I think the 2 main reasons for no high sub sandbox mmo are tutorials amd time efficient player drivn content. The more creative freedom a game grants you. Usually translates into insufficient tutorials and more options usally equals to the player becoming bogged down in menus frustrated. When a sandbox releases with superbly efficient tutorials & efficient accessibility. The sandbox games will become more widely accepted.
Well to Jon Wood , It doesn´t matter , people holding onto there perfect sandbox dreams .
Are very few and too far dispersed . It they manage to create one that shows potential.
Half the sandbox people cry it is not my sandbox .
No investor want to put major money into a development when you don´t know the correct target group . or the money it will refund , sandbox lovers will go the way turnbased games lovers go.
Into oblivion sadly , so I can sympathise with them ,what I am more worried about is streamlining MMO all into a happy farmville/Imbue stale of play .. nothing but a glorified chatbox with minigames .
Thus so far the themepark themself don´t dissapoint , cause they simply offer more option then sandbox , this is one of the grip most people have with themepark .
There options are there but not the optimal options , while in sandbox the freedom is there cause there is nothing really optimal or you are streamlined into thinking a certain pathway.
Now to GrumpyMel2 , every company starts out as a indie company , very few explode into Blizzard Bioware Obsidian Square Enix , but if there idea is sound enough , and they are willing to play and reinvest , look at Aerananet .
They won´t have problems finding financiel backers , but don´t expect investor to jump into a idea , that your game will bring in millions with a unproven track record .
That is a load of rubbishe , cause Indie companies are usually less flexible with comprimises, or too flexible thus losing there original idea .
Means they are out of touch with how the market and investor work .
Earth Rise/Masthead is the best example this year , I love the idea but I know not enough people will support it , it is a PVP based sandbox , that had only eye for a small market .
But want big budget income , that will not work . while I love the design or ideology .
CCP has a trackrecored so does City of Heroes , there design team generate something new with correct comprimises . they don´t stick blindly there head in the sand .
And say we won´t alter elements , EvE now is vastly different from EvE launch .
Incorporating a lot of themepark idea,s , to futher there own cause .
Sadly the time of imperfect launches are over , as consumers we will not purchase a expensive incomplete game , and hope that 6 months later it will be fixed .
It simply does not work anymore , so if you launch launch it as complete as possible .
Let's not forget people may not be able to afford it in these crappy austere times. I no longer sub, only play f2p and make the occassional cash shop purchase now and again.
If TOR is a p2p then it may find that the plentiful times of previous investments are well in the past and optimistic donations to TOR's development may be wasted due to people being unwilling or unable to dig into their pockets for a monthly sub. Game over in recouping revenue unless a drastic f2p model is adopted and even then breaking even will not be assured.
If you can't even pay the 50 euro that they are asking for a game and then the 12 euro monthly sub you should not be playing mmo's that needed good money to be made. The fact is that itam mall mmo's are often cost you much more then those that you month pay for. Also in item mall you have those who spend fortunes to stay on top in pve and pvp. That is often killing a game very fast. Bots, gold farmers and more enter the game and ruin it very every one.
A game as Tor will be doing for just because a few things.
1 It is star wars. it is one of the biggest franchises in the world. (i am talking about something accross the globe not just in asia or USA.)
2 So many fans already on the forum. That is just showing how many would like to play this game and they all know they will have to pay what ever bio and EA are asking.
3 Pax east was massivly crouded on the TOR booth.
4 Look at all the planets. Just for that i would pay for it.
5 Being a jedi, trooper, sith or anything else is worth subbing for.
Do i need to continue? There are so many reasons why people would play this game that they will surely get their investment back in the first year i think. Maybe a little longer but with every one wanting to play this they would already bank massivly. After that it is up to them to add new content and improve on the stuff that isn't working too well. But i have been following this for some time now and i see massiv potential in this game. It won't suck.
And if it sucks a little it still better then all those other theme park mmo's that are out there. So gw2 might be in their way but there are more TOR fans in the world then there are SWG2 fans. Consider all the people who do not play any mmo's but starting just because it is star wars.
I will give an example. I heard from a friend that they are remastering and make all the old star wars movies in 3d. Then i spoke to another guy who loves star wars and told him. He told omg why would they do that it so not something i would like. Then i asked him, are you going to see it at the cinema when it comes out. He answered me, of course i am it's star wars.
And there you go, just because it is star wars it sells.
How many unpolished and half finished , theme park MMOs made it big ?
Answer:
None
Same as sandbox , theme park , or whatever else.
Game needs to be polished and finished to suceed.
Your theory fails
Obviously, you didn't play WoW when it first came out....
LOL again that lame excuse
Yes. I played WOW from first minute it launched.
And the bugs it had were equal to bugs Rift had on launch. But after 5 years of horrible buggy piles of manure we were served. Rift was called the smoothest launch MMO ever.
Kind of puts things in perspective
Not sure what "excuse" you're talking about...?
My point is WoW was far from polished when it first came out and I would consider WoW to have "made it big"
Rift is far and away more polished than WoW was, but it remains to be seen how "big" it will make it.
People are saying SW:TOR has nothing to differentiate it enough to make people quit WoW or Rift to play it...I'd say light sabres and space ships differetiate it rather well.
I think what we are all see here in the development of MMOs is complacently, the loss of serendipity, and the fear of originality
This is something that I at least notice all across other products and services. For instance we see cars that look pretty generic overall, relative to concept cars or old cars. Same goes for movies, How many horror movies have a group of people at the start and finish with one hero in the end that survived, after all others died in various ways?
Simple idea of creating a game that for example would allow a person command a space ship, get in a fighter attached to it and fly around, land on a planet, walk on the ground (with no instancing); with a mixture of themepark/sandbox, and with RTS/FPS elements seems to be really costly (sure mixing 2 of the elements above would be really new) and im sure we have to tech to do that nowadays
What we want is the "bat mobile" but the choices are a generic looking car, truck, or suv; even though I would imagine the "relative cost" of making a car now is alot less than it was 50 years ago
OP is exactly right. SWTOR will be watched very closely by future MMO producers and developers to see if this is the model to follow. I mean why bother to invest the time and resources into anything that is not considered AAA? You obviously cannot rely on a company making something that makes some people happy if there is no profit to be found. How could you possibly argue that anyone anywhere would produce a product NOT wanting to make money on it and immediately at that? Good luck convincing a company to produce a title with the understanding that it may be YEARS down the line before any profit is turned, if ever.
