Another One Bites the Dust: SWG Edition!

[sam, an eggplant]

Everything is monetized somewhere. It's a sliding scale.

At the most player-friendly you have traditionally purchased games, where you chip out fifty bucks and get to play Morrowind, all of Morrowind, and maybe they sell expansion packs later on. The game's design was not impacted by its monetization strategy.

Then you have subscription MMOs, where you shell out fifty bucks for the box plus another fifteen per month. Their design absolutely was compromised by the need to sustain subscriptions. That's why they made us camp Drelzna for JBoots in Everquest, why they elongated progression until it took over 40 days /played to hit maximum level, why they made players repeat each piece of content ad infinitum, to stretch out that content, to maximize revenue. Subscription MMO design is absolutely compromised in a deeply negative way.  That doesn't mean they aren't compelling. WoW had a tremendous amount of high quality content even on day 1 of release. It just didn't have enough to keep you playing for a year without repetition.

And of course we have shooters with map packs and "season passes" and Oblivion's horse armor and the rest of that crap, but lets skip past it to F2P and B2P MMOs.

F2P MMOs are substantially more compromised than subscription MMOs, because they have no initial revenue source. Therefore they must walk the tightrope between brutalizing players and giving it away for free. Turbine was masterful at that; SOE much less so, although they've improved over the years. Cryptic did pretty well too, with Neverwinter. You can play without paying anything, but most people end up paying if they enjoy themselves. No problem there.

B2P MMOs are a great compromise. They have an initial revenue source, the cost of the box, so you'd think they sit comfortably between subscription and F2P MMOs in monetization's impact on their gameplay. But actually, in many ways they are more player-friendly than subscription MMOs. They don't care if you keep playing, once you pay for the box, so they have no powerful incentive to force you to repeat content. You buy the box, play until you're done, then hopefully they hook you with more content later on. It's the hermaphrodite of MMO monetization strategies, the best of both worlds.

Then moving away from MMOs, we come to the aggressively monetized mobile games. Unlike F2P MMOs, they are not designed assuming most people will pay something-- most players don't pay a cent. Instead, they want to hook whales, get them addicted, and totally screw those cokefiends over. Gameplay is largely immaterial, it just needs to be compelling enough to get those whales past the wall of that initial inflection point where they start to pay. This is basically evil. And that's what I meant by "monetization strategies disguised as games". In all the other various types discussed above, someone actually cared about the gameplay, because they wanted everybody to pay. In games like candy crush, they just want to screw those whales to the wall.

[tmp]

YEah I can get behind most of that. I'm just skeptical if there's any real differences between the mobile games and the F2P MMOs -- from what little i saw some of the Asian ones can be just as shallow/ruthless and aimed at blatant whale-milking as the worst of the mobile ilk. So I don't feel like one can be really said to be more evil and "not games" than the other. If it's a race to the bottom it has no winner and the involved parties keep digging furiously.

[Raph]

They're business models cleverly disguised as games.

Obviously there is a game underneath somewhere, or the disguise wouldn't  hold up. Thing is, after you sweep the monetization and calculated addictive mechanics away from something like candy crush, there's not much gameplay left.

That doesn't mean farming and decorating gameplay isn't incredibly attractive to many people. But The Sims did so more to prove that than Farmville.

Especially for Candy Crush, that is really not true. Before all these business models got grafted on, that exact game was *insanely* popular, when it was known as Bejeweled and as Jewel Quest.

[Raph]

The best Star Wars MMO I can make in the OT period won't ever have Jedi in it. It automatically makes the game bad. Period. Players may want it, but players are wrong. Players may even LIKE IT BETTER, but that doesn't make the game better. A game is not better if players like it more. It's just more popular. I realize this may be a gap between us. :)

I submit into evidence as People's Exhibit A the afrementioned Candy Crush, and as People's Exhibit B the aforementioned Farmville. 

[HaemishM]

No Jedi and no space flight, along with complete disdain for the IP after the prequels made me shy away from the game at release. I never played it until the abortion that was NGE.

See, the whole "complete disdain for the IP after the prequels" is projection on your part. No Jedi is based on RESPECT for the IP. Players who want Jedi are the ones who disdain its core tenets. Which is fine, it's not their job to care in the same way. But it rubs me the wrong way when people talk about disdain for the IP when I know very well just how many years of sweat we invested into getting every detail right. When people say this, they usually mean "I wanted to be a Jedi." Which puts us back at square one.

