IBM MMOG Roundtable Rundown

Plaguelands has up a rundown on the recent IBM MMOG Roundtable, with speakers such as Steven Reid, Raph Koster, and Geoff Heath putting in their two cents on the growing massive industry. Krones is not shy about voicing his opinions as regards the speakers and their effectiveness. From the article: "Continuing on, despite my subjective disagreement, Steven Reid; Directory of Community Relations NCsoft Europe stepped in after Heath and he pretty much spoke general edification about mmo communities. His presentation was average, not up to the quality of articles seen from community specialist Jessica Mulligan, but I believe he is well qualified in doing what he does and has an excellent head on his shoulders. The defining part of his presentation on community building is that community leaders should be local and native from that community. This is crucial for many reasons... including the most important, cultural differences." Also includes links to streaming media of the event.

Re:Handcrafted content

[RaphKoster]

You're missing the point... it's about cost of development, not about the hours alone. The reason why the MMOG content tends to be more basic than the stuff in a single player game is because the manhours spent to develop one hour of content are radically different in the two games. Single-player games can invest more in a given hour of gameplay, basically. In the more polished games like Half-Life 2, there's weeks spent on a single MINUTE of gameplay. MMOs, because of the extended play time that people demand from them, must supply more content, and by necessity it gets stretched thin. This is going to get much worse with time--EA has publicly mentioned teams of 200+ for next generation sports titles, and how many hours of content does Madden have, really? In the long run, this is not a good trendline for the industry. Not only will it lead to more overwork and quality of life issues like the ones that came to the forefront this year, but it will also cause budgets to continue to rise. As they rise, you're going to see a few effects:

• the required sales figures for break even may push prices up
• the high sales figures required for break-even will force blockbuster titles to greater conservatism
• more publisher consolidation as those who cannot afford the price tag get swallowed up
• a greater emphasis on hit-driven business, potentially leading to fewer choices for consumers

You will probably also see some other effects:

• More indie shops bypassing publishers altogether. Not everyone will be able to pull off what Valve did with Steam, however.
• The continuation of the flight of developers from console and AAA development and towards casual games and indie games (a major trend in the last few years)

Extrapolate from the film industry if they had to keep reinventing the camera every year, because that sort of Hollywoodish business model is what we're talking about here. The solutions I put forth are hardly unique to me, by the way. They're the underlying point behind what Will is doing with Spore, for example.

Re:To summarize

[Dachannien]

Apparently, people place value on learning from the mistakes of others.