Does a Game Have To Fail To Get a Real Ending? 178
After the closure of Tabula Rasa over the weekend, the Opposable Thumbs blog asks if that's what it takes for a game to have an actual ending these days. Quoting: "It's no surprise that most games hope for a sequel, as it's the easiest way to get some of that money back while taking advantage of the staff, engine, assets, and other advantages you've banked while creating the first title. The problem? This has lead to a generation of cliff-hangers at worst, and endings that hedge their bets at best. ... As all the game's characters die, as the servers are shut down, as the data is erased or backed up and then boxed or whatever happens to MMO data once the game is done, it's hard not to be a little sad. The sights and sounds of the world of Tabula Rasa are gone, forever. All the memories written into those ones and zeroes will quickly be forgotten, and no one will walk those grounds again." Massively put together a few screenshots and videos to commemorate the ending of the game.
Not just - or primarily - games that this affects (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd go broader than games. Pretty much any mass market entertainment these days has to fail to get a real ending, and even then it doesn't usually manage it.
When was the last time you went to the cinema to watch a major release that didn't end with a blatant hook for a sequel? When was the last time you saw a TV show end without some form of cliff-hanger? And yes... when was the last time you saw a game end without a plug for a sequel?
I think TV has it worst. The push to wring as many seasons as possible out of a particular intellectual property has destroyed the capability of a generation of screenwriters to actually write an ending for a story. They write a strong beginning to get people going, then just sit down and churn out "middle" for season after season until the ratings drop and the network starts to swing the axe. Then, if possible, they write in an ending from whatever point in the story they'd managed to get up to.
I remember when I got into watching anime, back in around 2001, the first thing that struck me was that many series did actually have endings. Sure, in some cases the endings were incomprehensible, but at least they were there. However, even with anime, as time has gone one, the classic stand-alone 13 or 26 episode series has fallen from favour in recent years.
The problem is that we are creating a body of cultural products which will not stand the test of time. Now, ok, you can write off 95% (at least) of modern pop culture as ephemera, but it would still be nice to think that we might actually be creating a few things that will still be watched, read or played in fifty years time (and beyond). But unless things have ending, it just won't happen.
Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down? How many modern TV stories have been ruined by this kind of thing? The X-Files? Lost? Buffy?
Ironically, given what sparked this discussion, MMOs don't actually need an ending. They're not usually intended as a story as such - more as an ongoing, but usually static, world that players participate in. They generally kind of exist in the same continuity-free zones as daily-gag comic strips in newspapers and the like. That they ended Tabula Rasa in the way they did is actually kind of cool and probably rather better than the shoddy game deserved.
Re:Not just - or primarily - games that this affec (Score:3, Informative)
2001? Long anime has been around before that. For example, Detective Conan started airing in 1996, and still is. Dragon Ball, though a bit shorter at ~150 episodes, aired back in the 80's in Japan.
On the other hand, there are still way more "stand-alone" animes than long ones. Though, if a stand-alone anime becomes really popular and well-received, they'll produce a second season for it, such as with Code Geass. I see nothing wrong with that as long as the second season is good as well (and in the case
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True but Detective Conan doesn't feel like it's just dragging on and on. There is still a lot of story left in that series but it's always exciting and interesting so I'm happy to have another 300 or whatever episodes.
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Code Geass was planned from the start to be two seasons, like many Sunrise shows.
(And the second season was still horrible, geez.)
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Sadly I can point to George Lucas as a good example of that. He's clearly stated that he wont make eps 7-9 for starwars because he wants to do something else before he dies!
Ah, in a rare moment of lucidity, he saves us all...
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Re:Not just - or primarily - games that this affec (Score:5, Insightful)
Authors may also want to decide whether they are actual people who deserve to have a life of their own, or simply story vending machines which exist to provide people with a lfew hours entertainment and then fade away.
And he has this to say on the subject [livejournal.com]. Given the choice between hearing about how GRRM has been watching football all day, or reading a hacked up finale to an otherwise great series of books which he just felt he needed to put together even though he was miserable doing it, I'll be one of the first to order him some beers and pizza and hand him the remote.
