Lizard we have got a little off piste here me and Sovrath but you highlight a point, yes MMO's take a lot more input than other mediums but that makes it more pertinent to speak up when you see them moving towards a cut and paste ethic, with music you can just stop buying the music but working AAA MMO's seem to be few and far between these days. Now what I see in Rift to me it is bad so don't confuse me with just disliking the game, I generally think the underbelly of the game is bad and when the rifts and invasions wear thin others might see it too. But I'm under no illusion, hence this thread, that I could be very wrong and Rift is a huge success, many don't see The Velvet Underground as the greatest American band ever and I understand that point of view even though they are all WRONG
Cal.
Somewhere, there is a map of music. It's done on aged parchment with a dark brown stain rather than ink. There's a spot on that map with your name under it. The area you're in has no name, but slightly above it in stylized text are the words, "Here Be Dragons". :-)
Right now, I don't think it's important that a specific type of game be successful, or that any particular game be successful. Rather, something needs to be successful, preferably very successful. If Blizzard is the only company that can make a successful mmorpg (successful to the investors and the general public) then Blizzard will be the only company makes mmorpgs. That would be very bad. Not because it's Blizzard, but because only one company is doing it. If Rift is successful, that means Trion is successful...somebody besides Blizzard can do it. Other companies will learn from what Trion has done, and they'll do something a little different. This is your mainstream. However...
In April, a free Hero Engine service is starting up (http://ideafabrik.de/). You can develop, for free, an mmorpg that costs you nothing to run. The only thing you need to supply is the work. People could actually write a fully functional 3D mmorpg. The limiting factor is their willingness to work (and download Blender). Being a small group or an individual with a day job won't be the barrier it is now to making a decent game. I've exchanged some emails with one of the Idea Fabrik reps and they envision the community trading and sharing resources (game models, maps, audio, etc.) which lowers the barrier even further. I'm not saying Idea Fabrik is the thing, but it's the type of thing that will bring new ideas and game play innovation.
* edit *
Messed up BBML code.
@Sovrath - I just couldn't think of anything to say. Thanks for agreeing with some of what I said. :-)
I definitely see your point LB and many wish this too but I really would like to see something different be successful and that is the premise of this thread.
Now that free Hero engine really could be the thing that cracks this nut as what is stopping many a Indie company is the inability to source a great engine to use for their games, so they have the time consuming act of creating one themselves and usually it is not really upto it as is my problem with Fallen Earth, Darkfall, Perpetuum et al.. but another thing is when they do create a great enviroment as in Earthrise there is not much time and money to do much else. So lets hope, as I said in an another thread of mine from a while ago, that MMO's get their Punk moment and we see the MMO equivalent of The Clash, Dead Kennedy's and Sonic Youth (sorry about the music analogies guys its my specialist subject and I'm still learning about the MMO world).
I feel a competitor to Blizzard has to be something different and show that different works.
Cal.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Baby steps. They're taking baby steps right now. They need to make money first. So far, WoW and Eve are the only two financially successful games (from an investor's point of view) out there. There are other good games, but they aren't there yet. The closest thing in the last 5 years to successful is Aion, Perpetuum* and Star Trek Online*. Well, Runes of Magic is successful too, but I think they'll more than 5 years old. Those games are small potatoes compared to the kind of money investors want to make.
Once investors know they can make money, they will get adventurous. They'll have parties and talk about the mmorpg boom of 2012 (coincidentally leading to the end of the world as we know it, predicted by the Mayans). Or they won't. It's easy to predict the future, it's being right that's the tricky bit.
* You notice how there's starting to be more hard science fiction games coming out?
* Addendum * All of my post doesn't get around to my actual point. It's the tools that are being developed because of the success of mmorpg that will push the innovative game play. A punk revolution indeed. There will even be zombies (I hope).
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
MMORPGs are art if you think about it as most do that criticize them do. When a player reviews an MMO and tells of the graphics, how appealing they are, how the quality is, the shading, the maps, its the same as a critic reviewing art in a gallery. The ssame goes for novels. People read books based on the quility of it, does it make them feel what is written, remind them of something in thier past, inspire them to do something in the present or future, or just make them happy or sad.
The story in an MMORPG is the same, only instead of being written on page after page in a book, the passages are spread out around an imaginary world that you must go out and find before you can continue to read what happens next. And in between finding those passages you add some of your own adventures while your finding them. The action of the combat, the raids, the fights are all like movies to us as we play. The difference is that instead of being a passive viewer we get to join in with the plot of the movie, maybe be the one that makes the big explosion.
