Morrowind not selling well enough?

Well, my family got the Amiga in '87, and it seemed like a logical step from the C64 (which was still in its heyday around then). The A500 was just a fabulous package for the price. (Actually we were going to get an Atari ST at first, but seeing a game demo of Faery Tale Adventure in a store tipped the scale.) At that time, there was promising stuff coming out for the Amiga – Faery Tale, the Cinemaware slate, the great-looking Psygnosis games, etc. And as a “buy it and go” computer with great graphics and sound out of the box, it looked a lot more promising to us than the PC, which at the time still seemed clunky, with DOS instead of a good GUI, and 16-color EGA graphics and lack of good sound, etc. (Weren’t a lot of PC games still using the PC speaker for “music” and sound FX back in the mid '80s?) I remember gloating to my friend around '88 when he had a PC and I had an Amiga. 2 years later, when Ultima VI came out on the PC and not on the Amiga, I realized I had gloated too soon. :(

I really don’t think the Amiga ever lived up to its potential as a gaming computer the way the C64 did. Most of its library seemed to consist of British shoot-em-ups with nice graphics and not much else – although some of the seminal games of the era did come out on the Amiga (Lemmings, Populous, Civilization, Star Control, etc.).

As for the PC developments of the early-mid-90s, I was only peripherally aware of them. I drooled with the release of each new Ultima but had a sense of schadenfreude when I heard Ultima VIII (Pagan) was getting a bad reception. I remember my brother raving over Doom in '94, and I went to see it on a friend’s computer, but I honestly didn’t give it much thought at the time. The whole Id revolution passed me by.

>Wow I couldn’t imagine holding out that long. I left the Commodore gaming scene after the release of the Commodore 128. Never even touched the Amiga. There were just so many good games coming out for the IBM PC platform

Well, I didn’t really have a choice, since I couldn’t afford a PC-platform computer. But the Amiga had stereo sound, VGA colour graphics, and games like Populous, Battlehawks 1942 and (especially) Dungeon Master, at the time I bought it. PC’s at the time were 286/ATs, with monochrome graphics or EGA and no sound. Amiga was a better gaming machine at the time, but that window was brief.

>Is this why you never mention “Betrayal at Krondor” when discussing the great RPG’s? I’m curious about your opinion regarding this game; I found it highly enjoyable and thought it had just about the best story ever

I don’t know if this was directed at me or Gordon, but if at me - yes. That’s why. I played it a little after it was released for free, and played through the horribly inferior Betrayal in Antara (and the completely disimilar Return to Kondor), but otherwise missed out on Betrayal at Krondor.

Now, I may be wrong about this, but I suspect RPGs have a longer shelf life than other sorts of games. That is, they stop posting Top 10 numbers, but the good ones keep selling quietly and consistently. Possibly through word of mouth (or of Web). For instance, I bet Neverwinter Nights is still selling two years from now (though granted that’s a special case–more construction set than game).

Peter

In the old days I think that might have been true of certain strategy games as well – Civ 1’s price seemed to hold up a long, long time.

Now, I dunno.

The problem now is that PC games get reduced rather quickly. So even if they “remain on the shelf” longer, which I doubt, they get knocked down in price, which usually means that the publishers don’t really make any money off of those copies sold (though it does help alleviate losses, I should think). It seems like in the early 90s and before a game would maintain its price for much longer. Nowadays, within 6 months, the game is marked way down. Also, with less shelf space for PC games at many stores, the New Release section has a higher turn around, and many customers only visit the new releases. I myself, rarely check older games. I guess I figure that if I had wanted the game badly enough, I would have bought it when it was new. That’s a mistake on my part, of course, because there are lots of games that I am iffy on, and would probably buy for less money. But then I don’t. Now that I think about it…I am an idiot. This post is now officially depressing me.

Well, I’m pretty torn between Daggerfall and Morrowind in terms of ‘quality’. Daggerfall’s random nature, while it could seem pretty repetative to others, seemed to me more like promising infinite adventure. Detailed, nuanced, 'Go for the eyes, Boo!" adventure? Nah. But to have that kind of adventure the game has to limit severely what you can do and who you can be. It’s heavily scripted. Daggerfall’s sense of possibility allowed me to believe I could make any character and play them any way I wanted. There was always another corner of the world to explore (even if it wasn’t often a breathtakingly original experience) and a new concept to try (spell creation, potion creation, different skills/stats, a different faction or combination of factions, etc…). I felt very strongly that the game was acting like a good GM. It was taking into account my decisions and creating a world that reacted to them regardless of what direction I went in.

