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[Column] General: Wanting MMO Failure
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Some of the most heated discussions on game forums anywhere happen between fans and 'anti-fans' of games, one side rooting for success, the other for failure. In today's Devil's Advocate, we take a look at why it is that anyone would want a game to fail. Check it out and then leave us your thoughts in the comments.
When it comes to MMORPGs, the word “failure” is a strong statement. It can connote the closing of a game, or financial misfortune, or any number of different scenarios that in very few contexts would be seen as a positive. The thing is, some people wish for certain MMORPGs to fail, and that doesn't seem like a good thing to me.
Read more of Victor Barreiro Jr.'s and Very Scary's The Devil's Advocate: Wanting MMO Failure.
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Comments
For me, wanting a game to fail is attached to simlply disagreeing with design decisions or execution, and not wanting success to be a roadmap for future games (which it would stand to reason I would also not like!)
Thats it exactly for me. I'd hate to see a game with minimal features and huge rails lead the way to future games doing exactly the same.
Personally, I enjoy these battles over who shall eat the paste.
Selling t-shirts like crazy!
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
people should never want a company to fail. mainly because as you said, there are people involved here and kids that might not eat if mommy or daddy dont bring home a paycheck. i know my kids sure wouldnt eat if I didnt.
not liking a game and not buying a game is totally up to the individual person but the worst part about mmos to me is the players. it seems like the players dont like any single game out there, all they do is bash every single new game, people see all the negative and think, wow this game must suck, dont buy it. remember we are living in a society where most people are afraid to make a decision for themself, before they go see a movie they have to see a review of the movie, reviewer says its bad, oops dont go see that movie. people see these negative comments about a game and think they shouldnt buy it, that simple. most humans are unable to choose for themselves anymore.
so next time a game comes out that you just dont like, instead of whining and complaining about it not being this and that, just stay away from it and play something else.
Where the kisses are hers and hers and his... (And apparently, those young'uns who were teens in the 90s.)
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I want games to fail so the players will quit, come back to my game, and tell me how my opinions were right all along.
No wait... Im not that insecure and only care why it failed so I can make sure I dont make the same mistake in any future project of mine.
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
Interesting read. Though I do agree, I believe you miss one of the main reasons people want an MMO to fail...namely...the future.
If a game that someone thinks is crap, looks like its going to succeed, then there's a chance, based on past history, that this type of MMO will become the next "big thing" (or will continue an unwanted past trend). MMO developers will then "clone" the concepts and for the next 8 years (you can guess what game I'm using as reference) the market will be saturated with these types of games. So suddenly, based on fear of success, people who do not like the game, and understand, based on past history, that if it succeeds it may be the only type of big game for a long time, began to bash said game based on speculation and, many times, downright lies.
I never want to see a game fail, no matter if its good or downright crap, but its hard to maintain this viewpoint after you see the vast majority of developers doing little to innovate, and instead, slapping a new coat a paint on the last "big thing" and hoping they sell enough to stay in business.
uh god, i know i will get another break for answering this topic... anyway, here we go:
imo that's due to kid's attitude nowadays. they are like "nach mir die sinflut!", eg, they think they are the centre of the world, and what they like has to be the good thing. if they dont like it - they want no one else to have fun with it either!
don't ask me how that happened, when gaming started, it was all about fun, you didnt like a game? fine, play another game, but we surely did not start 20 page post's about "why not to play castles of dr creep", you had a friend which didnt like all of your favorite games? fine, there are enough tho he liked that you could play if you wanted to play with him.
also, wow might be to blame. since wow it was "all or nothing!" gaming wise. no more "uh i just tend to play for fun now and then", you had to addept a professional game style to reach end content, do raids 3 times a week (or usualy even more!), and in between, farm your gear, skills, professions, level the factions and so on.
WoW is not meant to have breaks (even tho the tipp of the day sais so, ITS A TRAP!) :P
(dont get me wrong, i still play wow... just to my terms. being guild lead kinda is of advantage here hehe)
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
This is a cop out.
Those oh so great dev's that people talk about, have to agree to the terms to get the cash. And/or sell out to the huge companies when they wave enough cash under their noses.
Like everything else.. money talks in the end. Dev's get caught up in the end and have to decide how they will choose. Stay true to the dream or cash out.
So far..most cash out. Not good or bad..just a personal choice. They have families and people that they have to take care of too. But can not blame everything on the people waving the cash around. it does take the dev's saying yes in the end as well.
On topic: the majority of people that bash games do not do it out of blind hate. I would say that most really do not want trends to get set by what they see as bad games. Trends last for a while..and that can mean that they will have lots of companies pumping out copies of what they see as bad games for a while.
I too feel the same. Fail is a strong word though, maybe too strong.
I wont mince words, I feel the GW2 model is the gaming anti-christ, atleast one of the signs. I hate the business model far more than the gameplay itself.
I shudder at a future when buying gold in my mmorpg is the norm instead of the outlier. When an mmorpg is collection of games in a box without a cohesive one world design. When hype sells 2.4 million boxes at launch and solid innovative play sells less than 500k at launch. When "give me now" trumps earning an reward. When all of this is a raging sucess.
I never wish an MMO to downright fail.. There is an audience for every type of game, problem is when developers stick the finger up at the 2% and make the "same ol game" for the majority in turn which the majority rejects because they already have 1 million games just like it..
