Humor me as I indulge in a thought experiment. Note: I’m NOT working on this. No one I know is working on this. As far as I know, no Galactica game, massive or otherwise, is even in the “gleam in the eye” stage of development. I just like impossible problems.
If you ask any MMO designer (especially ones that have worked on one), MMO games based on movie/TV licenses are hot death. The reasons are pretty simple:
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- Movies are linear. MMO games are nonlinear.
- Movies have a star. MMO games don’t. (Or if they do, they’re part of the scenery.)
- Movies are about passive storytelling. You sit there and entertainment arrives. MMO games are about active participation. You make your own story.
- Movies have an ending. MMO games don’t.
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Even more, the best movies – the ones that play to the strengths of the medium – in so doing, become the absolute worst prospects for becoming backdrops for MMOs. Battlestar Galactica is such a perfect example, it could be the benchmark for why not to do so. Why?
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- BSG is linear. It tells a single story, albeit one that often jumps about.
- BSG is very narrowly focused. The vast majority of the story takes place on one fairly small starship.
- BSG’s strength is in its characters – its stars. The backdrop of the series is actually fairly hackneyed, but thanks to the strength of the writing and the interplay between characters, you don’t really notice.
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So. Assume you’ve been given $50 million dollars and told to make Galactica Online. What can you do? The strikes against you are pretty heavy. Need I list them?
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- Science fiction MMOs have not been commercial successes.
- MMOs based on a commercial license have not been commercial successes.
- The bar of expectations is VERY high among fans of the TV series.
- The series itself is an episodic narrative whose conclusion is unclear. An episode next year could neatly make anything you write nonsensically contradicted.
- The milieu is limited. How do you cram a million players on one battlestar? OK, some are cylons, but you still have an overly limited number of available slots given the game’s storyline.
- Everyone will want to be Starbuck/Adama/Apollo. Nothing new here, but it’s still a problem, especially among players new to the MMO genre.
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Saying “Uh, can I take this money and make ‘Orks Hate Humies’, please?” is probably not an option. Assuming you actually want to make a decent game, how could you do so given the many straightjackets listed above?
Here then, a few options.
It Doesn’t Have To Be Persistent: you could make a massively multiplayer space combat game set within the BSG universe that resets itself frequently. It could be set within BSG’s first season, and the Cylon players try to bring down the Colonial fleet through various scripted and unscripted trickeries. At the end of a given short period, the reset button is hit and it all begins again. This may not even be a roleplaying game, but a straight space sim.
Pros: it’s different, it works within the milieu, it meets expectations for the license.
Cons: BSG isn’t really about combat, most people expect character development and persistence as part of an MMO.
Battlestar Atlantia Online: Hey, look, yet another battlestar survived! Wow, those Cylons are awfully inefficient for being maniacal machines. This is the “Knights of the Old Republic” strategy; when presented with canon that makes it impossible to make a good game, leave canon entirely and carve out your own space fifty-seven degrees off centre.
Pros: you have all the wiggle room you need for canon-related issues, you’re within the same world as the TV show but not shackled to it, the gameplay will come the closest to what MMO players expect from the license.
Cons: It’s not GALACTICA Online, you will have to bend over backwards to introduce players to canon characters from the storyline, you’re still faced with the problem of a limited milieu, i.e. one battlestar.
The Battle For Dead Caprica: In the blasted nuclear desolation of Caprica, thousands of resistance fighters struggle on against the implacable Cylon occupiers.
Pros: close to familiar gameplay from other MMOs, seperate enough from the canon story to give wiggle room while still allowing for “walk-on cameos” of storyline characters.
Cons: no actual battlestars or space combat, game concept is really depressing considering everyone involved is probably going to die of radiation poisoning or being hunted to extinction.
There Are Many Ships In The Colonial Fleet, This Is One Of Them: A sci-fi RPG set on a cargo hauler within the Colonial fleet. Players try to survive as Humanity tries desperately to husband its resources on the long voyage to Earth.
Pros: Well, it’s true to canon, until Ron Moore writes an episode where your ship blows up.
Cons: Gameplay is almost as depressing as being stuck on a radioactive Caprica, with a limited area to move around in to boot.
