Every Topic Under The Sun
There’s been a lot of little hot topics roaming around these here webs lately, and while none of them seem compelling enough to do a full-fledged article over, I thought I’d comment briefly on each:
[deep breath]
Facebook MMO Domination: All of the sudden, it seems that everyone’s fixating on Facebook as the “next big thing” for MMOs, mostly because GDC talked about it quite a bit, and it seems as though devs are racing to get a slice of that pie. But something to keep in mind is that we as people are kind of a hive mind when it comes to news — we swarm over to big stories and make a big deal out of them until they lose our interest and we swarm elsewhere.
I think Facebook games will continue to be popular, but that’s like saying the sun will continue to shine. Games on any platform will be popular, and I’m not against devs making titles for Facebook. It serves a nice little niche, mostly of folks who are at work/school and can only use a browser, or people who want a fairly mindless activity to pass the time. But I don’t think they’re going to be THE FUTURE, since the technology is limited and the “gameplay” of many of these titles is very conducive to burnout.
TOR Needing Two Million Subs: Who cares? I mean, EA cares. BioWare cares. I don’t care. Again we’re falling into that trap where a game hasn’t come out and we’re rabidly predicting and speculating on its future, and quotes like this from EA do not help things. It gives the haters more ammo and a comparison point to which they can claim a title has “failed”, and even for fans of the game, it stresses them out with worry and concern about hitting that mark.
TOR is going to be successful, by all indications. It’s going to launch, it’s going to be popular, it’s going to make EA BioWare a bucketload of money. You’d have to be deep in denial to say otherwise. How successful, in terms of subscribers? I have no idea. I think it’ll be a lot, but a great deal depends on how the game actually plays and what they’ve yet to reveal about the features and end game. EA’s invested a huge chunk of money in this game, and they’re obviously positioning it to be big — these are not signs of impending failure or abandonment.
Champions Kills XBox 360 Port: Well, so much for the hope of a second great revival of the game. Really, this is beyond dumb, even for Cryptic. I personally talked with Jack Emmert about the port, and he stated in no uncertain terms that it was happening and they were excited to expand into that market. I just don’t see why they’re throwing away money like that, unless the technical challenges were too great or Microsoft wasn’t helping them with the subscription setup. Champions’ setup was obviously made to work as well on a controller as a mouse/keyboard combo, and an XBox launch would have really helped Cryptic’s subscriber numbers. Guess that’s a pipe dream now!
On the positive side, Cryptic did just up and surprise Champions players by releasing the Revelation content patch/update/mini-expansion/free gift from the gods without any prior warning. So that’s certainly a pleasant surprise to players logging in today!
- Posted in: Champions Online ♦ Star Wars: The Old Republic
The buzz around TOR reminds me of the buzz around Galaxies. I don’t accept that success is a foregone conclusion. We’ll have to wait and see how it feels to play the game. It could end up being a heavy handed story driven massively single player game that people don’t want to pay a subscription for.
I found Champions much more fun when using the 360 controller. That a shame.
I am not sure why they would throw out the 2 million number. I guess EA hasn’t learned anything from Warhammer saying stupid stuff that turned around, and bit them in the you know what.
To me an MMORPG is already a social network.
I understand making games for Facebook, it’s about reaching an audience. There’s nothing special about it beyond that.
It’s a shame though that these games will be leveraging an existing online community rather than building their own for their games. Especially when it comes to MMOs, I always prefer a strong community that’s focused on that particular game (or even better, per server).
Well, one would have thought that Cryptic couldn’t go wrong with such a strong IP as Star Treak, but look at what’s happened there. So I’m with Jason, I don’t think that ToR’s success is a foregone conclusion. I’m sure it will have it’s surge in the beginning as most MMO’s do, but what happens after that is anyone’s guess. For my part, I’m hoping that it’s a runaway success.
The licensing fee cost for TOR has to be like the Scene from Goodfellas when Pauly decides bankroll the restaurant. Sir Lucas the servers are down – screw you pay me, Sir Lucas Subscriptions are down – screw you pay me, Sir Lucas I need to meet payroll and roll out content – screw you pay me.
Great post! I agree with all three points. I haven’t touched a Facebook app but I know many non-gamers that are hooked on them. I am surprised devs are giving Facebook apps that much attention to be honest. I would think development money would be better spent on porting to consoles or creating an original mmo for consoles. IMO thats such an untapped market begging for a solid mmo title.
As far as TOR goes, after seeing how many people tried Aion which wasn’t that great of a game imo I can see why they think they can pull 2mil. Will they retain that many is the real question. For the record, as long as the game isn’t a steaming turd they will have my sub.
Cryptic, sigh, where to start? I can’t believe they aren’t going to port to Xbox now. Correct me if Im wrong but wasn’t that the reason they designed combat around a controller in the first place? I feel extra bad for the trekkies because at least super hero fans have other titles they can turn to. Its like they are the masters of “MMO-Lite” with their shallow content.
Since EA put out that rediculous statement, i’m going to wait 2 months after SW:TOR launches, and then buy it.
Just out of spite. I should name my toon Darth Spite.
I think the console port provides some kind of big monetary hurdle that the captains of struggling MMO’s just can’t pay.
Age of Conan was supposed to have a console version too, if I remember correctly. That too got canceled.
My impression is that the Xbox port fell through because of business/license/money issues between Microsoft and Atari/Cryptic.
By the way Vibora Bay wasn’t exactly a surprise to any Champions players, it was promised for mid-March and has been available on the test server for the last few weeks for anyone who wanted a preview.
Champions would have worked better on 360 than PC. I guess console development gets scrapped when money is tight though.
Facebook games: eh. Fad, will die.
TOR. They are not making 2 million subs. They probably will hit 500k-750k, then hopefully keep that. People give Bioware the benefit of the doubt now, but when the game is released any flaws are going to be magnified by that name.
2 million subs also needs a lot more to combat trials and player churn, and star wars isn’t that big of an IP anymore to keep drawing people. Too many bad games and crappy clone wars junk leave a bad taste in the mouth.
I thought the Cryptic (non) console announcement was especially stupid. The statement makes it sound as if they had considered console development and decided against it “There are no current plans for a console version of Champions”. Yet the gameplay was clearly designed with a console in mind, and except for a few bits and pieces the PC version plays better with a gamepad than a mouse and keyboard.
I’d also swear that a couple of months after release Jack (or someone at Cryptic) released a statement that the console version was done, they were just waiting on MS.
Sigh.
Moj, you forget one thing. Bioware is not Cryptic. Not only is Bioware not Cryptic, but Cryptic (as usual) rushed through STO at warp speed, whereas Bioware’s taking its sweet little time with ToR.
I don’t think it’s a “forgone conclusion” that ToR will be as amazing as everyone hopes it will be, but it is almost certainly a forgone conclusion that the game will be much more polished, full and complete than STO was at launch. That much is almost for certain.
The only thing that can hurt ToR in the end, IMO, will be massively high expectations — because people may be expecting perfection and that’s very high to live up to in any medium, never mind MMORPGs. If the game is a solid B, but people were expecting A++, that’s the only way there could be disappointment with ToR in the end, because it would then feel like a C.