GDC: 10 Reasons NOT to Make MMOGs

Warrior-GS writes "Gordon Walton, who helped create such games as Ultima Online and the Sims Online, is at the Game Developers Conference giving a seminar on "Ten Reasons You Don't Want to Run a Massively Multiplayer Online Game". GameSpy has been providing coverage of GDC, with several game previews and several conference reports. They also have a hands-on report of the Nokia N-Gage from four of their editors, and a somewhat unorthodox report of the Game Developer Choice Awards, where Metroid Prime was named Game of the Year. The convention continues through Saturday."

and the #1 reason......

They suck once you realize it's just an IRC chatroom with graphics that you're paying $40 a month for.

Re:and the #1 reason......

I realized this two weeks into Everquest's release and went straight back to MUDs. Least its free and I still get to kill stuff. I've yet to find an MMOG that can actually hold my attention. Too much going on, and I'm too limited to where I can play from. IRC, MUDs, whatever have you, they are accessible from anywhere, require any barebones system, and still let a person envision the game and characters in whichever way their mind chooses. People always say the book is better than the movie. The same goes for MMOG's.

Did you see his picture?

That's reason enough. I bet he had hair before he started.

I'd comment on this...

But I need to get back to the game, sorry.

Also see...

Slashdot's February 2002 story [slashdot.org] about the technical challenges in starting a MMORPG.

Brought to you by the letter "M"

Why you don't want to make MMOLRPG Haiku:

Internet attracts
nitpickers with no money;
driving you to drink.

Re:Metroid Prime

The reason the first Metroid was difficult would be the fact that you had NO MAP!!!

Sure you could create some bastardized atlas yourself on severla hundred pages of paper using nothing but fat Crayola markers, but really...I'd rather not go into the childhood trauma which was losing those maps.

And his most compelling reason...

"Please don't make them, because we don't want any more competition."

Re:And his most compelling reason...

Funny :) But this quote from the article suggests otherwise, if you agree with the analysis.

Walton wasn't giving the talk because he wanted the industry to quit trying. In fact, just the opposite: he expressed an inherent human need for community that goes unfulfilled in modern society, and how online games can fill that basic need while uniting people with similar interests.

However, he expressed his fears that the market is stagnating, and a series of poor product launches could make it even worse...

Which seems like a reasonable concern!

To summarize

10: Too Many are Being Built
9: It Requires a Mastery of Too Many Disciplines
8: A Huge Team is Required
7: Getting a Credit Card from a Customer is Hard
6: The Online Industry is Counter-Intuitive to Packaged-Goods Company Management
5: Everything You Know about Single-Player Games is Wrong
4: The Internet Sucks as a Commercial Delivery Platform
3: Customer Service is Hard
2: There are Lots of Legal Issues
1: They Cost Too Much money to Build and Launch!

0: WHA WHA WHA!

Nick Powers

Re:To summarize

mrnick posted the list of reasons given in the article. I feel these are all things an open source model would address well:

10: Too Many are Being Built ...eventually code and experts will leak out into the open source sector. Once the tons of people required to code these monsters realize they could get paid to write one that will fail or donate a few spare hours to one that will last the ages, enough may donate some time to make an open source one viable.
9: It Requires a Mastery of Too Many Disciplines ...but with open source development an artist can say "gee the art sucks...I'll redraw it" and an programmer can say "gee the AI sucks...I'll rewrite it"
8: A Huge Team is Required ...can't get bigger than the whole user base
7: Getting a Credit Card from a Customer is Hard ...so you give it away for free or if you don't, just go through a service like PayPal or something. I would pay for an open source MMORPG because I can't possibly host the whole thing myself - but my friends and I could get together and host it (see below).
6: The Online Industry is Counter-Intuitive to Packaged-Goods Company Management ...so you don't use a Packaged-Goods company
5: Everything You Know about Single-Player Games is Wrong ...thus don't use those people to write it. Sure the current MMORPG's have serious problems - problems they likely won't worry about working out. But in an open source context, many more ideas can be tried and we can see what survives.
4: The Internet Sucks as a Commercial Delivery Platform ...thus don't deliver it as a commercial good. Let 1000 people host games and the strongest will survive.
3: Customer Service is Hard ...so have no CS. The example given is players loosing items. If it pisses you off that you are loosing items, rewrite the code so you *don't* loose items. If it pisses you off that you can't find a monster, or an item, look at the code and find out how the system works. Should that system be changed?
2: There are Lots of Legal Issues ...which would be relieved if we didn't *pay* for a service
1: They Cost Too Much money to Build and Launch! ...so distribute the costs over many, many people: let me host one "zone" on a spare Linux box in the corner and my friend Dave will host one zone on his spare box and so on. Sure, we will not be able to have 500 people in one zone at one time, but is that a bad thing?

