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Topic: James Cameron designing an MMO (Read 15830 times)
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Venkman
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According to this entry at Slashdot.org, James Cameron, the Director of such classics as Terminator 2, True Lies, Titanic, Aliens 2, and other-stuff-of-note, announced plans for an MMOG launch to coincide with his upcoming movie 'Project 880'. Sounds like a sci-fi adventure. The game will predate the movie as a hype exercise. Should be interesting to say the least. I have neither high nor low hopes.
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
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The game will PREDATE the movie? Is the game going to have a concrete ending? Seems like it should be the other way around.
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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It'll never see the light of day.
I may be wrong. But not likely. He has no clue what he just said. Making Titanic with a handycam and an Apple IIE is easier than making an MMOG.
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Soln
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the opportunity for evil is just delicious
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yeah I saw that and couldn't stomach posting. Or the more worrisome news in the same article that Ron Howard and his producer sidekick are making an EVE-like MMO coinciding with a reality TV show. Seriously.
They're going to put a bunch of people in a space ship simulator, train them for the SF game, and have them run missions like in EVE. I dunno the castoff mechanism, but players will be able to play the MMO and watch the TV cast as just another ship. AND supposedly the tie-in is that if you catass to something in the game you get to be in the next season's cast. I am serious, again.
very worrisome
Of course, that spaceship will be smelling of cat pee pretty quickly no matter what happens I bet.
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Murgos
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Everyone is interested in fusing traditional media and computers/video games, obviously whoever does it firstest and bestest will have money hats in all the currencies of the world. I don't think this will do it.
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Venkman
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The game will PREDATE the movie? Is the game going to have a concrete ending? Seems like it should be the other way around.
The latter is how I interpreted Cameron's statement: "We'll create a world for people and then later present a narrative in that world". Sounds like a requoting of "build the world and patch in the fun later" to me. But I'm not the target audience. Everyone else is. Technology has enabled tens of millions of people in the U.S. to play MMOGs, and only a single-digit percentage of them are bothering. The latest big hits merely doubled that number. WoW and GW were MMOGs that attracted new players with brand but kept them and us through solid gameplay that tossed the rules of convention. Cameron's and Howard's work aren't likely to bother much with the latter. Being personified brands themselves, they attract people to movies. A lot of these people either can play, or already are playing, online games. If they ease the price of entry (web-based maybe, free maybe with a la carte pricing plans within), then their movies and names will attract even more people to MMOGs. It's all good. Everyone has their first game. This is a notice to veteran developers though to shape up though. No longer does this genre solely rely simply on the ability to get the game done.
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SnakeCharmer
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It'll never see the light of day.
I may be wrong. But not likely. He has no clue what he just said. Making Titanic with a handycam and an Apple IIE is easier than making an MMOG.
It's not as if Cameron doesn't have the money to hire the people who DO know what it takes to make an MMO, or more specifically to hire a recruiting firm to find the right people for him.
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Murgos
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It's not as if Cameron doesn't have the money to hire the people who DO know what it takes to make an MMO, or more specifically to hire a recruiting firm to find the right people for him.
It's a question of cost, remember he is in this to make a profit. I doubt if he will spend WoW type money on this, his goal with the MMOG is to sell his movie which he also has to pay for.
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Merusk
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That Ron Howard game will be entertaining.. if they do go the EvE route. I expect it to be a fully PvE space game,though, rather than PvP. There'd be far, far too many people offing them on a regular basis otherwise. The griefing will be bad enough if it's PvE.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Furiously
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Arrested developement the MMOG?
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JoeTF
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Sometimes I ponder what would we get if he hired f13 folks.
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SnakeCharmer
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It's not as if Cameron doesn't have the money to hire the people who DO know what it takes to make an MMO, or more specifically to hire a recruiting firm to find the right people for him.
It's a question of cost, remember he is in this to make a profit. I doubt if he will spend WoW type money on this, his goal with the MMOG is to sell his movie which he also has to pay for. I dont think its a matter of cost for him. Terminator 3 cost 187.3 million dollars (30 million of which went to Ah-nold) to make 3 years ago. He very well may not spend WoW type money, however much that was (80-90 million from what I've read, dont know for sure). Someone with his credentials can probably just about get however much financing he wants to get.
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schild
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There is NO way development on WoW cost more than $40M. NO WAY.
You can't count the cost of servers. They add them as necessary.
Pure development was not 80-90. Whoever wrote that is blowing smoke up your ass.
Edit: I'm fairly sure it cost about the same as EQ2 to develop. I have no idea why it cost that much though.
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Soln
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Posts: 4737
the opportunity for evil is just delicious
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There is NO way development on WoW cost more than $40M. NO WAY.
You can't count the cost of servers. They add them as necessary.
Pure development was not 80-90. Whoever wrote that is blowing smoke up your ass.
Edit: I'm fairly sure it cost about the same as EQ2 to develop. I have no idea why it cost that much though.
