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Are MMO's about to have their Punk moment?
Calerxes
Member UncommonPosts: 1,641
Hi Guys & Gals,
This question has occured to me of recent as I have been playing Fallen Earth, now for the younger and non musical types what I mean is that in the world of music the arrival of Punk music revolutionised the music scene, it opened up the music world and instigated the rise of the Independent label which could promote new styles of music without having to go through the normal channels of the mainstream allowing more radical and creative music to be available to everyone. Now most Punk was quite frankly terrible only a few artists could really be claimed to be good namely The Clash, The Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedy's, Crass and (maybe) The Sex Pistols with a few others, but really that wasn't the point it was the spirit in which it was made.
Now as I have been playing Fallen Earth for the past month I see a similar thing, at its heart its a great idea being a skill based/level hybrid with an open world, only a few instances and a deep crafting system so so good so far, the developer Icarus seems to want to grow the game with the involvement of the player base as well which is another plus point but for me and some others its let down by bad character models and combat, graphical bugs and glitches with poor graphics over all and an all around rough unpolished feel to the game. Many might not agree but thats not the point of my post, the point is that its good enough and different enough from the mainstream MMO's to garner a good following assuring its survival and growth. This is similar with Darkfall, which was the first Indie MMO I played, though Darkfall lacked different things but it to had that home made look and feel which I'm not having a go about as this is for me is simialr to those early rough and ready punks songs with kids shouting and screaming rather than singing.
So for me these two games show that the Independent MMO world is on the cusp of producing a game that's on the polish, content and graphical front of the major developers pre-2007. Thus enabling comapnies to break away from the tradition way of making MMO's with their huge development budgets and conservative design remits and injecting some needed creativity into a samey world as Punk did in the 1976 English music scene.
I must say I'm not against the mainstream for the sake of it, its that history has taught us that as things become bigger and more money is made the companies increasingly become conservative in what they produce taking less and less of a gamble on what they produce (which is understandable with the monies involved) 180 degrees to what happens with the first pratitioners of a particular creative art and from reading and playing MMO's for a couple of years (yes I know I'm late to the party) I can see this has happened in the sphere of MMO's. So in my view the hope of a varied a vibrant MMO world lies in the hands of the Indie developers, it will only take one indie MMO to be released in a quailty state for others to follow suit and because of smaller development budgets will not need 100 servers and 1 million players to break even. My vision is many smaller more varied MMO's only relying on a few servers and a dedicated player base just like many of my favorite Independent record labels do.
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.
Comments
Indy music like indy games will always have a niche.
There are people who would rather die than like what the masses like.
This gives the indy fans a feeling of being 1337.
You even see it in operating systems, microsoft versus apple versus linux.
Something good might come out of the indy games. If it's like music, whats good will go mainstream.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
The slight difference is: it takes a ton of money to make a MMO.
Making music takes teens with too much time on their hands.
Shame on you for even including the Sex Pistols in your list of punk bands. They were a creation of Malcom McClaren, and basically the "punk" version of today's boy bands like New Kids on the Block. Shame on you again for NOT including the Circle Jerks, Bad Brains, and Black Flag.
sorry... I had to.
Really? That's how music is made? Most forms of entertainment, whether it be video games, movies, theatre, and countless others would be completely bland and lacking without music. Don't try and downplay the entirety of music to the extent of bored teenagers.
It takes a ton of money to produce an album, millions even. That's why you don't hear every bored teenager on the radio.
Edit: Not that any of the music on the radio is any good.
It's already happened. We called it World of Warcraft.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Well, there are some small companies that are making MMOs right now, but the giants are putting in loads of cash into their games also.
Games like TOR, Blizzards next game, Bethesdas Upcoming game, FFXIV and other games from the giants will compete will smaller companies like CCP, Arenanet and other small developers.
If David or Goliath wins is anybodies guess but MMOs are rather expensive to make unless you have a masterprogrammer working for little money (both CCP and Arenanet have that, that is why I mentioned them).
Modern graphics is expensive but a game also needs to be fun to become a hit. If the giants can't deliver that then it will open up a market for all the small companies, most players will play a better game even if the graphics is not as great. Otherwise there will be a few of them hanging on due to talented devs but most will have very hard.
Only the future can tell, with music punk was a huge success but you have many small genres that never have become big, the question is if the indie games will become very popular or continue as small games for a handful players.
There is also the companies that are neither huge nor indie, like Turbine, Funcom and many others. It might well be that they are the ones that will become the next hug thing instead.
World of Warcraft is more pop music than punk, call it the Beatles of MMOs or something. It did nothing to open up for the independent labels.
WoW is to the Beatles as Fallen Earth is to the Sex Pistols.
You think 'New Kids on the Block' are one of 'today's bands?
