Does the continuation of old games discourage new ones?

Amathe · July 2020

Right now there are a lot of older mmorogs still up and running. Part of me celebrates that. I like the idea that I can always go home.

But I have to believe that game makers take these games into account in assessing how well the market space is being serviced. Maybe if more old mmorpgs went inactive, new ones would appear. Or maybe not. But I think it's worth discussing.

Aeander · July 2020

I think a large part of why most MMOs die on arrival is that they face unfair and impossible comparisons to the amount of content accumulated by WoW over years and years of subscription-funded service.

[Deleted User] · July 2020

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Theocritus · July 2020

I still play Anarchy Online and rarely EQ1...If I stopped playing those, taht doesn't mean I will automatically go to ESO or GW2......Even if we still play older MMORPGs, we most likely try the new ones....imo ESO and GW2 just don't hold my interest...If they did I would play them more than AO or EQ.

GladDog · July 2020

Hmm, I had not thought of it that way Blue.

Is that the reason New World keeps being delayed, since the project is so huge it is hard to hold the team together?

I'll be looking forward to seeing what develops in the new systems you mentioned briefly.

Theocritus · July 2020

remsleep said:

Aeander said:

I think a large part of why most MMOs die on arrival is that they face unfair and impossible comparisons to the amount of content accumulated by WoW over years and years of subscription-funded service.

This is why new games have to offer gameplay that is different enough to warrant interest based on new ideas and concepts and not the same old shit that Everquest, WoW and other old games have.

You cannot compete with 15 years of content, but if you make a new game with new concepts, new ideas and new mechanics that players flock to - then you make those 15 years of content irrelevant.

and I guess they did that...it's called Fortnite......We just didn't like the direction it went.

ShaniaReborn · July 2020

Aeander said:

I think a large part of why most MMOs die on arrival is that they face unfair and impossible comparisons to the amount of content accumulated by WoW over years and years of subscription-funded service.

Unfair? What is unfair about it? WoW started off with 270,000 copies of the game shipped. It was sold out within hours and stores had to wait weeks for more copies of the game. Today, WoW alone is over a $2 Billion a year business. They built that from the ground up. There is nothing unfair about that.

The game today costs as much as it did on launch day, $15 a month.

Any new game today can do the same exact thing. Don't think you are going to be a WoW killer as that will never happen. Many have tried, yet WoW is still King of the MMORPG landscape. Manage expectations for the game. Under promise and over deliver. Slow and steady wins the race. Remember, WoW started as a relatively small game and 270,000 units sold. If Blizzard can do it with WoW, anyone can.

Quizzical · July 2020

Does the availability of older single-player games discourage the creation of new single-player games? If anything, you'd expect that to be a much stronger effect than for MMORPGs.

For starters, single-player games have a much longer history. While a lot of people don't still have the hardware needed to play old console games, a lot of them are still available via emulators. Companies like Capcom and Square have been re-releasing some of their older games on Steam.

Additionally, single-player games tend to remain playable forever, which isn't really true of MMORPGs. It's not just that MMORPGs will sometimes pull the plug. It's not even that group content can become unplayable if the playerbase is too small. Often game developers make changes with the intent of altering or adding top end content without particularly caring how it affects lower level content, and that can leave the lower level content in an unplayable state. People mention WoW above, but a new player who wants to start WoW today very nearly can't, as the lower level content is a mess, and apart from paying a lot of money for a boost to high levels, he'll have to slog through a very long string of awfulness in order to reach the little bit of content that the developers still maintain.

Albatroes · July 2020

Too much choice in general is making the genre harder to thrive in. When you think back to games mmorpgs like WoW and prior, how much competition was there really? Keep in mind that all mmorpgs back then only had to compete with others in that same genre as well. Compared to now where mmorpgs are competing with mmos in the general sense, mobile games (including single player), and even streaming services, because all of these things are fighting not over subs, but a person's time (pretty much why blizzard shifting from talking about subs to talking about MAUs, since people are wanting to see how much time they can invest in something for the amount of money they would be paying).

