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Why must it always be sandbox= low budget??
gessekai332
Member UncommonPosts: 861
Why is it always the case that sandbox mmorpgs are always made by low budget indie companies?? themepark developers are always complaining about being unable to retain their userbase when its completely obvious that sandbox players are the ones that pay subscriptions and play the same game for yrs while themepark gamers are pretty much console gamers who are used to beating several games in one week and then moving on to the next set of games the next weeks.
i feel that investors are getting the wrong impression from the mmorpg trends in the past years. the reason why sandbox mmorpgs dont capture many users is because they are always funded by small indie companies that cant fund sh*t, so their graphics are always terrible, everything is broken, and they have no money for advertising campaigns. Also, the reason why all the recent mmorpgs are failing is not because people are getting tired of mmorpgsin general, its because companies keep trying to target themepark players who play mmorpgs like console games-> beat it then move on. they have no ties with the game world itself, or the social dimension of the game. theyre there to play with their buddies from work or just solo the content until max level.
if a proper sandbox mmorpg were to be funded, i'm sure it would be big. People do not need to be led by rails in order to have fun. Example, Skyrim. It did TREMENDOUSLY well even though was a sandbox game. The masses are waiting for a good sandbox game. instead we just keep getting fed these online single player games incorrectly labeled as mmorpgs.
Most memorable games: AoC(Tryanny PvP), RIFT, GW, GW2, Ragnarok Online, Aion, FFXI, FFXIV, Secret World, League of Legends (Silver II rank)
Comments
MMos are not failing....
wow has millions players....
rift is doing better than they ever thought!
swotor will sell millions! and retain some...
It is true that "we all players" dream of the perfect game.... one "Skyrim online" hehe.... Guild Wars 2?
But companies are still making tons of money on MMos.....
looking at minerafts success, now there will be big budget sandbox coming soon. i hope Blizzard makes one.
They aren't, unless Tecmo-Koei, with a 28-year history of making video games and $400 million in annual revenue, is your idea of a low budget indie company.
Being able to point out successful examples (aside from Eve) would probably be helpful on the investing-money-and-effort level. A success with a smaller game, perhaps without all the bells and whistles, would be a good start. Personally, I think that the sandbox fans overestimate the numbers they can bring to a game.
You complain about themepark MMOs that are glorified single player games online (though I'd say they are more 'co-op enabled'), and use as your evidence of sandbox glory a single player sandboxy type game?
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I don't think that Theme park players are less likely to play their mmo for long periods of time. The problem is the market is flooded with high budget Theme Park mmos and hardly any sandbox mmos. The best quality sandbox we have is EvE and sci-fi space setting is not for everyone. Hopefully we will get some ArcheAge NA info soon?
My theme song.
Blizzard and sandbox in the same sentence should be a grammatical error as far as I'm concerned, lol
sorry, maybe i should have said "console games" instead of "single player games".
Most memorable games: AoC(Tryanny PvP), RIFT, GW, GW2, Ragnarok Online, Aion, FFXI, FFXIV, Secret World, League of Legends (Silver II rank)
Sandbox games require less of a budget, since the community is sort of responsible with a good portion of the "content" creation. For an indie studio looking to create an MMO, that probably sounds a lot more appealing than dedicating a huge budget towards not only a game engine but content and story and lore and everything else.
If anything, the real question is why *wouldn't* a small indie studio start with a sandbox game?
You make me like charity
It is 100% down to what the investors think they will get out of it. If investors think they'll get a bunch of money out of a game, they'll put a bunch of money into a game. For whatever reason, the recent sandbox games that have been released did not impress investors as generating a large, positive income.
** edit **
More explanation may be necessary. It may or may not be because of the image that sandbox games have. It's more likely a feature set that is presented and the way the games are presented that nets them a bunch of money or not. It could just be that all sandbox developers up to this point are just poor at presentations.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You're probably right to some degree, but you're forgetting a huge part of the picture. None of the sandboxes to date have been "successful" according to the colloquial definition--meaning investors likely see that as a huge red flag.
That's probably a big part of it. Those games didn't start off being heavily invested in though. We don't have an example of a AAA sandbox failure because such a thing never existed in the first place. I think this is mostly because investors have extrapolated from history that theme parks pull in more people and money than sandboxes. They would have come to this conclusion even without WoW because that's what happened.
The bottom line is that theme park failures are as successful as the most successful sandbox game ever. Age of Conan is running 'in the black' and is fully funding another AAA game. Warhammer Online is funding the further development of at least one other game (though not mmorpg it would seem). Eve Online, the most successful sandbox game ever is fully funding one other game (but not an mmorpg), and partially funding another mmorpg. Rift, which would be wildly successful if you didn't consider WoW is fully funding two other games and then some. One game is a full on MMORPG and the other is an MMORTS. If you're talking money, Eve (great sandbox) compares favorably with Warhammer (mediocre or poor theme park), not so favorably with Age of Conan (mediocre theme park) and falls considerably behind Rift (good theme park). The gap will widen when SW:ToR comes out.
None of that means sandbox=poor investment though. It just means that sandbox developers, for whatever reason, do not come up with ideas that investors like. Or they're really bad at presenting good ideas. Something about what they present is wrong, and I don't think it's just the idea of 'sandbox'. It's something in addition to that. It could be the reliance on a 'hardcore' mentality. They could all just be stuck in the past and aren't really presenting anything new; just rehashed ideas that have already been done. It could also be that no experienced developer wants to do a sandbox mmorpg, so all that's left is inexperienced developers to whom investors will not give any money.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Could you please explain why Age of Conan qualifies as an AAA MMORPG and Uncharted Waters Online does not? Pre-release hype in America?