Ultima X Odyssey - Wisdom In Cancellation?

Thanks to Corpnews.com for its discussion of the history of the Ultima MMO franchise in the content of the recent cancellation of MMO title Ultima X: Odyssey. The author argues of the cancellation: "This isn't a surprise. No, really. More fundamentally, all this points to the fact that somebody in EA's headcheese department is scared stiff of potentially sapping subscribers from the only truly successful title [Ultima Online] to come out of the company's development sweatshops." He claims: "Furthermore, all this comes at a time when the amount of 'surefire bets' in the industry seems to be dropping exponentially. Miniscule subscription bases for former hot-ticket games like Horizons and Shadowbane, coupled with disappointing numbers for Star Wars Galaxies - at last count, the game widely predicted to crack the MMO industry open and bring in a new rush of players... make it easier than ever for suits to pull the plug on projects which require millions of dollars to even hit the shallow waters of beta." Where does EA go from here with the online Ultima franchise, given that this is the second cancelled online Ultima title?

MMORPG success? Ha...

[hoferbr]

Are the companys finally realizing that there aren't enought hardcore gamers to sustain all MMORPG titles?
Half of the MMORPG currently in development are doomed to vanish after six months of relative success.

Obvious really.

[TheLink]

They still can have new games and they should before the old stuff gets "real old". But what they need is a new game that enhances the "network effects"- more and more players playing the "same game".

So it has to be compatible with the existing game. e.g. even if it's a new world with different rules etc, the players can be migrated between them, (and probably communicate with each other between worlds - pick the right cost- heck link the "Ether resistance" to the CPU/bandwidth usage if you want) e.g. wormhole/teleport or whatever. Let them retain their attributes and some of their stuff (you could force them to leave behind some items- can't take everything back in the old world).

If you want you could even force them to spend X gp/credits/USD/items etc to travel between the worlds. Or make it a quest or something. Come up with a story.

Maybe some things become transformed into other things during the transfer (greater risk/chance of arbitrage opportunities if you do that).

If lots of players move to the new world, then you can retask/reassign the resources for the old world for the new world.

It is better for you to risk cannibalizing your old game than for SOMEONE ELSE to cannibalize yours.

Perhaps I totally don't get it coz I'm not an MMORPG player or designer. But I don't see why my idea is any worse than frustrating their _developers_. Good developers/artists want to see their work become reality, bad ones are relieved if it never does :).

Cancel stuff enough times and they'll make a new game - for a competitor.

Shit or get off the pot

[Osmosis_Garett]

EA has been dangling its toes in the online market for too long. They've taken a few strange steps in that way, and have not supported sure fire winners (Hello, EA Sports on XBOX LIVE? Cmon, even I'd buy an XBox to play that).

UO was published by Origin in the right place at the right time, and that sort of success is very hard to mirror. EQ has done it, as has DAoC to some degree. There is also Ragnarok and Lineage (1, not 2) to remember, so don't even begin to suggest that there isnt money out there to support these games. a subscription of about 20,000 is the magic number that these companies are aiming for to break a profit, and with a bit of imagination and a bit of risk, thats not a problem.

Take that, bandwagon!

[pommaq]

Why does each and every publisher need to have some grandiose MMORPG in their line-up? It makes no sense - the market is small, the maintenance costs are high, and with the treadmill setup everyone's using there really isn't room for more than one MMORPG (sometimes not even one, since most of them want you to put in at least an hour or two a day) per potential user. Totally senseless, it's been like that since the start, and I can't help but chuckle condescendingly every time a new UO/EQ clone goes down the toilet. Love seeing that herd mentality get punished, even if it probably means tighter budgets and less risk from the EA mooks in the future.

Now, if you really have to make a massively multiplayer game, why not try some new ideas? Raph Koster's word is far from law, games like Puzzle Pirates have shown that level grind isn't the only way of doing things and that it's possible to have a vibrant online community without levels, without requiring you to be unemployed and/or a college student to be successful, and without beards and dwarves. The MMORPG scene consists 99% of me-too games and we really don't need any more of those. So, I'm not crying over Ultima X. Its predecessor was revolutionary in many ways and deserved its success, but honestly - what would this game bring to the table that wasn't already there? Creativity, please!

Re:Take that, bandwagon!

[0x0d0a]

Why does each and every publisher need to have some grandiose MMORPG in their line-up? It makes no sense - the market is small, the maintenance costs are high, and with the treadmill setup everyone's using there really isn't room for more than one MMORPG (sometimes not even one, since most of them want you to put in at least an hour or two a day) per potential user.

I agree that the market is vastly over-saturated. However, there are reasons why each publisher can be easily convinced that an MMORPG is worth the risks:

* Very, very good antipiracy protection -- you're selling a service, not really the game.

