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Knucklecloud
Member Posts: 11
Hi, I'm Matt from Knucklecloud. I made a post about the state of the MMO market, with some additional sentiments included. I thought that it might be sensible to share it here and see what you guys think about it. It's relatively long, but if you're interested, read on.
I'll start off by stating the obvious: MMORPGs in general have become stale. They've become uninteractive and linear. And it worked for a while. It worked really, really well from the perspective of the game companies and their monetary assets.
However, there indeed are a few problems this kind of design arises on the long run: When interaction has to step aside for linear gameplay, there's no dynamic content. This means that you're going to hit a brick wall at some point, because linear happens to have a beginning and an end. The beginning and the end alternate in an infinite loop, with such speed that you believe the end doesn't even exist! Genius, right? Well, sooner or later, player by player, people will realize that they're only attending a polished rat race. There's a very specific pattern you go through, which never, ever, changes. Only the cosmetics of the situation change. Now, more and more people are starting to get fed up with the pattern. However, there's nothing else on the market to hold their attention and you're not going to gain it by continuing to sew the same texture of the same pattern.
And how do the game companies react? By putting out more of the same old, of course! It's the safe route to go, as copying the hit worked for single-player games too! The thing is, that going the "safe" route right now in the MMO business is exactly as much of a slippery slope as doing something utterly different with your game. You can't expect to see success with an imitation of the market's biggest MMO, because these games are continuous experiences. They don't have a definite ending like single-player games. Hence, people would rather play the "real deal" than the imitation of it, because they can and they have already bonded with their e-persona in it. I mean, it's common knowledge that most of the big budget safe bets in the MMO biz have horribly flopped in the last few years. You're not going to make a bad game turn good by including shiny boobs and crazy good graphics. Actually, sacrificing too much for graphics is never a good idea, because they're not what are going to keep people playing the game.
Basically, this situation would make it an actually valid option to create a massive multi-player sandbox with a sufficient budget. People seem to be ready for the next step, only if someone had the balls to make it. EVE Online is the only well executed sandbox to still live and breathe today. I personally think it is a great game, but it only attracts a very specific crowd. It has unfortunately got a way too steep learning curve for many and the pace of the game is often deemed agitating. Anyway, the fact that a game is a sandbox does not mean that it's automatically a niche game. EVE is a niche game because of the reasons I listed above. It's a hard game to get into in general and it has always been that way. Star Wars Galaxies got closest to a casual sandbox and people loved it, but it still didn't quite capture all the possibilities a sandbox offers. And then it got completely pissed on by the NGE.
The common gamer is not a myth, they just don't want to see a too much of a hassle for having the fun a sandbox may offer, just like many wouldn't pick up chess even if you'd be told that it's fun after you truly grasp it. However, I think that it's very possible to create a sandbox without the usual problems which may turn off the casual gamer, while not diluting the gaming experience for others. More about that in the next update!
Comments
Not bad, but I think you give sandbox a little too much credit over linearity. It might help if you better defined what you mean by a sandbox game; the term can mean quite a few different things. I'm not sure that I understand how only sandbox games allow "interaction". Interaction with what, the game? Other players?
That's true, I should've been more specific with that. Interaction with players and the game. I'm not trying to convey that theme park MMOs would not have any interaction at all, but they're just rather uninteractive when you look at what EVE has on offer. I'm talking about players being an actual part of the game's content and freely interacting with the very basics of it, like territories. When players make a big part of the content, and the elements planted by the developers only give the tools to create it instead of the whole cake, I think that's when the most rewarding form of interaction happens.
http://knucklecloud.blogspot.com/
I don’t think that there is an actual “next step” with these games. They are clearly designed/redesigned for the off-line and multi-player RPG player. RPG’s have not changed since… forever, apart from being heavily pirated now. So now we have quasi-mmorpg’s that are better for company profits. The next step for mmorpg’s will be for them to become mmorpg’s again. What we have here will continue on as RPG’s have for many years, just with their online element along with end-game etc. And when they make all computer content streaming on demand, old RPG’s will pretty much disappear as everything will be called an “mmorpg”. We are just seeing the beginning of it now as people like Jobs said it would become one day.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
op!we will have 180 degres turning chair with a small support on chair for keyboard and head display(180 degres)with motion sensor so player can play eve ,before one other game even use 25 % of what eve use lol!
i bet most other game dev hate eve because ccp is showing player where the futur of gaming is and not one other game dev want to even use even 35% of ccp ways!
Sandbox wouldn't be a new innovation either, though. It's simply that the players themselves hasn't shown a great interest to the normal, WoW -like MMOs as of late. I think that it's a pretty clear sign of the need for something different.
What is an RPG in the first place? Cookie cutter MMORPGs are more about slash and hack than playing a role in the game. You kill ten rats and get a leather tunic. Then you rinse and repeat the same pattern. The quests may have a story-line, but you know that it doesn't affect the game in any way in the very end. You fill absolutely no role, other than the predefined one which comes with your class, in a normal MMO.
One of the most interesting and important aspects of RPGs, off-line and on-line, are the effects of your choices upon the world. It's one of the core elements of a true RPG, I think. If your actions have no consequences whatsoever, no good or bad is created, no role is created.
http://knucklecloud.blogspot.com/