The head of Microsoft put the reality of 'console wars' pretty realistically, that its not just competing with each other, but services as a whole since at the end of the day, everything has a service attached to it (playstation plus, xbox game pass, w/e nintendo has, all competing with stuff like netflix/hulu/etc). The only way a game can thrive now is if its apart of something larger and offers people more for there money since time is very limited and people will always have more money than time (definitely something you learn as you get older).

Ungood · July 2020

blueturtle13 said:

I had a meeting a few years back with a team of developers and investors that was throwing around the idea of creating a new mmorpg in the vain of Asheron's Call and Spellborn.
(I was a part of it because of work on Spellborn and early contract work for SOE)
The initial budget was fine the concept was good enough.
Systems were decent yet half of us still voted to not want to be a part of it.
My concern personally was the time commitment involved in creating and maintaining an mmorpg. Budget was a concern sure but for me it was all about the time commitment.
So much ground work has to be put down in all the right order for it to survive long term then years of content creation and pressure to deliver.
Too many developers in our current time do not want to agree to such a long term commitment.
Many people think the market reads and competition and this and that are the biggest factors and the reality is for producers, investors and developers that could not be further from the truth. Because (for the most part) if you make a really good game it will get played.
It boils down to not wanting a long term personal commitment and creative focus for such an extended period of time.
Developing is for the majority, project based.
Most like to develop a project and move on.
Not commit to a ten year+ sentence.
There are a couple of projects in the works that show promise for a new era type mmorpg but they use gameplay systems beyond just the tired whack a mole system we have grown used to from 20+ years ago. How these will be received is beyond guess at this point but it is clear that a more fluid and dynamic way of developing is required for the genre to have any future beyond just rehashed games we have all already played.

This is fascinating to tell the truth, and in such stark contrast to my own profession, for example, when the company I worked for took a job building a train station, it was a 12 year project from start to finish, and we were eager to be part of that, as that gave use a sense of security that we would have a guaranteed locked-in job for the next 12 years.

Where you make it sound like that same kind of situation for a developer is a person sentence.

So in that vein, what you said was very informative, something I personally never even thought about, or looked at from a very different lens.

Thank you for this insight.

cheyane · July 2020

blueturtle13 said:

I had a meeting a few years back with a team of developers and investors that was throwing around the idea of creating a new mmorpg in the vain of Asheron's Call and Spellborn.
(I was a part of it because of work on Spellborn and early contract work for SOE)
The initial budget was fine the concept was good enough.
Systems were decent yet half of us still voted to not want to be a part of it.
My concern personally was the time commitment involved in creating and maintaining an mmorpg. Budget was a concern sure but for me it was all about the time commitment.
So much ground work has to be put down in all the right order for it to survive long term then years of content creation and pressure to deliver.
Too many developers in our current time do not want to agree to such a long term commitment.
Many people think the market reads and competition and this and that are the biggest factors and the reality is for producers, investors and developers that could not be further from the truth. Because (for the most part) if you make a really good game it will get played.
It boils down to not wanting a long term personal commitment and creative focus for such an extended period of time.
Developing is for the majority, project based.
Most like to develop a project and move on.
Not commit to a ten year+ sentence.
There are a couple of projects in the works that show promise for a new era type mmorpg but they use gameplay systems beyond just the tired whack a mole system we have grown used to from 20+ years ago. How these will be received is beyond guess at this point but it is clear that a more fluid and dynamic way of developing is required for the genre to have any future beyond just rehashed games we have all already played.

Hmm I think maintaining an MMORPG is very hard if you need to keep up content and it is not an easy thing to do. I would personally also not want to part of that because as a developer I would want to work on different projects too. It must be stagnating to keep working on one project for years being limited by the engine and resources that players have to provide. You can just rot away there and lose your edge.

I understand your perspective but I am very sad for the future of MMORPGs because this reasoning is what is making their development rarer. New games aren't going to be developed by large companies not in the vein we saw in the beginning of this genre.

