f13.net

Well he's back.

And got $600k in funding

Some of you will remember this (http://www.games.net/video/originalseries/100740/video-new-reality-show-trailer/)

Well. Despite the hilarity of the badly done presentation at Tech Crunch:
http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/presenter.php?presenter=93

He now has $600k to blow.

I have a bridge to sell.

Also, the sky apparently ISN'T blue.

http://www.kaoswar.com/home.html?Ran=761

How he made it into the tech crunch 50, I'll never, ever know.

Edit: Also, his company website: http://www.kaoswar.com/home.html?Ran=761

MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing

Role Playing what? ROLE PLAYING WHAT, MAN.

...

Huh.

New innovative ideas seen never before!  :grin: :grin: :grin:

(http://img.skitch.com/20080911-k9d9pmnkwmqwqpukn99y7pcyjq.png)

I clicked on reply really having the urge to use the word penis in this post somewhere.

That being said -

I'm putting my money on Neocron clone.

I give him credit for sticking with Kaos War.

However (and I'm about to insult a lot of MMO players) it seems to me that most (perhaps all) MMOs coming out now are merely trying to perfect the Diku model of gameplay by tweaking how levelling works, what items are purples, whether orcs should gave green skin or grey, etc.

Kaos War is merely a poster child. It's created by players who like MMOs so much (except for various minor tweaks) that the results will only be appreciated by a minority of hard-core MMO players. Harcore players create harder-core games, which only appeal to harder-core players. It's a feedback cycle that ultimately leads to the demise of the genre, as Raph Koster likes to point out.

To quote Henry Ford: "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse. "

That's all we have now, better horses. Lots and lots of $30M - $100M better horses. And Kaos War for $500K. It's discouraging.

So what is the background of this guy, besides being a doorman?

Was he a programmer?   Did he post on game message boards anywhere?

Is he acting as just CEO or also designer?

600k isn't going to get him very far in SF.  A code monkey, two artists and 6 months rent.   :why_so_serious:

I wonder who's reality is to be shattered.

I do however recall this:

(http://www.kaoswar.com/screenshots/screenshot-kaos-war-5.jpg)

I also recall being impressed for the time. But, uh, not really so much anymore.

If the results end up existing at all.  Call me a skeptic.

Don't get me wrong, there's something admirable about pursuing your dreams, but damn... there's something to be said for uh, starting small.

Hypothetically, then.  What would you do if you had 600k and a dream to make a WoW killer?  Would you give up before you started?

It will be enough for him to progress with the code monkey, two artists, and in six months probably get more funding.

I would not use a bleeding edge engine, nor would i tell anyone i was going to take on Wow.

Hookers and blow.

Ding!

Make an XBLA game instead?  I dunno.

I would make a cheap, easy to use game engine for social spaces.

He has played eve (and other games) with me in the past. I liked his ideas at first, but over time he started leaning toward the "everything for everyone" kind of game. That list doesn't sound like what was described to me last time we talked. He was talking about pvp zones, no death penalties, and cool gear for the carebears. I think he's trying to do something similar to Warhammer.

We should send Hoax over to punch him the dick.

Realistically, it will be enough for him to go into pure psychotic-power-hugry-asshole-with-dreams-of-omnipotence mode and piss off anyone willing to work with him after a very short period of time leaving nothing behind but a useless pile of spaghetti that, if you squint a bit, sort of looks like the very beginnings of something else entirely.

Cocaine can cause ED, so I would suggest just sticking with the hookers and not buying any nose candy.

2-3000 hours of hookers would be an awesome line item on a use of proceeds spreadsheet.

(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/43920/forums_appear.jpg)

I appreciate web designers that clearly communicate what they intended to happen at some point.

I thought gaudy flash websites had gone out of style. Does firefox become unresponsive for anyone else when right clicking on parts of their site?

Make a title of any sort. A mod. A fucking cell phone game. Prove that he can take a game from concept to store shelves. (or downloadable purchase) Something like Bejeweled would do nicely.