Re:Not just - or primarily - games that this affec (Score:4, Insightful)
Authors also have to decide whether or not they want to eat. Once one story has sold, it's a lot easier selling sequels to it than to sell something entirely new. If they don't sell stories, they don't eat. So sequels and long-running series are the norm.
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I lost my mod points yesterday, otherwise I'd mod you up.
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And I think that the bigger part of the issue is that this so called 'obligation' is a load of crap. If you sign a contract with a publisher to write a certain number of books then you should fulfill that contract, but the act of reading a book does not somehow place the author in your debt.
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I don't feel Martin owes me anything. And by the same token I don't owe him anything. He lost the plot with the last volume of Ice & Fire and so I won't be reading any more. I wish the hell he'd never even started the damn saga. Hard luck on me.
After that and the Wheel of Time I won't be getting caught a third time.
From now on, it's only finished stories for me. None of the ones I have read could be described as failures.
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And even sadder, this is not new. In my opinion, Dune never really ended, either. It was only terminated by the death of Frank Herbert, and I know from historical articles that he had other stuff planned. That stuff is all lost, now and will always be.
No, the Brian Herbert books don't count. They're not a continuation of the original in any way; they're inspired by the original and in some ways are a reasonable attempt to close the gaps and tie up the loose ends that were left when Frank died.
The lack of an
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What are you talking about? I thought the ending in God Emperor was very satisfying.
Wait--are you trying to tell me he wrote books after that one?
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You mean Dune actually had a sequel???
hawk, who thought those vapid things with "Dune" in the name were yet more dismal fan-fiction, like for Star Trek
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On a more positive note, maybe Sanderson will manage to tie everything in the last book. The Mistborn books as a trilogy worked quite well. No loose threads in the end.
I'm hoping Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles does the same.
I'll say... according to Amazon, now it's scheduled for september 29. And it's not even a se
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Dune (Score:2)
I thought the second non-canon book was OK, or at least bits of the end were. The co-authors probably had more original stuff to work with for that one. The first I found to be pretty bad, not in tune with the mood of the earlier books, and the last one was better but still significantly worse than any book in the series actually written by Frank Herbert. Way better than anything else I've picked up by Brian Herbert, though. I finish almost anything I start to read, but I've discarded some of his stuff.
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Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down? How many modern TV stories have been ruined by this kind of thing? The X-Files? Lost? Buffy?
The inherent assumption that you are making is that Shakespeare would would have a bad sequel. I don't think this is true. Shakespeare was in the business of making money. If he had thought he could make money through making prequels or sequels for some of his popular plays, say Young Hamlet or How We Miss Caesar, he would have, and some of them would have been excellent.
However, I really think that you're missing the point. You're really comparing apples and oranges when you compare Shakespeare's plays
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He did. And he did. Henry IV Part 2 was basically a tacked-on sequel to wildly popular Henry IV Part 1, where he reversed all the character development of Prince Henry (the future Henry V) to do it all over again. And then he did The Merry Wives of Windsor to bring Falstaff back for yet another encore.
Re:Not just - or primarily - games that this affec (Score:5, Insightful)
"When was the last time you went to the cinema to watch a major release that didn't end with a blatant hook for a sequel?"
The only films this statement really applies to are the "Blockbuster" style of films. I would say that the majority of films don't end in this fashion (then again, I am rather choosy regarding the films I watch these days, so perhaps I just don't notice).
What's perhaps worse are those films that are not expected to have sequels, but because they're successful, you end up getting a bright spark claiming it's time for a sequel.
That small gripe aside, you're spot on. I remember an interview with Dominic Monaghan (from Lost) who was saying (around Season two or three) that the original script for Lost was intended to end after Season Three or Four, but the studio executives objected and told them to stretch it out much further. Funnily enough, this was around the same time I lost interest in the show.
I find this approach alienating. It decreases the chance of new viewers being attracted to a show (how many people want to play catchup with a weeks' worth of viewing just to figure out what's going on), not to mention that the "indefinite" approach is likely to encourage a high fall-out rate as people either get bored, annoyed at the never-ending and increasingly more unbelievable plot twists, or simply fatigued.
Oh, and yeah, kids, get off my lawn!
