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MMOs are now produced by bloodsucking capitalist morons
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Member Posts: 1,904
To start, I am not involved in the video game industry and have only consumed these products for roughly eight years. Maybe this is not news any longer, and maybe I've been a moron myself for consistently hoping that newly developed mmorpgs are actually going to be worth something, but I think it's about time I take a leave from MMOs or video games entirely.
Modern mmo's have nothing to do with imagination, immersiveness, ingenuity, creativity, aesthetic appeal, or anything. They have become streamlined bullshit that is solely consisted of the most repetitious actives targeting the weakest aspects of human behavior. In looking at recent online games like Warhammer, WoW, STO, EQ2, Aion, FFXIV, etc, it appears that all these games boast is increased accessibility in character customization, repetitive dungeons, riskless PvP, boring quests and other gameplay mechanics that do little for the human imagination. They offer shiny graphics but absolutely no substance. Community aspects are ignored and solely limited to chat channels and dungeon finders. Consistently, all of what used to make MMORPGs fun for me is now being considered nonessential and removed so the greatest possible amount of players will subscribe.
It would be hard to write this post without bringing up Blizzard, World of Warcraft, and the effect it has had on the online game industry, something that everyone here knows. I used to have respect for Blizzard for being able to maintain superiority in producing a fun, immersive game. Now, my mind has changed. Cataclysm's dungeons are going to be even more linear. They are revamping dungeons by removing various nonessential wings. What happened to the enjoyment of exploring dungeons through a feeling of risk?
I resubbed WoW to play through WotLK. I did two years after the expansion had come out. Playing my 80 priest through the dungeon finder was a seriously disturbing experience. Every group pushes through 5 man heroics as fast as possible. They have all seem the bosses, know all of the loot, and only do it for badges and now for justice points. No one talks to one another, they have no patience if someone needs to take a piss or needs to know the strategy for the boss, or anything. People are running these dungeons purely for the small amount of badges they will receive to buy loot that will be useless in the next patch (let alone the next expansion.) So this brings me to my next point:
Go take a look at any game developer conference and look at what classes they are offering. You will not notice an emphasis on positive game design through ingenuity, rather, the focus is upon how to maintain a grind without making it feel like one, cognitive psychology in players (this scares the shit out of me), marketing models, the new intrigue in item shops and f2p models, and other crap that is solely for the purpose of making money and increasing subscribers.
These developers don't give a shit about your experience of the game, or creating new forms of art and play through virtual worlds. Now it's about taking advantage of your need to gather and hoard items, the psychological addiction of loot probability (gambling essentially), keeping you on the treadmill for as long as possible, and creating an overall experience that treats the player as some patient who needs his/her fix of MMO crack.
Where is the imagination that Dungeons & Dragons offered, or tabletop Warhammer? These games, along with fantasy literature, was the basis upon where MMOs got their ideas. EQ1, Ultima, Diablo 2, DAoC, FFXI, all offered aspects of gaming that appreciated social community, the unknowing of traveling without a map, open forms of PvP, experience loss, hard dungeons, etc. Old MMORPG experience was about risk and feeling like something unexpected could happen at any play session.
That doesn't exist anymore. Well maybe we can say that this is the "new" generation of MMOs. But then what does it offer in terms of creative, enjoyable content? My bet is that the 12 million subscribers of WoW aren't really even enjoying the game, they are rather not interested enough with their real lives and are seeking some form of accomplishment through gathering gold and items.
I think there is something seriously ethically wrong about the way developers are designing games, and I think that we as the players need to speak up and not act like mice or sheep. Online games should enhance the creative aspects of the individual, and the desire to experience fantasy-like elements with others in a virtual world. They should be about the competition we cannot enjoy in real life, through a playful manner, but also stimulate the collaborative aspects that we as a species can act upon.
