Attention all you MMORPGing Wierdo Dregs! You. Are. Offically On notice!

[Jait]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

If you want to read a really good enumeration of the reasons that PC is a far better platform than any console for MMOs for the foreseeable future, read Joe Ludwig's blog post that just became an article on Gamasutra: Gamasutra - Analysis: Why Aren't There More Console MMOs?

Pretty good article. The guy does mention that none of these barriers are insurmountable. With each generation of console coming closer and closer to being a more mobile PC, I don't see why it'd be too far off that Sony and others begin to plan on games/MMO's that can be adapted to their next generation of console if needed. In the same way every MMO releases expansion, I don't see why consoles couldn't do the same. Especially now that they can carry large hard-drives. Just as Luclin(?) brought an engine upgrade, the PS4 MMO expansion would do the same.

But I also know fuckall about consoles (I put the disc in and hit the button), so maybe I'm missing something. It just seems it's not too far off is all. Especially when there's money to be made, and lots of it.

[mutantmagnet]

Was referring to something that Gallienite covers in the last page but I missed reading accidentally. Move along

[edit]
Just so this isn't a complete waste of space...

The day will probably come when the usability issues are worked out, but the business issues will remain, and they're pretty gigantic barriers.

You and Mr. Ludwig are being too optomistic about MMO devs switching over to consoles. Consoles are atractive to devs for two reasons, one of which is that consoles are a kickass DRM device. Sure there are people out there that can hack the games but the ability to break them requires far more skill than cracking pcs games. That's why pc devs had no issues moving over to consoles in the late 90s and onwards. The majority created singleplayer games and aside from massive games like Elder Scrolls the only pc games to really have a long shelf life were multiplayer games with mod support.

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Jait

Pretty good article. The guy does mention that none of these barriers are insurmountable. With each generation of console coming closer and closer to being a more mobile PC, I don't see why it'd be too far off that Sony and others begin to plan on games/MMO's that can be adapted to their next generation of console if needed. In the same way every MMO releases expansion, I don't see why consoles couldn't do the same. Especially now that they can carry large hard-drives. Just as Luclin(?) brought an engine upgrade, the PS4 MMO expansion would do the same.

But I also know fuckall about consoles (I put the disc in and hit the button), so maybe I'm missing something. It just seems it's not too far off is all. Especially when there's money to be made, and lots of it.

None of them are insurmountable, for sure, which is a large part of my point - They have a ways to go, both in terms of technical reasons and business processes, before they can match things we can already do on the PC.

Meanwhile, the PC can do all of that. Today. And there's one everywhere. And more people are using them.

Some of the hurdles are a little more subtle, and are more centered around the fact that the companies that currently exist were built to do things a certain way - Changing that inside of existing companies is generally difficult.

PC MMO Developer: "We need to patch the executable. We have a gamebreaker."
PC MMO Publisher: "Does it need to go out right now, or can it wait until tomorrow morning's downtime?"
PC MMO Developer: "Tomorrow morning is fine - It includes 2MB of art also."
PC MMO Publisher: "Noted for bandwidth. Thanks."

Console MMO Developer: "We need to patch the executable. We have a gamebreaker."
Console MMO Publisher: "Please submit it to platform testing. We'll get back to you in 4-8 weeks with a pass or fail. If it fails, you can resubmit and we will restart the testing process. Depending on what fails, you may be placed at the back of the line."
Console MMO Developer: "That would have dire consequences for our game. Can we at least put out 2MB of fixed art that will prevent crashes?"
Console MMO Publisher: "No. Your game is already over its persistent data limit on our customers' hard disks. You'll have to fix the executable."
Console MMO Developer: (head explodes)

[Jait]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

PC MMO Developer: "We need to patch the executable. We have a gamebreaker."
PC MMO Publisher: "Does it need to go out right now, or can it wait until tomorrow morning's downtime?"
PC MMO Developer: "Tomorrow morning is fine - It includes 2MB of art also."
PC MMO Publisher: "Noted for bandwidth. Thanks."

Console MMO Developer: "We need to patch the executable. We have a gamebreaker."
Console MMO Publisher: "Please submit it to platform testing. We'll get back to you in 4-8 weeks with a pass or fail. If it fails, you can resubmit and we will restart the testing process. Depending on what fails, you may be placed at the back of the line."
Console MMO Developer: "That would have dire consequences for our game. Can we at least put out 2MB of fixed art that will prevent crashes?"
Console MMO Publisher: "No. Your game is already over its persistent data limit on our customers' hard disks. You'll have to fix the executable."
Console MMO Developer: (head explodes)

That's some really good insight, thanks.