Spaceflight was *never* in the cards for initial launch. Ever. For purely practical reasons. Not because of disdain for the IP.

No. I was talking about MY disdain for the IP.   The prequels really soured me on all things Star Wars. I felt like Lucas himself took a great big ole steaming dump on the IP. The only problem I had with the SWG thing was the lack of space flight. I actually agree with you about how game-fucking having Jedi in that time period was. That time period really hampered a lot of the things you could do. However, I do believe having a Star Wars game without Jedi really isn't a Star Wars game - which is why I agree that to make the best Star Wars MMO, it shouldn't have been set in the time period it was. The hoops you guys had to jump through to shoehorn Jedi in there are impossible to solve, especially in the time frames you were given.

Imposing those time frames and settings on an MMOG showed that the Lucas people whose money was being used to make this game did not fundamentally understand dick about their IP. They understood the brand of Star Wars (must have Jedi, must have Vader and Solo and Chewie and etc etc) but they didn't know nor give a shit what would really make a good Star Wars MMO. BTW, I think the same thing goes for Bioware's attempt as well. While it certainly had more polish (and budget and time) than SWG, it was even less interesting to me in any capacity than SWG. I'm very happy that Lucas finally sold the Star Wars IP to Disney because for all their flaws, they can at least do one thing no one at Lucasfilms could do - tell George Lucas to STFU.

[Rendakor]

They're business models cleverly disguised as games.

Obviously there is a game underneath somewhere, or the disguise wouldn't  hold up. Thing is, after you sweep the monetization and calculated addictive mechanics away from something like candy crush, there's not much gameplay left.

That doesn't mean farming and decorating gameplay isn't incredibly attractive to many people. But The Sims did so more to prove that than Farmville.

Especially for Candy Crush, that is really not true. Before all these business models got grafted on, that exact game was *insanely* popular, when it was known as Bejeweled and as Jewel Quest.

I think that's kind of the point. Candy Crush brought nothing to the table that Bejeweled hadn't done, except monetization. They cloned a game and figured out how to milk people for every cent.

[Raph]

Sure, but that doesn't make the underlying game itself a bad game.

[Malakili]

Sure, but that doesn't make the underlying game itself a bad game.

The part of Candy Crush that is specific to Candy Crush is the problem though.

Anyway, this is largely missing the point by now.  I agree with Raph on the last page about what they were trying to do.  If your directive is make a sandbox MMO set in Star Wars (episode 4-5), that's pretty much a good way to do it.  Jedi being rare or nearly non existent makes sense there, and I know all of my friends thought it was entirely normal that we couldn't play Jedi when we found out about the game.  We were Star Wars geeks and "obviously" you couldn't have Jedi running around in the New Hope/Empire era.

As for the mass market thing. WoW was (and frankly still is) an outlier.  I'm not sure I know what a mass market MMO even really means.  WoW busted into the popular culture for a couple of years there, but that sort of thing doesn't really happen in the MMO space.  That is usually reserved for Halo, Call of Duty, etc.  Even something like League of Legends which has 80 quadrillion players isn't really mainstream the way WoW was for a while.

[Margalis]

Everything is monetized somewhere. It's a sliding scale.

At the most player-friendly you have traditionally purchased games, where you chip out fifty bucks and get to play Morrowind, all of Morrowind, and maybe they sell expansion packs later on. The game's design was not impacted by its monetization strategy.

Unfortunately this is becoming less and less true.

These days publishers focus on offering fewer titles of greater "value." So mid-tier games are largely falling away. If you want to make a AAA traditionally purchased game it's going to have a large budget, and that very much does impact the design. Because the game costs a lot to make it has to hit a large audience to make a return, which means it has to play safe, be in a familiar genre, etc.

If you go back and look at SWTOR quotes that kind of PR-speak for doing the same thing that everyone else is doing has become very popular in the industry. The broad design strategy of AAA games these days is to take an existing game, copy it, then change one thing about it - the same way SWTOR was SpaceWow with cutscenes. This is pitched to players as "delivering industry-standard, best of breed solutions" or "giving players what they've come to expect", relying on "tried and true" formulas, etc, while "innovating in a core strength area." This is why Mordor is fantasy Batman / Creed with the Nemesis system and why Watch Dogs is "generic Ubi game" with different hacking minigames.