I haven’t even touched upon the artistic direction in games today. The main focus is realism. Fu*k realism. Video games are not about imitating real life; they are supposed to be imaginary. I want to see surreal landscapes with twisted skies and feel as if I'm walking through something that does not or never will exist physically. I don't need polished armor and enhanced light and shadows to make me feel like I'm in the world. I want the visual aspect to be left up to me as the observer to attach my own meaning and aesthetic appreciation. Screw how good the water ripple effects are, show me a castle that has been built into a giant mountain that I know I can approach and explore, without having a lighted entry way with a bunch of quest NPCS sitting outside.
Inevitably, I'm going to be told to quit MMOs and leave it up to the people who enjoy them now. Well I probably will, but I do want people to be more skeptical about the games that are coming out in the past few years. Don't just consume them as if they were McDonalds or Starbucks. These games are ideas, and ideas can't be capitalized and streamlined just to get subscribers. We need to ask more of developers, or support independent companies that are trying to make better games (and I try to do this myself.)
That's the end of my rant. I guess I feel like I've spent too many years hoping that MMOs will take a creative turn and approach the potential that they can offer. Sadly, we are going to see more hunks of overpriced shit like SWTOR and Tera.
Here's a good article about how MMOs are trying to get you addicted:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html
Also here's the ranting by EA Louse for anyone who hasn't read.
http://ealouse.wordpress.com/
Comments
You had me a streamlining. Sadly, this is the new gaming culture, make the games shallow and shiny, screw challenge, give them a couple of hours of distraction, and they will lap it up. It doesnt need to be good, just enough shinies to have them ooh and ahh. Look at gaming progression, the casual gamer is the new target demographic, anything challenging, difficult, or time consuming is out, in with the shallow, mediocre, and banal.
Its a sad indictment on the gaming industry that the new developers, the gamers of old, are making this garbage, and the "Journalists" give these substandard games 7-10 out of 10 because they dont want lost access to the upcoming titles. The industry is a joke, going mainstream and recycling old ideas, its just like Hollywood, recycle old/foreign ideas, repackage them in such a way as to add mroe explosions, skin, and pretty girls, and the moron masses will consume it and make you money.
It wouldnt surprise me if all creative design positions were filled with a market study touting suit.
Keep the faith, avoid MMO's if you have to, play older games if you have to ignore the newer collection of mediocre crap that is being pushed out not ready, not tested and made for console audience (absurdly short attention span and limited reading capability) though, you may experience some nostalgia, and be reminded how far game quality has fallen in storytelling, character development and immersive capability. Sucks to be an older gamer in the era of casual mainstream.
Thanks for the response. I definitely agree. I've been quite frustrated with various gaming review sites that continue to give these crappy gaves decent ratings as well.
I really think that Mythic is a prime example of a good developer with good ideas going to hell, ala Barton Fink. The EA Louse blog is hillarious to read, after he claims that Jeff Hickman was a customer service rep promoted to produce WAR.
I have noticed how many excellent ideas were in old games, and how little we have impproved since them. I started playing Diablo 2 with my ex after never experiencing it before. I can't believe how innovative it was. I also downloaded the first Final Fantasy, which was originally on NES, on my blackberry. I have now lost all respect for the FF series, as they have hardly come up with any new ideas.
I feel like a moron for buying a nice new shiny gaming computer. There are no modern games worth playing other than some FPS games that are fun for an hour. I feel like I should get into video editing or electronic music production just to be able to use it's hardware lol.
Couldn't agree more, it just isn't about the passion anymore and I personally don't see things getting better as gaming becomes more main-stream.
While I tend to disagree that some of the mechanics which made previous generation mmo's more time-consuming were not necessarily contributing to their creative influence on the player, I agree with your overall position. Games (mmo's in particular) are not produced for an audience of human beings - rather an audience of impulse-based consumers.
There was a period when I was contemplating entrance into the industry to work my way up to lead game designer in order to put my own creativity to work in games. However, my research yielded the commentary of several experienced industry insiders saying "the industry has more ideas than it can ever use - if you become a game designer, you'll usually be handed the already completed creative documents by the producer for a game and told to 'make it work'. Only those few who gain a special status in the industry (or have the dough to start their own development firm) actually get to create a game completely from their own minds (like Miyamoto, Hirunobu Sakaguchi, etc).