I will admit that I enjoyed the pre-NGE SWG. But I also enjoy WoW and other theme park mmo's too. It is not so much the style of the MMO that attracts me but ability for me to create a persona that grips me and the more closely I can arrive at my vision the more I enjoy the game.
I think what we are all see here in the development of MMOs is complacently, the loss of serendipity, and the fear of originality
This is something that I at least notice all across other products and services. For instance we see cars that look pretty generic overall, relative to concept cars or old cars. Same goes for movies, How many horror movies have a group of people at the start and finish with one hero in the end that survived, after all others died in various ways?
Simple idea of creating a game that for example would allow a person command a space ship, get in a fighter attached to it and fly around, land on a planet, walk on the ground (with no instancing); with a mixture of themepark/sandbox, and with RTS/FPS elements seems to be really costly (sure mixing 2 of the elements above would be really new) and im sure we have to tech to do that nowadays
What we want is the "bat mobile" but the choices are a generic looking car, truck, or suv; even though I would imagine the "relative cost" of making a car now is alot less than it was 50 years ago
While I applaud your general idea , Car has regulations , it is not that companies don´t want to design cool models or bat mobile like , Bureau Cratic Nonsense provents them from releasing it to the public .
And we got America to thank for that :P with there patent general consensus and follow our rolemodel .
Now the same thing is happening in the gaming industry , Sex is still forbidden , but blood and gore and dismembering other stuff that falls trough the loophole isn´t .
Honestly even inventions have to follow a set rules that makes 1 person wonder like Einstein impossible these days.
You cannot create games you want , lol the old atari cartridges games were more shocking , then these modern games.
While I do applaud for the morals , but sometimes bureaucratic system takes it a bit too far , like car design , or plane designs . Why do you think the military are the ones with the most wierd designs , cause they do not suffer from creative freedom . as long it works , is mass producable and become cheaper , cool is a 3rd factor but a major bonus .
{mod edit}. Having a stable, fuctional, and playable game at launch has nothing to do with whether the game is a sandbox, themepark, or something in between. There is no excuse for going live with a bug ridden game without any sense of direction or endgame. All of the games you mentioned were just poorly designed, poorly supported, and lacked any type of real appeal. So why on earth should anyone support such a game? Should gamers pay (reward) a company for a bad game in hopes that someone will take that as a cue to create a good sandbox game? To "blame" the community for the state of the genre because they did not play bad games is laughable and clearly illustrates the author's mindset on the topic.
Oh, and despite what you might think, the whole Eve thing was not clever. This site has always been the pep squad for Eve and finds a way to work it into just about any discussion. The reality however is that Eve is merely a blimp on the mmorpg radar, regardless of whether you love it or hate it.
The only problem with sandbox games is that they aren't developed with AAA budgets. If anything, sandbox games are far more fun to just start out in because they are ripe with untapped opportunity.
If, for instance, Blizzard developed a sandbox game and dumped hundred million into it, then that game would be extremely successful regardless of the fact that its a sandbox. It's all about the money Lebowski.
The only reason themepark titles are prevalent is because Blizzard created a highly polished, quality, theme-park MMO... and because everyone is trying to copy it.
It's all about the quality of the product, not whether its a themepark or a sandbox. And quality usually requires a lot of money.
Eve is successful... not because its some sort of crazy anomaly amongst sandbox MMOs, but because its a polished, deep, well thought out, well designed game.
Games like Darkfall, Mortal Online, etc are not doing exceptionally well because they are low budget products with lots of design flaws. That's all there is to it.
Read this, and read it again Jon Wood. Read it it so much that it shows up in your dreams at night. This is the reason why there aren't any QUALITY sandbox games about or in production these days. If a company sank $100 million into a sandbox effort and polished it to the "d" as Trion did with Rift, you'd have a game that would do just as well or better than 95% of the "efforts" being made today.
But, neither you nor anyone on this site can name a sandbox MMO that has seen HALF of that investment amount put into it and worked on by a veteran team after 2004. Sure, we've seen half-baked attempts by a few companies whose only reason for making a sanbox attempt was that none of the big, budget capable AAA companies is doing it.
It's not as though I'm ignorant of the argument. It's just way too simplistic an argument to make. Of course the games would be better if they were better funded.
Here's the tough reality though:
No one is going to put that much money into developing a sandbox when sandboxes have, on the whole, been unsuccessful and not supported even by the players who claim to want them. We can flail our arms and jump up and down all we want and say we want it, but the fact and the statistics (which are what game companies actually pay attention to).
The article makes two very specific points:
First: No major investment is going to be made into a sandbox MMO unless the folks with the cash see that people will actually play them. and support them.
Second: Sandboxes, by their nautre, have to start small in order to properly grow to fit their audience. They can't just "spring forth" completely "finished".
The vicious circle is that any studio looking to make a sandbox, because they aren't going to have the large investment that comes with a theme park, is going to be forced to have a smaller development team and a shorter development cycle. It's simple business. As a result, the games that they're working on are smaller in scope and generally more buggy. In turn, players won't support it and the cycle begins again.
Look, you can hate on me all you want for saying it, but that doesn't make it any less true. It's not like Activision or EA is suddenly going to wake up one morning and go: Let's dump a bunch of money into a huge risk. That's not how ig companies with a lot of money work.
I want a good sandbox as much as anybody. It's what attracted me to MMOs in the first place. That said, I don't have blinders on as to hw the industry works and moves. Sometimes the truth sucks.
Agreed..
Alot of people seem to have the blinders on when it comes to this subject..
Yes,its understandable that people would want a complete,bug free sandbox game upon release.But your best chance of getting that is if a top company,with top talent and a big budget decide to take it on,which is a slim chance to none.So,you have these small indie companies,with a small budget and a small team (who are usually not as experienced as the folks who are employed by these big companies) making these sandbox games.Due to the money cap and inexperience you have these buggy,messy games upon release.
Since you're most likely not going to get a perfect game upon release,the next best thing to do is stick with your favorite one and over time the wrinkles and kinks will be ironed out and hopefully it'll be the game you were hoping for.
If you demand perfection upon release? then Im afraid youre going to have to settle with themeparks or nothing.
