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A MMO without publisher ...
Rocketeer
Member UncommonPosts: 1,303
... what does that mean? How will it affect the continued developement of the game? We all know publishers sometimes let games die, cease support etc for sometimes hard to follow reasons(if indeed any reasons are given at all).
Maybe a good example would be Warhammer vs EvE developement. Both games had flaws at their launch(and im being very generous towards EvE here), but the latter got support and update after update while the former got cut off at the knees in an effort to ... what? Couldn't pull back the money already invested anyway, and ceasing any meaningful content additions after a mere 6 months destroyed ANY hope of ever making it back by sentencing it to a slow death.
What im curious about is, will CSE be similar to CCP in the sense that they support and develope their game come hell or high water(financial success given), or will it be a stepping stone with a fixed TTL. For example most devs have a large team working on MMOs during production, than once the game gets released they either fire or reassing people and have a smaller team working on content additions and finetuning.
If CSE would follow the CCP approach off development team = live team + x it would kinda increase my interest even more. I mean there is no technical reason why a running MMO couldn't get a new GFX engine, new higher definition models etc a couple years down the road. Do CSE even WANT their game being around 10 years from know? Serious question, cause its not just about profit, but also about being willing to reinvest profit into the game to prolong its shelflife for many years to come. With publishers involved games never seem to produce enough income to warrent proper engine upgades(not even WoW had the kind of engine upgrades EvE had ... so it can't be about money).
This apparently will be a very sandboxy game, which imho means it needs lots of dev attention post launch, creating new lego pieces for us to built our castles with for lack of a better analogy. How about MJ himself? Will he stay with CSE, maybe even the game postlaunch? In other words, do we have any clue how dedicated CSE will be to the game?
Comments
The short answer: Only time will tell
The long answer: Only time will tell
My opinion: If this funds and launches and CSE gathers a playerbase close or above what they want I'd imagine with the 12 man team + who ever else they have to hire during development they would continue to support the game until one of two things happen.
A) Mark (with approval of co-founders, investors, etc.) sells CSE to a bigger publisher in which case I'm sure, unless this game and others funding on kickstarter begin a revolution, we'd see CSE turn into what mythic has.
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
A developer can still use a publisher even in a case like this.
The difference is - rather than go to a publisher for funding and sign a contract which gives the publisher control they go to a publisher to...well... publish. That is, market and distribute.
They sign a contract with the publisher which makes them a client of the publisher - if that's what they choose to do.
The advantages of this is that the Publisher should have the necessary connections and sytems in place to do a good job of marketing the product.
This has been done before.
Unfortunately the two cases that immediately come to mind didn't go well:
Flying Lab Software did this with Pirates of the Burning Sea. They signed up Platform Publishing (SOE) for most of the world and Telstra Bigpond (Game Arena) in Australia and new Zealand. It didn't go well. SOE were totally incompetent and messed up badly - the whole sad story can be found in the forums here. Telstra also did a very poor job and FLS pulled out of that deal as soon as they could 12 months after signing.
The second case I can think of was DDO and Turbine using Atari as a distributer. Some of you may recall this ended in legal action with Turbine taking over large chunks of the marketing and distribution after Atari tried to stab them in the back with Cryptic's Neverwinter.
Gods and Heroes (the one that went bankrupt late 2008) was also a Platform Publishing title.
Or... they can publish themselves. Do their own marketing and distribution.
This is considerably easier in the age of digital downloads. Particularly if you don't want to distribute physical stuff (actual CDs/DVDs etc)
The problem then is only marketing - but in this case with Mark Jacobs all over the place - probably not such a big issue.
Although... in reality he is only reaching the audience who already know about MMOs. Probably having less success reaching 'virgin' players.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Any MMORPG that is not being released by EA is worth investing in IMO.
I loved WAR Online, but blamed EA for the missing polishing.
Actually CCP did this aswell with EvE. Which wasn't so much of a disaster. I still got the orginal box somewhere, it was some strange publisher(which name escapes me) thats long gone the way of the dodo but they didn't selfpublish initially.
I also found a "requote" on KS comments in regards to progression:
That does sound a bit like the way EvE is doing it doesn't it? Pretty sure CCP refers to the adding of new shipclasses and whole new gameplay mechanics even in the same way, i.e. horizontal progression that is.
I kind of see it like this.
I've noticed a trend (a trend, not an absolute rule) the past 10 years.
Most of the games done by BIG publishers (EA, etc...)...
They seem more interested in the initial profits the first year brings, where there's a lot of hype, and the playerbase is probably at its peak.