So based on that, I'd speculate that this is even more so the case in the mmo genre, since each game is a relatively large investment. It may not be that there is so much a lack of imagination in the industry but rather artificial barriers to that creativity being fully realized in many cases.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure what exactly can be done other than consumers collectively rejecting such condescending treatment by voting with their wallets...or a visionary developer receiving private funding for their own development firm and showing everyone how things should be done.
Edit: ...or the industry moving away from the subscription model.
I agree with most of what you said, except that I do tend to like realistic styled graphics. I think I would use SWG as my cut off. Anything that looks worse than that I will probably not be interested in.
But mmos are all about the grind and repetitive crap, when it could be sooooo much more. There is a real lack of creativity and ingenuity in game design. We need virtual worlds, not console mmos.
Place me in the We part
Star Wars Galaxies while my best personal best experiance with a MMORPG, it also has ruined the way I look at current limited MMORPG's that came after it as I kept hoping this genre would evolve from games like SWG or even UO.
A virtual world build by it's community in way's of housing/crafting/trading/grouping, learning from each other for example langauges from other species, depending on eachother for resources or setting goals or self made missions where one person would need item X or resource X and asked the community or other classes to get them some, where you had a place to be unique, where people would travel planets to get to your store to either buy things or simple watch some of the very nice interiours of houses. Where people use to camp but not in the way of spawn camp but to actually set up a camp and tell story's of their adventures or simple having fun conversations within a camp, setting your own goals without the game telling you what to do next, getting lost within the virtual world, running for your virtual life cause you could enter anywhere even if you wern't strong enough, where you where not being told you that hero but where you could become that hero due to what you might have done for friends or it's community, where people helped eachother out just for the fun of it instead of the rewards that lures at the end, where cap lvl still made you part of the whole worlds/planets as people would continue to visit back and forth to starters area's.
But still today I can't blame developers or gamecompany's as I have said before I still mostly blame the community that came in this genre over the years as we who have played SWG already saw the influx of the "I want it all and want it now crowed" hitting this genre, where I feel the large part of the blame lies there as developers/gamecompany's will target those who they feel bring in the most cash. The community has become impatient, wants it all and wants it fast, rush to cap lvl ignoring most of what could be done within the gameworld aslong they hit cap lvl asap.
Still have hopes though that one day a A-Tittle company might be bolded and make that virtual gameworld that gives it's players depth.
Oh and I don't want a Second Life or Sims online, but MMORPG as they are but with more depth that makes these games virtual worlds without losing the concept of fun instead of regular mulitplayer games with just more people in them then the normal multiplayer games.
Where is the imagination that Dungeons & Dragons offered, or tabletop Warhammer? These games, along with fantasy literature, was the basis upon where MMOs got their ideas. EQ1, Ultima, Diablo 2, DAoC, FFXI, all offered aspects of gaming that appreciated social community, the unknowing of traveling without a map, open forms of PvP, experience loss, hard dungeons, etc. Old MMORPG experience was about risk and feeling like something unexpected could happen at any play session.
I understand where you are comming from with Old MMORPG experiences with the unexpected. I remember when I played UO beta and I was so happy to be in a world with all these people I just sat in Yew amazed I can carve a tree for twigs to make a fire and kill the deer to make food. It was a bit of a sandbox world which left mysteries everywhere...PvP got annoying... losing your house/castle become troublesome... ragequits were mounting on this issues alone... Still I loved walking around a place not knowing if there was some PKer walking around trying to ruin your day.
I could walk around an orc forest for the longest time and bamm.. there is a strong orc guarding a treasure chest with who knows what inside... no idea what will come after that. May be a PKer will jump out. May be another Orc swarm will come.. Who knows.. there was no real online data base equal to today's.
However....
