Is there really a future in them? I really don’t care, since I already have a well established BC install base and my low overheads alone will tide me along.
But I’m just curious because it would seem to me that everyone keeps singing the death knell of space sims, yet, there are no less than four MMOGs based on this genre in development. Most of which have been in development for 4+ years. So, what gives? I mean, publishers obviously couldn’t make money on one-off retail sales (see flops like Starlancer, Tachyon, IWar2, STBC etc). So what makes them think they’d get the space simmers to pony up a monthly fee to pay? I don’t get it.
A lot of people predicted the demise of WW2OL, AO etc, and while they’re taking some beating in the subscriber dept and at retail, failed MMOGs are still plodding along and I have yet to hear of any that have closed up shop and headed South.
So, will MMOGs based on a rather fledgling genre be doomed to the same fate?
What sparked this interest? Well, some excerpts from our favorite watering hole, which also confirm some things I’ve been hearing from some of my insider friends.
SWG
What is going on over at Sony Online? The Sony owned development group called Verant continues to have problems with their upcoming line-up of massively multiplayer games.
We’ve heard the news that Star Wars Galaxies has been delayed until February 2003 and that the initial game won’t ship with any of the in-space features, so no flying around in your fancy X-Wing fighters. However, a source very close to SWG has said there’s no way the game will even be releasing before the summer of 2003, and most likely not until the September/October 2003 timeframe. Ouch! Quite a delay there.
EnB
Beta testers for the upcoming massively-multiplayer space game from Westwood Studios, Earth and Beyond, seem to be done with the game. In a game where levelling is quite easy, there is no player vs. player combat, and lacking completely in any unique qualities, the game that’s been in development for over 4 years is said to be dead before it’s even released. Testers have been reportedly quitting in droves, with EA/Westwood even offering them the ability to bring their beta test characters over into the official release version, once it hits stores. A sign of desperation? You decide. But with competitors Star Wars Galaxies and EVE: The Second Genesis looming on the horizon, the future does not bode well for Earth and Beyond.
Fighting Legends went away. Though I will never forget the jumping bean the developers sent as a marketing item. My family nearly removed the envelope from the building because they thought the clicking of the bean in the plastic case indicated some sort of booby trap. Instead the envelope sat in a corner of a room until I returned bravely to open it.
Yeah, it seemed like the couple guys posting on Earth and Beyond have either rolled up their interest or their NDA means they don’t have anything to say.
The screenshots for Eve look beautiful. I’m not huge on graphics, but if the game ended up looking close to that during play, it might be enough to sucker me in.
SWG is in a class by itself with it’s license. I’d imagine a lot of people don’t think of it as a space sim at all but as Star Wars.
I’ve rolled up my interest. Like I said before, if I have a ship to fly around, I’d actually prefer piloting it to require some real-life skill, which is not something I was seeing much in E&B.
I have consequently reactivated my Jumpgate account, however.
Count me in that group. I’m sure SWG will do well, whenever it comes out. It’s really more of a traditional MMORPG (but in a sci-fi setting) than a space sim anyway. The initial release doesn’t have any spaceship stuff–it’s like EverQuest on Tatooine. With that license, though, it is sure to do well (and it looks like it’s going to be very good to boot…I’m definitely psyched for it).
So, will MMOGs based on a rather fledgling genre be doomed to the same fate?
Look what happened to Allegience, which, although I never played it, was by most accounts a pretty good game.
Do you know what would make me excited though? A Privateer/Elite style MMOG using the Star Wars license. I would definetely sign up for that if they did it well.
>Look what happened to Allegience, which, although I never played it, was by most accounts a pretty good game
Both massively multiplayer space sims released to date were very good: Allegiance and, especially, Jump Gate. Both still bombed. Then again, Indepedence War 2 and FreeSpace 2 were also both excellent, and both bombed.
For more than 5 years now, space sims haven’t sold the sort of numbers to warrant interest from major publishers. I don’t think it’s a matter of just releasing a “break-through” game - joystick games just seem increasingly niche. Maybe because consoles moved away from joysticks, fewer people grow up associating them as a gaming “necessity”.
Count me in as a long time EnB tester who quit. Beyond the fact that the game won’t run anymore on my system (it’s supposedly near gold right?) and patches to correct problems are at the minimum two weeks apart. The recent patches have focused more on adding eye candy to the game in the form of intro movies than in fixing the whole easy leveling problem and poor experience pool balancing. Those really turned me off about 2 months ago. Before that I loved the game, but after playing it for 6 months and not having any story added to the game (I still doubt majorly in the EnB team’s ability to infuse any form of meaningful interactive storytelling to the game after enduring their “space camp” interactive scenario.)
Blah… and then they go and expect people to pay 12.99 USD a month… Sorry I think I’d rather buy pencils… or at least something that offers more than the ever so repetitive “mine asteroid A,” “Warp to asteroid B,” “Mine asteroid B” action.
I liked E&B, but I also wonder if it has much longevity. It felt more like a game you’d play a couple of months and move on rather than something you’d want to play for a year or more.
I think high fantasy is the best genre for MMOGs, at least for attracting a hardcore base. I don’t think space sim MMOGs will do well.
“A lot of people predicted the demise of WW2OL, AO etc, and while they’re taking some beating in the subscriber dept and at retail, failed MMOGs are still plodding along and I have yet to hear of any that have closed up shop and headed South.”
Well Funcom has reduced itself to just AO and nothing else. They had a second game they were starting and thats been canned. Along with all the people except the ones needed to run AO. We don’t know their finances but they could still be running on borrowed time.
“A Privateer/Elite style MMOG using the Star Wars license. I would definetely sign up for that if they did it well.”
