Acclaim's first MMO launch: Bots

[Venkman]

Now, I know some folks hate microtrans-based models. But the upside is that you get to at least check out the game for free and sans-subscription. So for anyone who wants another notch on the side of their monitor, Akklaim brings you their first MMO, live from the East:

Bots

If this interests you, chances are you knew this already. Or read it on /. :)

[Trippy]

Can't even make it past their landing page.

[sinij]

We recommend viewing the BOTS site with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0.

WTF? Are these guys for real or this is a gag site?

[schild]

Played it the other day.

It's goddamn weird. I really really really don't know how to explain the game.

See, there are rooms and legend of zelda-y (the bad parts) action - top down kinda like old school stuff.

And you grind and grind.

Also, lots of kiddehs.

[sinij]

And you grind and grind.

Thanks for taking one for the team, now I can skip it.

[damijin]

And you grind and grind.

Boy, you really know how to get me psyched.

BRING ON THE PAIN

[Yoru]

Also, lots of kiddehs.

I remember browsing the press release for this or something like this. It claimed that Acclaim was trying to be the major player in the "tween" market. With a microtransaction model.

Cuz mommy's gonna let you have her creddie card to buy gold. Sure.

[damijin]

I take it back, I couldn't last 10 minutes. First of all I was jealous of the 12 year old in my game who was level 23... and secondly, the thought of playing through that kind of combat for 23 levesl (however long that takes) made me feel kind of sick.

[Slyfeind]

I like the menu on the front page. You see all these robot action poses, then...TURKEY! Just this roasted turkey in the middle of everything. Turns out it's a contest about Thanksgiving, but I think it would have been cool to just go "TURKEY!" for no reason.

[Margalis]

Yeah, the website is hilarious. I also like how the Flash movie scrolls by so fast you have to speed-read to keep up.

Even funnier: schild has played this!

[Venkman]

I remember browsing the press release for this or something like this. It claimed that Acclaim was trying to be the major player in the "tween" market. With a microtransaction model.

Cuz mommy's gonna let you have her creddie card to buy gold. Sure.

It's not direct-billed CC transactions. Like many microtrans models, it's about loading credit into a system and drwing from it, like a debit account. So mommy's not approving a whole bunch of $0.50 transactions.

The other factor is to consider how ELSE money can be loaded into the system. Like, say, gift cards. Those don't require CCs at all to purchase at retail.

Oh, and was that article you mentioned this one? That's the one I remembered reading.

Finally, this particular game, and their goal for tweens are just part of why I think microtrans will work in the US. Nobody's coming after us with "legit RMT". They're going after new players with a new business model. And who better to do that with than the group still learning what money is, much less how to spend it properly :)

Seriously, you think MTV is going to market Maplestory, Audition and Kartrider to the core 18-35 predominantly-male WoW et al player? No way. They know we're not interested in neither a "casual" MMO like those are delivered to be nor the business model behind them. We likes us our flat-tax time sinks.

[geldonyetich]

I found bots awhile back through their banner spamming campaign.  Never played it, though - I could sort of tell from the Screenshots and website what I'd be getting into, and this thread has performed much in the way of confirmation.

[Yoru]

It's not direct-billed CC transactions. Like many microtrans models, it's about loading credit into a system and drwing from it, like a debit account. So mommy's not approving a whole bunch of $0.50 transactions.

The other factor is to consider how ELSE money can be loaded into the system. Like, say, gift cards. Those don't require CCs at all to purchase at retail.

Oh, and was that article you mentioned this one? That's the one I remembered reading.

Finally, this particular game, and their goal for tweens are just part of why I think microtrans will work in the US. Nobody's coming after us with "legit RMT". They're going after new players with a new business model. And who better to do that with than the group still learning what money is, much less how to spend it properly :)

Seriously, you think MTV is going to market Maplestory, Audition and Kartrider to the core 18-35 predominantly-male WoW et al player? No way. They know we're not interested in neither a "casual" MMO like those are delivered to be nor the business model behind them. We likes us our flat-tax time sinks.

No, there was one a day or two ago that came across the wire about some MMO or other launching for tweens with the microtransaction model. I get a half-dozen of these things a day and most of them go straight into the shitbin.

Anyway, I personally still find it unlikely that mommy would buy Jimmy $20 worth of 'virtual gold credits' so he can go buy swords and expees. But, hey, I'm out of touch with today's youth and parents, so what do I know.

And yeah, this is one way to sneak RMT in - present it as a benefit to a market that doesn't have direct access to a CC since they can "play for free" and hope they stay hooked once they get one. And yeah, retail-sold prepaid cards would work.