I would have to say that old mmorpg did not have to deal so much with the age of wiki this and that.. wow head... this and that. The age of discovery was dead before you even stepped in the world. Its very very hard to "surprise" anyone using old methods. Hard dungeons became only as hard as the predictable script... or the gear listed on the forum.. or the strategy you watched on YouTube.
As for experience loss? I have always been wishy washy about this. Its hard to punish someone for 6 hours of grinding for 1 mistake..This is a huge turnoff and ragequit factor for many many players. Only a few dont mind the down time that may come along as well. But at the same time death may become/has become just a minor problem. No one worries if they will die. They will run into any situation and die and then shrug it off. Developers are going to have to think out of the box with this one. Permanent death is not really a good idea for any company who wants to run a large MMO these days.
Open PvP... well I mentioned this before. Its a double edged blade that can be fixed a bit by not making death penalties too serious in PvP and leaving it open everywhere to keep players in suspense. Still, this will cause many many ragequits.. which like you said a company does not want because of the $$ aspect.
With the technologies as great as they are today.. it is still difficult to give D&D its proper place in the online world. We are talking about a sandbox world with no limitations here. Howerver, people still want a story to go through. They still want the chance for random events that are more than "Help I am being chased by kobolds." You can hardly match a good DM running a good story.
Games like WoW turned everything into a job with 0 randomness beyond will the boss drop this or not. I loved the early days of WoW because of a few reasons. Dungeons were difficult at times, loot took time to obtain, purple items were very rare and random. Today's wow is just check wowhead...run the boss with the strat from youtube... repeat.
Most likely we will never see
1. Serious death penalties. Permanent Death/Huge Experience Loss/Item Loss
2. "Hard" dungeons. Due to the internet databases alone. Eventually everything is broken down and will have a guide.
So what upcomming games have a chance?
Guild Wars 2 looks like it offers some unique ideas with exploration and the unknown if they live up to their hype. Depends if everything they are saying truely is as interactive as they say.
Diablo 3 looks to still be linear as Diablo 2, but may have more random encounters/quests/areas/etc. But they gave up on open PvP which is a shame. It was always a little exciting to have there. However, they could always change it back?
Probably not considering the game rules change in PvP Arenas a bit.. from what I read atleast.
What we need more of?
Randomness...
Dont confuse random dice rolls with attacks and skill with randomness in the world's enviroment. Items, bosses, MOBs in general, locations/map, etc.
We need GM made events as well. You cant depend on random fun all the time. Once in a while a true GM event held on each server. I still think the best people at this were in the MUDs I played in the past. The events had mystery...combat...real time strategy making.. and rare loot. Multiple server shards made this more difficult but its still do-able.
- ya I'm here
I have not played it yet but you speak of virtual worlds.. why haven't you all played second life, is that not what that game claims to be?
Dustin
I think you should read the article from cracked.com that the OP posted - there are specific reasons why this "randomness" is part of the problem. Given, there is still variety, which can seem random (but isn't truly random), such as the dynamic events in GW2. Dynamic/changeable/interactive, is generally good, true randomness not so much.
So, they have made a core element of most older MMOs, grind, a more enjoyable act. Now, grind has always existed in these games, maybe it always will. I really do not even mind it, especially if it's fun: say, you need to grind dungeons. For sure doing dungeons is fun, but it is even more fun if you get loot off it and what then makes it even more fun are the long time rewards you gain, such as reputation and those Justice Points you mentioned.
The fact is, older MMOs with their unmasked grind wouldn't appeal to nearly as many people as the MMOs of today do. As I said, I don't even mind the masked grind, I don't even think about it because in the MMOs of today, I often have fun doing it.
You also said there was something ethically wrong about creating games with a masked grind (or at least this is how I understood it), trying to keep the players playing for a time as long as possible. I agree, but from a different perspective. A masked grind, once again, can in fact be fun. If these games were created and published in a socialist society, they would be free and people would indeed play them for fun, for the fun of the masked grind. In a situation such as this where there would be no profit gained from these games, I would not consider it ethically wrong to create a game such as this. Maybe this indeed is the best way of MMO design to have the most of people enjoy the game.
