Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Eastern Game Company Assembly Lines
crunchyback
Member Posts: 44
Does anyone else think these companies are doing its loyal fan base a diservice, pumping out a new game every year or so?
Why dont they just put their efforts into one game, continually improving it (no i dont mean weekly item mall updates)?
To me this seems to be a major issue with the eastern f2p games. A game come out, draws a crowd, and a year later another game, very similair comes out by the same people. Players from the old game migrate, leaving loyal fans playing an outdated version.
It seems like a constant cycle, and Perfect World Entertainment caught my attention on this. PWE has 7 games now, the first appeard here in 2008. Thats a hell of a lot of games to put out in a few year. To think they could have put those efforts into making one stellar game, like western companies tend to do, only making a new game when technology out paces their current game.
Does it bother anyone looking at this game to know that in a year or less, a new title will be released, directly competing with this game, which competes with their previous games?
I know each version has its own flavor and gimmick, but still, it seems like an epic waste of money for the 10% of the game who does support the cash shop, usualy heavily too, to see thier game one upped by the same company after a year or two.
Thoughts and/or opinions?
Comments
if it makes more money for the company then i don't really think they care about our plight.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
It's probably because you are confusing publishers for developers again... a crime that happens so often here in these forums that hands should be chopped off over it.
Like the states, there are maybe a dozen well-known publishers, and HUNDREDS of development studios. Some of the developers actually own those studios, while the other ones end up groveling to the publishers to get their s**t out there.
Now imagine this; Asia has PWE and K2 and NCsoft, and all the other names that you probably recognize - but would it blow your mind if I told you they really don't *make* games? They finance them, and host them. In the publishers eyes it's "who cares if one game has the population migrate to another one that *WE* have the rights to". When PWE hosts a ton of games that are all the same, it doesn't matter to them because they will still make that monay as long as the players circulate within thier library of games. It's the individual studios that made those games that are going to suffer when they can't draw players anymore and get dropped - it's no skin off the publisher's nuts.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Im not sure about that. I know labor costs are dirt cheap in asia, so possibly it makes all the sense in the world to just make a new game to pull those cash shop spenders into, causing them to waste their money spent on the now old game and start all over and spend more in the new one...not sure about that though. I would think it would be more profitable to spend those efforts in expanding and polishing the origional title. Could be wrong though.
Agreed, that could be the case, however when the games are so damn similair, aside from a new gimmick you know that its just rehashing the same old system.
Yes i do realize that the company that actually makes the game leases it out to publishers.
But then why dont these secretive game creation companies ever just stick with a game and polish it?
They are secretive because the publisher owns the rights to the game, and anything said has to pass through monkeys in suits first. Plus, they usually realize they are going to make jack with what the publisher subsidizes them from profits on their first game, so they have to make more, and more, and more - in the hopes they can eventually break off and finance themselves - which never happens. It's exactly why they release a crapspree, and the self-published developers are actually making the things they always wanted to.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
We have so many more game comapny and studio in asia.
Even if Perfect International don' t make new games, other company will. I turn on TV and I see 5 new mmorpg commercial every month.
The market is very different.
I think people make too much assumption on developer not polishing their game. It's not that the company is moving their team to creat new games. It's really that they higher another team to make new games or merge with another studio.
The updates comes slow because it comes slow.
And my question back to you is how many western mmorpg are actually polish. Just because they sticked to one game don't mean it's polished.
Creating another team to make another game dont' mean asia company don't polish their game. As far as I know they are as unpolish as western games. "All it means is they are expanding their company to creat another team another department to make another game".
How much can you improve a game that has been improved for many many years? Will you still play the game at the cost of having tons of places where you will only see 1 or 2 people here and there?
Just take for example, WoW (just because they have the most subs) Even though theres that many people playing the game, you will notice how empty the zones are. Everyone hangs out at cities or the "popular" areas having forgotten the places that brings you good memories. Thats exactly what they are now...memories...
No matter how much developers improve a game, it can only go so far. I wanna see people when I travel, I wanna communicate, I wanna group up and do some quests. People grow tire of games (at least for me) that doesn't have the magical feeling anymore. The feeling where you can actually enjoy yourself.
I'm inbetween, I want a game that I can enjoy for quite a while, yet I dont want to keep playing the same game for the rest of its entire life cycle because it gets boring and old. The new add ons or expansions may seem cool but you'll end up fighting for the wrong reasons. (to gear up and repeat the process)
New games are good for people to wanna have a new experience and to enjoy new lores and stories, but not all games are good games. Look for games you enjoy playing.
I just canceld my wow sub, i cant get into the game for the life of me, but still keep trying out each new expansion. The zones are not empty, at all. Yes the major cities and high end contented is jam packed, but that is what you get when you have people who have been playing for years, on top of that the random dungeons removes the need to be in the low level zones. However theres still plenty of people there.
Years of polishing is why WoW has maintained so much of its community. Cataclysm sold almost 5mil copies that first week, thats unheard of for a game thats 7 years old, hell new overhyped games cant even come close...i think AoC had the record at 1.4mil box sales at launch.
They did add new experiences, for new players and old, new lore and new stories. The two new races have new starter campaign style quests lines, they were both very entertaining, however short lived they were. Nobody addresses the fact that they are starting to add more and more mini game type quests too, where you mount something with special abilites and use that to complete the quest. Its a very nice break from the kill X, fexed, mob drop quests. I give wow credit for that, you dont see much of that in any other game. Still wow is not for me..
Wow did have a less than stellar launch, but they kept improving it, you gotta give them credit for maintaining their population size, even if you detest the game. And they do start trends, that address a lot of issues in older games, like finding groups and pvp, even if they bring new isssues and problems, your going to see a lot of these wow ideas in Rift and new games.
The whole point of this thread was the discussion on why more companies, specifically aisian gaming companies, dont do this, they seem to opt for releasing a new title, with a new gimmick, on the same platform and engin as their old game. Its why so many f2p games look and play alike, and run the same.
You are generalizing things base on the success of 1 western mmorpg.
Very few MMORPG both in the east and west was able to maintain a high population after a few years.
There isn't even much relation between a company making new games and not polishing their old games. Since they "hier a new team to make the new game".
Some companies like to spit out crappy games but it isn't just eastern. Cryptic to name one is western and spits out games after 18-24 months in development.
Crappy F2P games is a global thing for that matter, since they come from Asia they are more common there but if you look around you will see that there are US companies that makes them too. Last Chaos is a good example, Aeria games are from California and makes loads of crappy F2P games.
Check around a bit and you will find that this is a global thing and if there is more Asian games is just because they started earlier there and most people of earth actually lives in Asia (well, China and India to be exact).
I have yet to play an asian-origin F2P worth the time it took to download.
I mean, who cares about those things anyway?
There are more than one successful western mmorpg. Success is measured diffrently here in the west than in the east. All games that are p2p are going to be less successful based on population alone. 50k-100k full price paying subs + a box sale is a more successful game than one on a eastern pay model with 10x the population.
Population matters little when 90% of them dont pay a dime for it. On top of that theres just more people to play on the other side of the pacific, demographics and all.
But yes, when compared to wow, no game is successful, if all who fail to top it are failures.