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Shame on you for not including Social Distortion.
I disagree.
The dozens of indie developers currently making games only appeared after WoW popularized the genre. Games such as UO and Everquest were the Beatles.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
I'd disagree. UO and Everquest were never that big, though they had a huge impact on MMO development, obviously.
Going with the musical analogy, I would liken UO and Everquest more to Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry, Chet Atkins, or Link Wray.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
WoW is about as punk as McDonalds Fast Food chains.
Being that this past decade has been the worst decade ever musically, it's no wonder why WoW is so popular. A more fair comparison would be WoW to Sex Pistols, as neither really cared about their genre and were there to make as much money as possible. Now, i'm a huge John Lydon fan circa Public Image Ltd., but lets not kid ourselves about the Pistols. Theye were formed to piss as many people off as possible and were not about the music at all.
UHHHHH hello?!?! Misfits? NOFX?
Big is relative. At the time, they were huge.
Point remains; WoW did what the OP describes.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
While small or indie developers are as punk as Captain D's.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
'punk' has a different meaning in some parts of the US. I think that's why it didn't catch on here as much.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
I don't know if I'm seeing things through some strange warped world filter but the release of WOW is not MMO's punk moment its actually the reason why we need a Punk moment. I've read the forum for over a year and the blindness of the fanboy is just incredible, WOW will cure Cancer next. WOW is the equivalent to the sugar coated POP music that litters the mainstream charts of today but I don't want this to turn into a WOW bashing thread because it has its place as does mainstream POP and is a quality product but its popularity has stiffled innovation (enter Camp1111).
I would just like to see, as with Independent record labels, a more diverse landscape of MMO's now there are a few interesting titles floating around I will admit like Face Of Mankind, Wurm, Love, even Mortal Online if they can get it together but the quality is way short of attracting a good strong following and these are the early Punk records, and this is my argument without the early Punk records we would of never had some truly great artists emerge Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure, Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Fall, Throbbing Gristle, [add favorite band] or even Electro Funk/Hip Hop and an expansion of music styles and genre's to where we are today with 100's of genres and scenes making music a truly fascinating hobby to have, would it have been so if the majors had there way, I don't think so. So hopefully we are close to seeing this happen in the world of MMO's
Now I'm not a lover of Punk but appreciate its contribution to muisc so there is really only one decent band to come out of that era and its The Clash, so you've been lucky I included 4 other bands anyway
.
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.
Thats the point Loke without Punk those sub-genres, microgenres would never had a chance to exist as they do today and even in the world of music you have the big Indie players like Domino Records, Rhino, ECM and I'd put Turbine in with them they can takes risks if they want to only time will tell if they have the balls to do so.
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.
Games like fallen earth are what i'd consider the rebirth of punk (ie Hardcore music). The problem is the genre went through the same mainstream outing punk did in the later 80's and hardcore did over last few years. It was tamed and packaged for a mainstream audience. Thats when you see the elitist jerks pop up as a poster above suggested. As they really don't know what it's about they just think it makes them different which is "cool".
Back in the late 90's MMO's were what you could consider "underground" much like punk was at one point and later hardcore was. Today none of it us underground, it's what's most popular amongst our youth. MMO's have had the same exact thing happen to them. Fake punks and fake MMO's are everywhere.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Here's the problem; your perception of the genre seems to be somewhat off.
Look at the list of games on the left hand side of this site. Many of those games are from indie developers. The landscape of MMO releases is more diverse than it has ever been, and a lot of that development interest only arrived once the genre really took off; i.e. when WoW exploded.
We have Sci-Fi, we have Fantasy, we have Post-Apoc, we have Horror, we have Pirates, we have Cowboys, we have Themeparks, Sandboxes, Hybrids, Grinders, Questers, PvP, PvE, RP, RTS, Twitch, F2P, P2P, etc, etc. We're seeing more innovation than ever.
I find it ironic that you choose to attack the "fanboy blindness" while simultaneously turning your own blind eye. Why do you think we see so much WoW-hate on the forums? .. why so many complaints from "veterans" that the previous generation of MMOs were better, and that WoW brought all the bad things into the genre?
It's because WoW is the punk, and the punk was never going to be universally embraced.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Wow is as punk as blink 182....
Honestly to hear WOW and punk side by side in the same sentence almost made me puke.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Now I wonder; did you read the thread entirely and understand that we were discussing the impact of WoW on the MMO genre as comparable to the impact of Punk on the music scene, or did you just skim-read and decide that a snappy one-line troll was the order of the day?
I'm not comparing WoW to Punk on a stylistic level. We're talking impact.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
If the "punk" impact on the music genre was considered highly negative and a detriment to the genre over all then yes, I agree with you. Otherwise, your comparison is just a sad attempt to give credit where it's hardly deserving.