You know OP, in America anyone can make a MMORPG and you sound like a person who knows what it would take to make it. My sugjestion is to start your own and see how far you get developing a game. I mean, you seem to have all the knowledge of what it takes to make such a game, jump in, go for it, make one that you feel fits the quals. Otherwise, rage on and see how far it gets you.
This sums up my feelings on MMO's perfectly, and is also the reason why I'm not currently subscribed to any MMO. Maybe something will come along to break the mold, but I'm not betting any money on it.
Second Life isn't a game, it's a hive for online sex addicts. Usually the most twisted and disturbing kind.
Great post OP.
It boils down to this:
LCD=$$$
Have you seen this movie?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
I do think there is a distinction between classical mmorpg elements that were fun, and ones that just existed for lack of better technology or experience. Much of my fond memories of EQ and FFXI were based upon me being a thirteen year old kid with enough faith in the game experience to create my own interest and motivation for playing. Exploring sewers in EQ or running spiderwebs to a nearby town to sell while being comissioned by another player was awesome fun.
I've considered trying to get into the game industry before but I'm not really sure if it would be worth the effort. I thought about majoring in philosophy and computer science and trying to implement ideas such as value theory, aesthetics, market economies, etc into a virtual world. But, as said earlier, to get to that position would be quite difficult and probably unrealistic.
There are plenty of essays out there worth reading that analyze various issues relating to cognitive psychology, market economy, ethical choice, and other issues within existing mmos. These types of games have huge potential for testing various social theories.
But outside of using MMOs as a function for exploring various ideas... MMOs should be fun, non repetitive, interactive, social, diverse, and immersive too.
Thanks Blud.
I have, but it's been a little while.
A good film on virtual reality and some of the concepts spoken here is eXistenZ directed by David Cronenberg. It takes a critical approach to gaming in general though.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120907/
RE: Consistently, all of what used to make MMORPGs fun for me is now being considered nonessential and removed so the greatest possible amount of players will subscribe.
Lowest common denominator, yep. They're becoming plastic.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1906-The-Future-of-MMOs
Maybe those 8 years you spent behind the computer were not good for you and if you are quitting playing games now, you might start to see the world surrounding you in some more realistic scope.
Good luck and all best.
Completely agree man.
Thing is though, it's OUR fault that these sort of games are what dominate the market. Problem is that we, the consumers/players, when actually finding a GOOD game, always smack it down because "It's buggy" or "It's laggy" or "It has bad costumer service", meaning overall that "It's a bad game."
Thing is though, these games are bad games BECAUSE we smack then down and refuse to play! All of us have at one time or another found a game, played it for a bit, found numerous problems with it, then simply switched back to WoW or whatever we play, simply because "We have no other choice." The fact is that if we wanted to we could take down WoW within a couple hours.
So, you want better games on the market? Then when a good one comes out, PLAY it! Don't just quit and smack it down because it has problems! Don't think "Hey, if I leave for a few months and come back maybe it'll be better!" If you stay you're helping it get better! If you leave you just make it worse.
/end rant
The answer is 42 you idiot!
I second that.
I'm also playing no mmo at the moment for the very same reason, and I've played almost all of them. Maybe one day we'll have a real game with real gameplay. But i'm also wondering if the masses (that could be concidered as mindless sheep) will break their current zombie-like fanboy mode and stop supporting really bad games. I get that the IP is really great, but please... look futher than that.
"You don't have much choice when trouble's riding your back so tight it makes the leather squeak. Sometimes you outsmart it, sometimes you outfight it, and sometimes you just have to outrun it... full throttle."
Yeah, the repetitive dungeon run for loot 'x' is very boring to me...I quit EQ after one of the instanced dungeon expansions, where I ran this same dungeon like 30 times, and no lie, my wife ran it like 70 times, all trying to get this one SK his boots as loot....I kind of stopped playing, was tired of doing the same thing over and over, but my wife felt the need to try to get the item for the guy....