* A subscription model. Aside from making more money per year than a per-copy game, it's easy to get people "subscribed".

* Good, free AIs. Oh, there are disadvantages to having humans running other NPCs (such as out-of-context behavior), but major advantages. People are smart, understand commands in English and can organize tactics. They can become friends (and hence increase the value of the game). If there is competition, there is generally tough competition out there -- in most single-player games, it's possible to beat/out-manuver all the computer AIs.

* A channel to make more sales. If you have a strong media channel to your customers, you can freely push ads to other products that you're making.

* A predictable revenue source. If you have sales numbers for each month, you have nice, predictable numbers to work with to show investors and whatnot.

* Greater freedom from deadlines. If a developer doesn't have to finish all of a game by a deadline -- he can build another country while being paid by revenues from initial sales -- he has the ability to work on a project that is uniquely his for a long period of time.

* Planned obsolescence. There is now a lot of video game content out there. Every person that is still spending time playing Tetris or Pac-Man or Super Metroid is not buying new games. Unless you can somehow springboard new sales from the old, having people continuing to play your game is *bad* -- it means that your market is less interested in buying your next game. I can play a fifteen-year-old videogame for most systems today. With an MMORPG, once the other players are gone, the game is "gone", and a player has nothing to do but buy the next product from the publisher.

* Gambling mentality -- the nature of MMORPGs has shown to exploit well addictive personalities. Vendors love addictive types of people -- they will do a marvelous job of shoveling money into the company's pockets forever. MMORPGs generally have no "end", continually have new content, and generally do a good job of forcing people to *start* playing a little bit per time period, making it easy to play a *lot* per time period without an effort of will.

Soaps & sitcoms

[LondonLawyer]

I disagree that MMO is necessary "a bad bad bad business idea". I do think the approach is still wrong.

It's unrealistic to imagine that a large and complex online environment can be built, provided and maintained for a large player base without costing the developers big bucks. The automatic reaction is to charge players to buy the game and then latch onto them with a monthly fee. Games are pushed out the door early to try to claw back cash from the initial purchasers and suffer because players don't perceive their end of the deal as value for money. When I've paid the equivalent of a regular game just to be able to pay the monthly subscription and I need to keep an internet connection all the time I'm playing, I'm going to want to be seriously impressed. MMOs seem to me to have too much to live up to in terms of expectation (and this is compounded by hype) for them to be able to deliver. Look at SWG as a case in point. The approach is too geared towards providing a product in the form of a game and not focussed enough on providing the service to justify the monthly fee.

Where does the money come from to support a soap or a sitcom? In part advertising, in part merchandising. How does a soap or sitcom develop the following which these revenue streams depend on? Mostly because they are provided at low cost, often because they start small and low budget. Nobody paid a monthly fee just to watch Friends but the cost was bundled with a package (cable subscription, whatever) which allowed you access to the show. It grew huge. Same with Buffy. Same with most any big TV show you can think of.

These things need to be bundled together as packages which can be subscribed to with minimum front-end cost to the subscriber. They need to bring in advertising and merchandising to subsidise the cost as much as possible. They need big network names to get on board and turn them mainstream. I don't think that day is too far off and I think predictions of the imminent death of online gaming are premature. There will be plenty that fail (as with TV) but the few that are successful will eventually be huge.

Re:Soaps & sitcoms

[2TecTom]

Ok, ok enough already. You've made your points. I agree, MMO's are more short-lived. However, I believe the whole concept is being approached the wrong way. I believe the problem isn't in the MMO's, it is in the corporate model.

Actually, I'm surprised that no one here has suggested an open community development effort. Why not create open standards, engines and objects. GPL and copyleft everything. Let Google handle the who's who and rankings. Then stand back and watch the MMO's grow.

Who knows, maybe that'll be the next "web"

Star Wars, breaking things open?

[e.m.rainey]

Since when was STG suppose to be the big thing?

Yes I was excited about it until I found out that I couldn't be a Jedi (a 0.002% chance is not good enough for me). And to add insult to injury, once a Jedi dies, it's dead FOREVER!

FAT CHANCE, buster! My dollars go to City of Heroes and DAoC now.

Re:Worlds of Warcraft...

[Carnildo]

I think we've seen it: City of Heroes.

New development funding model

[Doctor Cat]

I think instead of this "old school" model of "put in millions or tens of millions up front, then ship a boxed product that's real slick and flashy"... The huge risk in this area, coupled with the player's being not only willing to accept continual upgrades of the software with new features and art, but actually wanting it... These two factors suggest to me a model where a publisher makes a number of FAR less expensive prototypes, and then picks out the one or two that players are going nuts over and people are swarming in to play, and decide "THAT is where we're going to add five or ten million bucks worth of art and finish the job".

Hmmm, I think I need to send some emails to some other people I know in the industry. :X)