Most of us have never made the sausage, so the niceties of gaming bureaucracy gets lost in the details

[Braen]

Is that the way EQOA for the PS2 worked? Or FF XI for the PC/360/PSwhatever?

[Zehn - Vhex]

Pretty sure EQoa and FFxi was put out by Sony so they don't have to jump that hurdle. It's not just a development issue either but as Scott pointed out, economical. Everybody who owns a console that would play an MMO probably also owns a PC. So why develop for console when you have to let MS/Sony/Nintendo have a share of the profits just for the 'privilege' of selling your product to their customers when you can just develop for PC and use that extra money to make more content or gas up your ferrari as the case may be.

Anyways...

Kasey, you're batshit fucking insane.

[Kevincheese]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Pretty sure EQoa and FFxi was put out by Sony so they don't have to jump that hurdle. It's not just a development issue either but as Scott pointed out, economical. Everybody who owns a console that would play an MMO probably also owns a PC. So why develop for console when you have to let MS/Sony/Nintendo have a share of the profits just for the 'privilege' of selling your product to their customers when you can just develop for PC and use that extra money to make more content or gas up your ferrari as the case may be.

Anyways...

Kasey, you're batshit fucking insane.

Hahah, what?

FFXI, sony?

Hah, hah, hah.

[Zehn - Vhex]

I may be mistaken but wasn't Square still Sony's bitch at the time?

[Creediki]

I'm going to go out on a ledge and say this guy was pretty much right. There are a bunch of issues with MMO's atm. We all talk about them here on a daily basis. They vary from the customization of interfaces, the barrier to entry/reward system inherent in any game that has permanent character advancement, content design cycles.. etc. And every game that has come out or is coming out in the near future only fiddles with the edges.

Ok.. big whoop. This guy thinks he's jesus for stating the obvious. I'll bet 50% of MMO devs agree with it but are just smart enough to know that posting it on their blogs wouldn't be a revelation.

Gold star for stating the obvious.

[Grave]

It's not just that he's stating the obvious, but he's dogging on these developers without providing viable alternate suggestions to what they are doing, all while being a guy that practically killed an MMO with his own shitty design choices.

I'm all for discussing ways to improve current MMO design, I do it often on my blog, but the way he's going about it is just pretentious and annoying.

[kedwyn]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

None of them are insurmountable, for sure, which is a large part of my point - They have a ways to go, both in terms of technical reasons and business processes, before they can match things we can already do on the PC.

Meanwhile, the PC can do all of that. Today. And there's one everywhere. And more people are using them.

Some of the hurdles are a little more subtle, and are more centered around the fact that the companies that currently exist were built to do things a certain way - Changing that inside of existing companies is generally difficult.

PC MMO Developer: "We need to patch the executable. We have a gamebreaker."
PC MMO Publisher: "Does it need to go out right now, or can it wait until tomorrow morning's downtime?"
PC MMO Developer: "Tomorrow morning is fine - It includes 2MB of art also."
PC MMO Publisher: "Noted for bandwidth. Thanks."

Console MMO Developer: "We need to patch the executable. We have a gamebreaker."
Console MMO Publisher: "Please submit it to platform testing. We'll get back to you in 4-8 weeks with a pass or fail. If it fails, you can resubmit and we will restart the testing process. Depending on what fails, you may be placed at the back of the line."
Console MMO Developer: "That would have dire consequences for our game. Can we at least put out 2MB of fixed art that will prevent crashes?"
Console MMO Publisher: "No. Your game is already over its persistent data limit on our customers' hard disks. You'll have to fix the executable."
Console MMO Developer: (head explodes)

[In Negotions]

We have developed a MMO here that is huge, we have an awesome track record and have 10 million subs all paying X amount per month (or sub in SOE with all their games at probably historically close to the half that number of total subs, AOC with what a million subs at least for the first few months until people level past 40, LOTR with a few hundred thousand subs all of which are $$$$ much bigger than 80% of the console games $$ generation.) We are want to expand to consoles and make some more bucks but here are our requirements:

1. We patch as much as we want when we want
2. You get X amount per sub
3. We get X amount per sub
4. We pay X amount of your bandwidth costs
5. You violate this agreement in any fashion become liable for X% of our development costs as a penalty
6. Lets sit back and finish up this game and we can all get blow jobs from the investors when the checks start rolling in.