Multimedia?

All [gamespy.com] these [gamespy.com] visual [gamespy.com] aids? [gamespy.com]

It would be nicer to have just one focused, properly framed, and complimentary photo of the guy...

Re:Multimedia?

That's what I was thinking. I'm guessing that number 11 on the list is "It's hard to get a decent in-focus photo."

Electronic crack

Why should MMPORPGs be restricted? These things are perfect for dropping GPAs, especially for freshmen at high-pressure universities like Cal Tech and MIT where numerous freshmen who've never had an internet connection finallu get a chance to play "Quake" or "Everquest" at 1+GBPs or something ridiculous. I remember one of my friends at Vanderbilt got slapped with academic probation and complained that he had no time to get his work done in Engineering. Six-Eight hours a day of Counterstrike and Ultima Online will put a crimp in the ol' calendar. And it becomes like an electronic crack or alcohol for the users, especially if they're anti-social or unpopular to begin with. Trying to tell them they have a problem only leads to fights and arguments. Oh well, regulating these things is almost out of the question entirely but there should be careful consideration of how to deal with the "addicts" and how to best manage these systems.

Re:Electronic crack

They shouldn't be regulated for one very good reason.

Personal responsibility!

Maybe you've heard of it. Your grades are slipping because you play too much EverCrack? Too bad, quit playing EverCrack. Can't quit playing EverCrack? Seek out addiction counseling, it's availabe, often for free. Your ass is getting fat because you've eaten too many cheeseburgers? Quit eating cheesburgers every day.

A little common sense and some personal responsibility seem to be sorely lacking in the populace today.

Re:Electronic crack

A little common sense and some personal responsibility seem to be sorely lacking in the populace today.

That's not my fault!

Its like any other product!

If you are only going to make a half-assed attempt then you may as well not bother.

Surely the brightest minds in game development dont need someone standing up there telling them that massive online multiplayer games aren't as easy as single player ones?! .. if they do then we're probably all doomed

Two things:

First off, that guy looks like the Heaven's Gate cult leader from a few years ago. The bald head really does it for me.

Secondly, and more seriously, he brings up valid points. I just started playing Asheron's Call 2 last month as part of a psychology experiment run by the University of Michigan. I found that the lower level game was very intense and packed with content, but as I gained levels over the course of a month, the content tapered off and turned into merely hack-and-slash. This makes sense, because the game is only a few months old and should thus have more content for low levels than high.

Unfortunately, high levels are relatively easy to attain. I played for 1 month, a few hours a night, and I'm currently at level 32, right where the content stops. But there are people who were level 50 only 3 weeks after the game was launched. What do they do now? They sit around, or create alternate characters until the 50 level cap is released.

Re:Two things:

Unfortunatly you are seeing a problem with that particular game. I played the first Asherons Call for close to three years. The game started out with tons of low and mid level content. Then as the game got older and the majority of the populace started to gain higher levels there seemed to be nothing but high level content. A few months before I stopped playing the game for good they finally started adding low level content again. Unfortunatly you could get to the highest levels in no time at all so many people never saw the low level content that was added without starting new characters. The content issue is probably the hardest one.

One of the reasons:

"You make too much money and have to hire more accountants. Trust me- you don't want to have problems like that"

Next up: BF1942 clones

You hear that sound? Every massively multiplayer game maker is suddenly trying to switch business plans to moderately-multiplayer, cloning Battlefield 1942. BF1942 is hugely popular, so it "makes sense" to do something like that.

Of course, like lemmings, there'll be a few dozen BF1942 clones, and most will die due to too much competition.

Game makers: go AWAY from what's suddenly popular.

Re:Next up: BF1942 clones

like lemmings, there'll be a few dozen BF1942 clones, and most will die due to too much competition.