Nyghthowler · July 2020

Ungood said:

blueturtle13 said:

I had a meeting a few years back with a team of developers and investors that was throwing around the idea of creating a new mmorpg in the vain of Asheron's Call and Spellborn.
(I was a part of it because of work on Spellborn and early contract work for SOE)
The initial budget was fine the concept was good enough.
Systems were decent yet half of us still voted to not want to be a part of it.
My concern personally was the time commitment involved in creating and maintaining an mmorpg. Budget was a concern sure but for me it was all about the time commitment.
So much ground work has to be put down in all the right order for it to survive long term then years of content creation and pressure to deliver.
Too many developers in our current time do not want to agree to such a long term commitment.
Many people think the market reads and competition and this and that are the biggest factors and the reality is for producers, investors and developers that could not be further from the truth. Because (for the most part) if you make a really good game it will get played.
It boils down to not wanting a long term personal commitment and creative focus for such an extended period of time.
Developing is for the majority, project based.
Most like to develop a project and move on.
Not commit to a ten year+ sentence.
There are a couple of projects in the works that show promise for a new era type mmorpg but they use gameplay systems beyond just the tired whack a mole system we have grown used to from 20+ years ago. How these will be received is beyond guess at this point but it is clear that a more fluid and dynamic way of developing is required for the genre to have any future beyond just rehashed games we have all already played.

This is fascinating to tell the truth, and in such stark contrast to my own profession, for example, when the company I worked for took a job building a train station, it was a 12 year project from start to finish, and we were eager to be part of that, as that gave use a sense of security that we would have a guaranteed locked-in job for the next 12 years.

Where you make it sound like that same kind of situation for a developer is a person sentence.

So in that vein, what you said was very informative, something I personally never even thought about, or looked at from a very different lens.

Thank you for this insight.

I have to agree with this. I would have never thought of developers not wanting to be locked into almost guaranteed work for a period of years.
Honestly, the concept is hard to wrap my mind around in this day and age where all you hear is over saturated work forces, and companies requiring more and more experience to land an entry position job...

cameltosis · July 2020

Amathe said:

Right now there are a lot of older mmorogs still up and running. Part of me celebrates that. I like the idea that I can always go home.

But I have to believe that game makers take these games into account in assessing how well the market space is being serviced. Maybe if more old mmorpgs went inactive, new ones would appear. Or maybe not. But I think it's worth discussing.

First, I hold the firm belief that the potential market for mmos is vastly bigger than the actual market being serviced by existing mmos. This genre has so much potential, but hardly any of it has been tapped. So, the existing market is just a niche of a niche of a niche of a.....

Second, I firmly believe that lots of older MMOs should have shut down ages ago, though not for the reasons you stated. My concern is around the turnaround time for games. If you work in other genres, then you get to build a new game every year (CoD, Fifa etc) or every 3 years (bethesda, rockstar etc) or whatever. You build, you launch, you learn lessons, then you make the next game better.

In the MMO market, a dev gets tied into a game for many years, potentially a decade+. Sure, you can iterate / improve on your designs through updates and expansions, but you are generally limited by the engine and the original design decisions.

This means that the entire genre evolves much, much slower than other genres. Lessons get learned slower than other genres. Given the vast costs of development, studios are also less willing to take risks. A bad decision at the start could trouble you for years, whereas other genres, a bad decision might just mean a bad year, and you can recover the following year with a better game.

Finally, my main line of thought when it comes to "why we don't have nice things" is simply the nature of massively multiplayer games. Standard mechanics from other genres often don't work well when you add hundreds of other players into the mix. Most of the mmorpgs we have are designed around single player mechanics and this causes a lot of problems. Studios have realised this (by watching a long succession of mediocre games come out) but no-one has given us a good template for how to do it right. I think a lot of studios out there are just sitting on their hands, waiting for that spark of inspiration (or good game to copy) to come along.

I do firmly believe that once we get the next "great" mmo, we'll quickly see a load of studios re-enter the genre. How we get that first one, i don't know. maybe an indie studio will get there, but I think it still needs a larger studio.

Wizardry · July 2020

No what we are seeing right now is an era in gaming where devs no longer want to spend big money and/or take risks on new IP's.

So when Wow came out and made money,everyone jumped on the bandwagon,when Zombie games made money we got tons of them.When BR's began making loads of money again everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
When Dota and LOL's were making it big others saw that and jumped on the bandwagon.
Just like Wow was a huge turning point in the industry ,Fortnite might also be THAT GAME.You see Epic stopped developing Fortnite,stopped developing at least 2-3 other games just to focus on joining the BR movement.
Point being it is not only older games but the rehashing of the same gimmicks.