When you make a AAA game you don't start with a blue sky and come up with great ideas - publishers now are risk averse. You start with a "proven" concept in one a few genres then add a spin to it. It affects design very fundamentally - the more the budget increases the more certain genres fall out of consideration completely, the more certain types of content becomes off-limits, etc.

I get what you're saying, and personally I greatly prefer the model of just selling a thing normally because I do believe it's the model that most incentivizes making good games. But even if you go with that model it impacts the design, and the greater the budget the more that is true.

[Malakili]

Although we've seen smaller budget indy games actually start to take over that space, while the unwieldy AAA titles have almost gone out of fashion among some audiences (like this board, for example).

[IainC]

AAA is a victim of its own hype. When budgets regularly blow past $60M, every title needs to be a record-breaking seller to make returns that justify the development and marketing budget. Every project is essentially betting that the game will be the next GTA V because if it isn't then a lot of people are going to get laid off a week before the next quarterly report is due.

[HaemishM]

Well yes, AAA games have fucked themselves. See Square Enix's disappointments at the 2+ million sales of games like Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider. Those games selling 2+ million copies ought to be a goddamn studio/publisher defining hit, instead they actually caused people to lose jobs because they weren't "hit enough."

[Margalis]

Although we've seen smaller budget indy games actually start to take over that space, while the unwieldy AAA titles have almost gone out of fashion among some audiences (like this board, for example).

The sales of AAA games still dwarf those of indie titles. It may be true that indie games get more "mindshare" than AAA in some areas, but in terms of sales there's still no contest. AAA games aren't competing with indie games, they're just competing with their own budgets.

Also as bad as AAA is in terms of stability indies are far worse. You just don't hear about them much because when they fail they do so quietly, and there's a huge emphasis on success stories. There's a whole industry built up around selling tools and services to indie devs, and it's in the best interest of those people to make indie success stories look like the norm.

[Fordel]

Well yes, AAA games have fucked themselves. See Square Enix's disappointments at the 2+ million sales of games like Sleeping Dogs and Tomb Raider. Those games selling 2+ million copies ought to be a goddamn studio/publisher defining hit, instead they actually caused people to lose jobs because they weren't "hit enough."

I want to say Capcom is the worst at this, to the point where they've nearly gone bankrupt because of it.

[Paelos]

It's the focus of costs on the wrong things. Rather than spend money on making good AI, mechanics, or story, it gets blown on stupid cinematics ,graphics, and marketing. Then the rest of the game is just filler content. Shockingly people want to buy steak instead of the sizzle now. The industry consumer is evolving/devolving past what they know how to offer, which is why some of the most blockbuster games of the last few years have also been some of the most retro in ideas.

[Morat20]

The problem with triple A games seems to mirror the problems with movies -- or even TV shows (at least network). Sequels, instead of new stuff, because we're throwing so much money at it we can't afford to fail.

Everyone's chasing home-runs, because they've spent so much that only a home run makes them any profit.

So networks kill off shows four episodes in, because the number of viewers just isn't enough --- and "isn't enough" is measured by whatever killer show another network has, not by "profitable" or any other metric. If it's not killing show X on NBC in the same time slot, ax it.

Movies are the same way. Break even? Toss it. Shit-can the whole genre even. Let's remake Spiderman again.

[Raph]

Shall I link the presentations from 2006 where I said that was going to happen? :)

[Gimfain]

I keep seeing people say how AAA mmorpg fails, but usually its all subjective and none of it relates to how the game did financially. People got used to mmorpg's being a golden cow, which simply isn't true anymore and the industry had to adapt. Players jump between games and when they are gone you have to merge servers, you have to change payment model because no one pays a subscription for something they aren't using, and just like the rest of the gaming industry you can't keep the bloated staff that you had during the main development of the game. We see quite a lot of mmorpg's releasing new content, and that means the games aren't doing as poorly as people would like us to believe.

While there might not be AAA themeparks in development much of the underlying MMO design has been taken into console shooters like destiny and the division. While you can make the argument that destiny isn't an mmo because it lacks the gameworld that mmorpg's have, it plays much like a themepark mmorpg.