Really? There were lots of spinoffs, but I only remember one or two clones of Lemmings. [mobygames.com]

People required???

I particularly like the realization that Customer Service is the key to maintaining a well-run MMOG. If you want a steady stream of cash coming in, it only makes sense that it takes a steady stream of cash to support your customers - but all too often, customer service is viewed as a grudging neccesity, not a potential for competitive advantage.

I agree with the guy

I don't really think this guy is trying to prevent people from making MMOGs; I think he is trying to raise the standards for that genre of games. God knows we don't want to see any Deer Hunter: Online titles coming out, so give the guy some slack if he seems confrontational.

This, I think, falls under that rarely used "constructive" branch of criticism.

Interesting points...

His points are quite interesting, but the question I have is that if no one gets into the arena (and obviously 100 is a lot) then who will supply the demand? He has obviously figured out what challenges there are, but you have to be able to overcome them, because there is such a huge demand for interactive group fantasy. People want to escape.

What about a decentralized approach. A grid based or peer to peer for persistant worlds. You might have to increase the bandwith to double check nodes and the like to prevent hacking, but some of the problems (DOS, investment in infrastructure) would go away.

In the world we live in we can only see clearly and understand the world that is near by, that doesn't mean we have to be connected to a server that is one giant persistant world. There could be areas of the world hosted on several region peers. The client would be required to take on some function of the world and it could be totally decentralized.

Any thoughts comments?

The Big Point I Got...

...was that MMOG are A LOT harder to create and run than your standard game (console and PC included).

Just like with FPS and RTS games there is this rush with the success of UO and EQ to make these MMOG persistent games by small companies. These games will more than likely fail due to the lack of resources. This is deluting the MMOG genre because everyone is promissing to be the next "EQ Killer" and failing to deliver in one way or another.

So if you have a company and are thinking about making some persistent world, stop and make damn sure you plan a lot of resource and time into it...then double it. If word of mouth can kill a stand alone game it will uttery destroy an online one.

MMOCR

Massively Multiplayer Online ChatRoom ;)

Seriously, these games need to be made so they have a real point, and so that people will not get so attached to them. I'm sick of seeing my friends drop out of classes because they'd rather wait two hours for an imaginary dragon to spawn so they can cast the same spell over and over again and after another half hour they die and sit around waiting for someone to resurrect them.

I have a friend who's 65th level on EQ. (Currently the highest possible so he says proudly). He's also a year behind in his studies, and has had bouts of depression and alchololism (due to his lack of social life) for the past three years.

Pardon the sudden rant, but why can't there be an actuall MMOG that people can spend, oh, 1-3 hours on a week instead of 10-30 hours a week and still have fun.

Re:MMOCR

I strongly agree with you here. What is needed is a more "casual" MMOG, where you don't need to stop eating to become successful in. There was something in the article about UO and EQ being developed for users to pay on an hourly basis, so perhaps long spawn times are a relic of that system.

If you make it too "casual" however, and people can pop in and out at will, you lose some of the point of the game, the community and the relationships needed to succeed. In a game like this, they only groups you'd see doing things would be people that know each other from RL, so whats even the point of playing? Hey that sounds like Diablo 2, huh?

Animal Crossing

Just a thought: i rented Animal Crossing from blockbuster a couple of days ago, and it really does a good job of fitting what you describe.

The game is basically The Sims, except from the perspective of a Sim rather than the perspective of God. The game takes place in realtime-- it works off the Gamecube's internal clock-- and even if you aren't there, stuff happens and changes in the town.

The reason the game is interesting is that after the 30-40 minute tutorialish session of setting up a new character, it is basically designed such to make you want to play it for about ten minutes every day-- however, after about ten minutes, there really won't be much to do. You basically sign on to see if anything changed in the town, see if you got any mail, check with your neighbors and see what's up, *maybe* do something to get some money to help toward eventually paying your mortgage and see what's new in the store. And then there really isn't much else to do, usually, unless you want to just sit around and fish. This is brilliant becuase it keeps you from getting sick of it. And, of course, every few days something will actually be *happening*, or every so often you'll decide to plant some trees, and you'll be playing for a couple hours maybe. But you generally won't overdose on it: you can't sit through and experience the entire game in one solid weeklong gaming session. The game *forces* you to take it in small bites, yet ensures there is something special worth signing on for every single day-- yet doesn't *penalize* you if you just stop playing for a month.