Bleah.

[Slyfeind]

Ya know, I really like the idea of grinding XP as a super-deformed robot. It sounds like fun! I won't try this game though, because in order to achieve that level of fun, you need to keep surprising the player with new ways the robot acts. I wonder if there can be some kind of algorithm that randomly generates crazy-fun robot behavior...behavior that's fun to watch, of course.

[MahrinSkel]

Buy little Johnny a $20 gift card?  Nope.  Buy him a stack of foil-wrapped collectors cards that happen to equate to credits/stuff in an online game?  She's already used to doing that every trip to WalMart.  The more they can make the process look the same/similar, and conduct "nag factor" marketing, the bigger their money hats.

--Dave

[CmdrSlack]

Buy little Johnny a $20 gift card?  Nope.  Buy him a stack of foil-wrapped collectors cards that happen to equate to credits/stuff in an online game?  She's already used to doing that every trip to WalMart.  The more they can make the process look the same/similar, and conduct "nag factor" marketing, the bigger their money hats.

--Dave

Yeah, but you know as well as I do that it's just something that's filtering into our market in a different way.  I went to this conference in March where I heard so much "sticky platform" nonsense that I realized the industry was nowhere as noble as people would like to think it could be.

I believe that mobile games are our future, give them cash and let them lead the way, etc.

"Transparent" monthly payments are just microtransactions in a different costume.

[Venkman]

Buy little Johnny a $20 gift card?  Nope.  Buy him a stack of foil-wrapped collectors cards that happen to equate to credits/stuff in an online game?  She's already used to doing that every trip to WalMart.  The more they can make the process look the same/similar, and conduct "nag factor" marketing, the bigger their money hats.

It's not Mom buying the card. It's little Johnny themself doing so with their money at the store. The amount of money tweens have nowadays is only slightly less impressive than the amount of purchases they drive for a household.

And I wasn't talking about gift cards like those turny-display things you see at the cash out. I was thinking exactly what you were talking about: collector cards wrapped in another experience. Like, say, the WoW TCG that unlocks content in WoW itself.

[Yoru]

Buy little Johnny a $20 gift card?  Nope.  Buy him a stack of foil-wrapped collectors cards that happen to equate to credits/stuff in an online game?  She's already used to doing that every trip to WalMart.  The more they can make the process look the same/similar, and conduct "nag factor" marketing, the bigger their money hats.

It's not Mom buying the card. It's little Johnny themself doing so with their money at the store. The amount of money tweens have nowadays is only slightly less impressive than the amount of purchases they drive for a household.

And I wasn't talking about gift cards like those turny-display things you see at the cash out. I was thinking exactly what you were talking about: collector cards wrapped in another experience. Like, say, the WoW TCG that unlocks content in WoW itself.

Are we talking kids counting out the Benjamins here or kids getting ~$20 spending cash every week or so? Either one supports microtransactions in that form, I suppose - especially if sold alongside a CCG or something else tangible that can be tossed around for social status in the lunch room.

Still, I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around kids that young having any significant money, perhaps because I was lucky to have $5 at any given time until I started a couple little ventures to make spending cash. And even then it wasn't particularly impressive amounts for quite a while.

[Venkman]

Oh I hear ya man. I was not one of those nutty entrepeneurial kids. I could barely handle a paper route, and never did the lemonade stand thing. I had it easy though because my father owns his own boiler company, so I always had gainful employ. Of course, the job wasn't easy (those big industrial boilers you climb inside of), but getting a job and therefore cash was.

Nowadays kids are a heck of a lot more, err, "savvy", though I hate that work. I think it's part of their connectiveness. They learn stuff much differently than they did. In our professional careers, we consider it networking. To them, it's just the way things are. Budding business folks.

Add this to the fact that over 70% of U.S. families are dual-income. As a single-income family (my wife and I wanted our kids to grow up like we both did), I found that stat particularly surprising. There's simply more disposable income. Sure there's "house poor" and "working poor", but then that's why the average American family debt is so high. Plus, statistically, we are financially better off on average than 30 years ago in the sectors we're talking about (kids and microtrans).

Now, "tween" is typically defined as 8-12 year olds. That's roughly 3rd grade to 8th. It's not like 8 year olds are running their own auction farms in Neopets. But then, the "Tween" games coming from the likes of Acclaim are not coming for them. They're coming from the transitional teen tweenager, 12-13 year old. THEY are the ones who command about a $1bn a year in US purchases.