Starcraft 1...2,Warcraft 1..2..++,Daiblo 1...2...3 +,there is no risk to create a new IP and if they do create a new IP it will copy a current trend/gimmick.

Survival games came out in drones,tons of them,tcg's all seem to arrive around the same 2 year period.
There is of course the possibility that after 30 years of gaming developers have simply run out of ideas,run out of gimmicks.So when they ran out of ideas for gamin,they turned to ideas on marketing,the money side,loot boxes,"seasons","cosmetics""full cash shops""card packs" ,selling ships,selling GTA$$$,ISK etc etc.

So this is a phase,the sad part is that i don't see it getting better,the next phase will again be some gimmick to make money,while NOT bettering our games.

Wizardry · July 2020

We are sort of already seeing the other phases,VR can we really say even one great game came out for it?
The next money phase seems to be control of where we play our games and who gets a cut of the profits.Microsoft was trying to corner the entire market and why Sweeney created a controversial article on the subject.
Now we see these big businesses all jockeying for the new CLOUD wave,streaming services and once again<NONE of this gives us better games,if anything worse quality trying to play them or wearing some clunky VR machine on your head.

Kyleran · July 2020

Nyghthowler said:

Ungood said:

blueturtle13 said:

I had a meeting a few years back with a team of developers and investors that was throwing around the idea of creating a new mmorpg in the vain of Asheron's Call and Spellborn.
(I was a part of it because of work on Spellborn and early contract work for SOE)
The initial budget was fine the concept was good enough.
Systems were decent yet half of us still voted to not want to be a part of it.
My concern personally was the time commitment involved in creating and maintaining an mmorpg. Budget was a concern sure but for me it was all about the time commitment.
So much ground work has to be put down in all the right order for it to survive long term then years of content creation and pressure to deliver.
Too many developers in our current time do not want to agree to such a long term commitment.
Many people think the market reads and competition and this and that are the biggest factors and the reality is for producers, investors and developers that could not be further from the truth. Because (for the most part) if you make a really good game it will get played.
It boils down to not wanting a long term personal commitment and creative focus for such an extended period of time.
Developing is for the majority, project based.
Most like to develop a project and move on.
Not commit to a ten year+ sentence.
There are a couple of projects in the works that show promise for a new era type mmorpg but they use gameplay systems beyond just the tired whack a mole system we have grown used to from 20+ years ago. How these will be received is beyond guess at this point but it is clear that a more fluid and dynamic way of developing is required for the genre to have any future beyond just rehashed games we have all already played.

This is fascinating to tell the truth, and in such stark contrast to my own profession, for example, when the company I worked for took a job building a train station, it was a 12 year project from start to finish, and we were eager to be part of that, as that gave use a sense of security that we would have a guaranteed locked-in job for the next 12 years.

Where you make it sound like that same kind of situation for a developer is a person sentence.

So in that vein, what you said was very informative, something I personally never even thought about, or looked at from a very different lens.

Thank you for this insight.

I have to agree with this. I would have never thought of developers not wanting to be locked into almost guaranteed work for a period of years.
Honestly, the concept is hard to wrap my mind around in this day and age where all you hear is over saturated work forces, and companies requiring more and more experience to land an entry position job...

Agreed, I've been delivering financial services software for almost 20 years now, mostly in the same department, not bored yet.

Some of my peers have over 35 years in, some within the same Tech group for more than 20.

So I can't really relate to the ideas of devs fearing being trapped.

Theocritus · July 2020

Gorwe said:

Well, there is just so many free hours in the day. But! You answer me:

"Would I rather play a proven and remastered old game or a promising, but ultimately unknown new game?"

The difference now is we can take a few minutes, watch a youtube video, and have a pretty good idea of what we are getting into.

