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Will scifi genre ever be the majority?
Xenduli
Member Posts: 654
Would it take a sucessful Sci-fi MMO for there to be more Sci-fi MMO's or are publishers waiting to see how a game like Tabula Risa or Star Trek Online does?
EVE Online - boring
SWG - see countless posts on this
AO - great, but looks old.
Planetside - pffft
The Matric Online - I'm the one, no I am, no you're not, yes I am, not, am....
Seed - quirky graphics, great idea except Horizons has a larger population 
Auto Assault - not a typical mmo, not sucessful either.
So does anyone think it would take a sci-fi MMO to be a huge seller for there to be more of them. I also find it interesting that when Warhammer Online was announced there was quite a response asking where's 40k.
No annoying animated GIF here!
Comments
Until a highly successful Sci-fi MMO is made most game companies will take the safer, proven route of fantasy. Maybe some of the people clamoring for a Sci-fi MMO should get to work on making this revolutionary game.
Siehst du mich
Erkennst du mich
Ganz tief in meinem Herz
ist noch ein Platz f?r dich
Ich suche dich
Ich sehne mich
nach dem was ich geliebt hab
doch ich find es nicht
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
Well Warhammer 40k would be ideal to mix Sci Fi with fantasy, you have the traditional fantasy races maybe with a diferent name but Eldars could easy be viewed as Elves for example, your mount need not be an animal but a glider, and you have as much mellee fighting as in any fantasy game, sure you dont simply have an Axe, a Sword, a Staff or Armor but you have a Power Axe, a Power Sword, an Energy Staff and a Power Armor, but in general they usage is the same
So i believe that warhammer 40k would be the perfect oportunity to introduce a Sci Fi game which is as close to a fantasy game as possible, who knows maybe in the future.....
SciFi should be #1. If you look at the top 20 movie$ for the US you'll see 8/20 are SciFi. (I know these are movies and not games but it does show a general interest.) If you look at the same list only 4/20 are fantasy. So if people would rather watch SciFi then fantasy, why would they not want to play it?
There is a lot to work with too.
Androids, Cyborgs, Human genetic engineering, Nanomedicine, Aliens, exploration of new planets, time travel.........endless!
The business world likes to copy things that have shown success, so yes it would take a successful SciFi MMO to break the ice. I just hope it isn't a FPS type when it happens
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
fantasy pwns scifi
Which FF Character Are You?
You see that's the thing, bar Lord of the Rings fantasy films generally don't do as well as sci-fi. It's also about legacy of a different generation, think of fantasy I think of DnD. The legacy of MUD's, dungeons not starports. I genuinely feel that the dominance of fantasy is a combination of how well the genre sells with single player games, legacy of MUDs and the sucess of EQ and DnD (paper version). In a couple of generations I predict that because very few play DnD any more and with the popularity of sci-fi at the box office that will influence the type of games that are made. I also think that because you can pretty much have your own rules with a sci-fi game it can be more imaginative, nanobots healing you in AO make more sense to me than waving your hands about and giving someone life. You can pretty much make anything up as long as xyz invention explains it, who knows maybe Vivendi are really going to co-erce Blizzard into World of Starcraft.
No annoying animated GIF here!
Galaxies could have been it. But there were a few flaws with Galaxies that doomed it from the beginning.
1. Time Period. The game takes place after a new hope, but before Empire Strikes Back. Everyone knows what happened with the Galactic Civil War at that point in time. Yet the developers tried to make players believe that they would be participating in the Galactic Civil War. The developers should have chosen one of three time periods for Star Wars Galaxies: After Episode III, but before Episode IV, before Episode I, or after Episode VI. Those time periods were "virgin" areas. Books have been written, but the general populace has no pre-conceptions about those time periods. You may well have played a part in the history of the Star Wars universe. As it stands, everything that happens in Galaxies feels like a lie.
Another game that understood the problems with Star Wars time periods was Knights of the Old Republic. To date, KOTR is one of the most successful Star Wars games released, and it takes place WAY outside of the Episode I-VI storyline. I think choosing the right time period for a game based on a movie, or a previous game makes all the difference in the world.
2. Jedi. In line with the Time Period, Jedi simply do not exist except for Yoda and Luke. The only other force sensitive person that we know of (from the movies) during this time period is Leia, and she's not even remotely aware of her abilities. On top of that, a "super being," like a Jedi should never appear in any game where balance should be a consideration. Jedi were not a part of the SWG initial release. And I believe that their implementation was the beginning of the end for Star Wars Galaxies.
3. Lack of dedication to the Galactic Civil War. Even with the above two areas of concern, SWG could have been successful if they had emphasized the Galactic Civil War. The logical end to any MMO is either PvP, or raid content. Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, had PvP written all over it. But SOE failed to capitalize on that, and instead looked for ways to extend gameplay by encouraging people to wipe their characters and try to unlock their Jedi slot.
The skirmishes that did take place did not seem to fit into the Star Wars universe. Rebels outnumbered Imperials 2 to 1 on many servers. The powerful machinery that the Empire used against the Rebels in the Movies was "nerfed" because the Rebels thought it was overpowered. Rebels marched around Imperial holdings without any sense of fear. Quite the opposite... It was the Imperials that had to be fearful. All in all, the Galactic Civil War in SWG was non existent. I'd go as far as to say it was a sham.
Since it's release, the SWG development team has continually looked for a way to "fix" the problems with their game. They never bothered to look at the above things. It's quite sad really. SWG started out as a great game with a lot of very well developed GAME concepts. Trying to adapt the Star Wars Universe to the game, instead of designing the game around the Star Wars universe is what killed it.
