In Tabula Rasa’s case, not with a bang, but with a whine.
It is probably safe to say that, despite decades of ever more spectacular Hollywood visions of extra-terrestial domination, humanity in its worst nightmares never imagined it would have to contend with spawn-camping aliens.
Brian “Psychochild” Green has a more bittersweet view.
So, while the big TR ending event might win them style and PR points, it fills me with a bit of sadness. Can’t games be special to people anymore? Was TR’s community really so weak that they needed a big event to make the ending special? Are online games becoming more disposable from the business, community, and development points of view?
#1 by J. on March 6th, 2009
I’d like MMOs that were well designed from the beginning without a whole shedload of single-player baggage. If you make people think your MMO would be great as a single-player game, you did it wrong.
#2 by geldonyetich on March 7th, 2009
Personally, I don’t like to look at game development in terms of money invested. How much money did it take to invent Poker? Chess? Are they “lesser” games? Low budget indy games come out continually that surprise us.
Money is almost a moot point — sure, technology takes a bit of scratch to harness. However, the heart and soul of the thing the game, is a product of developer talent in understanding the human condition, not money. Everything else is advertising and, well, what intrinsic value have you proved you have if you’ve just paid to be popular?
That’s right: Eat blasphemous truth, Western world.
#3 by gyrus on March 7th, 2009
I would like to agree with you – but the harsh reality is that no-one exists in a vacuum.
I would love it if games were sold based purely on their ‘artistic and design merit’ because we would probably see a lot more innovation.
But why does this thread exist? Because TR got shut down.
Why was that? it was not profitable.
TR was a very interesting game in many ways. I kinda liked it and liked some of the ideas in it very much (both story/plot and game elements) but that was not enough to keep it afloat.
And sadly, unless you can turn a profit you are unlikely to get another go.
As for how much money it took to invent Poker or Chess?
Hardly a fair comparison, the design team on Chess was huge and they largely worked for free, in addition the development time was in the order of hundreds of years (vaporware!).
#4 by EpicSquirt on March 7th, 2009
@Vaxhacker
So we’re down to that not all mobs have to be simulated at once (sleep/awake triggers) and that a free RDBMS can be used to save on the costs for the to be shipped game (even from start in development if you want stored procedures).
What’s left is the headless (non-graphical view) server side representation of the world, which can be CPU and RAM intensive or not, depending on how big and alive the world is.
It can be done.
Todays most MMOs come with super bloated clients, but I don’t see why a game like Guild Wars shouldn’t be able to run on one PC.
I am writing about the technical side here, I don’t play single player games at all and I can understand that no one is interested in providing single player modes as an exit strategy, but it’s possible.
#5 by Tesh on March 8th, 2009
Even if they don’t want to go the “single player version exit strategy” route (though I think savvy planners should do so), they could at least legitimize private servers. If the fuss is that maintaining the official servers is too expensive to go forward, let people assume that cost on their own.
Note that such doesn’t necessarily mean aiding and abetting the haxxors, I’m just saying that while you’re cutting costs and apron strings on a game that you’d just as soon disavow, cut the legal team that gets their knickers in a wad over private servers (and not so coincidentally cutting *their* costs out of the budget). There’s not even any new coding necessary, since people who want to do it will find ways to do so. Let them.
Maybe take an official stand that “we don’t support the game any more, duh” to cover your legal rear, but recognize that while you’ve given up on the game, there are players who haven’t, and they paid money for your product. You don’t have to honor a perpetual warranty, but you don’t have to pour sugar in the gas tank and salt the fields, either.
#6 by gyrus on March 8th, 2009
Hmmm… here’s a thought… how about a ‘franchise type’ business plan?
You develop a game and then ‘franchise’ it out to ‘private’ servers?
Even allow those franchise owners to charge their own rates?
You sell the franchise the same way you sell regular software – only in this case you are selling the server side software (and as a result it would be VERY expensive). But, that said, gamers are not what they used to be (they’ve grown up!)and there are people out there who might be interested in this sort of idea.
As with any franchise, you sell the ‘package’ and all the management docs on how to run it (and associated forums, advertising etc) but you don’t actually run it. Also, the franchise holder does not actually own the game or the IP.
Yeah, I realise there are lots of potential problems here (Tech support for one + putting the game in the hands of the ‘enemy’ ;-] ) but just throwing out an idea.
#7 by Sara Jensen Schubert on March 9th, 2009
Hmmm… here’s a thought… how about a ‘franchise type’ business plan?
You develop a game and then ‘franchise’ it out to ‘private’ servers?
It’s been done.