It Ain't Easy To Create The Next EverCrack
from the so-so-difficult dept
A few years ago, all anyone in the gaming industry could talk about was how multi-player online games were the next generation of games. There were all the success stories about EverQuest and Ultima Online, and the greed factor set in: players had to first buy the game. Then, they needed to pay a monthly subscription fee to keep playing the game. It's no surprise that everyone wanted to offer such games: upfront fees plus recurring fees. However, the other side of that equation is that it's costly to keep those games running. There's the technical side, of course, but also the customer support issues. Plus, with so many multi-player games out there, the market started to get a bit saturated. These days, many companies are slowly backing away from the space, including EA who dumped the latest version of Ultima Online, in favor of improving the existing version. The space isn't dead, of course. There are still quite a few success stories that continue to do well. It's just that it's pretty difficult to create new multi-player games that will get people addicted.
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Here to stay
Iv played online games since duke nukem on TEN, Warcraft on Kali, Warcraft 2, 3 on battle.net, subspace, Call of Duty, Earth and Beyond, Starwars Galaxies, and even City of Heros... Oh and im just a casual gamer :).
So who else is waiting on Jump to Lightspeed expansion or World of Warcraft?
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Re: Here to stay
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Online RPGs
Ultimately it's like playing in Vegas. Every game development project is a gamble, but which sort of gamble do you prefer? Do you bet a little here and a little there, or do you like to put everything on one big play? If that big gamble pays off, you might find yourself with the next EverQuest, but if it doesn't you'll be left wondering what happened.
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nice fuzzy entry
http://pw1.netcom.com/~sirbruce2/Subscriptions.html
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