Arglebargle · July 2020

Kyleran said:

Nyghthowler said:

Ungood said:

blueturtle13 said:

I had a meeting a few years back with a team of developers and investors that was throwing around the idea of creating a new mmorpg in the vain of Asheron's Call and Spellborn.
(I was a part of it because of work on Spellborn and early contract work for SOE)
The initial budget was fine the concept was good enough.
Systems were decent yet half of us still voted to not want to be a part of it.
My concern personally was the time commitment involved in creating and maintaining an mmorpg. Budget was a concern sure but for me it was all about the time commitment.
So much ground work has to be put down in all the right order for it to survive long term then years of content creation and pressure to deliver.
Too many developers in our current time do not want to agree to such a long term commitment.
Many people think the market reads and competition and this and that are the biggest factors and the reality is for producers, investors and developers that could not be further from the truth. Because (for the most part) if you make a really good game it will get played.
It boils down to not wanting a long term personal commitment and creative focus for such an extended period of time.
Developing is for the majority, project based.
Most like to develop a project and move on.
Not commit to a ten year+ sentence.
There are a couple of projects in the works that show promise for a new era type mmorpg but they use gameplay systems beyond just the tired whack a mole system we have grown used to from 20+ years ago. How these will be received is beyond guess at this point but it is clear that a more fluid and dynamic way of developing is required for the genre to have any future beyond just rehashed games we have all already played.

This is fascinating to tell the truth, and in such stark contrast to my own profession, for example, when the company I worked for took a job building a train station, it was a 12 year project from start to finish, and we were eager to be part of that, as that gave use a sense of security that we would have a guaranteed locked-in job for the next 12 years.

Where you make it sound like that same kind of situation for a developer is a person sentence.

So in that vein, what you said was very informative, something I personally never even thought about, or looked at from a very different lens.

Thank you for this insight.

I have to agree with this. I would have never thought of developers not wanting to be locked into almost guaranteed work for a period of years.
Honestly, the concept is hard to wrap my mind around in this day and age where all you hear is over saturated work forces, and companies requiring more and more experience to land an entry position job...

Agreed, I've been delivering financial services software for almost 20 years now, mostly in the same department, not bored yet.

Some of my peers have over 35 years in, some within the same Tech group for more than 20.

So I can't really relate to the ideas of devs fearing being trapped.

How many 60+ hour crunch weeks do you get to endure in a year? Does your office have bunk beds for staff to sleep over? How's the workplace toxicity? Do your kids wonder who you are when you come home? (okay, that one may happen regardless)

Different expectations.....

Scot · July 2020

Amathe is alluding to a built in issue with the MMO genre, games which intend to be played for years hinder the uptake of new titles. Only co-op comes close to having this problem. In solo player games old titles in a franchise like say Battle Field can hinder the uptake of the next in the franchise but that's as close solo gaming gets to what is a real problem in MMO land.

This is exacerbated by MMOs all moving to similar playstyles and revenue models (revenue dictates a lot of gameplay). So when you finish with one MMO going to another seems rather deja vu.

MMO land became saturated with MMOs by 2005, since then it has been a lot harder to make an impact on the genre. You have to have a fantastic brand like Elder Scrolls or Star Wars, and you have to appeal to all the players who are not really like gamers of old. Some might say its not a genre for old men.

AlBQuirky · July 2020

That's an interesting thought.

The old games, though, have "evolved", too. Some are too far removed from their originals form some older players.

It would be interesting to see what happened if those old games closed up. I wonder where those players would end, if anywhere?

remsleep said:

Theocritus said:

remsleep said:

Aeander said:

I think a large part of why most MMOs die on arrival is that they face unfair and impossible comparisons to the amount of content accumulated by WoW over years and years of subscription-funded service.

This is why new games have to offer gameplay that is different enough to warrant interest based on new ideas and concepts and not the same old shit that Everquest, WoW and other old games have.

You cannot compete with 15 years of content, but if you make a new game with new concepts, new ideas and new mechanics that players flock to - then you make those 15 years of content irrelevant.

and I guess they did that...it's called Fortnite......We just didn't like the direction it went.

Interestingly enough, no matter how much each person feels that life should deliver on their personal wants and desires, turns out that's not how life works

Ah... but see, if a game wants , my money, they best cater to what I find enjoyable, yes?