Starting out with an ambitious MMOG is like trying to reach the moon by spending your 15 bucks a week allowance on fireworks and watching re-runs of Star Trek.

Then again, it would be highly entertaining if he did make it. So I shan't say he's automatically doomed to failure. Just that the odds are stacked against him. He's the little guy who just might make it because he doesn't know any better.

So good coding practice, poor choice of engine.  Off to a great start.

I'd use that $600k to make a simple RTS game that resembled a known IP, then use the proceeds to buy a smaller studio to get their innovative game, then use THOSE funds and my now-impeccable reputation to build a simple-but-polished MMORPG that also resembled/used a known IP.  Easy-peasy.

And not spend the 600k on designer chairs and sports cars.  :grin:

Don't be silly.  The FIRST things I'd get would be a comfy chair and a sports car!

CryEngine is straight-off a botched choice for an MMO. Even UE3 would be better because atleast that's fast considering the render quality you're getting. Crysis is giving my comparably beefy machine a kick in the nadgers.

Also, I don't get why MMO start-ups license engines developed with shooters in mind. Shooters have fancy graphics and absolutely nothing else that would help with the development of an MMO. Or, well, I do understand that's the very reason, but it's still an inane choice. It's like licensing the Doom 3-engine for an RTS (unless the RTS is Pitch Black: Tactics!).

Y, FPS engine seems to be wrong choice for MMO, but then I more interested in gameplay than glitzy graphics…

Everytime I hear a story like this, I think of that crappy browser game built by the teenage kid who Schild rednamed last year.  Then I laugh that someone has thrown piles of money down a hole investing in a project that will, in the end, be less successful than that.  Because the handful of players who will attach themselves to any random browser game are more than the zero players a turd like this will ever have before it sputters into oblivion.

So um, watched the tech crunch video and he keeps mentioning the community helping out with idea's or features they want for the game.

Checking the forums (http://www.kaoswar.com/forums/memberlist.php?do=getall&pp=30&order=desc&sort=lastvisit) there's like 120 users active in the past three months.... mykaoswar.com (http://kaoswar.ning.com/profiles/members/?sort=alphabetical) has 190 total

I really don't understand how this game is going to succeed in any shape or form from the presentation pyramid.

(http://binfuser.com/files/standard.jpg)

So from the presentation, he states and has a nice little power point that 90% of players play the 20% content of the game only (pvp/bg/arenas/raid).  Then backs up the man hours of developing the small content arena/bg's vs zones.

Then tada, the agile development
(http://binfuser.com/files/improved.jpg)

So from this slide and the presentation the company is going to build the 20% of the game then let the community "build" the 80% left...

Which is what?! The world, the questing, the dungeon crawling, the binding focus of your online game community?!

That's really dumb.

1)  make a chart
2)  use a buzz word
3)  invert chart
4)  INNOVATION!!!!!!!!11111!!!!1!!!

What he's describing is was Fury. 

Well then...

SUCCESS!

I wonder if this is all some guerrilla marketing by activision blizzard  :awesome_for_real:

Separate?

Everybody's spelling automatically sucks as soon as they start typing on the Internet.

It's probably the way EVE (and Darkfall  :why_so_serious:) works -- there's the frameworks of market, shitty PvE quests and big empty sandbox for the PvPers to come and piss on everyone's sand castles while trying to shield their own from the others' pee. That kind of game do have most of the content provided by the players...

He has $600k, which is nowhere near enough to make his game, and spends it on a flashy-yet-unattractive website and a terrible logo. Flashy-yet-unattractive website normally comes AFTER proof of concept and paid staff, amirite?

Ought to just reinvest it while the economy is in a slump, because he clearly doesn't know how to run his own startup.

genius.  Just needs scalability and a good content management framework.  /sigh

See how much licensing a third party MMO development suite is going to cost me.

Build a browser orientated MMO that will let me start generating income.

...

I'll have my $600 k now plz.