This is an example the MMORPG world would do well to follow. As you note, a system like this would lead to some community "issues", but it would make content creation, system maintenence, etc, an order of magnitude easier.

Interestingly, shigeru miyamotu is on record as saying that Animal Crossing 2 will have "network support". I assume this means internet support. As of now, it's possible to "take the train" to a friend's town with your character if you either borrow their memory card with their saved town on it, "take the boat" to an "island" if you plug in a GBA with the GBA version of animal crossing saved on it. I'm very curious how they'd implement internet features.. it could wind up being like a kind of p2p MMORPG.

(Note to everyone: make sure if you rent this game, you either have a spare memory card or rent it from somewhere that includes with the rental the memory card that came with the game. An animal crossing savefile takes up a full 57-block memory card.)

Re:MMOCR

I've contemplated this idea for a long time (I've run a mud for several years now).
With a good set of rules, I think its possible:
1.) Remove levels. Everything is based on attributes and skills.
2.) Put in aging (including death date from old age, character is gone forever).
3.) Allow players, on creation, to start from either a young age, middle age, or old age.
You're maniac 50+hours a week players will go for the young age, and can build up better skills when they reach a middle age than any player that starts at middle age. You're 'casual' players start at an older age, which includes a ton of skills, have fun, but don't have to worry about really working on skill development or getting thrashed by the maniac players.
And if maniacs stay maniacs, they'll eventually die.

Of course, this won't work well with games that require tons of monthly fees, because your maniacs give you your steady income, but its a great idea for free games like MUDs, etc...

Learn from Sony

Sony has LONG since tackled the issue of harrasing customer phone calls with their customer service program, "Operation: Go Fuck Yourself". Sony believed that if you truly just stopped giving a shit, eventually your customers would pick up on this and quit asking for help. It's a beautiful, horrifying behemoth of a program that paid off big time in their favor. Grats to them.

Customer Support

One of the main points, one which he put much stress on (and I'm glad to see this) is Customer Support. Problems happen; and if the game is to survive and prosper, good support is essential. I've been playing EverQuest for some time, and the support there (which has improved) is still, in my opinion, subpar and problems are often very hard to get some answers/help for. Especially when you have technical issues.

The old joke was this; "Verant changed the mean of CS; it now means 'Customers Suck'."

Using the wrong business model??

He mentions in the article how 'old business models' aren't suitable for online games; reffering to the pre-packaged product.

Surely the answer then is to develop a new business model adapted to the new market?
Is this too blindingly obvious? (I would think he mentions this in the seminar although its not in the article)

"And don't call me Shirley!"

Earth and Beyond

so I got the five day demo disc, and rebooted into XP to try it out. I was immediately impressed. Cool science-fiction worlds, great graphics, pretty standard everquest-style gameplay. Then, after a bit of time, I realized exactly why this game wasn't worth my money.

The world is too static. I can imagine a space game like this one that allows people to travel all over the place, trying to find new things. Granted, it's impossible to allow an infinite amount of places to explore and stuff, but they simply have to start rotating servers, starting the exploration from zero again every once in a while...not let the game get stagnant as it seems to be now.

This follows exactly from what this guy says. To make a game world that's as dynamic and as exciting as I would want would require a huge amount of support, something a lot of people would like to see, but not something that a lot of people would like to pay for.

I guess that those ten reasons to not make an MMOG are simply those, but the more people that waste their time and money trying to make it better, eventually will bring along, not to use a silly pop-culture reference, 'the one' that brings it all together. Then we'll be rocking as everyone else will have to copy that one to make success for themselves.

well, here's hoping that afer the earth and beyond team moves they can start to juice up the sci-fi world they have created in such a way that they really impress people. I've got my fingers crossed.

open it up

The author sees problems that need to be micromanaged. In my experience with projects like this, you need organic growth, not sudden, rapid growth like the Sims Online got. Many users are willing to create content for you, if you waive their monthly fee. This could represent a small portion of your userbase, and the content creators become more valuable than their waived fee. In regards to customer service, many of the most sucessful online games have a group of players who are in a "mentor" role. They answer questions, help out newbies, etc. Some do it out of good will, others do it for special privilages they get in the game. These two simple steps can drastically reduce the complexity of an online game.

