and is now known as "Dark Games Game Studio". News about Darkfalls fate will follow in a few weeks they say. Quote: "It is out of our hands" - Leading game dev
* Dark Games Game studio announces that "Darkfall" will change gameengine to a "Top of the line game engine with many new features".
* Sometime in April "Dark Games Game Studio" is closed down. Petitions are made to "Give out Darkfalls sourcecode'
* During the summer a small group of fanbois keep the mmorpg.com Darkfall-forum section alive. No news about Darkfall except one or two posters who claim to have been among the Darkfall devs. They say the game was finished and had great potential.
* During the autumn of 2009 a few game devs are in a meeting with possible future investors about a "sandbox fantasy mmo" that will have a guaranteed slice of the lucrative mmo market since there is no competition for those special sanbox customers. "There is no competition so you have a VERY good chance to get back your investments and a huge profit on top of that" says the boss of the small new indie game studio "Medifan Games". "We will release the game in Q1 2011, thats for sure" says the Medifan boss to the impressed investors. One of the ask a question "Can you tell me again Tosas, what is a mmorpg really? Is it like Sims?"
"No no not at all" he clicks on his laptop and brings up a chart of WoW sales and monthly revenues.
Comments
I agree with every point you made here. Im all for people coming on here and making real posts that actually talk about what they are skeptical of or worried about, i am certainly no blind fan boy and i do that as well. Im not even sure i will play the game but i am intrigued so i come here to get any information i can.
And of course i would like more information but that doesnt mean Aventurine has to give it to me. Nor do they have to give it to me just because other games now give it to me. Especially when said other games give me tons of info that turns out to be a load of crap.
People often dont come on this thread to make real points or even real threads though. They come on here and say
"8 YEARS, that is way to long and it is going to suck big time!"
"No information, game is no way complete, will not release!"
"EPIC FAIL!" (My favorite)
They come here and say this because they want to start a fight with the people salivating over Darkfall, and they usually get their wish. Which turns nearly every thread on this forum into crap.
This game may fail and it may not, but i have no idea why ANYONE would want it to fail. If you cant see that it is important that a smaller company puts out a popular game, or that a game that breaks away from the norm and is well received is important then you dont care at all about this genre.
Are you all guys try to be fortune tellers.
Are you all guys try to take the credit of "YOU SEE I TOLD YOU SO". This is so boring watching probably 13-14 years old mommy boys trying to prove themselves masterminds of the game industry.
What do you know about a company whith 30 devs trying to bring in life their dream when companies with 300 devs or more just trying to just rip off your money so they can take the milk home ?.
Instead of giving a credit to them for agonizigly trying to bring something new to this genre, you pathetic creatures burry them at startline.
You remind me of all those noobs running around in games like WAR, L2 and the other shit, killing whatever and when they fall in a perfect trap they all press the 'Mr GM THEY EXPLOITED ME' button. Well reality check noobs if Aventurine is trying to scam 50k ppl in Europe it will be your fault not theirs if you fall in.
They bluff -----> you call ----> you lose. If not then shut your milk-fed mouths and beg your daddy for monthly subscription.
See you in 22nd Pot.
― Terry Pratchett,
LMAO....your funny, go make another alt why dont ya
^^golf clap^^
I will give credit where credit is due, I see nothing to give credit too. And that is not my doing.
You give credit to something you know so little about...Your praise is cheaply given sir.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
That's because you WERE NOT in AThens presentation of DF to Public dude. And i'm not blaming you for not giving credit to something you havent seen but i praise you for also not burying it.
― Terry Pratchett,
And for all those who are doubting Aventurine's lack of promoting the game read the following article posted by JON WOOD mmorpg editor.
"Editorial Commentary
I really have to tip my hat to the folks over at Aventurine on an impressive and to some, unexpected win in this year's 2008 Reader's Choice Awards. Not so unexpected though to those who have been following the game, which I would classify as one of the most hotly anticipated MMORPGs in recent memory. No other game has caused more of a stir here on MMORPG.com with each and every piece of information that becomes available, bringing people out of the woodwork to debate and discuss.
I have to admit, while I am honestly looking forward to every nominee's launch, Darkfall has to take the cake for me as well. I think it's probably the overall concept that grabs my attention more than any of the nitty-gritty design details. After all, Darkfall is attempting to build an audience for a new, fantasy-based sandbox style game. It's a bold choice for this indy development studio, but one which will certainly allow them to corner the niche of the market that has been screaming for a change from the theme park style that seems to have taken industry precedence since the launch of World of Warcraft. I also think that, given a solid game and release, Darkfall's influence could spread beyond the niche and pick up some of the much sought-after general gaming population crowd.
I won't say that all of the lead-up to Darkfall's impending launch has been positive, but nor has it been overwhelmingly negative. In fact, people on both sides of the Darkfall discussion seem eager to find out just what Aventurine has up its sleeve. It's easy to say that while the anticipation is sometimes mixed, no other game has more eyes on its launch this year than Aventurine's Darkfall Online."
I Rest My Case.
― Terry Pratchett,
Try putting yourselves in Aventurines shoes at the moment.
I dont claim to have the perfect knowledge. I do have experience in the business for working on one of the widely regarded failures of the MMO world as a story/questtext/dialogue writer, and thus have seen many of the issues first hand. You guys are expecting WAY too much clairvoyance. The market is NOT easy to predict at all, yet investors (primary source of budget for development usually) demand fairly precise predictions.
I think Aventurine suffers from the same thing that most companies suffer from it seems: Taking too long, and looking too hard at the competition (read: WoW). The game I worked on had this problem, and a good friend of mine ,she worked at Funcom until half a year before AoCs release, claims its the same there either: You are constantly outrun by the changes in the market.