All I can say is that if TOR is terrible, I think I'll be retiring from MMOs for good. The underwhelming sequel that is DA2 does have me a bit worried that they're losing their touch, but it might just mean that they were more focused on TOR than DA2.
It's a stalemate between developers and sandbox lovers:
Sandboxers are waiting for a AAA sandbox title from developers.
Developers are looking for a more viable market between sandbox and themepark players.
Unfortunately for sandboxers, themepark market wins by a mile. I myself will not waste millions of dollars on something that is not surely profitable. I'm running a company here, not a charity.
Right now EVE is the most successful sandbox game and, if you're a real supporter of the genre you should support these sandbox games and hope that in the forseeable future your market will grow to a less negligible size. Maybe then some AAA sandbox game will come, and more will follow depending on its success. Am I indirectly telling you to waste your time and money? Yes. You don't have much option, really. It's either you sit and wait until the sandbox becomes mainstream; you help spin the "gear" and waste tons of money just to show your support; or, just be happy with themepark.
Those who complain about wanting something different don't put there money nor their support where their mouth is
It's not that simple.
I'm an old school MMO vet thats waiting for that next sandbox on the hill, and I've put my money into games like Darkfall and Mortal Online....but could not justify continuing to give money to play because the games weren't anywhere near a playable state.
NOT the falut of a Sandbox....just how the business works out these days now that MMORPGs have become mainstreamed.
The EAs, BioWares, NCSofts of the world that have the bank roll to put a polished game out isn't interested in dumping several million dollars on a game that appeals to a minority niche of the new MMORPG market base.
So what happens is companies like Adventurene spin their wheels for years and years because cash flow issues limit their ability to put in the infrastructure to handle a smooth launch, and develop a software solution that uses hardware and software technolgy that isn't outdated the day they launch.
Star Vault is another good example. Mortal Online is using the same Unreal Engine that Lineage 2 pioneered in MMOs in 2004 (which is still riddled with graphic glitches)
On paper, both of these games are the games I'd like to ride out into the sunset with.......but when you log in and your toon is floating from A to B, content is vapid around starter areas, and half the features stated in the brochure is either not implemented or broken.....you can't continue to sub. You most certianly can't continue to sub when sandboxes are made or broken by the community within them. (Care to guess what kind of community you got with polish like that?)
One of these independents will get it right. After seeing what games like Minecraft is able to acomplish, with its Super Nintendo Graphics.........some cheap graphics interface (like battle of immortals) with a solid sandbox rule set like MO & DF have would be fun as hell to play.
How many unpolished and half finished , theme park MMOs made it big ?
Answer:
None
Same as sandbox , theme park , or whatever else.
Game needs to be polished and finished to suceed.
Your theory fails
I 100% agree. Jon, of the sandbox MMO's you mentioned, I can't say any of them came out of the box at launch as quality titles. Most of them are still average or even below average. Eve is an example of a company taking a good idea and building on that and building a good game through solid, well thought out development. Unfortunately the market is different today then when Eve started. Companies that think any MMO can launch as a buggy, unfinished, and poor product are destined for the scrap heap. I don't care if they are sandbox or theme park. Now, give CCP 100 million or more of investment capital to go build a sandbox MMO and I imagine they could put something together that would be just as compelling as SWTOR. In the end MMO's are going the way of a great deal of entertainment media where instead of innovation companies are recycling the same old crap. Holywood are masters of this and somehow they still make money.
When the OP says that the MMO market voted for themeparks with their dollars is a little misleading.
It's not as if the existing MMO market (that previously enjoyed games such as Ultima Online...and even to a certian extent Everquest) all the sudden one day woke up and said......the WOW "theme-park" model is what I want!
No, games like WOW (more specifically WOW) made a MMO that appealed to a larger portion of the "Gamer" market (casual gamers) and pulled in former Console Gamers, FPS Gamers, and Single Player RPG Gamers into the MMO market. Is it any supprise that the trend in the Modern MMORPG market looks more like a single player game with a chat lobby than it does like a virtual world?
For a while now, I've been watching the news about The Old Republic. I've seen the "OMG THIS IS GOING TO BE FAIL!" or "OMG THIS IS GOING TO KILL WOW!". That might be a bit eccentric and over the top as a summarization of the posts about the game. Not just on these forums, but the other forums in general.
In my very personal opinion and in my own point of view, this is how I see things. Bioware, for many years, has been a company with "quality over quantity". Following the mindset of "It won't be released until it's done." Sadly, I don't know too many companies that have done that in the MMO market. Trion seems to follow the mindset to a lesser extent. And they're doing well I suppose. Only one other company has truly taken that mindset to the max. Blizzard Entertainment. And we all see what happened with their triple A title. Like it or hate it, there it is.
The concern now comes into play because of Electronic Arts. I'm sure a good portion of us know what happens when EA gets their hands in something. -Points to Dragon Age 2-
In so long as EA has kept their hands out of the development of The Old Republic, I think, or at least I hope, that we will see a game, an MMORPG that will be Bioware's finest "peice de resistance".
Am I a Bioware fan? Of course. I won't deny that I am. I'm a fan of their old games. KOTOR 1 and 2, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age and Mass Effect 1 and 2. I'm also a Blizzard fan. Starcraft, Brood War, Starcraft 2, Vanilla WoW, and Warcraft 2-3. Why am I a fan? Because these companies proved to me that they care about what their customers want. A well developed game that will entice and enthrall their audience. And they won't release it until it is done in the DEVELOPER'S eyes.
Personally, I wish Bioware had held off showing any kind of tidbits from the game. But that is merely my thought.
I woudl say that Blizzard used to care about their subscribers.....but, for a good deal of time now they have forgotten about us, and just look to the financial bottom line.
For a while now, I've been watching the news about The Old Republic. I've seen the "OMG THIS IS GOING TO BE FAIL!" or "OMG THIS IS GOING TO KILL WOW!". That might be a bit eccentric and over the top as a summarization of the posts about the game. Not just on these forums, but the other forums in general.
In my very personal opinion and in my own point of view, this is how I see things. Bioware, for many years, has been a company with "quality over quantity". Following the mindset of "It won't be released until it's done." Sadly, I don't know too many companies that have done that in the MMO market. Trion seems to follow the mindset to a lesser extent. And they're doing well I suppose. Only one other company has truly taken that mindset to the max. Blizzard Entertainment. And we all see what happened with their triple A title. Like it or hate it, there it is.
The concern now comes into play because of Electronic Arts. I'm sure a good portion of us know what happens when EA gets their hands in something. -Points to Dragon Age 2-
In so long as EA has kept their hands out of the development of The Old Republic, I think, or at least I hope, that we will see a game, an MMORPG that will be Bioware's finest "peice de resistance".
Am I a Bioware fan? Of course. I won't deny that I am. I'm a fan of their old games. KOTOR 1 and 2, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age and Mass Effect 1 and 2. I'm also a Blizzard fan. Starcraft, Brood War, Starcraft 2, Vanilla WoW, and Warcraft 2-3. Why am I a fan? Because these companies proved to me that they care about what their customers want. A well developed game that will entice and enthrall their audience. And they won't release it until it is done in the DEVELOPER'S eyes.
Personally, I wish Bioware had held off showing any kind of tidbits from the game. But that is merely my thought.
I woudl say that Blizzard used to care about their subscribers.....but, for a good deal of time now they have forgotten about us, and just look to the financial bottom line.
Blizzard has never, does not now, and never will care about you. They want your money, nothing else. They're no different than any other company out there.
It's not as though I'm ignorant of the argument. It's just way too simplistic an argument to make. Of course the games would be better if they were better funded.
Here's the tough reality though:
No one is going to put that much money into developing a sandbox when sandboxes have, on the whole, been unsuccessful and not supported even by the players who claim to want them. We can flail our arms and jump up and down all we want and say we want it, but the fact and the statistics (which are what game companies actually pay attention to).
The article makes two very specific points:
First: No major investment is going to be made into a sandbox MMO unless the folks with the cash see that people will actually play them. and support them.
Second: Sandboxes, by their nautre, have to start small in order to properly grow to fit their audience. They can't just "spring forth" completely "finished".
The vicious circle is that any studio looking to make a sandbox, because they aren't going to have the large investment that comes with a theme park, is going to be forced to have a smaller development team and a shorter development cycle. It's simple business. As a result, the games that they're working on are smaller in scope and generally more buggy. In turn, players won't support it and the cycle begins again.
Look, you can hate on me all you want for saying it, but that doesn't make it any less true. It's not like Activision or EA is suddenly going to wake up one morning and go: Let's dump a bunch of money into a huge risk. That's not how ig companies with a lot of money work.
I want a good sandbox as much as anybody. It's what attracted me to MMOs in the first place. That said, I don't have blinders on as to hw the industry works and moves. Sometimes the truth sucks.
I suspect they will eventually, but I suspect it more likely to be a company like Sony or Turbine. They have less to lose, and more to gain. Eventually they'll stop trying to hit a homerun by copying Blizzard, and they'll go after the more realistic market that Eve presents. In truth though, I thought Blizzard was going to be the one to do it with their next project. They needed a game that didn't directly compete against WoW, so some sort of Sci-FI or dark themed (ala Diablo) MMO sandbox would be ideal.
However, that was before Bobbie "worse thing to happen to gaming" Kotick was at the reins. Now, I suspect their next MMO is going to be something very close to CoD online or something FPSish that is focused towards bringing in the console crowd.
But CCP w/ WoD is my shining hope for breaking the sandbox AAA cherry. They have the capital, reputation, technology, and experience now. and a Vampire MMO is pure gold for pulling in mainstream gamers, especially female gamers. And I don't see CCP making a themepark game.
“The game is, after all, the perfect representation of what MMORPG players have been pushing for (with their wallets, not with their forum posts). It’s a theme park, with questing and easy solo-ability. It’s got a lot of the hallmarks of the MMO genre, crafting, housing, PvP battlegrounds, questing, leveling, classes and the like. The UI looks exactly how you’d expect an MMO’s UI to look and will function the same. It’s going to look amazing, sound amazing, and run as close to lag-free as the developers can make it. It’s also going to be chock full of content. By last count, I think that they said it was the equivalent of five new Knights of the Old Republic RPGs. Like many of the recent MMOs, it’s going to have some kind of endgame that the developers just keep refusing to unveil.”
But whose player wallets are we talking about? The players who do not frequent these forums but spend most of their time in solo games. The players who are more social network people who get sucked into a MMO by the hype and their friends playing. They only do one maybe two months and then they are off. This is why there is a disconect between the forums and the wallets, because it is not our wallets. Having said that we do play them anyway, because there is nothing else toplay. FE, DF and EvE, are the only mainstream sandbox we have, if you don’t fancy those games then it’s of to DisneyMMO.
The game is, after all, the perfect representation of what MMORPG players have been pushing for (with their wallets, not with their forum posts). Its a theme park, with questing and easy solo-ability. Its got a lot of the hallmarks of the MMO genre, crafting, housing, PvP battlegrounds, questing, leveling, classes and the like. The UI looks exactly how youd expect an MMOs UI to look and will function the same. Its going to look amazing, sound amazing, and run as close to lag-free as the developers can make it. Its also going to be chock full of content. By last count, I think that they said it was the equivalent of five new Knights of the Old Republic RPGs. Like many of the recent MMOs, its going to have some kind of endgame that the developers just keep refusing to unveil.
But whose player wallets are we talking about? The players who do not frequent these forums but spend most of their time in solo games. The players who are more social network people who get sucked into a MMO by the hype and their friends playing. They only do one maybe two months and then they are off. This is why there is a disconect between the forums and the wallets, because it is not our wallets. Having said that we do play them anyway, because there is nothing else toplay. FE, DF and EvE, are the only mainstream sandbox we have, if you dont fancy those games then its of to DisneyMMO.
I agree the sandbox choice is narrow & performance is important. Minecraft sends out a MSG that players will forgive graphics for a good sandbox and good performance... Let's see the AAA Themepark games collect most players and watch sandbox mmos pick off players.
“The game is, after all, the perfect representation of what MMORPG players have been pushing for (with their wallets, not with their forum posts). It’s a theme park, with questing and easy solo-ability. It’s got a lot of the hallmarks of the MMO genre, crafting, housing, PvP battlegrounds, questing, leveling, classes and the like. The UI looks exactly how you’d expect an MMO’s UI to look and will function the same. It’s going to look amazing, sound amazing, and run as close to lag-free as the developers can make it. It’s also going to be chock full of content. By last count, I think that they said it was the equivalent of five new Knights of the Old Republic RPGs. Like many of the recent MMOs, it’s going to have some kind of endgame that the developers just keep refusing to unveil.”