You See Me Now A Veteran Of A Thousand Cylon Wars: Scroll back the timeline just a touch, to when the Colonies and the Cylons are at war. There, game. Done.
Pros: Easy enough to do, ties in to the new Caprica series for a bonus assist!
Cons: People are going to expect to be able to play within the world of Battlestar Galactica, not trading quips with Adama’s grandfather over pyramid games.
Screw All Of You All, I’m Apollo’s Wingman: IT IS BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ONLINE! FLY ALONGSIDE YOUR HEROES ON GALACTICA AND SAVE HUMANITY FROM THE CYLON HORDES!
Pros: It’s the game the people giving you $50 million want you to make.
Cons: You will probably not actually be able to make a good game from this.
Galactica 1980 Online: Galactica makes it to Earth! Yay! Bad people want to stop them. Time travelling will probably be involved as well as cute space kids going to space camp.
Pros: You can use much of the development budget on drugs.
Cons: Many fans will hunt you down and kill you.
So would YOU do any better?
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Just a question. Are we only spending $50M for development of this game (engine/graphics) or does that include staffing, marketing, support centers, hardware, etc. in this budget?
From the consumer point of view, I’d pay for 2, 3, and 5… Based on the descriptions.
Dethroning WoW aside, I do not think that BSG can be made to be a fun MMORPG without ditching significant portions of its BSG-ishness.
Honestly, if some dude came to my door with $50mil and told me to make Battlestar Online with it… I am not sure if I would try to talk him down, check his meds, or just tell him to go to hell.
Although it’s lacking in story and character, Vendetta Online simulates BSG-style space combat pretty accurately in physics mode with ships strafing around each other in circles and banking and rolling and whatnot.
I never really got the hang of it but watching videos of pilots who knew what they were doing always reminded me of BSG. Pilot a Warthog to make it even more authentic.
Crap. My apologies, Dave. I need to wear my glasses more often.
Geez, walk away from the computer for a day…
First, “Fantasy” is a genre, just as “DIKU-style” gameplay is a genre. In literature, both “Fantasy” and “Novels” are genres, even if the describe very different aspects of the story. The term may be inprecise, but I am not using it incorrectly. The popular games out there happen to fall into the intersection of the first two genres listed above: Fantasy and DIKU-style.
Second, yes, I know that small scale doesn’t instantly mean failure. I’m one of the few people here to to put my money where my mouth is. Well, more like credit cards instead of money. But, anyway, M59 has been profitable as a business despite having a tiny subscription base. Small can be modestly profitable. But, once again: we are not talking about small here if we stick with what Scott mentioned above, particularly with a $50M budget.
As for Dave Rickey, Austin is in about a month. I’ll beat him up then. RLPK, baby!
Have fun,
Phooey. If both “fantasy” and “Diku” are genres, then the term “genre” is a generic muddle that is useless for discussions of game design. Something with more precision is neccessary to separate the gameplay from the background. I’m fine with ditching the word entirely, if we can find something better to describe gameplay systems.
–Dave
Okay, I’ll admit… I was in Australia when BSG hit, and I’ve only seen the opening miniseries. (Yes, I know BSG came to Australia, but I didn’t own a TV. And I know the first season and a half are out on DVD. I still don’t own a TV.)
Part of the reason that Stargate, Star Trek, and Firefly work better than BSG (and a number of other licenses) is because the shows are built around episodic away missions, and you can make excuses for any number of teams working in parallel on different missions. Instanced content is a total no-brainer for these licenses, since canon supports small teams working independently, without really running into each other much.
Shows like B5, DS9, and BSG tend to be much more sedentary. Rather than being proactive (let’s go solve this problem!), the action is largely reactive (omg we’re under attack!). Reactive games are bad, because constant defense can be boring, repetitive, and psychologically exhausting — like a never-ending game of Missile Command.
Ironically, the latter environments are what work the best for RP-MUDs. Roleplayers need a central stage for their pick-up roleplay, and a large, sedentary, captive audience — with secrets, a looming background crisis, human drama, and meaty politics — is just what the doctor ordered.