Developers have spread this fantasy-is-more-popular meme far and wide and it's obviously taken hold. Sci-Fi MMOGs are much harder to make for many different reasons and most developers are not about to put forth any extra effort just to make the same amount of money.
There are a few reasons.
First, the whole RPG genre came first from fantasy. I know all of you are going to jump down my throat about how that is all irrelevant for computer games, but the stats say otherwise.
Second, people like the kinds of "classes" they can play in a fantasy setting, and these are not always easily transferable to a sci fi setting.
Third, if you look at the market ... no sci fi game has ever come close to the success of the fantasy MMOs like UO, EQ and WoW. None. The folks who make and who finance the people who make MMOs know that, and that has a significant impact on what gets developed and financed.
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Starcraft mmo = #1 game in Korea if its made.
The Sci-Fi mmo's to date really haven't targetted thier audience too well. SWG kinda did this well and Eve almost does a good targeting; but for the most part they lose the effect of Sci-Fi because the developers are a fantasy background.
The Cyberpunk genre is still has a good audience base in the 30-60 year old range; they also have alot of money. If a company can pull off some good Cyberpunk then it will have a good backing.
Steampunk also looks like it can be a good genre; the architecture is definetly interesting.
Anything that involves building a custom ship and battling with it will do well in Asia. Doesn't matter if its 2000 BC Triremes; it will do well in Asia if it had alot of customization and tactics.
I think that alot of new sci fi games are going to be coming to us soon in the next year or so.
Games like :
Twilight War
Conflict Omega
Fallen Earth
Huxley
All these games look promising and are a new kind of MMO really, there has been Neocron but that didn't go that big. These games are like MMO's, but then they are a first person fighter, so it's like a twitch gaming MMO.
i'm waiting
I would probably like fantasy if it didn't include going to a place that looks like disney land every time i log in :P
The reason that people dont see many great Sci-Fi games is because it takes more imagination and creativity to make a game based on something that hasn't been beaten into glue.
I'm dont feel that fantasy is going away, but I'm suprised its not working more like other fictional theme rollercoasters where for a few years you will see one genre, then for a few years you see another, and they tend to bounce back and forth alot.
This rollercoaster is partly so people dont get bored, and partly so idea's seem "fresh" and people think amazing products are coming out. Sci-fi tends to be driven by new special effects methods, so alot of the time when new ground breaking cgi ships can make you beleive more in space travel, you will see it, and many clones released.
Honestly, I dont know how much longer the fantasy thing will keep going as it is. I know there are huge numbers of people getting bored with elves and dwarves, its not hard to see how many of these threads there are. The problem is that mmo's take years to develop and by the time devs figure out people want something different, they are already on projects not finished, and years later you will see the product they knew they should have made based on popular opinion.
3-5 years is roughly how long it takes to make a MMO, depends obviously on what features are present, size of the world and how much testing is done. I just think there is a chasm between games made and the amount of interest out there for sci-fi or at least more futuristic settings. Surely there must be an investor out there who can see the potential, they could make a killing. Some would say that it would take an independent developer to come along and do something new. Well that's all very rosy sounding, but when was the last time anyone heard of one making something really innovative, majority just seem to copy the big guys - that's just not happening.
No annoying animated GIF here!
I think people are being way too pessimistic about the possibility for Sci-Fi doing better in the future (heh). The MMORPG legacy is in the fantasy genre, and the sci-fi games have either been lackluster over time or had less than stellar (badum ching) launches. SWG should've done better, it seems to me. MxO's fanbase was already eroded by the time it got to them. Anarchy Online falls neatly into the "bad launch" camp with its infamous bugs.
Though I do think it'd have to be a franchise game with a cult following and interest already a factor. Without a powerful draw they'd have a lot of trouble just overcoming inertia. Hence, we're getting Star Trek Online and Star Gate Worlds (SGW just to be confusing).
Yes, and obviously:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic
I mean duh.
Why would anyone, EVER, want a Warhammer 40k MMORPG?
In WH40k, the individual does not count. Like a mindless slave, you just follow your superiors order.. To death.
WH40k is huge, way to huge - The only way to make even a remotely interresting MMORPG out of it, would be to focus on a hive city. That's right, lots of small gangs trying to take control of different stuff. No spacemarines, no imperial guard, no freaky eldars, nor any Orks.
I'm sure there will end up being a lot more science fiction and modern games compared to the almost-all-fantasy that we have now. For that matter, I think the real split isn't SF vs Fantasy, it's 'fantasy world with elves, orcs, dwarves, set in something fairly medieval europe with some oriental things slipped in and a relatively narrow kind of magic' vs everything else.
Like Kyoruto pointed out, 'science fiction games' are not a very tight group. Star Wars and EVE both just toss real science out of the window; you have spaceships that move unrealistically slow in normal space (the fastest ships in EVE use a micro-warp-drive to hit a top speed of 8-9 km/s, the space shuttle goes up to 17 km/s), maneuver like they're in an atmosphere (especially noteworthy is that top speed in both seems to be based off of an analogue of air resistance and not on fuel supply and engines), and for Star Wars there's very fantasy-stlye personal combat with light sabres and blaster beams that move slower than modern bullets. But some Scifi fans want much more realistic space combat, where ships maneuver with newtonian physics instead of like airplanes on a black background (there have been a number of space sims done using this kind of combat). Others will want something like Anarchy Online (IIRC) or the Matrix, which are set on a single world and doesn't involve space at all.
BTW, you could make a good 40k MMO based around rogue traders, explorers, fringe worlds (where the imperial cult isn't as overwhelming), but you'd have to leave out space marines, which are the most popular army by far (look who's on the game box), so I kind of doubt GW would be real keen on it.