Agreed, that my desires may not agree with "the masses"

[Deleted User] · July 2020

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Kyleran · July 2020

Arglebargle said:

Kyleran said:

Nyghthowler said:

Ungood said:

blueturtle13 said:

I had a meeting a few years back with a team of developers and investors that was throwing around the idea of creating a new mmorpg in the vain of Asheron's Call and Spellborn.
(I was a part of it because of work on Spellborn and early contract work for SOE)
The initial budget was fine the concept was good enough.
Systems were decent yet half of us still voted to not want to be a part of it.
My concern personally was the time commitment involved in creating and maintaining an mmorpg. Budget was a concern sure but for me it was all about the time commitment.
So much ground work has to be put down in all the right order for it to survive long term then years of content creation and pressure to deliver.
Too many developers in our current time do not want to agree to such a long term commitment.
Many people think the market reads and competition and this and that are the biggest factors and the reality is for producers, investors and developers that could not be further from the truth. Because (for the most part) if you make a really good game it will get played.
It boils down to not wanting a long term personal commitment and creative focus for such an extended period of time.
Developing is for the majority, project based.
Most like to develop a project and move on.
Not commit to a ten year+ sentence.
There are a couple of projects in the works that show promise for a new era type mmorpg but they use gameplay systems beyond just the tired whack a mole system we have grown used to from 20+ years ago. How these will be received is beyond guess at this point but it is clear that a more fluid and dynamic way of developing is required for the genre to have any future beyond just rehashed games we have all already played.

This is fascinating to tell the truth, and in such stark contrast to my own profession, for example, when the company I worked for took a job building a train station, it was a 12 year project from start to finish, and we were eager to be part of that, as that gave use a sense of security that we would have a guaranteed locked-in job for the next 12 years.

Where you make it sound like that same kind of situation for a developer is a person sentence.

So in that vein, what you said was very informative, something I personally never even thought about, or looked at from a very different lens.

Thank you for this insight.

I have to agree with this. I would have never thought of developers not wanting to be locked into almost guaranteed work for a period of years.
Honestly, the concept is hard to wrap my mind around in this day and age where all you hear is over saturated work forces, and companies requiring more and more experience to land an entry position job...

Agreed, I've been delivering financial services software for almost 20 years now, mostly in the same department, not bored yet.

Some of my peers have over 35 years in, some within the same Tech group for more than 20.

So I can't really relate to the ideas of devs fearing being trapped.

How many 60+ hour crunch weeks do you get to endure in a year? Does your office have bunk beds for staff to sleep over? How's the workplace toxicity? Do your kids wonder who you are when you come home? (okay, that one may happen regardless)

Different expectations.....

Trust me, every industry suffers from such abuses, gaming hardly corners the market in this regard.

In my career I recall working 432 hrs unpaid OT in one year in transportation engineering, multiple 14 day crunches of 12 to 14 hr days, 6 days a week in telco, endured several years of mandatory 50 hour (minimum) work weeks and clocked more 60 hr weeks (all on salary of course) than I care to think of.

Toxic envs? Check. Bullying got so bad at my office during one crunch I suffered a good old fashioned nervous breakdown, now a days called stress disorder or some such, took me well over the year to recover and I still suffer from anger mgmt issues because of it.

cheyane · July 2020

Theocritus said:

Gorwe said:

Well, there is just so many free hours in the day. But! You answer me:

"Would I rather play a proven and remastered old game or a promising, but ultimately unknown new game?"

The difference now is we can take a few minutes, watch a youtube video, and have a pretty good idea of what we are getting into.

Yes this is exactly it. When I see the combat is beyond me; the interest drops to zero.

There are many games I want to play but when I watch the youtube video I realise it is too hard. Then whatever interest I had is gone. I should be thankful that I am not spending the money on it thanks to the youtube video.

I would not have been able to play PSO2 if not for the summoner class.

I want the old games because at least I can still play them.Lot of the new ones are way beyond my ability to manage the action combat.