But then something happens. THe big publishers all of a sudden decide to scrap the team, cut to barebones, cut back the budget staffing big time, and run the game on fumes. Not sure if it's to appease investors, stockholders, or to increase their quarterly reports numbers, get bigger short term profits for bonuses, etc... all the crap I see in corporate business. They also blame the players for it LMAO.
Players get a sense of this, and go "man, this game isn't going anywhere now", and gradually leave in large numbers. Players can sense when the game/publisher switches from excitement to, how can I squeeze every ounce of profit out of this game possible, even at the expense of the long term fun/survivability of the game. Especially when there are glaring issues internal to the game, and the game/publisher doesn't seem concerned at all about those, but about things that directly increase their revenues/profits. Players go, I'm not here to pay your salary, I'm here to enjoy a game, and leave.
I think the big publishers have gotten spoiled. They're like a 300 foot tall baby wearing a diaper, that's used to getting what it wants all the time.
Well I hope this funds, so we can show that giant spoiled baby that it DOESN"T always get what it wants.
MMO history - EVE GW2 SWTOR RIFT WAR COH/V EQ2 WOW DAOC
Tuktz - http://www.heretic.shivtr.com/
The vast majority of players in an MMO are never aware of those things, let alone factor it into their enjoyment of the game. Only a fraction follow third party and non-game related news (news about the employees or annual reports is not game related for most) about an MMO and an even smaller group is invested enough to be concerned with it. An even tinier number posts on forums about it.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I view publishing as basically additional funding, advertising and distribution and they take a % of profits.
WIth the emergence of Kickstarter developers don't necessarily need the partnership with a publisher to be able to produce and distribute their game. The biggest drawback would be lack of mainstream advertising.
I think the often times the opposite happens, if a game is self published it sticks around a lot longer. EVE is one example, Runescape is another, which has been around for about 12 years and has its 3rd iteration comming out this summer. The reason being is that these self published games tend to start out small and then grow larger over time as their audience grows. Initially, the dev teams are small and the population of the games are small. There's not 10s or 100s of millions of dollars being invested into these projects either, so it's much easier to make a profit. If they are able to capture an initial audience (even if the audience is small compared to other mmos), then it will allow them to have sustainable buisiness that can slowly expand over time. I think I remember hearing last year the population of EVE online is actually still growing, even after all this time.
I don't feel that CU would be abandoned, even if it was only moderately successful, especially if the team is so passionate about it and also because their livihood depends on it. But as someone mentioned earlier, only time will tell.
Not true imho. Maybe they won't notice it immediatly, but they will notice the consequences of it. I.e. no new content for xy months, changes to ingame shop policy(like starting to sell advantages) or the good old "i quit cause my server is dieing" fail cascade that begins server mergers.
Additionally what tuktz described is exactly what turned me off from EvE. The shift of focus to avatars, double dipping from ingame shop sales and subscription and lack of updates due not to firering but shifting resources to dust 514 and their new project. And i wasn't the only one who took a negative stance on all that, infact the outcry was so big CCP reversed their stance on most of the issues giving in to pressure, but you know what they say, too little too late.
http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility
As you can see 2011 wasn't a good year for eve, it took them almost 2 years to recover and noone knows how many veterans of many years they lost.
So yeah corporate decisions do play a major role in players perception.
I don't disagree that when a game declines player notice and leave, which results in more players leaving because the world is less populated and so on. His statement was that players say "this game is going no where now" based on staffing changes, which is not a driving factor.
On your second point, are you saying that the EVE dev/community relationship isn't one of a handful of exceptions in the industry?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Basicly i think its a bad idea to copy the big guys. Firstly because your not a big guy and what works for them won't work for you. Secondly because its not working even for them unless you are Blizzard. And lastly because your not blizzard.
And what I'm telling you is that you forget the tiny circle of people that you are in. Most players will never hear or know that and, if they do, it rarely affects their view of the game. You're forgetting that you are far more invested in MMOs than the average MMO gamer is.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
In this case, with MJ having given up Mythic and the DaoC title , I don't think he's going to want to let CU or CSE go.
I reckon it's going to be the most tightly held on to piece of gaming IP ever , which means he will be nurturing it for as long as people continue to play it.
He's played the wads of cash game, he's in it for the love of it now.
Camelot is one of the most used IP's in exsistence.
Well yes, but I doubt that Camelot will be in the final title of the game.
What I was trying to say is that they will have to prise control of this game from MJ's cold dead hands, because there's no other way he'll give it up
It means it's going to be good.
It also means, that if it fails to meet promises, we can only blame one person: Mark Jacobs.
So for all those who cry about Warhammer. That was EA. For everyone who says that is shifting the blame...this is your chance to see if he did.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained
Everyone.... Every person on this Earth has a price.
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."