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In Japan... (Score:2)
> I think TV has it worst. The push to wring as many seasons as possible out of a particular intellectual property has destroyed the capability of a generation of screenwriters to actually write an ending for a story.
Anime may have leaned towards no ending series goes on as long as it can, but many still stop at one season. Berserk. Fruits Basket.
Japanese Live Action dramas usually only go for one season. Stories are so much better with a beginning, a middle and an end.
c.f. The X-files. a beginning, midd
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I, for one, am looking forward to the end of Battlestar Galactica in a few weeks time...
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The first series of 'Sledge Hammer' ended with a nuclear explosion destroying LA. And it STILL came back for another series! So writers should not be afraid to end stories if they wish - you can always explain your way out of it if you get another chance.
Re:Not just - or primarily - games that this affec (Score:5, Funny)
Ooooh, surveys! We're getting so MySpace these days.
"When was the last time you went to the cinema to watch a major release that didn't end with a blatant hook for a sequel?"
Changeling
"When was the last time you saw a TV show end without some form of cliff-hanger?"
Off the top of my head, Life on Mars which is extremely ironic since the TV show has a sequel and the sequel is actually pretty decent once you get past the first two episodes.
"And yes... when was the last time you saw a game end without a plug for a sequel?"
Mario Galaxy (also ironic since there will no doubt be a sequel)
"Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down?"
Yes.
"How many modern TV stories have been ruined by this kind of thing? The X-Files? Lost? Buffy?"
42
Now pass this along to 6 other friends or you will be cursed forever and your wang will fall off (if equipped).
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I agree with you on The X-Files and Lost, but Buffy had a very strong ending. The characters continued to develop throughout the show's run until a very climactic ending.
Buffy suffered more from losing focus in the middle of the seasons. A couple of them start strongly, lose their way a bit in the middle and then have a strong ending. But that tends to be true of a lot of shows that work to a standard 22 episode seas
Re:Not just - or primarily - games that this affec (Score:2)
When was the last time you saw a TV show end without some form of cliff-hanger?
Avatar: The Last Airbender. But then, they actually planned their arc. Before that, Cowboy Bebop. Before that, Firefly. Before that, Babylon 5.
when was the last time you saw a game end without a plug for a sequel?
Fallout 3. Mirror's Edge. Dead Space.
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The immediate story (getting Kate off the hook for Pope's murder) was resolved, but the news report during the credits saying Faith and Kate were on the run is just begging for a Mirror's Edge 2.
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Don't forget Stargate Atlantis. That had a great ending imho.
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Like Seinfeld? (Score:2)
You're probably right for shows like 24, but I don't think you're right for most sitcoms.
The TV show Seinfeld had a pretty definitive ending (despite the spinoffs that followed). It sucked.
Contrast that to South Park and Family Guy, where although there's a tiny bit of ploy carry-over from one episode to the next, each individual episode tends to have an ending that completely wraps up that episode's story arc.
So the thing common to Seinfeld, South Park, and Family Guy, is that they do have good endings: a
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So the thing common to Seinfeld, South Park, and Family Guy, is that they do have good endings: at the end of each episode.
South Park:
"You know what? I've learned something today."
Family Guy:
"Yes, but theoretically, if someone watched the events of that simulation from start to finish, only to find out that none of it really happened...I mean, you donâ(TM)t think that it would be just like a...giant..middle finger to them?"
"Well, hopefully, they would have enjoyed the ride."
"I dunno, man, I think you piss a lotta people off that way."
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How did the Seinfeld finale fail? The characters were thrown in jail for doing what they'd always done: nothing. There was really no other way it could have ended satisfactorily. Typical sitcom endings where all of the stories are wrapped up (Jerry and Elaine getting back together, or Kramer finding his long lost father, for instance) would have been completely out of style for the series.
Did you expect something else?
I say it failed because, from what I saw anyway, a significant majority of the fans said the ending sucked.
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Sequels, when done well, allow for the characters to evolve and become more complex. Normally for a Movie a good chunk is establishing the character. Then less time with actual plot in the 1 1/2 - 3 hour block of time. Sequels allow for the character to go from where they left off, or further down where their character background is already known.