A big reason left out...

A huge reason for not making a MMORPG, especially on a shoestring, is that your game at release cannot possibly hope to compete with games that have been balancing and adding content for a year, or three, or more.

A good example of this is Asheron's Call 2 vs. the original Asheron's Call. AC2 is a beautiful game that you can run through and just appreciate, while AC1's graphics are merely functional. AC2 has brand spanking new crafting and town building systems, while AC1 has the same old ones. AC2 offers individualized dungeons so groups can go hunting and questing without running into packed "camped" dungeons, and AC1 does not.

Which game has more subscribers and active players? AC1, by a wide margin, despite never having received anything in the way of advertising from Microsoft (as opposed to AC2 which was widely and aggressively marketed). AC1 simply has more content -- more stuff to do. It may not be eye candy like AC2, but the eye candy effect wears off after a week or two anyway. To catch up to AC1's three years of monthly (free) expansions, AC2 would have to -- well, be out three years. Or hire a MUCH larger content team (the AC2 content team is basically the old AC1 content team).

EQ2 will face the same problem compared to EQ1. People are going to buy EQ2, go "ooh, ahh", log in, appreciate New Freeport's amenities, walk outside and fight a couple of rats, and go back to their level 65 guys in EQ. Why would they want to level up on rats again in a game with 1/10 the content of EQ?

Games without the brand recognition of AC and EQ have it even worse off. Dark Age of Camelot somewhat sidestepped this phenomenon because they were the first "next generation" MMORPG out of the gate (Anarchy Online was too buggy at release, so doesn't count ;)), and got the disgruntled AC/EQ/UO players. The newer games, such as Shadowbane, have a LOT to live up to. Current MMORPG players will compare everything to their current game, and if the new game doesn't REALLY shine, they have no reason to leave. They have too much time invested in their characters. And The Sims Online's tepid sales show that the market isn't ready to expand much yet -- you're dealing with the same bundle of players that you have to lure away from their current addiction.

Re:A big reason left out...

You assume the likes of Asherons & EQ are balanced. I only have experience of EQ (two years worth), but I can tell you this - it was horribly, disgustingly, offensively unbalanced.

Essentially the situation was that unless you were some no-life loser who spent 10 hours a day on the system you were doomed to slowly, very slowly slog, slog away watching that exp bar crawl up one pixel at a time. After an eternity you raise a level, learn a few new skills or spells and repeat. The process for the casual player (as in a few hours a night) was just an exercise in tedium. There was no 'balance' here - the game was tuned to make progress as slow and as painful as possible. Worse, it was tuned assuming folks were twinked with unfeasibly over powered armour and weapons. So unless you wasted a disproportionate amount of time raising funds to buy uber gear you stood no chance of progressing because the mobs would murder you in a second.

It wasn't just the game that was the problem. Patch after patch and expansion after expansion demonstrated beyond a doubt that Verant didn't give a shit about the casual player. Every single expansion without exception has been deliberately aimed at the high level player. Sure you might see some 'newbie' zones but by and large expansions were developed for 30+ players, i.e. those already 'hooked'.

So casual gamers could basically fuck off. If you weren't constantly running EQ fullscreen for 10 hours a day there was little chance of progress. After the abysmal Shadows of Luclin expansion followed by a price rise I dumped the damned thing and I'm glad I did. It was a wrench to be sure, no doubt from the Skinner box like reward model, but I'm happy to be rid of the bloody thing. I don't think short of some extraordinarily positive reviews I would ever touch an online game written by Sony or Verant again.

Now addressing your points of EQ / AC players moving back from version 2 to 1. I would not be surprised if Verant and Microsoft offered 'migration' paths that enable characters to upgrade from the old version to the new one. I would be extremely surprised if they offered a route in the other direction.

BBSs

When I read the article, the first I thinked that this guy should not have been running a BBS in the old days. Most of this points could be correlated to an (hypotetical? there was ever one published?) list of 10 reasons you don't want to run a commercial BBS (specially if you programmed it, as myself). Of course, this list is more actual and have problems that are not fully related to the BBS ones, but anyway, gived me some sort of deja-vu.

Interesting comment about shorter gameplay.

