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Camels and Stealth Fighters
kb4blu
Member UncommonPosts: 717
There have been many threads about the lack of innovation and the general crap that passes for MMOs. I thought I would add my own thoughts.
To amplify what some others have said about how big companies could not find their rear end with both hands as far as making a decent MMO, I give the following example.
I am over 65 years old and one expression that I have heard many times is "A camel is a horse designed by a commitee"
Also the stealth fighter was designed and built in the "Skunk Works" far away from the suits and MBAs. They were able to try many things without having management looking over their shoulders. In other words the "Devs" were left alone to do what they did best.
The gaming industry could learn from this.
But it seems to me we will keep getting camels instead of stealth fighters.
Comments
Camels have their place in the world though.
I would think that the gaming industry is quite different from the aerospace industry. For one thing, budgets are quite different. There aren't that many large game companies out there and they tend to stick with what's popular. (I'm thinking Electronic Arts and their annual football games) Smaller game companies have much smaller budgets and creating their games is a huge risk (but it may pay off). There are some smaller game companies with some innovative games out there but it will have a lower budget and hence, not be as "nice". Also, the target audience of the game companies are quite fickle and not all can be pleased. If the game companies think they can design a game that can please a majority, then they will lean towards that (even if their product becomes a copy cat of another product).
The aerospace industry tend to have massive budgets and a set customer (the government) that knows what it wants. The company producing the product just needs work with the customer to define the requirements and then work towards designing a product that meets those requirements. So for something completely new and innovative, the company creates a proposal to the customer to get $X to do research on $Y with the option to get $Z more if the research was successful such that the product in question goes out of the research phase and into the development and production phase.
A game company can't exactly create a proposal to its customers to get money in advance to try something unknown.
Which is why the market has been getting so many bland and generic MMOs with RMT lately.
Devs don't have creative control like they used to.
The MMO industry was once driven by those with a vision now it is driven by suits. Get used to riding that camel.
I think there are still many creative and innovative games out there but they are mostly in the indie game category. Fortunately, it does seem that some of the larger companies focus their attention on it (such as Microsoft LIVE Indie Games). There should be some good indie MMOs out there too but because indie media (music, games, etc) in general aren't publicized, we don't hear about them often.
That's a horrible analogy to use for this. Camels are actually superior to horses in many situations. Thus if a committe actually designed a 'camel' when asked to design a 'desert horse' then they should be praised since they did a great job.
The camel as an animal for the desert is first class, as a riding animal it was designed by a commitee.