Morrowind doesn’t manage to do that at all. I’m am very conscious of the limited pool of missions and there is no doubt, after a while, about how the factions interact. Joining a faction and doing its missions is the same kind of tedious linear experience you get from most CRPGs but, unlike Daggerfall, you feel compelled to finish all of them because you know for an absolute fact that you’ll never want to have to go through them all again with a new character to finish the ‘career’ path. That does reduce, hugely, the sense of freedom Daggerfall and its infinite questing resources provided. Pick and chose, ignore or follow through. Your call. You’ll rarely see the same mission twice even if you play the same character in the same guild. Even if you do, names and locations will be changed. Where Morrowind does blow doors on Daggerfall is in the realization of a rich fantasy setting. Daggerfall was the most horribly generic fantasy setting I’ve ever encountered. But in Morrowind, Bethsoft actually put serious thought into the politics, culture and theology of the setting. Even if you don’t read a single book (though I highly encourage it) you’ll find architecture and views to boggle the mind as well as NPCs and creatures that make sense being where and what they are. The whole world feels alive in that sense even if the NPCs, as a whole, aren’t a whole lot more thrilling than Daggerfall’s cardboard cutouts.

With the exception of Darklands and Torment, and neither of them really had the degree of graphical originality in Morrowind, there’s been no game of any genre that comes close in quality of setting design.

Anyhow, my two cents regarding the Daggerfall vs. Morrowind discussion.

Good post. I haven’t played Daggerfall but I mostly agree with what you said about MW. Now I wish I had played Daggerfall, and I have some inkling of why some people are so fond of it…

Shelf life seems to be rather short at the chains. When I go to Best Buy I don’t see more than a handful of games that more than 6-9 months old. Perhaps the reduced box sizes will help this a bit.

I would like to see publishers and devs put more money into less titles. Instead of trying to flood the market with clones everytime something remotely descent comes out.

I don’t understand the cloning thing. Supposedly the gaming industry works like the movies, where only 1 game in 10, say, really makes it big and justifies the investment in all 10. If that’s true, why make clones? Do they often make it big? Or are they somehow less expensive to make and likely to produce some profit?

I’d also like to be a fly on the wall at Bethesda; I wonder how they will approach the next Elder Scrolls game. I hope it doesn’t take another 6+ years to come out.

I hope the ratio isn’t quite that bad in movies – at least not in movie studios that are run well. It’s dangerous to play the “blockbuster game” and hope for one movie to hit really big every now and then. I remember Orion, which had several blockbusters (of which Dances With Wolves was one) and then folded after a few years anyway. Probably wiser to make films with modest budgets that can turn a solid profit with some consistency. Still, runaway budgets are always a problem and the occasional megahit (Spiderman, Titanic, etc.) can create an “all-or-nothing” gambling-style mentality in the industry. Then a Waterworld-esque fiasco comes along and everyone talks about how the blockbuster is dead – until the next one hits big.

As for “why make clones?” maybe part of it is just that there are only so many genres, and it’s HARD to think of a whole new type of game that will also be enjoyable. And then, how do you market it – who wants to buy it? If you’re making an FPS, an RTS, an RPG, etc., at least you know there is a user base with built-in interest in that genre, and you also know the basic boundaries of the design – you can build on the work of what came before. If you try something more offbeat, you a) have to come up with a workable game formula (which is tough enough) and then b) hope it will find an audience. Of course occasionally this approach hits the ball out of the park (i.e. The Sims) but more often than not, you probably fall on your face.

I rather like the idea of incremental innovation. Kohan stretching the boundaries of the RTS, Flashpoint with the FPS, etc. You don’t have to invent a new genre every time, but at least try to shake things up a little bit. “Evolutionary not revolutionary” has become a cliche, but honestly this is probably the philosophy behind a lot of the best games.