So dont discount the theory that MMORPGs and different forms of culture and art can not be compared side by side, because they really can. What makes the issue more important, is not that this media form will go away, but why it might. My theory of the biggest threat to our entertainment art form here is the fact that it, unlike the others, requires an active participation to keep it alive. A player who walks into a game world, grabs the quest, read only 'collect 4 swords' and nothing else is not reading the book and thereforre killing that part of the art. They know nothing of why the swords are there, why they are needed, or even who the person was that needed them. They dont have a desire to 'turn the page' in the book to see what happens next, they just ruffle the pages front to back as fast as they can, close it finally and set it on the table again. Eventually looking for the next book.
The players now seem to want to be able to read the cover, inside the cover, the back of the book, and say they read it. It does follow most of society though. Not many anymore will read a book if there is a movie of the book they can just watch instead. And that's exactly what is happening in our MMORPGs. Too many just want the action movie, with the nice looking special effects. Its where the change is happening in the MMORPG genre. It didnt used to be this way, but it is where we are headed. The appreciation of all aspects of the art of MMORPG games is being funneled down the same quick fix, dollar menu, twitter path just like everything else.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
Comments
I definitely see your point LB and many wish this too but I really would like to see something different be successful and that is the premise of this thread.
Now that free Hero engine really could be the thing that cracks this nut as what is stopping many a Indie company is the inability to source a great engine to use for their games, so they have the time consuming act of creating one themselves and usually it is not really upto it as is my problem with Fallen Earth, Darkfall, Perpetuum et al.. but another thing is when they do create a great enviroment as in Earthrise there is not much time and money to do much else. So lets hope, as I said in an another thread of mine from a while ago, that MMO's get their Punk moment and we see the MMO equivalent of The Clash, Dead Kennedy's and Sonic Youth (sorry about the music analogies guys its my specialist subject and I'm still learning about the MMO world).
I feel a competitor to Blizzard has to be something different and show that different works.
Cal.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Baby steps. They're taking baby steps right now. They need to make money first. So far, WoW and Eve are the only two financially successful games (from an investor's point of view) out there. There are other good games, but they aren't there yet. The closest thing in the last 5 years to successful is Aion, Perpetuum* and Star Trek Online*. Well, Runes of Magic is successful too, but I think they'll more than 5 years old. Those games are small potatoes compared to the kind of money investors want to make.
Once investors know they can make money, they will get adventurous. They'll have parties and talk about the mmorpg boom of 2012 (coincidentally leading to the end of the world as we know it, predicted by the Mayans). Or they won't. It's easy to predict the future, it's being right that's the tricky bit.
* You notice how there's starting to be more hard science fiction games coming out?
* Addendum *
All of my post doesn't get around to my actual point. It's the tools that are being developed because of the success of mmorpg that will push the innovative game play. A punk revolution indeed. There will even be zombies (I hope).
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
MMORPGs are art if you think about it as most do that criticize them do. When a player reviews an MMO and tells of the graphics, how appealing they are, how the quality is, the shading, the maps, its the same as a critic reviewing art in a gallery. The ssame goes for novels. People read books based on the quility of it, does it make them feel what is written, remind them of something in thier past, inspire them to do something in the present or future, or just make them happy or sad.
The story in an MMORPG is the same, only instead of being written on page after page in a book, the passages are spread out around an imaginary world that you must go out and find before you can continue to read what happens next. And in between finding those passages you add some of your own adventures while your finding them. The action of the combat, the raids, the fights are all like movies to us as we play. The difference is that instead of being a passive viewer we get to join in with the plot of the movie, maybe be the one that makes the big explosion.
So dont discount the theory that MMORPGs and different forms of culture and art can not be compared side by side, because they really can. What makes the issue more important, is not that this media form will go away, but why it might. My theory of the biggest threat to our entertainment art form here is the fact that it, unlike the others, requires an active participation to keep it alive. A player who walks into a game world, grabs the quest, read only 'collect 4 swords' and nothing else is not reading the book and thereforre killing that part of the art. They know nothing of why the swords are there, why they are needed, or even who the person was that needed them. They dont have a desire to 'turn the page' in the book to see what happens next, they just ruffle the pages front to back as fast as they can, close it finally and set it on the table again. Eventually looking for the next book.
The players now seem to want to be able to read the cover, inside the cover, the back of the book, and say they read it. It does follow most of society though. Not many anymore will read a book if there is a movie of the book they can just watch instead. And that's exactly what is happening in our MMORPGs. Too many just want the action movie, with the nice looking special effects. Its where the change is happening in the MMORPG genre. It didnt used to be this way, but it is where we are headed. The appreciation of all aspects of the art of MMORPG games is being funneled down the same quick fix, dollar menu, twitter path just like everything else.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)