Good games like the chronicles of spellborne, Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa were wayy before their time and people called for their heads all the time.. Seeing those games shut down and all those jobs liquidated helps no one.. Not the industry, not the genre, not the consumers.. It only further helps the guy with the big wallet realize that MMO's are NOT the future and cannot be dependant on support from its fans (SWTOR was a big check in this category because not even star wars fans could keep that game afloat, which is partly what they were relying on)
One day, the genre will suffer a great collapse and then and only then will we really weed out the part time players who want everything to fail from the true genre supporters who will help rebuild and maintain the genre as it were back in 99-2003...
First of DS9 borring? What the world you start talking Star Trek get your facts in order.
Next I am not wanting to see any game fail. However we have it. I wanted SWTOTR to be my replacement for swg. I had quit swg after the NGE. I love star wars, in fact I have played just about every game that is out there under the star wars ip both good and bad. I was wanting SWTOR to be a great game, fact is for many of us they failed to deliver a great game, what happened next was bound to happen, cutting cost, cutting staff, and free to play.
Failcom, can I say enough. I had been mad with this company ever since AOC, but I still tried TSW as there sure seamed to be a lot of folks liking it. It is ok, but it is a niche game. Not many folks are playing it. I can log into hudra, chat in egypt is made of of the same 8-9 folks most of them spamming insults at each other. I can got most of the day and not see another player until I go back to London, there at the bank 30 or 40. Argartha 30-40 standing around spamming lfg. Fact is I wanted this to be a good game that would eat up my time, what we got well was mediocre at best.
I don't want companies to fail, I want them to make good games. Fact is a lot of them are making cruddy games and those games need to fail. They need to fail hard to show lazy developers that we don't want cruddy games.
I am sorry when anybody looses a job, been there done that laid of several times over the past few years and even fired once when I was deemed to sick to work but got let go for a made up excuse. Never fun to loose a job, but you know what. You pull up your pants, put your big boy smile on and carry on with life. Go get a new job and get over it!!!!!
Enough said.
This is true...developers do want to create innovative games. But the problems arise after the game design document is created with the idea of investment in mind. So instead of actively pursueing new and innovative ideas for their MMO, the developer is just trying to find a way to get adaquate funding. This leads to them using cookie-cutter concepts that they know the publisher or investors will understand and make it easier for them to get investment, or the project accepted.
The blame...I believe...falls on both shoulders. The developers for not pushing new concepts that may be just as risky as copying the old, and the publishers and investors who suddenly seem to forget a very important rule of business. That without innovation, a business will become stagant, and eventually...fail.
Only problem is, a job like this is directly related to the fans and consumers.. You can't just go out on the court and make a jumpshot for 2 points that is seen and recognized as a score.. You can't go out on a sunday and throw a couple of touchdown passes which win you the game.. You have to spend hard hours working away at something and HOPE that your public, your audience will support you..
A good nascar driver can be the most hated man in the world, but as long that car finishes top position in that cup standing, our opinion, our hate does not matter..
In MMO's, WE drive them.. They cannot please us all (who could? Blizzard? ha..) so they have to target a group that they feel would support them.. When EvE came out, I am positive they were not expecting EVERYONE to like their game, but the people who actually enjoyed it kept it from sinking (even though it had it's problems, trust me, I know)..
If we like a game we need to support our community..
Kickstarter was such a great idea because it gets fan support and supplies directly from, without having to put yourself down in the dirt to reach for it.. The fans basically pay for what they get, so there is no confusion..
I think as the industry is failing us, we are also failing the industry.. Sometimes "perfection" (ya know, WoW 'obviously') takes time.. If we are too impatient to even offer up at least one month of subscription fees or a few dollars in a cash shop we cannot expect a product to get better..
They don't just pull funds out of their behinds.
I want almost all games to succeed save two very big and important exceptions:
1) Very bad/damaging pricing models or game designs that I do not want to have repeated in future games
2) Lying/Criminal/Shady business practices
So far, the only developers that have really crossed the line in these areas have been Funcom so its really their latest 2 mmos that I have drawn issue to. You can bet though if other mmos went the same route I would take a similar stance against them.
People have been complaining about WoW clones on these forums for years. Well why do you think there were WoW clones in the first place? Because developers see a successful model and they try to replicate it. Well guess what happens when a bad game or corrupt company has success? Many years of others repeating what they did. For someone that isn't shortsighted, the problems with this are clear.
Waiting for: A skill-based MMO with Freedom and Consequence.
Woe to thee, the pierce-ed.
To many companies now make MMOs that are like Frogster - these strange, non-imaginative MMOs with subpar graphics pop onto the market every other week, have some strange cash shop and exist almost soley to make a quick buck.
I absolutly want these to fail, these companies are shady at best and downright deceptive at worst. The games themselves are usually awful in nearly every aspect, I don't want these games/companies to succeed.
Agree with the article.
Never wanted a game to fail. I hate the game WoW became (easy mode, dailies, LFR, etc) but I never wanted Blizzard to fail as a company. Like someone said, I just cancealed my subscription and started playing an inovative game.
On the other hand, I really hope that some games succeed on the industry, so we can have more options. I love TSW and GW2 style, and will play both. Strongly hope they succeed.