For example, you build a great dungeon, Old-Sebilis-style (EQ1) because when you started working on it, these garnered a lot of good rep and seemed popular. Now, a successful MMO comes along an shows off "Stratholme", a semi-linear, instanced, non-respawning somewhat story-driven dungeon. It really takes off, so your boss/project manager/whoever is in charge comes to you and tells you the world has changed, we now do instanced semi-linear dungeons, and to top it off, we try and be better than "Stratholme" and have dynamic scripts for every boss.
Thats a shitload of work and that takes time. So while you chew on this, and a dozen other dungeons now being reworked, discarding hundreds of man-hours, a new game comes along, and it introduces 3-man-Dungeons with adaptable difficulty and cutscenes. You can already hear the knock on your door when your boss comes calling and tells you the 3-people group is now the future, because its more casual friendly, and please rework your instanced linear dungeon into a 3-man.
Basically, if you have little or no confidence in your designers ability to do something that works on its own merit, but constantly try to be on the very edge of current mainstream tastes (and believe me, that is the norm today. Innovation is actually a surefire way to get budget cuts), you never finish.
Thats what happened to Darkfall I think, before someone put down their foot and said "screw this, we go with what we believe in, and lets see". That immediately will turn off a lot of potential investors. And it defines your target audience a lot more narrow, because now you arent going after the Mainstream Mass Audience anymore.
You are now going for the people who like this nonstandard gameplay, and HOPE that in turn the game attracts the mass audience DESPITE being different.
At that point, if you start dumping cash into advertising instead of development, you got a huge problem. Darkfall has a lot of buzz in the veteran MMO community. That also is the community that will make or break it through their word-of-mouth, through their willingness to play it. If you take money sorely needed to leave the best possible impression with this crowd, a crowd you dont have to advertize so anymore, and dump it onto a public ad campaign for the unaware mass audience, you ll likely have the same problem of overhype leading to disappointment.
Darkfall is already sold, or not sold, to those it needs as its base. It is not a game that can, right now, keep a mass audience. A mainstream player is far more likely to accept a game at its own merits if he reads good stuff about it, about the REAL game, and then buys it. At that point he has accepted what the game is. Ad campaigns just hype up the expectations, especially of the mass audience addicted to easymode, convenience and mainstream, to unfulfillable levels and cost you customers.
Let me repeat: The primary target audience of Darkfall is not one you reach with a huge ad campaign. Its on thats already there, but for which you need every penny, cent and dollar to provide the best possible game.
Extremely Well Said !!!!!
Bravo you took the words out of our mainstream heads and put it on paper (or screen) to be more accurate. !
― Terry Pratchett,
Nice to have someone that actually knows about the game business stopping by. Your post will probably be ignored by most though, trolls (ie 14 years olds) don't have enough attention span to read it.
Your mind is like a parachute, it's only useful when it's open.
Don't forget, you can use the block function on trolls.
Very interesting write-up.
Let me get this correct, you were a writer for a failed game.
You have no experience as an ad exec, middle or any level of management for that matter, the game you worked on failed and you know that Aventurine is doing things correctly?
If your devs had to drop everything and throw away hundreds of hours of work everytime a dungeon needed changing then you needed 1) better development tools 2) better software 3) better writers 4) better management.....ad naseum. and therefore nothing would have helped your company.
Did your company work on their game for 7 years with 30 people? I bet not and since you have "experience" do you honestly believe that 30 people could write a game that is worth a tinkers damn?
Isn't it interesting how investors want concrete facts before they piss away their money and all you low level peon workers seem to think you have the right answers and know more then they do. Well hell they should just throw C-notes your way and let you make the greatest game in the history of the world and never expect any return on their investment.
Talk about having your head in the clouds.
BTW I hope that you weren't too upset when Brad McQualude didn't show up personally to lay people off since V:SoH is the only true failure in recent memory that would have been changing their dungeons to match WoW and "failed" so to speak.
Darkfall a scam or not?
I have no clue. But if it is a scam then it's already over and it wasnt aimed at the players but the investors.
Maybe Darkfalls future will be something like this:
* No open beta will be released and the 22 of january will pass by with no news for the DF community.
* A few days or weeks later Aventurine will claim they have stumbled upon problems upon which they have no power.
* Aventurine will announce staff changes. Especially higher employees will leave the company and fresh faces will take over.
* The new faces will say that it was the old staff was the reason for Darkfalls delay. More news will be announced at a later stage.
* Aventurine will merge with a small unknown game company and is now known as "Dark Games Game Studio". News about Darkfalls fate will follow in a few weeks they say. Quote: "It is out of our hands" - Leading game dev
* Dark Games Game studio announces that "Darkfall" will change gameengine to a "Top of the line game engine with many new features".
* Sometime in April "Dark Games Game Studio" is closed down. Petitions are made to "Give out Darkfalls sourcecode'
* During the summer a small group of fanbois keep the mmorpg.com Darkfall-forum section alive. No news about Darkfall except one or two posters who claim to have been among the Darkfall devs. They say the game was finished and had great potential.
* During the autumn of 2009 a few game devs are in a meeting with possible future investors about a "sandbox fantasy mmo" that will have a guaranteed slice of the lucrative mmo market since there is no competition for those special sanbox customers. "There is no competition so you have a VERY good chance to get back your investments and a huge profit on top of that" says the boss of the small new indie game studio "Medifan Games". "We will release the game in Q1 2011, thats for sure" says the Medifan boss to the impressed investors. One of the ask a question "Can you tell me again Tosas, what is a mmorpg really? Is it like Sims?"
"No no not at all" he clicks on his laptop and brings up a chart of WoW sales and monthly revenues.
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But maybe it is a great game. I hope so