It's interesting that he mentions shorter gameplay - one of the online games I've enjoyed the most is (Although not an online RPG) Magic: The Gathering online. I really like it because I can sit down, log on, play a game, and log back out - all in the space of 10 minutes. There's no "I need to go get something to drink, let me wait for a 30 second logout animation, a 20 second 'connecting to character server' screen, and then another 20 second login animation when I get back," and there's no "I want to play, but it's going to take me 10 minutes to get my character ready to play, and another 5 minutes to run to the place I want to hunt (or another 10 minutes to try to find a ride there) and then there's really no point if I don't play for at least 20 minutes."

Ode of the Terminally Uninformed

10: Too Many are Being Built
But there are very, very few good ones.

9: It Requires a Mastery of Too Many Disciplines
Oooh, I thought that was half the fun. It's like saying "the tech tree is just too darned big!" in MoO3

8: A Huge Team is Required
But somebody is obviously making money off of it, so what's the problem again?

7: Getting a Credit Card from a Customer is Hard
Huh? Not from somebody who actually wants to play the game. Maybe you're talking about the whiny 15 year olds I hear on the XBox forums all the time.

6: The Online Industry is Counter-Intuitive to Packaged-Goods Company Management
So you look towards other examples of services that have succeeded with "24-hour operations, 365 days a year, with continuous customer support, etc, etc". Is this really a reason not to make an MMOMMOMMORPG? Sony obviously disagrees.

5: Everything You Know about Single-Player Games is Wrong
Um, not really. Plot? Interaction? The mastery of many disciplines????? Sure, there are radical difference in some areas, but a reason not to make a MMORPG? Pretty weak.

4: The Internet Sucks as a Commercial Delivery Platform
Dot bust, blahblahblah. Once again, where you complain, others have succeeded.

3: Customer Service is Hard
I'm sorry, but this man's "points" sound increasingly like whining. Customer service is a fact of life. Yes it's online. No, it's not crippling. DEAL WITH IT.

2: There are Lots of Legal Issues
Like ANY industry. He refers to Ultima misfortune. Last I heard, ultima was a good example of how not to handle an MMORPG. It was especially bad in it's opening years if I remember right. Customers were revolting in droves. So yeah, if you screw your fanbase over, I can see the potential legal issues.

1: They Cost Too Much money to Build and Launch!
Perhapse, but lets refer to point #10: Their are too many being built. Points #10 and #1 don't exactly share a happy coexistance with one another in why you shouldn't make an MMORPG. "My God! They cost too much, but everybody is building them anyway!" Huh? Either A) You're lying/Don't have a clue or B) There s enough profit potential inspite of reasons 1-10 to do it anyway.

If you said C) Both A and B, you get a star.

I REALLY hope developers take this to heart

I really hope developers take what he has to say to heart. As an EQ player and a moderator of a fairly large Everquest and MMoRPG board [ezboard.com], I understand many of these issues. Many game companies look at Everquest, see enormious revenue and think it'd be a great idea.

In truth, sony pours TONS of money into Everquest. Their bandwidth alone is huge. Add onto that that they have a full development team for dealing with the implimented game, (the live team: fixes bugs, etc), and then another whole development team that builds expansions and such to add content. They are contuiously changing the core code of the game, (such to add features not implimented in the original game such as 2 new user interfaces since the game was released).

They have 50ish servers compromising, (from what I understand), of roughly 30 computers per server, which means for every patch they are possibly updating around 1500. (Though it should be noted that I doubt they patch every computer every patch.) Also, these servers are located in both the United States and in Europe. And they are expected to have minor patches done in 2 hours, major patches, (for things such as expansions), done in 8. And no loss of any amount of data, (such as what character has which items), is tollerated in any way. Because of this their network administration must be near flawless.

Now lets look at what we have down the pipe. We have games that are being thrown together by people who come from single player games instead of MUDs and D&D. We have people who design games with out the backing of the enormious companies it takes to supply the capital required for a 4 to 5 year development cycle, implimentation of the enormious amount of hardware, the marketting, and the payroll for the support staff. We have people who don't realize that they must either be perfect at what they do, (see blizzard), or tap a previously untapped nitch, (Star Wars Galaxies) of MMoG potential. It would be wise that they make sure that the nitch exists and that the model for advancement in the game actually holds water first though (The Sims: Online).

