Valrandir
Shiva
Morsus Mihi
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Posted - 2006.09.29 17:20:00 -
[1]
I think that we can seperate the MMOG industries into two main groups.
The first group make games like a disposable product, only to generate money out of it, and make more games afterward. It is a bit like making a movie. Lots of people watch it once or a few times, then it's over and more movies must be made. Think EAGames, they make/published lots of games as a disposable product where they wants their customers to buy it, play it, then put it away and buy another.
This group is also more tending to hire some dev studio and art studio for their game, instead of sticking with the same devs all the time.
The second group would be when a few people gets together to create the game of their dream. They have no popular name, no sequel that everyone will buy because of the previous games, little money and lots of time. They can research, experiment, learn and step by step build their game at their own pace, they way they want. They are creating the game not just for the money but also from passion, they are making the a game that they would like to be playing.
This is EvE. The 'game' is never finished, it is always ongoing. They bought back the distribution rights from Simond & Shuster(spelling) back in 2003 and they have no other entity telling them where to take the game, as far as I know.
The first type will always want to make games with mass appeal to attact as much players as possible.
The second group make the game from their vision and stick to it. Three years and a half after release we now an EvE where many section of the code have been entirely rewritten a few times, and it is always growing bigger and bigger. We have 30k players at peak time instead of 4000, yet there is no shard and only one world.
Maybe some company will try to make a sand-box oriented fantasy game with non-consensual PvP, to use the EvE formula. But that would be hard to find investors who would back up such a project since the mass of sheeps, err, common players, are more after things like WoW.
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This has surpassed the Yarrdware specification and has been dubbed Uberware.
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