What ultima is being created? I recently have been dreaming of ultima online being created for the browser.. Seems like it could be possible now, no?
EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
41–50 of 94 posts
Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
#42I worked on Warhammer Online for nearly two years before it left the offices of Climax Entertainment in Nottingham, England. When I arrived the game was already a couple of years in development, but the focus was on the technology not the game. We had no game, just a test area running on a local server. There was a design department consisting of 10 people, 4 working on environment and level design, 6 working on ques…
A little outside perspective: This is exactly the way it goes with a huge percentage of IT-related projects, in many serious industries. The "Enterprise" is screwed.
I don't know about the enterprise area, but when this happens in the gamedev industry (and it happens a lot), it's extra depressing because 90%+ of the people working on it will have poured their life and soul into it and really care. We're not talking individuals in a sea of office drones.
Part of the problem is that "release early, release often" is hard to do when it comes to entertainment products. MMOs & social games are starting to change that, but nothing close to the sort of pivoting you can do with, say, a productivity web app.
Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
This one made my day: "Panic set in, and it suddenly had to be WOW 2.0"
There should be a fundamental game industry mantra in there: "Don't try to beat Blizzard at their own game. You will lose." Caveat: Unless you think you can sneak out a Diablo game before Diablo 3 comes out. (Nice one, Torchlight)
Jeff Strain formulated it like this: "the team that is best poised to deliver a successful game that is an evolution of WoW is... well, the WoW team".
http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.p...
It will be interesting to see how much of his own advice he managed to follow.
Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
#44"I'm sick of seeing EA outsource"
My country is poor and lots of developers work in outsourcing firms from the first world. The funny thing is that a friend of mine does class assignments for kids in American universities, perpetuating the cycle of outsourcing need.
Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is partially because nobody has figured out how to reliably estimate project costs and timetables for software. If houses routinely came with estimates like "We think this house will cost between $200k and $2.6 million to build, and it could be done in between 6 months and 10 years, and at the end it may or may not have a bathroom", every general contractor in the country would be in the unemployment line.…
I think the problem is more fundamental than that. The requirements for a house are pretty much static. The requirements for an application are often in constant flux.
What makes up a house is generally understood. A application or game is often a custom job with all sorts of different features and functions. Any decent company should be measuring these things as best they can. It appears that is often isn't done. It's remarkable that EA hasn't been able to do this since they have a bevy of projects that they should be able to use as a rough yard stick.
Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes it feels this is so because we have a lot less number of ruins when it comes to IT related projects. Stop construction of a building you have a gigantic half constructed bloat of concrete and bricks. Nothing can be reused (except for the land). Stop construction of a program and you will have some files which can be deleted, all the machines are general purpose and all this can be reused.
I think it is partially because nobody has figured out how to reliably estimate project costs and timetables for software. If houses routinely came with estimates like "We think this house will cost between $200k and $2.6 million to build, and it could be done in between 6 months and 10 years, and at the end it may or may not have a bathroom", every general contractor in the country would be in the unemployment line.…
The software entity is constantly subject to pressures for
change. Of course, so are buildings, cars, computers. But
manufactured things are infrequently changed after
manufacture; they are superseded by later models, or
essential changes are incorporated into
copies of the same basic design. Callbacks
of automobiles are ready quite infrequent; field changes of
computers somewhat less so. Both are much less frequent than
modifications to fielded software.
In part, this is so because the software of a system
embodies its function, and the function is the part that
most feels the pressures of change. In part it is because
software can be changed more easily--it is pure thought-
stuff, infinitely malleable.
Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would have been almost impossible for them to release Age of Conan in it's current form. The current form was fashioned after massive amounts of customer feedback. Developing a MMO in the dark for 6 years isn't going to make it better than a released game that takes a couple years to mature. The issue is that you can't charge 60 bucks for a half finished game and 15 bucks a month after that. You also have to conte…
It's true, but you can't really sell a game on the premise it will be eventually good, so yeah they are a killer market, well at least since WOW redefined what you had to do to have a successful MMO.
You can, it's just really hard.
This is basically what Minecraft is doing - the game is entertaining now, but it's also got INSANE potential. So it's absolutely worth plopping $13 down on. Notch made $3 million or whatever (enough to fund game development) on the alpha sales. Of course, he may have trouble making money post-release if he can't charge the people who bought Alpha for the full version and if most of his potential audience buy Alpha or Beta.
Torchlight had the right idea, I think - create a fun initial product, and use the income from that to fund your more expensive V 2.0 that has a subscription model.
Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
#48I worked on Warhammer Online for nearly two years before it left the offices of Climax Entertainment in Nottingham, England. When I arrived the game was already a couple of years in development, but the focus was on the technology not the game. We had no game, just a test area running on a local server. There was a design department consisting of 10 people, 4 working on environment and level design, 6 working on ques…
I would be annoyed to if I was games workshop, having spent decades painstakingly creating the IP to have a flop of an MMO created that was clearly pushed out before it was done.
I love the W40K universe (it resonated with me as a teenager), I'm thankful at least that Relic has treated it so well.
Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah really, I was kinda hoping to read through some relevant posts, but it's just been taken over by a bunch of tards concentrating on his SWTOR comments.
This one made my day: "Panic set in, and it suddenly had to be WOW 2.0"
That was probably the main thing that killed the game. Personally I loved the RvR aspect of WHO (the few times you actually had enough players from both sides on the same server and in the same zone to actually make a decent fight out of it). Easily the most fun I've had with any MMO game. Had they focused on that and really made that the core of their game, it could have been something great.
Re: EA Artist, Soon To Be Laid Off, Burns EA Management, Discusses Failed MMO
#50"So we shut up and did what we were told, by people too afraid to tackle real problems. It is a culture of fear [...]" In my experience, this is passing the buck. Culture is not something dictated by management. Culture is something that every person in an organization takes part in. Anyone can change it any time they like. It just takes a little brass. Shutting up and doing what you're told is not good enough. I've…
The curse of the leader is that you cannot lead a group of people out of somewhere if they don't really want to leave. If you try, you end up becoming one of them.
I agree that corporate culture is dynamic and that you can make a difference, but you need to find if there is a group of people that is willing to change. Then you need to understand and put in concrete terms the vision that the group already have but does not quite understands. If there is not vision, the only option is to move on.