Prequels, on the other hand are for more dangerous, As the plot usually stinks as they need to establish the characters again for their younger self, and try to ma
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Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down? How many modern TV stories have been ruined by this kind of thing? The X-Files? Lost? Buffy?
You are judging two different things. You sho
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MMOs don't actually need an ending. They're not usually intended as a story as such - more as an ongoing, but usually static, world that players participate in. They generally kind of exist in the same continuity-free zones as daily-gag comic strips in newspapers and the like.
This, in an nutshell, is the problem with MMOs. I love RPGs, but I have no interest in a perpetual grind.
Hamlet (Score:2)
If anyone could drag a Shakespearian plot out for 17 plays, Hamlet could do it. Or at least think about doing it or not doing it for 17 plays before being forced into action when the Globe burns down.
Staple of television from the beginning (Score:2)
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> the Fugitive never would find his one-armed man,
He DID, though. The ratings for that episode were supposedly not matched until the last episode of MASH.
> The Prisoner would never escape from the island.
He did, several times. The last time has him discover that he (or his exact double) is also Number 1, as I recall.
That is 2 out of 3 examples that are wrong. Boy, do you suck at arguments.
The Invaders (a Quinn-Martin production, just like The Fugitive) didn't have an ending. Neither did Run For Yo
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Hey, I still remember the awesome Hulk TV movies, including 'The Trial of the Incredible Hulk' which utterly and unamibiously ended that particular series.
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But Lost and Buffy? It was around season 3 that they announced their plan for a total of 6 seasons, with a clear cut ending, no movies after the show's over or anything. By the end of 6 seasons, it would be wrapped up quite nicely.
And Buffy was just stellar tv. Yea I'm a biast Whedon
Ruling out a sequel is not always a good thing (Score:2)
If you manage to tie up all the loose ends, then yes, you might not have a powerful and satisfying story. But you may also never be able to revisit the characters in that story. To put it bluntly, sometimes you want to have that option, since doing so can make the entire series better. The original Starwars movie was reasonably self contained. But the original trilogy as a whole is a much better story.
Shows like Lost or X-Files that seem to lurch forward with no idea what the hell they are doing may wel
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Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down?
Yet another sign of the decline of today's educational system.
Clearly ou are not familiar with Shakespeare's little known swan song, "Tempest II: This Time We Mean It."
It is very rarely performed, possibly because the play doesn't work without the finale in which the theater burns, and the characters rescue most, but not all, of the audience.
For that matter, it is rarely covered (or even its existence admitted!) in most college courses on Shakespeare, due to administrator's prissy ideas about classrooms cat
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Well, Fallout 3 definitely has an end. And a lot of people are pissed about that. Finish the main quest and you're done. Yes you can load a save from before finishing, but you don't get to play around at all wiping out the last mutants as the world starts to clear of radiation.
But OTOH, if they want to do a fallout 4 it wouldn't be that hard to right a story set another couple hundred years in the future when some other calamity has destroyed things.
Probably the better question would by, "is there any point
Re: Anime (Score:2)
On the topic of that, even if there's an ending, mechandise and other related spinoff stuff will still be made/sold years after the series ends. Just wanted to add that.
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"Can you imagine if Hamlet never came to an end (ok, if you've ever sat through a bad student production, it might have felt like that) but instead ran on for 17 plays, with 8-12 comprising the little-loved Finland arc, play 4 introducing a new love interest who got written out in play 9 and then the whole thing stopped abruptly after play 17 because the Globe burned down?"
You mean like how fan favourite Falstaff got killed off in Henry V so the eight-play historical cycle could suddenly turn all serious?
Ye
Re:Some shows DO have an ending (Score:4, Interesting)
Star Trek Voyager also had a good ending where they made it back to earth (and beat the Borg as well IIRC, its been a while since I watched the show). I havent seen enough TOS to know how that one ended as a TV series. The real ending to TOS is where Kirk passes the mantle on to a new generation in the NCC-1701A in Generations and also dies in that film (and it was a proper ending at that)
The Voyager ending was a lot of Deus ex Machina for an ending. TOS died without any ending. The "ending" in Generations was a rushed way to kill off Kirk so they could never make another TOS sequel. Tada, Prequel!