But whose player wallets are we talking about? The players who do not frequent these forums but spend most of their time in solo games. The players who are more social network people who get sucked into a MMO by the hype and their friends playing. They only do one maybe two months and then they are off. This is why there is a disconect between the forums and the wallets, because it is not our wallets. Having said that we do play them anyway, because there is nothing else toplay. FE, DF and EvE, are the only mainstream sandbox we have, if you don’t fancy those games then it’s of to DisneyMMO.
I agree the sandbox choice is narrow & performance is important. Minecraft sends out a MSG that players will forgive graphics for a good sandbox and good performance... Let's see the AAA Themepark games collect most players and watch sandbox mmos pick off players.
On the topic of Minecraft: while I'm not denying Minecraft's jawdropping success, it's not enough to make the AAA devs think that sandbox has become a viable market. About 70% of its players are still playing for free. The 500,000 is a stellar number of sales and actually means A LOT to MC because of its low budget, but if MC happened to be a AAA game it requires a much higher budget, must be sold higher(not $10), requires a subscription fee(or maybe not, depending on the publisher's greed). Suddenly the 500,000 sales number is a "failure", and I'm assuming it will still sell 500K, which is a bit optimistic.
This article ignores something very important about TOR.
This is a game being developed by the most succesful studio in RPGS right now, a company that even a game many consider bad (DA2) still makes more money then the majority of games on this website combined have over the course of their lives. And they are owned by the biggest gaming company in the world, who are probably going to spend more on advertising then Eve Online has made in the last 6 years.
The game doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be a revolution, but before it's even out it's promised the #2 spot in the mmo world because nothing else can compete with it. GW2 can be the best game on earth and it's going to be a blip on the radar compared to this, because no one but Activision/Blizzard has the means to compete, and EA has made their intentions with this game very known. They want this market, and i would be shocked if they didn't do everything in their considerable power to grab it.
And another thing i keep reading is about these "other kinds of mmo". There is no other kind of mmo for a company of their size. WoW dwarfs every other pay to play game, and it is a themepark, it hasn't shown huge growth with cataclysm, but that isn't neccesarily because it's bad or because people want something different, it's time to consider that there is a limited number of people willing to pay 60 bucks + 15 a month for a game.
WoW is the market, you can talk about EVE Online all day long but it doesn't have 10 million subs. EA wants those players, and Star Wars fans who will buy almost anything Star Wars. They aren't out to change the game radically, they are out to make money of the exsisting market.
Having now had a chance to play the game If BW and EA do things wrong I can see it becoming very quickly a FOTM game where people play through the story and then box it up or move onto the next MMO.
Of the two classesI tried cimenatics and story were heavy and this is great if this is what you are looking for and it is the market BW are trying to reach. But once you have completed the game I don't know if people that played it for these will see much point in gear grinding out gear and PvP, while traditional MMO fans may never get there cause they get too board with how long it takes to get into the action. And then move onto whatever the next MMO that is released.
If EA want this game to be a sucess they need to launch in the next few months ahead of GW2 and the secret world and Tera or they will likely see their subs drop rapidly after the first 30 days as people complete their choses story (ies) and then try the next thing out. As I don't think the gameplay holds enough to keep people coming back without the story. Take the lack of any swimming option, not a massive deal but a fair indication on the sort of gameplay you can expect.
“The game is, after all, the perfect representation of what MMORPG players have been pushing for (with their wallets, not with their forum posts). It’s a theme park, with questing and easy solo-ability. It’s got a lot of the hallmarks of the MMO genre, crafting, housing, PvP battlegrounds, questing, leveling, classes and the like. The UI looks exactly how you’d expect an MMO’s UI to look and will function the same. It’s going to look amazing, sound amazing, and run as close to lag-free as the developers can make it. It’s also going to be chock full of content. By last count, I think that they said it was the equivalent of five new Knights of the Old Republic RPGs. Like many of the recent MMOs, it’s going to have some kind of endgame that the developers just keep refusing to unveil.”
But whose player wallets are we talking about? The players who do not frequent these forums but spend most of their time in solo games. The players who are more social network people who get sucked into a MMO by the hype and their friends playing. They only do one maybe two months and then they are off. This is why there is a disconect between the forums and the wallets, because it is not our wallets. Having said that we do play them anyway, because there is nothing else toplay. FE, DF and EvE, are the only mainstream sandbox we have, if you don’t fancy those games then it’s of to DisneyMMO.
I agree the sandbox choice is narrow & performance is important. Minecraft sends out a MSG that players will forgive graphics for a good sandbox and good performance... Let's see the AAA Themepark games collect most players and watch sandbox mmos pick off players.
On the topic of Minecraft: while I'm not denying Minecraft's jawdropping success, it's not enough to make the AAA devs think that sandbox has become a viable market. About 70% of its players are still playing for free. The 500,000 is a stellar number of sales and actually means A LOT to MC because of its low budget, but if MC happened to be a AAA game it requires a much higher budget, must be sold higher(not $10), requires a subscription fee(or maybe not, depending on the publisher's greed). Suddenly the 500,000 sales number is a "failure", and I'm assuming it will still sell 500K, which is a bit optimistic.
This is it. AAA Themepark mmos will gather the most players and make the big profits but players will start leaking into good sandbox games that are low budget but have an irresistable game idea realized. Sandbox MMOs will start becoming MORE successful off the back of really good Themepark game I reckon, when the market hits that point.
I think TOR will be successful and GW2 and this will in turn lead on to good things in the shape of the market and sandbox devs like Jackels scavenging players around the Lion's table!
How many unpolished and half finished , theme park MMOs made it big ?
Answer:
None
Same as sandbox , theme park , or whatever else.
Game needs to be polished and finished to suceed.
Your theory fails
Pretty much exactly this.
You can't say that games like Earthrise (!?!!?) and Fallen Earth are games that sandbox fans should have supported. These games were an embarassment to gamers because of the state they were released in. Just because someone calls their unfinished pile of manure a sandbox game doesn't mean you should subscribe to that game for a year to help the industry. Doing that promotes the idea that an unfinished, unpolished product with barely any content is what we're looking for as players. If we were to promote this idea, then the article is right about that: you would not see any multi-million dollar budget MMOs, theme park or not, since we would have clearly sent the message that we don't need content or polish to keep paying monthly for an MMO.
