I was reading a blog post by Tipa over at West Karana tonight and it got me to thinking about what it was that made Vanguard thud so thunderously and why that shouldn’t affect competent publishers that are going to publish a new MMO. I really respect Tipa’s opinions on MMOs although I don’t always agree with her prognoses. I’ve known Tipa forever, as we were guilded together in EQ and remember even then her zest for the game and that is evident in her blog. But I digress…
So why shouldn’t we be concerned that Vanguard pissed in the MMO bathwater? Because it was an anomaly. Now I can’t speak to the other MMOs that have failed to launch or stick over the last couple of years, but I can speak to Vanguard. The problem with Vanguard and Sigil wan’t a lack of ideas or a viable idea or design. It wasn’t a poor implementation of the art department’s vision. It wasn’t that Brad’s Vision <TM> was flawed or that Jeff Butler didn’t have great ideas. I spent 45 minutes at the last real E3 just talking with Jeff about what he wanted to see in the game. Not only was the stuff cool, but you could see that even at that late date, he had a real passion for the game and what he wanted to make it be. Did they bite off more than they could chew, design-wise? Probably. They could have let the cool stuff out in dribbles, giving us updates and awesome new stuff in expansions. Were they overly ambitious? Probably. Were they in over their heads? Definitely.
I was reading recently (and I need to apologize, because I can’t remember now where I read it and I can’t find it now. If you recognize what I am citing, please email me and I’ll make sure it gets credit and link-back.) that 80% of building an MMO is [drum roll] Project Management.
The ideas that Sigil had weren’t bad. The community wasn’t bad. The implementation. Bad. It doesn’t matter what you are setting out to make, if you don’t have any idea how to make it, you aren’t going to get there. Some of the information which came out after the fact about Brad McQuaid’s management abilities and maybe even design shortfalls didn’t hamstring Sigil. They had plenty of smart people there who could pick up that slack. They were trying to build a skyscraper without a contractor’s license. None of the usual level building tools, none of the programming tools, none of the design tools that a modern game company would have would be found at Sigil. They had a blueprint that looked like a beautiful building, but inside were no elevators or mechanicals.
The people who fund MMO’s must have realized by now that Vanguard was a bet on a lame horse, and from now on they will be looking for leaders who can lead, but more importantly, can manage. There are some sharp managers out there among the studios and companies that make up the MMO business. I think we can chalk Vanguard up to a fluke, and whatever may come of that which is positive we can credit to the hardworking people at Sigil that did their jobs without the framework that they deserved, and to the folks at SOE who took a flyer on this property for no apparent reason, and made something of it. If they do.
So, given VG was a fluke, who’s going to be making a game for the slightly harder core MMO fans? I don’t have enough information about many of the upcoming MMOs (Spellboard, Bioware’s, Bethesda’s, 38 Studios’) to know which market they are aiming for, but I would be surprised if all of them weren’t trying to get a piece of the WoW pie.
That’s a good question. I don’t know who will be making that game, or even if anyone will. I’d probably buy it if they did. If any of those you mentioned were going to be the one, I would guess 38 Studios, just because of Schilling’s involvement. I see him as more of the hard core player, so I would think that would be reflected in his design.
One thing I have noticed is the way that designers personalities and tastes manifest themselves in their design. One example; Salim Grant, the lead designer for crafting in Vanguard had a hand in a couple of the more “hard core” designs for crafting, in Vanguard and in SWG. What does he play? For fun, he 2-boxes FFXI. By most standards, that would be considered pretty hard core.
We’ll see if that kind of design ethic manifests itself in 38′s product. But of those listed, I see them as the only likely candidates.
I’m not sure the “hard core” segment of the gaming population, however you choose to define the term, is seen as a large enough or viable enough demographic slice to be bothered with — certainly the larger companies care much more for the younger market, possibly because WoW did so well there and as soon as you say WoW, suits get $$$ in their eyes. As someone mentioned in an earlier post here, the target demographic for games is *not* the ageing gamer with disposable income who wants something a bit more meaty for his gaming buck (again, however you choose to define “meaty”).
I’ve spent the last 4-5 years waiting for something with substance, and all the promising ones (SWG, Horizons, VG) flopped horrendously for one reason or another. It might just be coincidence — Horizons’ downfall is a case in point — but older gamer style & content just doesn’t seem to do that well. That’s the main reason I’d like a niche game, *any* niche game, to do well, just to show it can be done; but with the bar set at WoW-success levels, even niche games seem to have unrealistic subscription expectations. EVE, to me, seems like one of those niche games done well, if you like the type; yet paradoxically, nobody pays it any attention… because it’s a niche game. Guess you can’t win.
Whatever happened to a few hundred thousand players being enough? I’m sure it’s possible to develop a game without spending 30 million bucks and still have a reasonable product at the end of it.
Maybe there is such a game out there right now that we don’t know about? Though I doubt it, there’s games I know nearly nothing about, especially the Euro ones. Was Ryzom such a game? Dark & Light? RF Online? It’s hard to tell from the MMORPG forums which are pretty useless — trashing games with no explanation why they are bad. So maybe there are games we’d like if we had heard about them.
I was going through MMORPG.com’s list of MMOs and was thinking of installing a couple. I noticed some common themes. A lot of Korean games based around anime and PvP (they are HARDCORE over there). Some 2.5D games, some 2D, some very small games but 3D… I saw one which had a cool grouping system; if you were fighting, you could light up an icon over your head and someone could click on that and be in your group for the kill to help. And you could stay together or split up.
It’s going to make a decent article