The only passable ending I remember to a TV show that was not a cartoon is from Quantum Leap. They actually had enough advanced warning that they could create an ending. Live TV shows have good endings too. Since there's no preparation time, "this is your last week" means they can make the last day special, even if it's a video montage.
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A video montage is supposed to be special lol
It's better than ending in mid senten
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Brian: So, what you're saying is that what you experienced in the simulation didn't really happen, or even matter?
Stewie: Yes, that's correct.
Brian: So, it was sort of like a dream?
Stewie: No, it was a simulation.
Brian: Yes, but, theoretically, if someone watched the events of that simulation from start to finish, only to find out that none of it really happened, I mean... you don't think, that would, j-- be just like a giant middle
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Quantum Leap's finale definitely remains my favorite. But I'd like to add to that: Babylon 5 and Angel. Both productions had advance notice that the series were ending. In "Babylon 5", J. Michael Straczynski closed a major story arc and gave us a chance to watch some core characters remember the past in a very respectful way. It was actually a bit of a tear jerker for me. In "Angel" Joss Whedon ended on a cliffhanger, but it went out in style, leading you to believe that there was no way for the protagonis
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Oh come on. Enterprise? That only got an ending because they were given some advance notice and cobbled together an ending as quickly as possible. The entire show was intended to be milked for years, but lack of popularity killed it when the execs decided they'd had enough. It was only because they knew the fanbase was rabid enough that they agreed to let the show end when the season did, thus allowing that rather bolted on ending.
I mean, really. Is there any of the seasons of Enterprise where that ending w
Re:Some shows DO have an ending (Score:5, Interesting)
TOS - canceled by NBC, revived by fan campaign, canceled again. Was intended to be "Episodic", such that Episode X being broadcast before Episode Y really didn't mean much. There was no "ongoing story" intended.
TNG - A tad of ongoing story but not really enough intended to matter. The "ending" I thought was a pretty damn well-done episode.
DS9 - one hell of an ending, especially after the "switch" from episodic (early seasons) to arc-driven (later seasons, cardassian/dominion war stuff).
Voyager - only existed because it was Berman & Braga's toy. Also, Seven of Boobs. "Ending" was a fanwank from Berman & Braga
Enterprise - could have gone on a lot longer, ESPECIALLY after Paramount execs finally got the message and kicked Berman & Braga off the franchise to get some real writing staff in. Sadly, they were too late and most viewers couldn't be won back.
If you'd like a series that REALLY never ends, try Doctor Who.
Now as for the rest of sci-fi and the rest of writing in general, you have a few different scenarios:
#1 - "Drag it on forever" - arguably you can put shows like Cheers, Frasier, Simpsons (which has jumped the shark so many times the damn thing is just getting bored) here. Also, Dragonball/Dragonball Z/Dragonball GT, or InuYasha/Bleach/Naruto.
#2 - "Oh crap the creator just left but it's still popular" - see West Wing (which got crappy within a season of Sorkin leaving but dragged on two more seasons), or Smallville.
#3 - "Why won't they let it die?" - Lost, Heroes, etc. Caused by desperate networks that know damn well they have nothing palatable to replace it with and we're bored out of our gourds with so-called "reality TV."
#4 - Last, but definitely not least, the rushed/tacked ending, personified by a number of tropes from anime such as the Gainax Ending [tvtropes.org], Mandatory Twist Ending [tvtropes.org], and similar. Basically where you have the writers "counting on" a 2-3 season arc, doing the 3-4 episode "premise and characters" intro, 16-18 episodes of happy silly fluffy slapstick, and then needing to "turn the show serious" at the end. Great examples: just about any anime out there, including (but not limited to) Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion (though that was also the result of Anno going off his meds)...
Now if you want to see a series that had multiple seasons all of which had a real ending, and which kicked the ass of all of these conventions, pick up Slayers sometime.
As for video games... it doesn't have to fail to get a real ending. Some games get an ending, some don't. The Baldur's Gate / Icewind Dale games all had pretty encapsulated stories. Legacy of Kain has a definite cyclical storyline - sure there was "room" for a game centering on Kain afterwards, but they wrapped up Raziel in a nice neat package and there's no harm in leaving the "what happens now" question behind: the focus of contention ever since Soul Reaver (given that the original Blood Omen had a "definite ending" pair and the rest of the series is premised on assuming which ending the player chose and running with it) has been resolved. Hell, we even got to take care of the unfinished business and kill Turel.
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You're implying the Simpsons has ever attempted to have a ongoing story when in reality every episode is basically it's own standalone adventure. In this regard it's not much different from the sunday comics.
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Where do you put Babylon 5 and Avatar the Last Airbender? Two series with definite, planned story arcs and seasons? Avatar was always going to have three seasons, and the story reflects that. Babylon 5 was always going to have 3, 4, or 5 seasons (JMS wrote hooks into the story that would have allowed for abortive wrapups, unfortunately he pulled the line too quick and ended the show with season 4 and it was unexpectedly renewed for a fifth)
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Actually, Avatar was originally supposed to have FOUR seasons: the fourth "Chapter", Air, was supposed to center much more heavily on the whole "spirit world connection" thing (with the face-stealing demon making his promised reappearance). It was only after Nickelodeon treated the show like crap and started playing Futurama-ish timeslot games that they cut it to 3 seasons, and the rushed nature of the final few episodes (ESPECIALLY the rushed, cramped-feeling "finale movie" with the barely-explained Turtle
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I'd stay clear of the movies/OAV's - but otherwise look at what you have! Slayers (TV), Next, and Try are each their own, entirely-encapsulated series with definite endings. Revolution and Evolution-R (no idea why they split the name like that) are working the same.
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I'd be on board for a Coraline 2 - Bedlam Strikes Back.
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Adaptations from stand-alone books, and movies based on real events, don't really count.
By your criteria, we may as well list "Valkyrie" too. ;)
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Cliff-hangers are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
It possible to end a story and still leave enough open for a sequel. A cliff-hanger doesn't end a story, it just stops it. And with the time it takes to create a sequel people will have forgotten about the cliff-hanger when they start the sequel.
Memories... (Score:2)
All the memories written into those ones and zeroes will quickly be forgotten, and no one will walk those grounds again
All the more reason to make sure you're actually having fun playing. Too many people think they're accomplishing something and end up ignori...
.... BOP EPIC!! Finally, about time that trinket dropped. I mean really they need to up the drop rate, or make it boe, all this grinding is ridiculous.
What was I saying again?
Does a Game Have To Fail To Get a Real Ending? (Score:2)
Do Games With Real Endings Fail?
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Do Games With Real Endings Fail?
Only if they can't spin it into a low cost sequel.
If it was really closed off hard they may need to resort to time travel, alternate dimensions, or the ever popular "it was all a dream" approach.
Single-Player Games (Score:2, Interesting)
It appears that single-player games can afford to have real endings, yet be successful in a sequel.
Not sure about Warcraft though.
Others include movies (Indiana Jones, Star Trek) and books (Tintin, Asterix). Weird, huh?
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I forget, do we like final fantasy in these parts or not?
Final Fantasy, while the very definition of a game series that has been milked for all it is worth, is notable in the fact that almost all of the iterations of the franchise come to a concise ending. Characters die, are rejoined with their long lost whosits et cetera. The Dragon Quest series does this too, although they do tend towards three game story-arcs with a running theme.
Given that the two above series are two of the most successful franchises
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FF XII also rehashes the horrid world Ivalice From FFTA (as opposed to the war-torn Kingdom of Ivalice from the far superior FFT).
Whingy Bishonen weren't bad enough, they had to make a pseudo-MMO with furries in it...
Does a Game Have To Fail To Get a Real Ending? (Score:2)
Im saying this again : OPEN SOURCE IT (Score:2)
and it will live forever.
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On who's servers?
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On who's servers?
Presumably the same people interested in supporting it as open-source. Servers are very, very cheap.
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doesn't matter... within a few years you could emulate (if required) the cluster within a virtual machine. More to the point, if that was really the case you wouldn't have any unofficial wow or daoc servers available now like you do. (just google them)
The reason most companies do not want to open source is that ANYONE (including the fans) could take that code base, rewrite the code through love (or whatever else spurs these entities on) and bring out a better mmo than the company had planned as a sequel.