The highlighted is a lie. A damn dirty ape lie. Fallen Earth was possibly the best launched Sandbox style hybrid in our current generation of MMOs. Icarus Studios is really a fantastic developer, and though some part of the game could have been more polished, everything was functional and more stable than Darkfall, Earthrise, MO and Xsyon combined.
Some could easily make the case that MMOs themselves are never truly finished, and not a single MMO has ever launched bug free, theres just, acceptable bugs, and unacceptable bugs. FE was very playable, but lost players in other areas, such as the economy, the post apocalyptic setting, and a lot of the missing PvP elements that were added a little too late to keep the population. (also they way overbalanced mutations 2 or so months after launch making some builds useless... don't know if they ever fixed it, I unsubbed shortly thereafter).
But I digress.... you see relatively few sandboxes because the biggest companies that make games see very few gains in creating them. If people want to see more sandbox games, they have to be willing to show developers that the money will be there. Its a catch 22... to say the least.
I played Fallen Earth at launch and got to max level with seeing maybe 2 minor bugs. I think people with netbooks running wow on full settings came to forums and complained about the lag. BS, I didn't even have a great computer at the time and it ran smooth.
OP has many good points. I am actually beginning to think that the 'give-me-sandbox-nao!' crowd (of which I am admittedly a part) is simply a vocal minority. EVE is the proof that it is a sizable and significant minority, but still that is one game out of dozens of themeparks that combined dwarf its numbers.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Comments
Well to Jon Wood , It doesn´t matter , people holding onto there perfect sandbox dreams .
Are very few and too far dispersed . It they manage to create one that shows potential.
Half the sandbox people cry it is not my sandbox .
No investor want to put major money into a development when you don´t know the correct target group . or the money it will refund , sandbox lovers will go the way turnbased games lovers go.
Into oblivion sadly , so I can sympathise with them ,what I am more worried about is streamlining MMO all into a happy farmville/Imbue stale of play .. nothing but a glorified chatbox with minigames .
Thus so far the themepark themself don´t dissapoint , cause they simply offer more option then sandbox , this is one of the grip most people have with themepark .
There options are there but not the optimal options , while in sandbox the freedom is there cause there is nothing really optimal or you are streamlined into thinking a certain pathway.
Now to GrumpyMel2 , every company starts out as a indie company , very few explode into Blizzard Bioware Obsidian Square Enix , but if there idea is sound enough , and they are willing to play and reinvest , look at Aerananet .
They won´t have problems finding financiel backers , but don´t expect investor to jump into a idea , that your game will bring in millions with a unproven track record .
That is a load of rubbishe , cause Indie companies are usually less flexible with comprimises, or too flexible thus losing there original idea .
Means they are out of touch with how the market and investor work .
Earth Rise/Masthead is the best example this year , I love the idea but I know not enough people will support it , it is a PVP based sandbox , that had only eye for a small market .
But want big budget income , that will not work . while I love the design or ideology .
CCP has a trackrecored so does City of Heroes , there design team generate something new with correct comprimises . they don´t stick blindly there head in the sand .
And say we won´t alter elements , EvE now is vastly different from EvE launch .
Incorporating a lot of themepark idea,s , to futher there own cause .
Sadly the time of imperfect launches are over , as consumers we will not purchase a expensive incomplete game , and hope that 6 months later it will be fixed .
It simply does not work anymore , so if you launch launch it as complete as possible .
If you can't even pay the 50 euro that they are asking for a game and then the 12 euro monthly sub you should not be playing mmo's that needed good money to be made. The fact is that itam mall mmo's are often cost you much more then those that you month pay for. Also in item mall you have those who spend fortunes to stay on top in pve and pvp. That is often killing a game very fast. Bots, gold farmers and more enter the game and ruin it very every one.
A game as Tor will be doing for just because a few things.
1 It is star wars. it is one of the biggest franchises in the world. (i am talking about something accross the globe not just in asia or USA.)
2 So many fans already on the forum. That is just showing how many would like to play this game and they all know they will have to pay what ever bio and EA are asking.
3 Pax east was massivly crouded on the TOR booth.
4 Look at all the planets. Just for that i would pay for it.
5 Being a jedi, trooper, sith or anything else is worth subbing for.
Do i need to continue? There are so many reasons why people would play this game that they will surely get their investment back in the first year i think. Maybe a little longer but with every one wanting to play this they would already bank massivly. After that it is up to them to add new content and improve on the stuff that isn't working too well. But i have been following this for some time now and i see massiv potential in this game. It won't suck.
And if it sucks a little it still better then all those other theme park mmo's that are out there. So gw2 might be in their way but there are more TOR fans in the world then there are SWG2 fans. Consider all the people who do not play any mmo's but starting just because it is star wars.
I will give an example. I heard from a friend that they are remastering and make all the old star wars movies in 3d. Then i spoke to another guy who loves star wars and told him. He told omg why would they do that it so not something i would like. Then i asked him, are you going to see it at the cinema when it comes out. He answered me, of course i am it's star wars.
And there you go, just because it is star wars it sells.
Not sure what "excuse" you're talking about...?
My point is WoW was far from polished when it first came out and I would consider WoW to have "made it big"
Rift is far and away more polished than WoW was, but it remains to be seen how "big" it will make it.
People are saying SW:TOR has nothing to differentiate it enough to make people quit WoW or Rift to play it...I'd say light sabres and space ships differetiate it rather well.
I think what we are all see here in the development of MMOs is complacently, the loss of serendipity, and the fear of originality
This is something that I at least notice all across other products and services. For instance we see cars that look pretty generic overall, relative to concept cars or old cars. Same goes for movies, How many horror movies have a group of people at the start and finish with one hero in the end that survived, after all others died in various ways?
Simple idea of creating a game that for example would allow a person command a space ship, get in a fighter attached to it and fly around, land on a planet, walk on the ground (with no instancing); with a mixture of themepark/sandbox, and with RTS/FPS elements seems to be really costly (sure mixing 2 of the elements above would be really new) and im sure we have to tech to do that nowadays
What we want is the "bat mobile" but the choices are a generic looking car, truck, or suv; even though I would imagine the "relative cost" of making a car now is alot less than it was 50 years ago
OP is exactly right. SWTOR will be watched very closely by future MMO producers and developers to see if this is the model to follow. I mean why bother to invest the time and resources into anything that is not considered AAA? You obviously cannot rely on a company making something that makes some people happy if there is no profit to be found. How could you possibly argue that anyone anywhere would produce a product NOT wanting to make money on it and immediately at that? Good luck convincing a company to produce a title with the understanding that it may be YEARS down the line before any profit is turned, if ever.
