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General: Outside the Box: The David Perry Project
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
This week, in Garrett Fuller's Outside the Box column, he takes a look at the recent Acclaim announcement that they would be holding a game design contest that could see an average gamer hold the title of Director on an unannounced MMOG.
Read the whole article here.This week Outside the Box is short and on the fly. With the NY Comic Convention articles still in my head and not on the site, clearly I have more work to do for you guys, so let's just jump right in.
This weekend, a press release caught my attention that I thought was definitely something new. In the age of reality TV where anyone can be a star, Dave Perry from Acclaim is bringing that type of competition to the video game market.
Dave has set up a contest where players from the community can enter and become selected as part of the design team for the Top Secret MMOG project. As the game goes through the process of development, one person will eventually be named the winner and get the title of Director. They will see the new MMOG throughout its development cycle and eventually win royalties when the game is released!
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
I would love to meet Acclaims employment attorney and ask about the things they have done and are doing in trying to make money. According to the FLSA and the U.S. Department of Labor there are certain laws and rules a for profit company has to follow concerning volunteers and unpaid staff doing the work employee's would normally be paid to do.
To put it in simple English for everyone.
Acclaim and David Perry want YOU to give them ideas to build a game they have nothing for and help develop it.
Whats next? Is Acclaim or another company going to offer the following?
"We will allow you to pay us to play our next great title BUT this game is only on paper for right now and each person that pays us will also have to set forth the story line, build quests and then run the game while we collect advertising fees we charge to other companies along with your subscriptions. "
I just want to see what Acclaim is going to do once the "volunteers" they have are talked to and they find out that the volunteers are actually considered employee's by federal law and are due back wages for the work they did and do.
Right, back to GW, Runescape & a bit of Rappelz, all free to play with no effort on my part.
They say that right before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. That's true, even for a blind man. ^DareDevil^
I would be hesitant to sign up for this kind of contest based on the last 4 MMO like games I've seen out of Acclaim. They are taking the free to play MMO route. That type of game holds no interest for me because it's far too repetitive for me. I tried Puzzle Pirates and it got old quickly. I tried Acclaim's Bots game, also became very boring. I guess I am just too ingrained in getting more gameplay out of my MMOs.
I have tried the betas for Acclaims 2 most recent projects 9Dragons and 2Moons. Both of those games were localised to english from asian games. Neither are the type of game I am interested in playing. Mostly because they were poorly designed and unbalanced games that were then translated to english. Garbage in garbage out.
2Moons is actually a Dave Perry game. I think he was the guy that wrote english version of the in game text. It is adult content in game text. I commend them for making an adult content game but it seemed like an adult content game written by a 15 year old boy. The game has poor game balance between characters, they butchered the skill tree system so that everyone gets everything on one side of the skill tree, and it is basically a potion/skill spaming game. Not my cup of tea.
I have the feeling that what Acclaim and Dave Perry are offering is the chance to direct and write the in game text. Since that is all dave perry seemed to do with 2moons. Sure it is a lot of work to re-do all of the client text and npc dialogue... but translating text and writing missions is only a small part of game design.
What most companies these days are neglacting is a solid ruleset foundation for a game that promotes character diversity in a balanced way. So, I would be supprised if this contest allowed the winner to do anything other than write some quests for the game.
This is precisely what Infinite Spectrum Productions is attempting:
Where World of Warcraft meets Second Life is where you’ll find MyndSparc—all the addictive action of a massively multiplayer online gaming title with the content adaptability and social networking that comes from a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its users. MyndSparc is the next generation of web experience for the next generation of web user. And only the tip of the iceberg for Infinite Spectrum Productions, who intends to be on the leading edge of entertainment convergence as we enter into the second decade of the new millennium.
Well as a PR person, I actually quite like this idea for adding members for acclaim. And as a side not, what E-mails I have exchanged with Dave Perry in the past, he seems to be an alright guy with a good reputation. I don't think he would back something to be a "flop".