This could happen in a expansion pack.
“We’ve heard the news that Star Wars Galaxies has been delayed until February 2003 and that the initial game won’t ship with any of the in-space features, so no flying around in your fancy X-Wing fighters.”
I remember this being said when Galaxies was first announced. They said the flying in outer space and such part would be released later.
Allegience wasn’t an MMOG. It was more like Quake or CS; a retail hybrid that kept track of some minimal scoring, but not much else. That’s why it failed; to charge money for an online game, there has to be more persistence than that. The game was doomed before it ever launched. MS now has the distinction of having three failed subscription games on the Zone in the past three years, Allegience, Fighter Ace and UltraCorps. Note that two of the three are flight sims.
Online flight sims in general, including MM space flight sims, are a small niche of the total market and always have been. We learned that years ago on GEnie and the other services. You can make money with them, just not nearly as much as with a game that has RPG persistence. Part of the problem is that sims are zero-sum by nature; if I win, you have to lose. RPGs allow for multiple success paths, and that is very important to someone paying a monthly fee. The most successful online vehicle sim of all time, Air Warrior, had some of these multiple success paths.
E&B has some of that persistence, too, but, as other have noted, it tends to get bogged down in the mundane chores. I’m unsure of it’s chances for major success, at this point. However, I do believe it can be a medium success, which is still enough to pull in millions per year in pre-tax profit.
Interesting to note that there were and have been calls for a Privateer-like game, but that is exactly the game that EA cancelled in favor of E&B. Also interesting to note that the team from the cancelled Privateer Online, which would have had an RPG as well as a space flight environment, formed the core group developing SWG…
Personally, I do not enjoy the outer space setting as much. I like the armor, the monsters, the D&D-type stats and levelling. It would have to be something pretty inventive to pull me into a $12.99/mo. price plan.
As an example, many folks should have dug SMAC, but it was the setting that held it back from becoming a huge hit by many accounts. I tried the demo when it was released, ended up picking it up for $9.99 and still have not installed it.
There is no doubt there is a huge fanbase for games in space. Just look at all the most popular browser-based games at the MPOGD site. Many of them are space-sim strategy games. I guess my elf-loving roots run too deep to change.
Get passed that dauntingly hard Sci-Fi shell and you’ll find that SMAC (full title: Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, a Brian Reynolds Design) is probably the single finest and most intelligent strategy game ever made. Better than Civ2 and actually much, much better than Civ3. I know, that sounds like hyperbole, but the more time passes the more I firmly believe this is true.
I think you’re right though, the subject matter and the sober/dark/intense way it is handled probably did hurt sales. Sad to say. It sold well, but likely on the strength of the Sid Meier/Firaxis name. But SMAC is pretty much the main reason I have such high hopes for Brian’s next design.
It is a fine strategy game that I can only play for short periods of time because the terrain graphics (particularly late game) give me a headache. Losing the 3D terrain (which contributes very little to the game, other than making it difficult to tell where units are located) was a smart move in Civ3.
I never understand the criticism of the 3D terrain. It’s a very important part of the gameplay. You can make a mint on solar collectors perched on a high mountain. You can change the nature of a person’s resource collection by altering the land near them. Hell, a lot of really good players will raise land creating new land bridges to allow for assaults overland on their opponents. Throw in the absolute pleasure derived from making an ocean-filled crater out of your opponent’s cities with a planet buster and you’ve got a crucial part of the game.
Civ III is a step backwards in so many ways. It’s such a shame it was embraced the way it was. It was buggy and unfinished at release. It’s also about half the game SMAC is. Bub’s absoultely right…SMAC is probably the best strategy game ever made.
I think it also gives defense and offense bonuses. But SMAC could have done without that and, I’d argue, the solar collectors and other esoteric ways of collecting resources were an impediment to the game. In my opinion. SMAC’s AI also plays the game more effectively. Civ3’s AI seems to rely on simple strategies and brute force methods (and the ample cheating it does - SMAC cheats too, but its harder to see). Going simpler, rules-wise, was probably a good thing for Civ3 to do.
The real problem I have with Civ3 though, is that it lost the diplomatic subtlety, it lost most of the AI, and it lost almost all of the personality. SMAC is much harder to predict in single player, Civ3 wears its plans on its sleeve. Yet, in diplomacy, you can manipulate SMAC’s factions effectively. You can’t in Civ3. At all.
Most of Civ3’s changes are for the better because SMAC probably should have been more accessible. Selling games is a business, after all. But the Civ3 team really shouldn’t have gutted the AI and diplomatic models as much as they did. They made something more “gamey” out of a component that didn’t feel like a game.
All things that could be done without rendering the terrain in 3D. Yeah, the 3D rolling landscape looks neat, but it makes it harder to see where things are, and combined with the overly contrasty color scheme (which only gets worse as you develop the land around you), it literally gives me a headache.
I love SMAC. Fun game. But I don’t play it much any more.
I have to agree that SMAC is a much better game than Civ3.
I just couldn’t get the hang of Civ3 for some reason, even on the easiest level. SMAC on the other hand, I was great at that game.
SMAC was almost too intense…there were several times when out of sheer anger and frustration at the bloodymindedness of some stubborn oponent, I would turn from normal methods of conquering (which weren’t punative enough) to the nukem method and just blast them.
I do not think your statements are hyperbole at all. I completely believe you as I have seen those same sentiments in too many other places for it not to be true. In the end, that is why I picked it up and will play it eventually.
BTW, I was going to put the full title in my post, but I wanted to feel like a cool insider so I opted for SMAC.
P.S. Derek, sorry for ruining your thread talking all this SMAC (pun intended).
