Disney Takes Aim at Movie Based MMOGs 67
eldavojohn writes "Disney has announced plans to launch more movie-based Massively Multiplayer Online Games. With plans already on the table for a "Pirates of the Caribbean" title, additional properties are apparently now under consideration for a similar treatment. They are aiming at teens more than the older crowd, and don't seem to be interested in fighting for players from World of Warcraft or Second Life." From the article: 'We plan to build more virtual worlds like "Pirates" based on a broad range of our properties,' Iger told attendees of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas ... 'You can imagine living in Buzz and Woody's toy universe,' he added, recalling Disney Pixar's computer animated hit feature film 'Toy Story'."
Re:This is hilarious (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is most companies are looking for a cash grab based on IP.
repeat of earlier flops (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems that every company that wants to get into the MMORPG game makes the same predictable mistakes. Thankfully, most of these never make it to the final "go live" moment. Some can limp along for a while but are nowhere near the leaders of the pack. It's just a waste of time when companies can't learn the mistakes they watch their competitors make.
In this case, it's making the fatal assumption that "great character-based story will make great MMO franchise." MMORPGs are about the players, not about a few trademarked names that served as the ensemble core of a story. To entertain the players, they must feel like the star of their personal story, and if the premise is about the key personalities in that world, there's a big disconnect there. Find mythical worlds which don't rely on the obvious few characters, where everyone has a chance at being great in an original way. The pre-authored content should be about the settings, the mythos, the backstories, not about the "main characters."
Example: don't make an MMORPG about Harry Potter's world. There's a huge castle, a wonderful surrounding countryside, four great built-in guilds, and more magic spells than you can shake a stick at (literally). But you're also going to have five thousand people who can't succeed without a ragged scar on their forehead in an entirely predictable way.
Example: don't make an MMORPG about Cap'n Jack Sparrow's world. There's a huge ship, a great collection of ports of call and legendary treasure to plunder. But you're also going to have five thousand people who can't succeed without swaggering around drunk on sun and rum in an entirely predictable way.
I could cut and paste a few more examples, but you could just look down the NetFlix Top 100 and the Amazon Top 100 for a lot of the ideas that are being discussed in MMORPG board rooms today.
Tron? (Score:5, Interesting)
The TRON2.0 game was pretty enjoyable, and Disney could build an entire universe around the premises in TRON and the later game without even trying. Even the game engine is ready to go. How much tweaking would it need to convert the Tron2.0 game into a MMORPG?
And if you could enter your world as a "User" or otherwise have your "Program" running around according to it's own script when you weren't in control, it would be pretty cool. Having your program search for interesting items / escape routes etc, and emailing you back in the real world when it found them, allowing you to control the game either from the command line or email and then using a full client when you wanted to roam around.
Probably the era of the MCP would be the ideal time.... As you recall, the MCP controlled all the NPCs while the programs were essentially independant reflections of their users... Better still if you could download a basic bitmap of your size/features as parameters, your program could even look like you... (Not that difficult to send along with co-ordinate information if well thought out).
And you could develop your "User" powers over time, gain access to Tanks, Recognisers and Lightcycles to move through a massive world inside the computer. Even set up your own hard drive file area to store them
As much as the thought of a Disney MMORPG bothers me, I (and I imagine other programmers) could probably really get into and enjoy something like this. Kinda like Second Life but with Neon...
GrpA.
Disney MMORPG (Score:4, Interesting)
Before A Tale in the Desert [atitd.com], we proposed an episodic MMORPG to Disney based on A Bug's Life. We built a playable (2D) prototype that was a lot of fun. Characters from the movie were NPCs - for instance, Flick would give you "blueprints" for crazy contraptions, and you'd have to scavenge and make all the parts for each one.
You could find grain and plant it to grow wheat shoots to use as rubber-bands. You could climb the tree and toss down acorns to other players. They could show them to Flick who would suggest an invention to pry the nut from the cap, and then the cap could be used with glue that came from sap as part of a gear for other contraptions.
Ultimately you'd build a little ant-sized sailboat/raft to get yourself and trhe others off the island, and that would lead to episode 2. IIRC, the content that we had could be played through in an hour or two by a team of 3-5 people.
Unfortunately the project never made it further than the prototype - I think this was all in 1999. But I still think that A Bug's Life is *the* Disney property that needs an MMO.
Re:World Of Disney (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is hilarious (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Guild Wars is not an MMO. It is an RPG that allows you to play with other people, called a CORPG (co-op role-playing game)
2. The lack of a subscription fee is not what makes Guild Wars pwn; it's the bait. I refuse to pay monthly for games, and that's what got me to buy GW. However, it is all the other things that have made me stay. (ask if you really want a list)