I don't really know what to make of the sandboxes in development but so far I haven't wet myself in excitement.

[Rendakor]

It's the focus of costs on the wrong things. Rather than spend money on making good AI, mechanics, or story, it gets blown on stupid cinematics ,graphics, and marketing. Then the rest of the game is just filler content. Shockingly people want to buy steak instead of the sizzle now. The industry consumer is evolving/devolving past what they know how to offer, which is why some of the most blockbuster games of the last few years have also been some of the most retro in ideas.

Agreed on the first part; I'm not sure I know what retro blockbusters you're talking about though.

[tmp]

It's the focus of costs on the wrong things. Rather than spend money on making good AI, mechanics, or story, it gets blown on stupid cinematics ,graphics, and marketing.

Which may be because players can't cope with actual good AI and it makes them ragequit, don't give a flying fuck about the story and prefer to spend their time on game forums wanking over tree textures at 4k or whatever the resolution du jour happens to be and how it clearly makes their platform of choice the best.

It's not really spending money on wrong things when it's spending on the things your audience deserves.

[Paelos]

There's a move towards games that are harder, more challenging, less handholding, less graphically intense. And you know what? They are doing well. Minecraft has no graphics to speak of, and it blew everything else away in sales. A game like FTL probably wouldn't have done well 10 years ago, but in 2012 it did very well. Kickstarter is full of games that people want to see made that are about mechanics, RPGs, story, etc, and that aren't graphically intensive.

There's a shift happening, and games aren't selling as well. Publishers will point to games outselling others, but take a look at industry reports. Game sales keep falling.

[Margalis]

"Good AI" is not the same as "AI that kicks your ass." Good AI is just AI that is fun, has the right level of unpredictability, doesn't get stuck or do dumb immersion-breaking things, etc.

[Morat20]

There is a real disconnect with AI. What people want is 'challenging' which is not the same as 'hard'.

Challenging means different things to different people, and different things in different games. And I think what people really want in AI is "An AI that's just slightly worse than me. Like, tough enough to be fun and not feel like a cakewalk, but not so hard I get stuck, frustrated, or struggle".

Interesting, basically.

[Sophismata]

I want an AI that's better than me so I'm able to improve. Fighting something worse than yourself leads to complacency.

When I played tennis I didn't want to fight the worst players - I already knew I could beat them. I wanted to fight the best opponents I could find as it 1) made victory meaningful and 2) forced me to improve.

[Cyrrex]

I want an AI that's better than me so I'm able to improve. Fighting something worse than yourself leads to complacency.

We all think we want this on some level.  Just as long as we can still, you know, sneak up on that guard and sever his throat without him ever spotting us.  Or just as long as we don't aggro anything more than 5 meters away from us.  Or just as long as we can run away, break aggro, and come back and find that same guard still at his post.

We don't actually want AI that is better than us.  You would by definition never win that game.  Imagine playing Demon Souls where all the AI enemies were replaced by Schild, who is probably better than you at that game.  No fucking thanks.

[tmp]

"Good AI" is not the same as "AI that kicks your ass." Good AI is just AI that is fun, has the right level of unpredictability, doesn't get stuck or do dumb immersion-breaking things, etc.

My point with bringing up that article was, I believe the complaint about money being put in pointless stuff instead of AI etc, is sadly mistaken. The money *is* put in the AI, and what you get in the current games is the AI tailored to what your mouth breathing audience demonstrated they can actually sort-of handle. As opposed to what they like to think hey can handle.

[Merusk]

There's a shift happening, and games aren't selling as well. Publishers will point to games outselling others, but take a look at industry reports. Game sales keep falling.

Part of that shift was content delivery and another is time spent doing things.  Music listening is probably at the highest point ever, but you wouldn't recognize it looking at sales.

There's an entire generation used to getting things for free and only pays for bundles.  Games need to adopt like music and movies, but are actually being slower at doing it.

[tmp]

There's a move towards games that are harder, more challenging, less handholding, less graphically intense. And you know what? They are doing well. Minecraft has no graphics to speak of, and it blew everything else away in sales. A game like FTL probably wouldn't have done well 10 years ago, but in 2012 it did very well. Kickstarter is full of games that people want to see made that are about mechanics, RPGs, story, etc, and that aren't graphically intensive.