I will admit that I enjoyed the pre-NGE SWG. But I also enjoy WoW and other theme park mmo's too. It is not so much the style of the MMO that attracts me but ability for me to create a persona that grips me and the more closely I can arrive at my vision the more I enjoy the game.
While I applaud your general idea , Car has regulations , it is not that companies don´t want to design cool models or bat mobile like , Bureau Cratic Nonsense provents them from releasing it to the public .
And we got America to thank for that :P with there patent general consensus and follow our rolemodel .
Now the same thing is happening in the gaming industry , Sex is still forbidden , but blood and gore and dismembering other stuff that falls trough the loophole isn´t .
Honestly even inventions have to follow a set rules that makes 1 person wonder like Einstein impossible these days.
You cannot create games you want , lol the old atari cartridges games were more shocking , then these modern games.
While I do applaud for the morals , but sometimes bureaucratic system takes it a bit too far , like car design , or plane designs . Why do you think the military are the ones with the most wierd designs , cause they do not suffer from creative freedom . as long it works , is mass producable and become cheaper , cool is a 3rd factor but a major bonus .
{mod edit}. Having a stable, fuctional, and playable game at launch has nothing to do with whether the game is a sandbox, themepark, or something in between. There is no excuse for going live with a bug ridden game without any sense of direction or endgame. All of the games you mentioned were just poorly designed, poorly supported, and lacked any type of real appeal. So why on earth should anyone support such a game? Should gamers pay (reward) a company for a bad game in hopes that someone will take that as a cue to create a good sandbox game? To "blame" the community for the state of the genre because they did not play bad games is laughable and clearly illustrates the author's mindset on the topic.
Oh, and despite what you might think, the whole Eve thing was not clever. This site has always been the pep squad for Eve and finds a way to work it into just about any discussion. The reality however is that Eve is merely a blimp on the mmorpg radar, regardless of whether you love it or hate it.
Agreed..
Alot of people seem to have the blinders on when it comes to this subject..
Yes,its understandable that people would want a complete,bug free sandbox game upon release.But your best chance of getting that is if a top company,with top talent and a big budget decide to take it on,which is a slim chance to none.So,you have these small indie companies,with a small budget and a small team (who are usually not as experienced as the folks who are employed by these big companies) making these sandbox games.Due to the money cap and inexperience you have these buggy,messy games upon release.
Since you're most likely not going to get a perfect game upon release,the next best thing to do is stick with your favorite one and over time the wrinkles and kinks will be ironed out and hopefully it'll be the game you were hoping for.
If you demand perfection upon release? then Im afraid youre going to have to settle with themeparks or nothing.
very nicely written article
All I can say is that if TOR is terrible, I think I'll be retiring from MMOs for good. The underwhelming sequel that is DA2 does have me a bit worried that they're losing their touch, but it might just mean that they were more focused on TOR than DA2.
It's a stalemate between developers and sandbox lovers:
Sandboxers are waiting for a AAA sandbox title from developers.
Developers are looking for a more viable market between sandbox and themepark players.
Unfortunately for sandboxers, themepark market wins by a mile. I myself will not waste millions of dollars on something that is not surely profitable. I'm running a company here, not a charity.
Right now EVE is the most successful sandbox game and, if you're a real supporter of the genre you should support these sandbox games and hope that in the forseeable future your market will grow to a less negligible size. Maybe then some AAA sandbox game will come, and more will follow depending on its success. Am I indirectly telling you to waste your time and money? Yes. You don't have much option, really. It's either you sit and wait until the sandbox becomes mainstream; you help spin the "gear" and waste tons of money just to show your support; or, just be happy with themepark.
It's not that simple.
I'm an old school MMO vet thats waiting for that next sandbox on the hill, and I've put my money into games like Darkfall and Mortal Online....but could not justify continuing to give money to play because the games weren't anywhere near a playable state.
NOT the falut of a Sandbox....just how the business works out these days now that MMORPGs have become mainstreamed.
The EAs, BioWares, NCSofts of the world that have the bank roll to put a polished game out isn't interested in dumping several million dollars on a game that appeals to a minority niche of the new MMORPG market base.
So what happens is companies like Adventurene spin their wheels for years and years because cash flow issues limit their ability to put in the infrastructure to handle a smooth launch, and develop a software solution that uses hardware and software technolgy that isn't outdated the day they launch.
Star Vault is another good example. Mortal Online is using the same Unreal Engine that Lineage 2 pioneered in MMOs in 2004 (which is still riddled with graphic glitches)
On paper, both of these games are the games I'd like to ride out into the sunset with.......but when you log in and your toon is floating from A to B, content is vapid around starter areas, and half the features stated in the brochure is either not implemented or broken.....you can't continue to sub. You most certianly can't continue to sub when sandboxes are made or broken by the community within them. (Care to guess what kind of community you got with polish like that?)
One of these independents will get it right. After seeing what games like Minecraft is able to acomplish, with its Super Nintendo Graphics.........some cheap graphics interface (like battle of immortals) with a solid sandbox rule set like MO & DF have would be fun as hell to play.
I 100% agree. Jon, of the sandbox MMO's you mentioned, I can't say any of them came out of the box at launch as quality titles. Most of them are still average or even below average. Eve is an example of a company taking a good idea and building on that and building a good game through solid, well thought out development. Unfortunately the market is different today then when Eve started. Companies that think any MMO can launch as a buggy, unfinished, and poor product are destined for the scrap heap. I don't care if they are sandbox or theme park. Now, give CCP 100 million or more of investment capital to go build a sandbox MMO and I imagine they could put something together that would be just as compelling as SWTOR. In the end MMO's are going the way of a great deal of entertainment media where instead of innovation companies are recycling the same old crap. Holywood are masters of this and somehow they still make money.
...and one other thing.
When the OP says that the MMO market voted for themeparks with their dollars is a little misleading.
It's not as if the existing MMO market (that previously enjoyed games such as Ultima Online...and even to a certian extent Everquest) all the sudden one day woke up and said......the WOW "theme-park" model is what I want!