I dislike/hate instance dungeons, but it seems that its the new norm. I play games to have fun, I harvest, craft, explore, pve, pvp...I like playing on a pvp server, I like having options...If I get tired of doing one thing, I switch it up, the problem with there instance grinds is that its all anyone wants to do, they become obsessed with grinding it out for 1 piece of loot, till everyone has their 1 piece from it, and the drop is often something someone has, so it was a wasted time.
I only played WoW beta, but I didn't think it was anything original and we didn't play it. I felt like it was a mix of EQ, and DAoC, without real RvR objectives or reason when it was in beta. I know its much more now, but it didn't make a good first impression....I think WoW took a lot of the aspects of change that I dislike to a new level, so I don't regret not giving it a chance.
My favorite all around game ever was UO, favorite 3D/Theme was EQ, and RvR/PvP was DAoC.
No bigger companies seem to want to take a risk, they want to target bored WoW players it seems, so they offer something that is WoW with a twist or such, and then the indie companies often put out something different, but its usually buggy and full of exploits and problems, as well as unfinished. I mean I get it from a investment/risk standpoint, but it doesn't mean we gotta like it.
I'm these days playing coop mode games with friends and fps rpg's,.. They'r way better than mmo's atm. Thou I like world of tanks as a mmo. But it's more and fps game with rpg elements in it.
Anyways I'm personally tired of grinding lvl's in mmo's.. I like more the games what give u xp according to your skill aka fps games with rpg elements, instead of having to grind 2-3 weeks of rats etc to get to the max lvl so you can actually get a gear what is end game and then notice there's nothing to do with the gear what impacts the game in pvp. In tanks and fps games your gear and your charachter/skills will affect the battlefield so that others can see it. Instead of just grinding some pve monsters in dungeons.
I'm not only one.. let's say about 150ish of my friends are on the same trend.. moving from mmo's to fps/rpg/coop games in groups so we get our team effort/pvp fix from them. This mainly coming from people who have been playing since 2000 in mmo's or joined our little group of friends since that.
Trying swtor out, but that's going to be my last mmo with world of tanks. After those won't try any of the so called mmo games for few years.
About moronic capitalists.. etc doing games, Yeah.. all the mmo's these days have frigging insane decisions made into them.. No veteran mmo player can understand the mistakes they seem to do.. Don't they have any mmo players in dev teams these days, it can't be always the producers etc screwing the dev's up.. It's happened too often. More likely people who do mmo's.. don't play mmo's as it's like taking work home or something just my gues.
Try World of Tanks and Minecraft, these games are pretty fresh.
The 2nd is made by just one guy and fun to play for an hour at a time.
O_o o_O
Wow pretty long rant and in general it takes a tone that I tend to disagree with but you have presented your point in such a way that I can certainly understand what you are saying and that in many ways you are correct. The thing is though I'm not too certain any of the games you feel may have been created in these eight years to push the genre forward and present some of these experiences of artistic value etc. that haven't required and thus gotten massive amounts of it's gamers time as well.
One of the reasons I have to agree that the people who are developing mmorpg's are changing is because they tend to be people with access and willing to spend more money than earlier in mmorpg history and as such it's quite obvious that in many ways it means our games are brought to us by different people. And don't forget in some other cases these people who have brought these diamonds of the industry have been made superstars in their own rights and now only serve those same "capitalists".
I am pretty picky about what I play and as such don't try every mmo that comes out simply because I like mmorpgs so while I am well aware of how alot of these games have come out it hasn't effected me personally, but even if I was I wouldn't be willing to bet that atleast one out of DCUO,Rift,TOR,GW2 wouldn't be a great game regardless of what has happened to the games that have been coming out.
As mmorpg's go the industry is growing and it stands to reason that growth is going to come in the form of a "different type of gamer" than many of the purists and some of us veterans as well. I think the music industry and the different styles of music that have appeared are a good comparison to how growth happens in an entertainment industry.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....