In the end, we will have many companies that put 2/3rds of the work and money into making the games all competing with each other for a very small populace of people who are not already commited to as many games as they can afford time wise and monitarily. Most of them will die out, just like the dot-com bust.

But many games will pervail. Star Wars Galaxies will likely be as big, if not bigger than Everquest. Worlds of Warcraft shows amazing promise. Horizons seems to be a crowd favorite. And whatever product is being build by Sigil [sigilgames.com] will be one of the leading contenders. (For those who don't know, the company is run by the people who made the decisions about Everquests form and is funded by microsoft. They also have recruited alot of the senior staff that had previously worked for the Everquest team.)

But with the majority of the market for Online RPGs and D&D type worlds already accounted for through Everquest, (or soon to be picked up by the above mentioned games), Developers better have a spot for their game to fit and they better do a DAMN good job of designing it, populating it, and supporting it if they plan on recouping their losses.

Let the users create

The amount of content required is IMMENSE.

Duh. That's why you don't try to build it yourself. Make a game in which the players build the world. And then encourage them to do so. I suppose this ties in with:

Everything You Know about Single-Player Games is Wrong

That's right Dave. One of the "wrong" things is the premise that the game creator creates the world. That doesn't work! The game creator has to create the rules of the universe and start the world. Then, if he expects to not be swamped, he has to sit back and let the players take it from there.

I'll tell you why they suck...

I never have been into MMO (Massive Multi-Player Onlines) and I'll tell you why:

1) Recycled games themes; You get either Dungeon and Dragons or Future Space SciFi. No one is really breaking out of the box on this. Of the 100 games on the market, they fall into these two catagories.
2) Too restrictive, Narrow play. Stop making the game so static. Just make a world that has rules and let the players do the rest. Don't make it so you have to do missions to advance.
If players want to be in a clan that raids other clans, then let it be. You can make protection zones (No fighting in the zones), but once out of the zone, go at it. For exmaple, let players set the price of items by supply and demand.

I am still waiting for a Fallout (Post apocalyptic) style MMOG where I can be evil or nice or anything in between. Just create the world and let the players do the rest.

Maximum Charisma's Spectacular Online Game failure

This guy has got this issue right on.

I worked for a computer gaming software development company called Maximum Charisma Studios in 2001-2002. I was the systems and network engineer, doing all of the production and corporate infrastructure -- desktops, servers, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, WAN and LAN networking.

Maximum Charisma actually produced their first software title called Fighting Legends to store shelves, which was a huge accomplishment considering that we were independent. We had Sony manufacture the CDs and a few other things, but we handled distribution. We outsourced some customer service agents for the anticipated needs of customers, but that was about it. The company consisted of about 30 people at it's height.

Fighting Legends was supposed to be a Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy (MMORTS) game. It required a network connection that I metered out to be an average of something like 25Kbps bursting to 80Kbps per user for the persistent connection. Latency was a big issue, with the edge of enjoyment being about 250ms.

There was trouble with Fighting Legends. The big mistake was design. The game was designed poorly because the company was inexperienced. It lacked story, it lacked refinement of play, and it lacked fun. The game was not fun, so nobody played it. I know the actual statistics of how many players we had, how many at one time, etcetera, but I am not going to quote them. Instead I will just say that we didn't have enough.

The overhead to keep the company going without the subscription cost meeting the break even point is what killed the company. We could have gotten more money, we could have really cut down on spending, we could have probably made it for the second title if it was not for the overhead costs of Fighting Legends. It was the data center costs that were the killer -- $900 per month per cabinet, and about $5K+ per month for power data and other service costs.

Maximum Charisma took about 2.5 years of development time. The product was on the shelf on November 1st of 2001. The company called it quits on January 29th 2002, even though the servers stayed up for almost two months after.

Here are is a picture from Maximum Charisma Studios of our data cabinets. This is off of a 1.5Mbps VDSL line, so be wary. And don't even tell me about cable management. We got those 65 some odd servers out of box, software loaded, and in the rack within 72 hours. It was a break neck operation. As for the hardware costs of all of this equipment that you see, it was something like $450K -- I still have the receipts to prove it.
http://www.Opendreams.net/jesse/images/Maximu m_Cha risma_Studios/20011030_MaxCha/P1010045.JPG

Here is the Maximum Charisma death notice;
http://pc.ign.com/articles/354/354578p1.h tml