No, games like WOW (more specifically WOW) made a MMO that appealed to a larger portion of the "Gamer" market (casual gamers) and pulled in former Console Gamers, FPS Gamers, and Single Player RPG Gamers into the MMO market. Is it any supprise that the trend in the Modern MMORPG market looks more like a single player game with a chat lobby than it does like a virtual world?
I woudl say that Blizzard used to care about their subscribers.....but, for a good deal of time now they have forgotten about us, and just look to the financial bottom line.
Blizzard has never, does not now, and never will care about you. They want your money, nothing else. They're no different than any other company out there.
I suspect they will eventually, but I suspect it more likely to be a company like Sony or Turbine. They have less to lose, and more to gain. Eventually they'll stop trying to hit a homerun by copying Blizzard, and they'll go after the more realistic market that Eve presents. In truth though, I thought Blizzard was going to be the one to do it with their next project. They needed a game that didn't directly compete against WoW, so some sort of Sci-FI or dark themed (ala Diablo) MMO sandbox would be ideal.
However, that was before Bobbie "worse thing to happen to gaming" Kotick was at the reins. Now, I suspect their next MMO is going to be something very close to CoD online or something FPSish that is focused towards bringing in the console crowd.
But CCP w/ WoD is my shining hope for breaking the sandbox AAA cherry. They have the capital, reputation, technology, and experience now. and a Vampire MMO is pure gold for pulling in mainstream gamers, especially female gamers. And I don't see CCP making a themepark game.
“The game is, after all, the perfect representation of what MMORPG players have been pushing for (with their wallets, not with their forum posts). It’s a theme park, with questing and easy solo-ability. It’s got a lot of the hallmarks of the MMO genre, crafting, housing, PvP battlegrounds, questing, leveling, classes and the like. The UI looks exactly how you’d expect an MMO’s UI to look and will function the same. It’s going to look amazing, sound amazing, and run as close to lag-free as the developers can make it. It’s also going to be chock full of content. By last count, I think that they said it was the equivalent of five new Knights of the Old Republic RPGs. Like many of the recent MMOs, it’s going to have some kind of endgame that the developers just keep refusing to unveil.”
But whose player wallets are we talking about? The players who do not frequent these forums but spend most of their time in solo games. The players who are more social network people who get sucked into a MMO by the hype and their friends playing. They only do one maybe two months and then they are off. This is why there is a disconect between the forums and the wallets, because it is not our wallets. Having said that we do play them anyway, because there is nothing else toplay. FE, DF and EvE, are the only mainstream sandbox we have, if you don’t fancy those games then it’s of to DisneyMMO.
I agree the sandbox choice is narrow & performance is important. Minecraft sends out a MSG that players will forgive graphics for a good sandbox and good performance... Let's see the AAA Themepark games collect most players and watch sandbox mmos pick off players.http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
On the topic of Minecraft: while I'm not denying Minecraft's jawdropping success, it's not enough to make the AAA devs think that sandbox has become a viable market. About 70% of its players are still playing for free. The 500,000 is a stellar number of sales and actually means A LOT to MC because of its low budget, but if MC happened to be a AAA game it requires a much higher budget, must be sold higher(not $10), requires a subscription fee(or maybe not, depending on the publisher's greed). Suddenly the 500,000 sales number is a "failure", and I'm assuming it will still sell 500K, which is a bit optimistic.
This article ignores something very important about TOR.
This is a game being developed by the most succesful studio in RPGS right now, a company that even a game many consider bad (DA2) still makes more money then the majority of games on this website combined have over the course of their lives. And they are owned by the biggest gaming company in the world, who are probably going to spend more on advertising then Eve Online has made in the last 6 years.
The game doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be a revolution, but before it's even out it's promised the #2 spot in the mmo world because nothing else can compete with it. GW2 can be the best game on earth and it's going to be a blip on the radar compared to this, because no one but Activision/Blizzard has the means to compete, and EA has made their intentions with this game very known. They want this market, and i would be shocked if they didn't do everything in their considerable power to grab it.
And another thing i keep reading is about these "other kinds of mmo". There is no other kind of mmo for a company of their size. WoW dwarfs every other pay to play game, and it is a themepark, it hasn't shown huge growth with cataclysm, but that isn't neccesarily because it's bad or because people want something different, it's time to consider that there is a limited number of people willing to pay 60 bucks + 15 a month for a game.
WoW is the market, you can talk about EVE Online all day long but it doesn't have 10 million subs. EA wants those players, and Star Wars fans who will buy almost anything Star Wars. They aren't out to change the game radically, they are out to make money of the exsisting market.
Having now had a chance to play the game If BW and EA do things wrong I can see it becoming very quickly a FOTM game where people play through the story and then box it up or move onto the next MMO.
Of the two classes I tried cimenatics and story were heavy and this is great if this is what you are looking for and it is the market BW are trying to reach. But once you have completed the game I don't know if people that played it for these will see much point in gear grinding out gear and PvP, while traditional MMO fans may never get there cause they get too board with how long it takes to get into the action. And then move onto whatever the next MMO that is released.
If EA want this game to be a sucess they need to launch in the next few months ahead of GW2 and the secret world and Tera or they will likely see their subs drop rapidly after the first 30 days as people complete their choses story (ies) and then try the next thing out. As I don't think the gameplay holds enough to keep people coming back without the story. Take the lack of any swimming option, not a massive deal but a fair indication on the sort of gameplay you can expect.
This is it. AAA Themepark mmos will gather the most players and make the big profits but players will start leaking into good sandbox games that are low budget but have an irresistable game idea realized. Sandbox MMOs will start becoming MORE successful off the back of really good Themepark game I reckon, when the market hits that point.
I think TOR will be successful and GW2 and this will in turn lead on to good things in the shape of the market and sandbox devs like Jackels scavenging players around the Lion's table!
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I played Fallen Earth at launch and got to max level with seeing maybe 2 minor bugs. I think people with netbooks running wow on full settings came to forums and complained about the lag. BS, I didn't even have a great computer at the time and it ran smooth.
OP has many good points. I am actually beginning to think that the 'give-me-sandbox-nao!' crowd (of which I am admittedly a part) is simply a vocal minority. EVE is the proof that it is a sizable and significant minority, but still that is one game out of dozens of themeparks that combined dwarf its numbers.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga