General: The Future of Online Games - PAX East Panel

SBFord

MMORPG.com is happy to bring you our 5th Annual “Future of Online Games Panel” at PAX East this year! On Saturday, April 12th at 6:00pm EST in the Albatross Theater we will host the top talent in online games. 

For 2014 who ever thought we would be returning to topics such as sandbox games or subscription models? How much does Free-to-Play rule the market? What will your game experience be like going into the second half of the decade? All this and more will be answered.

The Panel will be moderated by our own Bill Murphy and will include:

• 
  Dave Georgeson - EverQuest next
• 
  Stephen Frost - WildStar
• 
  Ryan Dancey - Pathfinder Online
• 
  Andrew Krausnick - Trove
• 
  Josh Halls - The Repopulation

We are excited to hear from each of these upcoming games and what they have in store for players. They will also be on hand to answer your questions and discuss topics in the industry as a whole.

Here is the video from last year’s panel: 

Dreamo84

Ugh and I was going to go this year! Sooo mad at myself now.

Nitth

First video i have seen where Dave is not excited lol

Loktofeit

That's a pretty cool line-up for that panel. Going to have to make a point to be there for that!

 

Mitara

Very cool lineup, certainly people that know what they are talking about. Adding cute Bill is just icing on the cake...

Akumawraith

Boring line up.. I was expecting Chris Roberts and Phillip Blood.. Ah well none of the games really interest me. Star Citizen and Citadel of Sorcery are still the only two games being developed that have new and unique innovations. 

 

SteinarB

Originally posted by Akumawraith

Boring line up.. I was expecting Chris Roberts and Phillip Blood.. Ah well none of the games really interest me. Star Citizen and Citadel of Sorcery are still the only two games being developed that have new and unique innovations. 

 

Well, Chris Roberts at least will be on a PAX East panel.  Here's the announcement quoted from the Star Citizen website (https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com):

 

The (Incredible) Future of PC Gaming, hosted by PC Gamer

The immortal hobby of PC gaming continues to experience a renaissance of innovation, affordability, and accessibility. Free-to-play, an explosive indie scene, eSports, virtual reality, livestreaming, 4K displays, crowdfunding, Steam Early Access, and the growth of Linux position the PC as a truly vibrant platform.

 

But how will technologies like gameplay streaming, SteamOS, the Oculus Rift, and others shapes PC gaming? More importantly, what new experiences will the PC games of the near future provide? PC Gamer asks our panel of innovators and PC gaming stakeholders to paint a clear picture of the next five years. Stick around to participate in the audience Q&A.

 

Panelists:
Evan Lahti [Editor-in-Chief, PC Gamer], Palmer Luckey [Founder, Oculus VR], John Smedley [President, Sony Online Entertainment], Tom Petersen [Director of Technical Marketing, Nvidia], Chris Roberts [Founder, Cloud Imperium Games]

MumboJumbo

One of the problems with previous panels is that (rightly) each dev is very very polite about the other devs meaning they don't say anything that is controversial towards another dev or approach or could be construed as such.

This does limit discussion even if it's appropriate to get on well with your fellow devs (it's a touch racket for one and fans provide enough of that anyway).

=

I think Wildstar (Stephen Frost ) might be a spanner in the works because it's heavily themepark and that's going to limit the sandbox devs from really expounding on why they believe sandbox wave is the crest to be riding. That said the pricing model will be of interest and all devs can talk that up I think in a positive way.

Suggestions for getting the most of of the Wildstar guy:

• Pricing model
• Getting the most out of dev content
• Themepark popular appeal of dungeon-runs, how to make combat have depth in a mmorpg
• Age group of players they're targetting with the aesthetic choice and calculated base in that range
• Which other players will they attract: WOW and other themepark players?
• How have they evolved the themepark?

I'm actually not so much a fan of Georgeson, as a Paul Barnett type of character, though he'll have some interesting things to say about EQ-L/N so that evens out things, I think SOE are possibly the new Blizzard atm with info you get on:

• voxels, storybricks, pricing, landmark and player studio and more ips

If mmorpg.com can get Josh Halls and Ryan Dancey trading design idea on:

• Sandbox mmorpg designs and solving various problems associated (eg griefing, spreading of resources across more features as compared to themeparks).
• designing on a lean budget, kickstarter
• designing for a niche audience that is very specific high level of engagement
• influences from UO, SWG, EVE etc. Mistakes from these...
• Pricing and middleware experiences, other interesting projects that have caught their eye on a similar indie budget range.

 

No idea about Trove but it looks like another voxel/terraforming work and should be interesting when talking with Georgeson. So you have a couple of natural pairings of discussion, bar the Wildstar guy you might want to let wax on and fight the themepark corner with more time to expound his design focus (should still be a big market for themepark mmorpgs).