Wh
What game developer will OS a viable game? (Score:2)
What game developer still in business is going to open-source a game that's actually using state-of-the-art technology? I'm not talking about Doom[three versions back] or the Second Life client, I mean an actual state-of-the art game with a story arc and competitive graphics and physics.
Even if they have rights to enough of the IP to do it, why should they? They'd just be creating a competitor to their NEXT game.
Leisure Suit Larry series (Score:4, Informative)
LSL is the counterpoint... these games were full of fail, and yet there was always a happy ending.
And they produced what, half a dozen sequels to it? Well, I'm including the missing one.
Missing option (Score:3, Funny)
End it the classic way! (Score:2)
With a "kill screen" [wikipedia.org]
When I was a kid we didn't HAVE friends to play with, if we wanted morrpmgsss (or whatever you youngsters call 'em) we had to leave the house and truck down to the arcade. Then we had to wait in line to continue the life of someone else's character. And by "mass" we meant 4 players and we liked it.
It wasn't about exp and armor either, it was about gold. We didn't have to wait for a posse to go into the dungeon. Our games were ALL dungeon and we liked it. None of this customizing your
Brain dead (Score:2)
For me, I consider a game dead when I stop playing it, stop hearing about it from friends and stop visiting the website. Isn't that pretty much the point at which it dies for each of us?
Take Ultima Online. Notably the first graphical MMO that reached a real massive population even though it was surpassed in many ways by successors. It's still runnin
It's not about a sequel (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's not confuse MMOs with "normal" single player games here. MMOs have no ending. You are supposed to play (and pay) forever. That's what they're about. Single player games need no cliffhanger to spawn a sequel. Did Call of Duty have a cliffhanger? Or Command and Conquer? The big nasty warlord needn't escape your grasp in the end to allow a sequel, wars didn't go out of fashion just because Hitler was beaten in WW2, there's plenty of nasties to start new wars. And just because the princess was rescued in the first part you needn't let the bad guy escape to have her kidnapped for a sequel.
MMOs continue for a simple reason. It's not about the game and "beating" its content. You can do that fairly easily and in relatively short time (depending on MMO). It's about items. What makes people play MMOs over and over is that they don't have the last item for their set yet.
That's also why TR failed. No item hunt. You could actually "finish" this game. You have seen all the instances after a fairly short time and ... well, why bother doing it again, it's not like you need to get some ultra-super-duper-rare drop from some boss monster in a 8+ hour 25 people instance.
MMOs today also do what single player games offered for the longest time: Different difficulty levels, for better rewards on higheer levels. You could play on harder modes for better scores for quite a time. Then single player games came equipped with "unlockable" goodies like concept art or better weapons or graphics. MMOs do pretty much the same these days, usually you can choose your difficulty to increase your chance for a drop or to unlock different, more powerful drops, on higher difficulty.
TR failed to deliver any of that.
And that's why TR failed.
tabula rasa was a train wreck (Score:2)
I could never install the game. kept getting a cryptography error.
NCSoft support were useless also. I'd say Garriot needs to make a new game so he can go into space again.
SPOILERS up ahead, enter at your own ri-- (Score:2)
Or you might read stuff like Kirk dies.
Oh, wait...
What a dumb question, don't they play games? (Score:2)
Fallout 3, you die. Was it a failure? No, is it going to get a sequel? It has.
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Gee, thanks for the spoiler alert!
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Fallout 3 is getting a patch later to continue the game after the main story actually with 10 more levels. (360/PC only) Sorry PS3.
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That's what annoys me about the trend of big studio games, it's like the more money you throw at a production, the more it's gonna have to look like a movie. Take GTA IV for example. It's just a huge movie in which you get to partially play the scenes and dick around pointlessly in between scenes for the sake of fun or boredom.
Yeah, it's a great game, but it tries to hard to be just like a movie, so hard it ruins the fun. "You failed the mission? Yay, you get to try it over and over again until you succeed!
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Why were you surprised? You knew from the moment she wielded the sword she was doomed..