MMORPG Tycoon

[Xanthippe]

For all you armchair devs out there:

http://playthisthing.com/mmorpg-tycoon

MMORPG Tycoon is an interesting experiment in meta-game design, created in just over a month for TIGS' procedural gameplay contest. On hearing this concept, you're probably thinking a lot more grandiously than what's actually delivered, but that's ok. You'll find yourself boxed into the RPG model, adjusting monster and class numbers, setting up zone distributions for a smooth leveling curve - you won't be doing any bold economic or social experiments with your virtual MMO (so meta). What you will be doing is getting an interesting insight into the 'script MMO business, and if you have any experience working in an MMO studio or have friends who have, then you'll get a good chuckle as well.

The game involves setting zones with level ranges, trying to keep them distributed so your servers don't overload ("due to the coding practices of ShadiSoft"), making sure there are enough towns and respawn points, and trying to keep monster and class stats on keel. Your primary metric for success is your forum buzz, you want more positive posts than negative, and the main factor for this is how hard or easy the game is. Here's where the punchline starts getting set-up: no matter how well you do a portion of players will complain the game is too easy, and a portion will complain the game is too hard. However, as long as you've got some content in, and you've got a half-competent balance, people will play, get addicted, and you'll grow, even though your churn rate might only be slightly lower than your growth rate. And you'll make money. You only have to get the basics down and then just let the game run. The implication is that you don't need a good game, you just need an addictive game. It smacks you in the face with a procedural resonance, the derivative names of the rival MMOs are just icing on the cake.

[Falconeer]

Sounds... great.

<downloading>

[schild]

Played it the other day. I loved this presentation in Defcon, but in this it's just terrible. Should've been either 8bit tiles or a civ style look.

[Montague]

Awesome.

I love weird little simulation games like this. I even almost bought Video Game Tycoon before common sense prevailed.

[tmp]

Played it a bit, reached the point where half of forums was crying game is too hard while the other half was crying it's too easy. That's pretty good simulation, there. The players are also modeled dumb like the real things, going into zones way above their level and then quitting over death or whatever.

It's way too simplified though, skips most of the stuff that could actually make it interesting management game...

[Slyfeind]

Can you get your funding cut halfway through development? Cause that rocks.