Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
#2I am working on the first stages of a multiplayer online game.
Any tips on game hosting services with IRCD?
Between 500 and 1000 players is ok for a start.
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Re: Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
#3I am working on the first stages of a multiplayer online game. Any tips on game hosting services with IRCD? Between 500 and 1000 players is ok for a start. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Any reason why a VPS wouldn't cut it? assume I know nothing about games, online or otherwise (at least not since Street Fighter II)
Re: Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
#4"There are no MMO engines for sale that can make robust games. They just aren’t any good yet"
That's somewhat surprising to me. There's so many MMOs out there that have failed for one reason or another that you'd think someone would be trying to salvage their sunk costs by selling the engine.
Despite the competitiveness of the MMO market, there are still a lot of companies trying to break in, so you'd think that there'd be a decent sized market for a product which would shave years off of the development time.
I wonder if part of the problem comes from most MMO companies clinging to life for as long as they can, and then not having the money to rework their technology into something suitable for a third party. Certainly, there have been quality(from a technical standpoint, anyways) games that got released, got a few rounds of post launch patching, and then died from lack of users. I'd bet that with a bit of polish, that sort of proven technology would be a moneymaker.
Re: Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
#5I am working on the first stages of a multiplayer online game. Any tips on game hosting services with IRCD? Between 500 and 1000 players is ok for a start. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
cool! Any more info on the game you can provide?
Re: Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
#6"There are no MMO engines for sale that can make robust games. They just aren’t any good yet" That's somewhat surprising to me. There's so many MMOs out there that have failed for one reason or another that you'd think someone would be trying to salvage their sunk costs by selling the engine. Despite the competitiveness of the MMO market, there are still a lot of companies trying to break in, so you'd think that ther…
Panda 3D was used to make one Disney MMO at least. And that one's free!
Re: Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
#7Seems like there's plenty of room in the MMO industry, if most of them are this bad. Is there some sort of pathological psychology that's involved with wanting to make your own little world that works for bad group dynamics in MMO dev teams?
Re: Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
#8"There are no MMO engines for sale that can make robust games. They just aren’t any good yet" That's somewhat surprising to me. There's so many MMOs out there that have failed for one reason or another that you'd think someone would be trying to salvage their sunk costs by selling the engine. Despite the competitiveness of the MMO market, there are still a lot of companies trying to break in, so you'd think that ther…
Oh, there are a few such companies. Can't think of the names right now, but I did some research into this over the winter. A big problem is that the asset creation is very expensive, and balancing the economic factors is much easier said than done. If you are interested in this, Richard Bartle, inventor of MUD, is the leading thinker in the field.
The best technical system that I know of is the stackless python one developed for Eve Online, which I believe is profitable but has only about $300k players. Mind you, with that number it's insanely complex already. I had to stop playing, because to do so well requires the same level of commitment as a full time job.
Re: Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
#9Seems like there's plenty of room in the MMO industry, if most of them are this bad. Is there some sort of pathological psychology that's involved with wanting to make your own little world that works for bad group dynamics in MMO dev teams?
Its the scope of MMO's thats the problem. Building a massive game world, with massive networking requirements is very hard.
Re: Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"
#10"There are no MMO engines for sale that can make robust games. They just aren’t any good yet" That's somewhat surprising to me. There's so many MMOs out there that have failed for one reason or another that you'd think someone would be trying to salvage their sunk costs by selling the engine. Despite the competitiveness of the MMO market, there are still a lot of companies trying to break in, so you'd think that ther…
Why not use an open source one? I saw a Google tech talk by Keith Fulton, one of the main architects of PlaneShift. He said that although the engine is GPLed, the characters, rules, scenery, etc. are all separate from the main project and can be scripted. So if someone wanted to, they could improve the GPL engine while creating proprietary art and storyline that could then be marketed.