Ungood · July 2020

Arglebargle said:

Kyleran said:

Nyghthowler said:

Ungood said:

blueturtle13 said:

I had a meeting a few years back with a team of developers and investors that was throwing around the idea of creating a new mmorpg in the vain of Asheron's Call and Spellborn.
(I was a part of it because of work on Spellborn and early contract work for SOE)
The initial budget was fine the concept was good enough.
Systems were decent yet half of us still voted to not want to be a part of it.
My concern personally was the time commitment involved in creating and maintaining an mmorpg. Budget was a concern sure but for me it was all about the time commitment.
So much ground work has to be put down in all the right order for it to survive long term then years of content creation and pressure to deliver.
Too many developers in our current time do not want to agree to such a long term commitment.
Many people think the market reads and competition and this and that are the biggest factors and the reality is for producers, investors and developers that could not be further from the truth. Because (for the most part) if you make a really good game it will get played.
It boils down to not wanting a long term personal commitment and creative focus for such an extended period of time.
Developing is for the majority, project based.
Most like to develop a project and move on.
Not commit to a ten year+ sentence.
There are a couple of projects in the works that show promise for a new era type mmorpg but they use gameplay systems beyond just the tired whack a mole system we have grown used to from 20+ years ago. How these will be received is beyond guess at this point but it is clear that a more fluid and dynamic way of developing is required for the genre to have any future beyond just rehashed games we have all already played.

This is fascinating to tell the truth, and in such stark contrast to my own profession, for example, when the company I worked for took a job building a train station, it was a 12 year project from start to finish, and we were eager to be part of that, as that gave use a sense of security that we would have a guaranteed locked-in job for the next 12 years.

Where you make it sound like that same kind of situation for a developer is a person sentence.

So in that vein, what you said was very informative, something I personally never even thought about, or looked at from a very different lens.

Thank you for this insight.

I have to agree with this. I would have never thought of developers not wanting to be locked into almost guaranteed work for a period of years.
Honestly, the concept is hard to wrap my mind around in this day and age where all you hear is over saturated work forces, and companies requiring more and more experience to land an entry position job...

Agreed, I've been delivering financial services software for almost 20 years now, mostly in the same department, not bored yet.

Some of my peers have over 35 years in, some within the same Tech group for more than 20.

So I can't really relate to the ideas of devs fearing being trapped.

How many 60+ hour crunch weeks do you get to endure in a year? Does your office have bunk beds for staff to sleep over? How's the workplace toxicity? Do your kids wonder who you are when you come home? (okay, that one may happen regardless)

Different expectations.....

Not to cock waggle, but when I worked in Commercial Construction, as a salaried foreman, a 60+ hour work week, was my every week, just the nature of the job. So, not being rude, I am not shedding any tears for someone that gets hourly pay and can still rack up a 20+ hour OT pay, when the company I worked for considered OT a cuss word.

Just saying.

Ungood · July 2020

Gorwe said:

Well, there is just so many free hours in the day. But! You answer me:

"Would I rather play a proven and remastered old game or a promising, but ultimately unknown new game?"

This is a great question.

I just started to play DDO again (made in 2006) and, while chatting, topic turned to why we were all playing a 14 year old game as opposed to a newer game.

While many answers were said, there was a more uniform agreement that we play it because the game is "deep". It gives us all the ability to play the way we want to play, with a huge amount of options, and styles, and abilities that all matter.

And while as anything organic goes, yes the topic of updating the game came up, basic ideas of just a graphics update and some of the more modern systems of cosmetics, which, were much talked about and embraced.. but then the idea of all the "mistakes" they made, and I say "mistakes" because some people loved those features and some hated them, and lo, it turned into a match of fussing about what was good and bad.

Anyway.. I think if Given the Choice between playing a remastered Old Game, or some new Game, I would be far more inclined to give a remastered game a chance if I liked it the first time around, so much so I would even be inclined to willing to "Pre-order" to support the remastering process.

Ungood · July 2020

Also, thinking about "remastered" old games, I wager this is why "Spiritual Successors" like Camelot Unchained (DAOC), Pantheon (EQ), etc, right now are getting so much backing from the people that played the original.

This makes me believe that there is a huge subset of gamers (perhaps the aging/older demographic) that is in fact excited at the prospect of playing a remastered or spiritual successor of a game they loved.

To be fair however, it is not the majority, because when I look at Star Citizen, with how much it made vs a title like Paneton, it seems rather obvious more people are looking for the new shiny, but that does not discret the legion of gamers that are looking for that nostalgic resurgence.

Just my observations.

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The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

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Does the continuation of old games discourage new ones?

Comments

거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다

The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV