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Lead designer gone
7star
Member Posts: 405
According to this article, TSW lead designer Martin Bruusgaard is no longer with Funcom.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/10/secret-worlds-lead-designer-not-with-funcom-anymore/
This makes me a little worried.
EDIT: How do you think this will affect TSW and future design decisions?
Comments
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
now that the game is complete for the most part,his services are probably no longer needed.
that said,that doesnt mean the game isnt hurting.They really need to make it F2P.A lot of people are no longer willing to pay a monthly fee.
How is the game going f2p going to help revenue and fun factor?
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
This is not good. Not good at all.
As far as I know Martin is the father of the ability wheel. Which imo is the heart of TSW. He was also the PvP lead. To that matter it always seemed like he was left with the scraps as far as budget. There was a lot of things he wanted to do, but it all was pushed down the line.
There is a quote from him that stands out to me know having to do with what he wanted in the future, "Once we stabilize the current pvp."
Sounds like he was made the fall guy. I hope someday he gets to lead his on game. Damn this sucks. Good luck Martin.
Yep, people are not willing to pay for a lot of things - everything should be free!
Or wait, folks that are not willing to pay for something...should go without.
Hrmmmm...
Even back at the end of August, Martin was discussing plans they had for TSW...
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
if anything it'll get more people in the door.
If it means spicing up the online store,then im sure they'd oblige.F2P,B2P or whatever.. its most likely inevitable..
in this case if folks decide to go without..
then the game dies.
If you read between the lines of the FC financial release, the future is looking quite bleak for FC.
They are laying off 50% of their people, will not be making any more MMOs, and with the long term state of FC's cashflow and finances, it is doubtful FC will even be around in another year or two.
Things are not just bad at FC, they are worse.
if anything it'll get more people in the door.
If it means spicing up the online store,then im sure they'd oblige.F2P,B2P or whatever.. its most likely inevitable..
So if you cant get someone to pay a sub, how are you going to get them to by from a store?
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Sad news. I'm glad to read he already found alternate employment. How this bodes for TSW reamins to be seen. As long as Ragnar is at the helm I'm not too worried. Still, not the kind of news to inspire confidence.
The game dies if it goes F2P... it becomes just another, well, whatever one wants to call those games.
No doubt TSW came out at the wrong time. Had this come out 2-5+ years ago; it would have been a very different situation. The market is very - F2P - but then again, that's not just with MMOs. Years and years of piracy of movies, music, books, porn, you name it - and - people believe things should be free. Doesn't matter if we're talking about MMOs or if we're talking about games folks are playing on their Android smartphones or iPhones... developers have seen that the majority of people out there are either thieves or the kind of shopper that's obvlious to how much more it costs them to be nickel and dimed.
Instead of games going F2P - the subscription costs should have been increasing. That's not been the case though. They've seen where they can offer a subpar game for free and reap huge profits from folks that do not think twice about spending $1-5 at a time...ignorant of the simple fact that they're spending $20-30-100s of dollars a month.
It's pretty much a moral thing - and - folks lack morals.
A Developer makes a game - do they deserve renumeration for having done that? They provide a virtual world, maintain it, update it - etc, etc, etc...do they deserve to be paid for that?
F2P means people do not believe that is the case.
Ask those same people how they would feel about going to work day in and day out...and not getting paid?
Well...that's different...ahem...yeah...hrmmmm.
So TSW goes F2P, well - it would have to go Freemium. So then you deal with that - you're going to have various levels of players, what are they going to have to buy - what will they get - do they get a stipend - do they have additional access - etc, etc, etc. Does it become P2W?
And...eventually it dies. So going F2P doesn't mean that it would keep it alive... it's just the difference between a quick death and painfully long - drawn out death...
edit: pesky typo
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
He tweeted that he got another job with an IT firm in Norway, he called it a grown up job so I'm assuming it's not game design. If I understand it correctly it's common practice to let people go after the completion of the game but in this case they let people go temporarly too and they will be back when The Secret World picks up in revenue?
EDIT: I think I saw a black cat! 7 years of bad luck incoming!
Definitely not good. A fun game that probably stuck a bit too close to the themepark mode. But honestly I've heard a lot of ideas as to why no one bought the game but I'm not sure anyone really knows. It's likely a really bad combination of things.
Hopefully someone can keep this game afloat as there really is nothing else like it out there.
For many folks, it did kind of come off as that.
They might have been fine with the box cost.
They might have been fine with the box cost and paying a sub.
But then, in looking at the box + sub while also having to upgrade their rig when they could play most other games already...yep, definitely made TSW a very expensive game.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I don't feel like this game "bombed" exactly. Maybe you're right, but I don't want to characterize it that way.
In any case, I'm really happy with TSW and I like to have it along with GW2. I think I'm all set for themepark games with these. I believe (hope maybe) that TSW will continue to grow slowly and the mostly positive player reviews and great community will attract more players over time.
I think (*hope* really) this game can stabilize with at least 200k players about a year or so down the road. I don't know what kind of numbers FC needs to remain profitable with this game, to keep it sub-based, to go f2p, whatever. All I know is that, to me, TSW is the best themepark game I've played. I hope TSW can find its community and that FC can keep it going for the long haul.
I've never felt "loyal" to a game before, like I do to this one. It's something special to me.
Agreed. At best the publicity might pull in some more players but making the game better is smarter, players will slowly increase in that case and mouth to mouth would increase the revenues more than any quick fix.
It's a good point.
How do you think this game could be better?
In my opinion, I would like to see options other than raids added. I'm not a raider, so I'm not going to stick around for that. Also, there are plenty of other games that already offer that.
TSW could focus on something else. For me pvp or exploration would be good -- or adding more "sandbox" elements (another thread).
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I've always liked crafting but atm crafting in TSW is complete garbage imo. It would be good if they'd redesign this thing. Maybe some nice and rare and semi-rare toolkits. Something to create and play with. Why not a stock market of some kind? Maybe even collecting and crafting certain things to open a new area in the future? I'm not a raider either, more like an explorer and crafter.
well the solution to that is bring in servers especially for f2p..that way the main paying community dont feel alienated.