I remember Raph said somewhere in here that WoW was $80M. Although the search tool eludes me. /lazy
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SnakeCharmer
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There is NO way development on WoW cost more than $40M. NO WAY.
You can't count the cost of servers. They add them as necessary.
Pure development was not 80-90. Whoever wrote that is blowing smoke up your ass.
Edit: I'm fairly sure it cost about the same as EQ2 to develop. I have no idea why it cost that much though.
Here you go, child. http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=4485.msg117313#msg117313Outside of the CFO of Vivendi/Blizzard, I would think that Koster is probably the most credible to offer a guess as anyone. Have fun gnawing on that one for a while.
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schild
Administrator
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Common estimates?
Ok, and my uncommon estimate calls bullshit. What's your point?
Edit: After marketing and everything after development I'd believe it though. They marketed the shit out of it, just like they do every Blizzard game.
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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Sometimes I ponder what would we get if he hired f13 folks.
You really don't want to know. It's all good. Everyone has their first game. This is a notice to veteran developers though to shape up though. No longer does this genre solely rely simply on the ability to get the game done. Since when has this medium relied on people getting the game done?
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Wolf
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Brad also said WoW cost $75 mil. In that "instaces=tehsuck" article. I don't like Cameron, so - Meh... whatever :)
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As a matter of fact I swallowed one of these about two hours ago and the explanation is that it is, in fact, my hand.
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schild
Administrator
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I've already said it 3 times. I want to know what WoW cost at the development level. Strip out their campaign level marketing and tell me what the actual game cost to make.
I refuse to believe it cost more than EQ2 for reasons that should be extremely obvious.
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Margalis
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FFXI apparently took $12 million to create, where FFX took $40 million. (Lesson - CGI is expensive!)
WoW costing 6 times as much does seem a bit odd given that FFXI has more detailed models, more detailed areas and more detailed animations. I'm not sure if I can compare landmass size that well but if WoW is bigger (and I'm not sure it is) FFXI is way more detailed.
I'm actually very surprised that FFXI only cost 12 million, I've read that in a few different places.
I'm not going to say that WoW didn't cost 80 million, but there is no reason why it should have. 100 people a year for 4 years at an average of 100k per employee is 40 million, and while a peak of 100 or more is reasonable 100 for the entire 4 year life is not.
I have to agree with Schild in that I don't see how it would cost 2x what EQ2 cost. What did the double in money get? The models aren't more detailed. There aren't a lot more game systems. Etc etc...
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vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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And one of the most expensive things, voice acting, is damn near nonexistant in WoW.
Maybe they had to license some of the dances.
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Tale
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Outside of the CFO of Vivendi/Blizzard, I would think that Koster is probably the most credible to offer a guess as anyone.
No he's not. Sure, Raph Koster is a good and honest guy, but as Chief Creative Officer of SOE, Raph is about the least credible authority on WoW you could possibly ask, other than Smed.
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« Last Edit: February 06, 2006, 01:03:19 AM by Tale »
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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In some cases I'd say so, but Blizzard and SOE are in no way competitors.
No one is a competitor with Blizzard. I don't even care if you're in the same market. I simply disagree with Raph's numbers.
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Trippy
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I can easily believe WoW cost more than EQ2 to make. I don't know the exact development timelines of WoW and EQ2 but WoW came out of alpha earlier than EQ2 and was much further along in their beta cycle at the same points in time (EQ2 clearly had to be rushed to meet its release date) which would imply that WoW was under serious development for a longer period of time. WoW also had a lot more spit and polish and TLC applied to it compared to EQ2 (again part of that is because EQ2 rushed its release) and that sort of lavish attention to detail costs money. I don't believe, however, that WoW cost $80 million for the reasons Margalis pointed out -- the numbers just don't add up.
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Merusk
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Personally, I believe that everyone else in the MMO market wants to believe that WOW cost 40mil. It gives them an excuse for releasing unfinished, unpolished products and getting the subscribers to beta test it.
Unless, of course, they're counting-in normal business-related things like rent, benifits, software, etc. But that'd be an unfair comparison to do it for one game and not another.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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schild
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I think one of my big problems is, given the art and animation in WoW, I just can't buy the numbers that are tossed around. Hell, even the mechanics within the game are plain-jane MMOG and it's been done a thousand times. All the streamlining Blizzard did was tweaking exp gains off the normal scale and writing pretty generic quests (for the most part, there are some gems - just like every game) and raid content to be milled through. If CoH had 1/2 the grind it has, they probably could have had double the subscriptions they had shortly after launch. I know I would have recommended it to everyone and their dog. Point being, the only way I'd believe WoW cost more than ~40M is if it was in development for the better part of a decade and at some point they scrapped the entire design and had to start over. Waterworld style... but with less sinking sets.
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Murgos
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I'm not going to say that WoW didn't cost 80 million, but there is no reason why it should have. 100 people a year for 4 years at an average of 100k per employee is 40 million, and while a peak of 100 or more is reasonable 100 for the entire 4 year life is not.