DARK SOULSSLSS!!!1

I'd think in this particular subsection of all places we'd know well enough to not take single aberrations as a sign of the market state in general. Because Minecraft? Minecraft is the other white WoW. Yes, it looks shit, yes, it sold like crazy, and then no clone which tried to cash on that craze came anywhere near, though many tried and keep trying.

Yes, you have indies churning out the 'retro graphics' games one after another after another and the writing is on the wall it's stopped being cute long ago, just like bloom did decade+ back and the 'miniature look' depth of field and the 'artsy' style will do next. Yes, in 2012 they did well, just like the zombie games did well a few years back, until people eventually, slowly realized that gosh, maybe there's a wee bit too many hacks doing nothing but sticking zombies everywhere and how many more it'll take, I'm reluctant to open the fridge now.

If there's one thing this industry has apparently mastered, it's riding what looks like its latest prancing pony roughshod into ground in no time flat, by sheer repetition of anything that looks remotely like a popular idea. That's basically what the "don't spend money on dumb things! spend them on these things instead, that's what people clearly want now!" calls lead to. And fuck that.

edit: (this likely came out too condensed, disjointed and not very readable, sorry)

[5150]

All this reminds me,

Does anyone know what Smed meant when he recently(?) said that SWG players would be able to come home soon?

I can only think he meant Landmark (which is a shame)?

[Paelos]

I'd think in this particular subsection of all places we'd know well enough to not take single aberrations as a sign of the market state in general. Because Minecraft? Minecraft is the other white WoW. Yes, it looks shit, yes, it sold like crazy, and then no clone which tried to cash on that craze came anywhere near, though many tried and keep trying.

It's not important if the success of that product can be repeatable. It only points to the fact that gamers en masse wanted something that a particular game finally delivered. WoW and Minecraft are mult-billion dollar successes because they scratched that itch the right way. There will be another game in the next 4 years that will do the same thing. We won't know what it is, but I can absolutely guarantee you it won't be another COD clone, Solid Snake cinematic fest, or tab-target RPG.

What I'm pointing out is that senseless repetition after the fact is stupid. This isn't like other arenas with definable products that fulfill a standard need. Entertainment is subjective and as such it's constantly shifting with consumer tastes. Coke is Coke, you market it based on the fact of what it is and you ride out consumer tastes with different offerings. But you never change Coke or you get shitty results.

Gaming is way different. Instead of taking the approach that one successful game should mean trying new and different arenas with the money made, the companies instead go into a sequal shell. Even worse, they decide to go into sequals and then totally change the games within the series so it pisses off fans who just wanted more of the same. Even Coke innovates beyond the one product line. Gaming companies seem incredibly unwilling to do that because they don't know how to run their businesses or support proper human capital.

[Typhon]

[...]
Gaming is way different. Instead of taking the approach that one successful game should mean trying new and different arenas with the money made, the companies instead go into a sequal shell. [...]

What?  Movies, books, songs, art, is 99% iteration on something that came before.  Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are saying (more coffee?), but if you are saying that game development houses are unique in their propensity to stick with a tried and true formula you are incorrect.

[Lantyssa]

When I say a challenging AI, I want one with strengths and weaknesses so it's still beatable.

If it's an aimbot with omniscience it's not fun.  Of course that's the trick, making it good without being perfect, and adding a bit of variability without giving it massive systemic weaknesses.

[eldaec]

Think EA's accountants would disagree with you regarding the importance of turning gaming IP into serial franchises.

And tabletop gaming has been doing iteration even longer (see D&D, Magic, and absolutely anything produced by Games Workshop or Fantasy Flight).

There is room for a little from column A and a little from column B. I doubt innovation drives sales of console based dudebro shooters, and trying to dig out an EQ-clone niche directly under WoW was idiotic when that product was still running and players had investment in Blizzard's particular model. But clearly it is also possible to make money doing something new.

[Merusk]

All this reminds me,

Does anyone know what Smed meant when he recently(?) said that SWG players would be able to come home soon?

I can only think he meant Landmark (which is a shame)?

That or EQ Next, which is supposed to be more sandboxy.

[sam, an eggplant]

It is, but it's called Landmark, not EQN. Seems very clear that EQN is dead.