So, I could probably make you an utterly fantastic RP-MUD based on BSG, but it’d be the niche of the niche, and my investors would be dreadfully unhappy.
Phooey. If both \’e2\’80\’9cfantasy\’e2\’80\’9d and \’e2\’80\’9cDiku\’e2\’80\’9d are genres, then the term \’e2\’80\’9cgenre\’e2\’80\’9d is a generic muddle that is useless for discussions of game design.
And yet the term has worked for literary discussion for longer than the computer game industry has been in existence. The term can usually cover theme (e.g., fantasy), style (e.g., biography), and format (e.g., short story) of a work; any particular work can belong to various genres, and the final story is an intersection between these different types of genres. The term “genre” is by definition and necessity a fuzzy term.
Are you really willing to admit the lit eggheads are smarter than you are, Dave?
Perhaps the best thing would be to adopt a modifier to “genre”. So we could talk about theme genres (e.g., fantasy), gameplay genres (e.g. DIKU-style), and graphical genres (e.g., stylized graphical presentation). But, the term “genre” is still correct and sufficient for the discussion, IMNSHO.
Ummm…no.
(Hi Raph)
But with the qualifiers, it’s usable, so I’ll pick a different windmill to charge, language fights are usually more work than they are worth.
–Dave
Really? Star Trek? If anything, Star Trek is WORSE than BSG… it is hopelessly saddled with a strict command hierarchy and every week there is a completely new piece of the world introduced to meet the demands of that week’s episode. At least with BSG there is more than one ship in the convoy. The Star Trek MMO that’s in the works seems like it has a tough row to hoe.
Stargate (You know, that show that totally kicks BSG’s ass
is practically ideal. It has a practically unlimited set of worlds to visit, ready-made mission-based gameplay, and a decent number of bad guy types to fight. The game play there isn’t a problem at all.
If Firefly had lived, it would have become a rich world to set an MMO in. The Buffyverse certainly did, and the final episode even turned “slayer” into a character class.
Dagnabbit! Why doesn’t this blog engine have preview or edit capabilities? One misplaced
There are exactly two liscenses I would consider working on: Mad Max, and the Buffiverse. Not just because I’m a fan, but because those two both involve worlds that it would be possible to put the player into, without the player automatically expecting to follow the main character’s development arc on rails.
Star Trek, I would run away screaming. BSG, I’d just laugh and say “good luck with that.” I’m a fan, but precisely because I am a fan I know that what makes the franchise compelling would be impossible to deliver in an MMO: The confrontation of the unknown. In an MMO, nothing can ever be unknown for long, and faking it won’t cut it for those liscenses. Max Max and Buffy, on the other hand, are essentially a dark mirror held up to our familiar world, each in different ways.
Auto Assault will probably poison the well for post-apocalyptic vehicle-based games for a while, much as Earth and Beyond poisoned the well for space exploitation and combat games (Eve not with-standing, do you see a line to make more of them?).
But the Buffiverse…That would be cool.
–Dave
A lot to ponder here. I just thought I’d mention that the chain of command in Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica tend to be another reason why they are poor choices for multi-player RPGs, even pen and paper kind. Players like to go where they want, not be told what to do.
Id be more intrested in controling Capital ships and fighter craft in a first person sort of way. A Multiplayer crew for the Base ships and anoyone else strapped into Vipers and Cylon Fighters to fight it out in the deep reaches of space. Throw in some extras like resouce and logistics, make a nice starmap to follow with perhaps more then one path to earth and have at it. THis dosnt have to be over complicated. Problem with developers now days is they make games too detailed just to try to suck money out of the player, the game arnt fun to the regular pastime players. Thats my 2 cents.
For anyone interested there is an excellent game called Space empires.
So far the latest release,, Space Empires V has a lot of bugs in it and can be frustrating, however, it is a game for the modding community and there is a battlestar mod being made.
It is effectively total war in space (kind of) and is very fun to play.
Th IV release is also an excellent game and there may already be a mod. So for those of you who want to interact with the spaceflight side of BS it might be worth a look
You forgot another option… players are cylons. Screw humanity. Screw the heroes… they’re the targets. Obviously the problem with that is not everyone wants to be the bad guys. Especially in a morality tale like BSG.
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