I just recently read an article on Oblivion stating about the same number for thier production. In production since 2002, currently 100 people working on the team, + 50 some odd hours of voice acting, they are probably closing in on the $30 - 40 million mark. I don't find it hard to believe that WoW's production requirements could exceed the numbers you stated, even double that. Has anyone actually counted the size of the team in the WoW credits?
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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HaemishM
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the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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I can believe WoW cost $80 million to make. Why?
Blizzard is SLOW AS FUCK with development. Time = money. They take longer to develop anything than anyone else. Also, look at the number of quests, the amount of content that they had on release. From level 1-60 was itemized, full of quest content, etc. No one else has had that. They had bigger betas than anyone else, I think, including the 500,000 stress tests near the end. They just did everything bigger, and more expensive than anyone else.
We've always said that content creation is the most expensive part, and they had more content than anyone else. Plus, I think they developed for longer than EQ2.
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Venkman
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Since when has this medium relied on people getting the game done? Since players were willing to put up with just about anything that arrived on store shelf. Every year has been an incremental improvement, but you've been around since the days of EQ1's launch, AO's unplayability, DAoC's incompleteness, SB's SB.exe, SWG's train wreck and so on. People put up with this shit because they bought the hype and loved the genre for what it was. But all of these alienated people who had been long receiving better quality experiences in other genres. Now they can get that in MMOGs. GW and WoW were what I'd consider as flawless-as-possible launches (though WoW's first January was rough). It matters less that these two titles appealed to veterans than that they drew in so many new people in droves. We know why that happened. We also know those people are still here because the games worked, were fun, and all that stuff. That's the bar. Back when everyone thought DAoC would save the world, people used things like "stability" and "playability" as part of the reasons they were all hot for the game (they also gave Mythic the typical new-arrival-nod, basically implying anything not done by a veteran developer had to be better than what currently existed). Nowadays, the way to grow the genre is to assume stability and playability. People want their games to work. They aren't going to accept shit launches and massive content holes because they don't have to in other genres. This is why I, like you, can believe WoW cost so much. They had the money, and the wherewithall to spend it on getting the game done right for launch. And they followed with a crapload more stuff. Meanwhile, veteran developer/publishers have periodically redesigned their games because they are continuing to learn what it means to actually target players not already in the genre.
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Merusk
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Meanwhile, veteran developer/publishers have periodically redesigned their games because they are continuing to learn what it means to actually target players not already in the genre.
Quick tangent here, you're already seeing this ripple to affect games in development. Last night on a whim I went browsing Vanguard's boards and found this thread that linked to this article over at Ten Ton Hammer. Brad's definition of "Core Gamer" now sure sounds a bit different than it did about 9 months ago.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Yegolev
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2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Brad's definition of "Core Gamer" now sure sounds a bit different than it did about 9 months ago.
The VC guys woke up and read the newspaper, telling McQuaid "lrn 2 LCD, n00b"
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Murgos
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Brad's definition of "Core Gamer" now sure sounds a bit different than it did about 9 months ago.
The VC guys woke up and read the newspaper, telling McQuaid "lrn 2 LCD, n00b" From the article While many assume or feel that those rowdy and raucous gamers are taking over and making a nice home in your favorite MMO, the reality according to their research is that they only make up less than 10% of the gaming population. I wish you could have seen the looks of disbelief that masked those in the room. Both Brad and Jeff reiterated that it was true and in fact they asked for a show of hands. There was no denying it at that point. Most of the room claimed to fit in their definition of "core gamer". Who can point out the flaw in this demonstration? I think it's safe to say that anyone and EVERYONE that attends 'Fanguard' is a hard-core gamer.
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"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
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Venkman
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Probably.
But I find their definition of Core Gamer to be sound. It fits neatly between Hardcore and Diversional.
Whether they actually hit Core Gamer with Vanguard though remains to be seen. I personally link "casualness" with the ability to choose when and if to group. From what I've read of Vanguard, soloability is not something they're trying to sell.
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Yegolev
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2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Who can point out the flaw in this demonstration?
I think it's safe to say that anyone and EVERYONE that attends 'Fanguard' is a hard-core gamer.
Well, I suppose the problem is the same one that always hounds McQuaid: being surrounded by brown-nosing yes-men keeps him in the dark. I don't know that he is going to actually change anything, but it sounds better on paper and that's important to the money men.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Merusk
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Whether they actually hit Core Gamer with Vanguard though remains to be seen. I personally link "casualness" with the ability to choose when and if to group. From what I've read of Vanguard, soloability is not something they're trying to sell.
You are correct in that. However, they're going about it differently than they did in EQ. They say grouping will give "bonuses" that make it the more attractive choice, rather than soloing penalizing you. No idea how that'll work out in the mechanics. These were the guys who acted like 'creating xp' was problematic when it's an imaginary construct with a make-up number and not a finite resource anyway.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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