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*CAUTION* created for money????
Lorth
Member Posts: 6
The LOTR trilogy is some of the best literature written. Millions of people have read it.
most people that play MMORPG's are dorks. (i am one) And droks usually read books (LOTR). This game, LOTR online, might suck ass completely because the creators know that no matter how bad the game blows, they will make lots of cash off of us dorks that hope for once a good mmorpg will come out based on a book or movie. (cough, cough, star wars)
Be carefull my friends! This game could be just another trick!
Comments
Now Wait? Who are you calling a dork?? I read all kinds of fantasy novels and started all those years ago reading LOTR....way before the word mmorpg or even computer games ever existed!!!! Yes I'm that old!
Sure! They create games in order to make money, also in order to create jobs for people designing, making, packaging selling etc.... thats how the economy grows. But saying that, I do believe that many "dorks" will buy this game just because it has the LOTR name, world and characters attached to it. God, WoW brought in the same crowd from their RTS world games and most of them stayed! So maybe LOTR online will be just as good as the battle for Middle Earth RTS was? Who knows? From what I have seen and read so far, I am definetely going to be one of those "dorks" waiting in line the first day it comes out. Imagine walking trhough the fields of Middle Earth looking behind each tree for a hidden Ork or 2. Or travelling through the caves of Moriah listening for goblins sneaking up behind you? Visiting the elves or dwarfs in their homeland and I can go on and on..... Maybe, Legolas, Frodo or Gimmly would make an appearance like Neo in the Matrix online? I am sure willing to give it a chance...Are ther any other "dorks" out there willing to join me?????
Cheers!!
Its worse to actually think about doing something then actually doing it!!!
Call me naive, but I don't think all games are created solely for the purpose of generating income any more than Jimi Hendrix started playing the guitar to generate income. I believe that deep in the heart of every developer is the belief that they are making these games out of a love of the genre and trying to go one further and make a better game than has ever existed.
Of course if you don't make gobs of money no one will let you make another game so the fact is they do have to appeal to people. However it is only when the corporations and stockholders are making the decisions and not the developers who are often largely gamers themselves that things run awry.
I think it is fine to build off of a major license and have huge corporate dollars behind you, as long as the people with the love of the game and indeed the love of the gamers themselves and their best interests at heart are making the decisions and game infrastructures.
Thusly (I know, thusly isn't a real word and I don't care) I hope for the best out of Lord of the Rings Online and expect it to stick to the vision of J.R.R. Tolkien and indeed RPG lovers everywhere.
A transcript of this essay is available at Amazon.com/yadda yadda yadda
I do agree with you that the developers of a game are not out to make lots of money off of the game, it is the corporations and the stockholders that are and when the game is launched it is out of the hands of the devs on how much money it cost to buy and to pay a month to play this game, the corporation decides that they do the marketing and the money decisions. If the game is a hit and raking in lots of money then they allow funding to make the game better and this gives the devs the freedom to futher there work. But when the game is not making money and becomes a sinkhole eating up corporation profits they pull the plug. Like AC2. So the end result is always the money, regardless ot the good intent of the Devs and there love for the work they did. The corporation has the final say on how there money is spent.
I wish it was that the devs did we probably wouldn't be spending up too 15 dollars a month for a game to play.
We have to look at it this way too, The devs have to be payed somehow and the corporation pays them, The game they create is the source of imcome for the corporation to pay them. So yes wether they set out to make money from the start it always comes down to making money in the end.
"Created for Money" is usually one step in the process of describing the purpose of anything created by man. But, ignoring that, I know what the author means, but it really doesn't have any trueness. I believe to create a LOTR mmorpg is going to demand a huge amount of information from the LOTR stories, and that will demand, in turn, people who can dedicate and recreate those stories into a worldly MMO format. Yes, there is always the business end of it, where the sweat shed is falling onto money. But I also think there is the developing end of this title, and that is where the sweat will be shed onto actual gaming pride. I think the LOTR Online MMO will be pretty fantastic, especially considering what they were given to work with. But I'm only being hopeful, I will have to wait and see, along with any other excited LOTR fan/gamer.
This is exactly what I think as well. Getting into the game industry is hard, and it is a little known fact that except for a few notable cases, being a game developer actually pays less than being a developer for say a normal IT company (despite the more challenging and time-consuming work environment). These people get into the game industry because they love games. Period.
Money will always play a factor in games, but it's foolish to think that it is the main driving factor for those making the games. Just for fun, anyone who doubts this should do a little research on the time and effort required to graduate from DigiPen Institute of Technology in Washington. Find out how much of your life you have to dedicate to the place, then ask yourself if you could do it if you didn't absolutely love games.
Only a few problems with that line of thought, however.
1. Game designers, by and large, don't get to decide what games get made and released. The larger company does (few exceptions of designers starting their own companies are the exception of course)
2. The company doesn't care about 'true-to-the-book' or 'satisfying rate of advancement' or anything gamers do -- the company cares only for money [see Grapes of Wrath chapter five for a discussion of the bank and the company constantly needing to be fed more money or it dies
3. The designers don't set release dates based on when a game is ready and bug-free; the company sets them based on when it'll make the most money (again, see point #2).
So while the devs and designers themselves may love their work, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with why this game is being made.
Don't kid yoursleves. The C*O's [CEO, COO, etc] and owners are only looking at how much money this game can make them. The devs may be looking at making the best game they possibly can based on a saga both they and we love, but they can't overule their own bosses if an irrational release date is set, or profit predictions drop so low this game is deemed ill-advised.
[quote=anarchyart][b]Call me naive, but I don't think all games are created solely for the purpose of generating income any more than Jimi Hendrix started playing the guitar to generate income.[b][/quote] You confuse the artist with the patron. The artist (game designer, guitarist) creates art (a game, music) because he cannot live any other way. The patron (company [SOE, Turbine, NCSoft; Columbia, Capitol Records, etc]) pay the artist for a given work based how much the company plans to make off it.
What the public eventually sees is almost always a result of a patron seeing potential for profit. No more, no less.
Why were the Beatles refused from some labels? Were they awful until they came to Capitol Records? Of course not. The other patrons (other labels) simply didn't think they would be profitable. So it is for games: some companies will pass on excellent games based solely on profit predictions until another company thinks it will be profittable. Again, it is the bottom line that drives companies, regardless of the spirit, passion, or dedication of the atists, designers, or devs.
[edit: I subtitle this post "Go back and re-read Grindalyx's post! And if you still disagree, read it again. He's right!"]