We are being reasonable, no one is being piggish. If you don't' like it thats fine we are close to a deal with XYZ console already so take it or compete against us.



[Negations end]


[Console people]

[Boss Hog] Whats our risk?

[Manager1] 1Some bandwidth? They fuck up our patching system? Console Hard drives get fucked up?

[Manager2] Pretty much but the system is pretty idiot proof. We've had a fourth level part time tech pushing patches for 3 years now. We can also set up a partition on users drive solely for the game the risk is extremely low.

[Boss Hog] What are the rewards?

[MoneyDude1] Well if they sell like they say it will it will be around $$$ per year.

[Boss Hog] Damn thats serious money in line or greatly surpassing even our biggest titles and you aren't even talking about expansions or anything else. Not too mention they keep on paying all year for on average X.y Years? Jeez why didn't we approach them earlier?

[MoneyDude1] Yah its pretty lucrative deal for everyone should it work. If not our risk is low. We didn't pursue it with the previous gen because we had our head up our ass and didn't want to push out games to such a small segment since not everyone was on line or had a hard drive. Now that we've stoped fuckign the dog in our release plans we can really starting fucking our customers with subscription fees and pretty much bank big bucks totally not having to pay our retail partners an arm and a leg for shelf space.

[CFO] Best of all the money keep rolling in which means the investors will be really happy and it will take some of the uncertainty, peaks and dips off our income statement.

[BossHog] Ok lets do it.

[deal gets signed]


I can see something similar happening. SOE / PS is an obvious match in heaven and they tried it once before with EQa or whatever it was called but that was a totally different market with much fewer people online using consoles. They have that new spy MMO comming to the PS3 this year don't they? These days with so many Xbox live and whatever the PS3 is using it seems to me that the bridges are much more likely to get crossed and the road blocks torn down.

[Kreugen]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

Slight derail, but can you give me some examples of what you are talking about here? I haven't had a difficult time finding any type of console RPG.

Fallout, Wizardry, Ultima 1-7, Baldur's Gate, Might and Magic, Neverwinter Nights, Temple of Elemental Evil, the old SSI 'Gold Box' series - of these style games only NWN survives and it was pawned off to another developer. Fallout 3 could turn into a third person shooter with no party for all we know.

The closest thing would be KOTOR I suppose. Console JRPG's don't really compare, they have no dialog tree whatsoever, and most don't even let you customize your characters beyond their outfits. Most people when they hear "RPG" think of Final Fantasy, but those are all missing the critical element of actually being able to choose how the story progresses instead of just watching the dialog.

[Froofy-D]

Originally Posted by Jait

With each generation of console coming closer and closer to being a more mobile PC, I don't see why it'd be too far off that Sony and others begin to plan on games/MMO's that can be adapted to their next generation of console if needed.

Console-PC convergence will likely be close next gen. Keyboard/Mouse/Mic will be standard, there will be a web browser standard (the PS3 and XBox Live store are nearly web browsers already), and console MMO games will be big $$$.

Also, Vista clearly shows MS will console-ize the PC no matter what. The next gen of Windows is gonna be nearly an Xbox live type of deal. So really, PC or Console won't matter soon, they will be nearly the same hardware and software.

The Wii-2 probably won't have that stuff, but it isn't for the FPS/RTS/MMO market anyway.

[Kharza-kzad]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

Console MMO Publisher: "Please submit it to platform testing. We'll get back to you in 4-8 weeks with a pass or fail. If it fails, you can resubmit and we will restart the testing process. Depending on what fails, you may be placed at the back of the line."

And if you fail a second time, you have to pay them 25 grand for another submission.

[nosf]

I'm more curious what they're going to do with SWG when Bioware ships its Star Wars based MMO than the actual details on the new MMO itself. Take it out back and shoot it and offer current subscribers a free client or a discount?

As far as NGE vs. original flavour; would the movies have been as successful if Luke had to bring someone along with him in all three flicks to dance and sing or build furniture? Seriously, Star Wars mass appeal wasn't people thinking, "Wow, I wish I COULD dance in a sleazy space cantina!". It was a few million nerds who wanted to be Jedi, or bounty hunters. They catered to the fringe and got crushed because of it, and by the time they came around it was too damn late. Original SWG offered to let everyone be JarJar. That's why it failed.

EDIT: Actually, current subs would be fucked, Bioware has nothing to do with Sony! My bad. Wonder if Lucasarts will do anything?