Gods and Heroes Canceled

WarCry was one of the first with the news that Perpetual Entertainment's years-in-the-making MMOG Gods and Heroes is now canceled. The title was due out in August, and was pushed back after changes to the animation system were put into place. Now on 'indefinite hold', it appears a game just weeks or months away from release will never see commercial production. From the article: "Our source tells us that the majority of the Gods and Heroes development team has been let go as part of the move, which comes only a few weeks after they had downsized and pushed back the release date. The Star Trek Online team, those who worked on the Perpetual Platform (which was recently licensed to BioWare) and a small number of people from the Gods and Heroes team will be remain with the company." For a great deal more usefully cynical commentary, F13 (as always) has us covered.

Re:Where the money is ...

[Fozzyuw]

suspect Star Trek Online will do better than yet another Sword & Sorcery game

You make an good observation. Richard Bartle, author of "Designing Virtual Worlds" [amazon.com] talked about this same aspect.

Here's a snippit of what he has to say...

Why are there so few Wild West vitual worlds? Because it's very hard to explain why Joe Newbie's character can't enter a shop, buy a loaded six-gun, and empty it into the back of a character someone else has been playing for five years. They didn't call those things "equalizers" for nothing! Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror worlds have fiction-preserving ways out of this, as do ones based another hundred years or more into the past. It's not the only issue, though - there are plenty more. Following are some examples:

• Crime fiction doesn't work well as a genre because players don't want to divulge clues to one another. This means they're discouraged from communicating; most designers would prefer to encourage them.
• Comedy flops as a genre. You laugh the first time something funny happens, but by th etenth time that same thing happens, it ceases to amuse you.
• Romance doesn't work for virtual worlds. Sex does, but romance doesn't. If you start out with the former, you rapidly end up with the later.
• Lone heroes or heroines don't translate well into virtual worlds. It doesn't make sense to have 5,000 people running around who all act like Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, James Bond, or Dr Who. There wouldn't be room for them in the real world, let alone a virtual one

~ Designing Virtual Worlds, Richard A. Bartle, New Riders, p.40-41

The gem is just one of many great points he covers. Anyone who's a fan of video games and MMO's would probably truly enjoy reading this book. It's basically a complete history of MMO's with great details on how virtual worlds work and how they don't.

I've learned a lot in just 100 pages. Though, it was released in 2003, so it's only current up to Dark Age of Camelot, which is a bit sad as I would LOVE to hear his views on the monster that is World of Warcraft as he analysis games such as EQ, DAoC, Ultima Online, MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHES, AC, AO, and SWG.

Cheers,
Fozzy