Lots is different nowadays. :)

[angry.bob]

Lots is different nowadays. :)

Indeed. Not to derail, but instead of giving my kid (2 months old) an allowance out of my pocket, I've built a couple of websites with that serve Adsense adds. He gets all the revenue from those channels (For now it's being used to buy Bonds). Once he's old enought to actively want a cash allowance, I'm going to slowly show teach him Dreamweaver (design interface anyway) and Photoshop and all the other little programs to make his own websites. Of course I'll have to help him quite a bit, but honestly, a monkey can make a nice website with Dreameaver. As long as he's willing to put in a few hours a day working on a couple websites and SEO about shit that would interest him anyway, it's entirely likely that he'll be earning about $1500 a month after taxes by 8th grade. I imagine there are quite a few other parents doing stuff like this as well. Internet FTW!

[schild]

It'd be nice if f13 made $1500 a month.

[Trippy]

It'd be nice if f13 made $1500 a month.

Need more porn.

[schild]

Obviousry.

(That's the answer Ookii and I came up with yesterday too).

[Yoru]

Obviousry.

(That's the answer Ookii and I came up with yesterday too).

Solution: Men of F13 oil calendar.

Gag-gift sales alone should peak into the dozens!

[hal]

Sig worthy? I guess I'll have to look at dreamweaver now, if your 2 month old is buying bonds.

[Kitsune]

Played bots during its open beta, and whoo boy do I want that time back.  Take a decent side-scrolling fighting game, say Double Dragon.  Now duct tape big mittens on your hands so you have controls roughly as accurate as a retarded monkey.  Now mash on the buttons and watch as your character leisurely decides whether or not to actually perform the moves you told them to do.  Go through a level with about three different types of enemies, kill them as best as you can, then kill a boss.

Repeat this a few hundred times.  With a banner ad being tossed in front of you for about twenty seconds at the beginning and end of each level.

Of course, you can get a leg up on everyone else!  If you simply pay a little money....

[stray]

Is this made by Japanese designers or Americans? Either way, it screams "Korean" to me. With a touch of Burger King.


I'm waiting for the great day when a Japanese MMO has all the sensibilities of a Japanese game. Why hasn't this happened?


[edit] Err...Wait. Acclaim has always been American.....Right? The Japanese would never use Fabio for box art.

[Trippy]

Is this made by Japanese designers or Americans? Either way, it screams "Korean" to me. With a touch of Burger King.

It's Korean.

[schild]

Acclaim went out of the business. THIS IS A NEW ERA OF ACCLAIM.

They were bought by some guy who thinks RMT is the wave of the future. Might be, but the game behind the RMT can't be shit. Unless "Fun" is one of the things you can buy.

[Big Gulp]

Oh I hear ya man. I was not one of those nutty entrepeneurial kids. I could barely handle a paper route, and never did the lemonade stand thing.

Age 10, got a job with the Livingston County Greensheet to deliver their papers around my neighborhood (and it was a big neighborhood) for the princely sum of $5 a week.  Of course, this was 1984, when a Snickers bar was only $.25, but still it was peanuts for the amount of work involved.  I saved up all that money for a C64 1541 disk drive to finally replace the pathetic tape drive I had.  The next purchase was a lawn mower and snow shovel so I could pimp myself out around the neighborhood.  I actually made damned good money for a kid my age in those years, to the point where I bought my first car at 15 1/2 and had to wait 6 months before I could actually drive it.

Then, after all that blood sweat and tears and buying my owned damned car my parents went and bought my younger sister a car.  Yeah, I'm not still bitter or anything. 

[Venkman]

You were far more industrious than I. I blew all my cash on Apple //e games, a disk drive, the 80-column card and then this crazy tether brick thing someone called a "mouse" for some reaosn. Having a job was a foregone conclusion. But I hated it for all my teenage years, so much so I ensured that whatever I did coming out of school, it was from behind a desk :) My father's gift to me.

Of course, years later he wanted to sell me the thing. Still does. But it isn't my dream, and I've seen too often what happens when a kid takes over a parent's business.

[geldonyetich]

It's not my fault I've had a lazy life.  It's, erm, my low mitochondria count.   

(I'm not sure if enduring Internet Hell Desk for 3 1/2 years makes me a staunch and honorable worker or a total tool.  I've heard varying opinions on this.)

[Edit: Edited to include my one shot at redemption in the publics' eye.]

[Venkman]

Heh, I read that as "midichlorian" 

[geldonyetich]

I almost used that.  So tempting to blame my ills on lack of jedi power.