If only I’d waited! Shane Hensley has posted up other Deadlands MMO videos. First is Blackhills, which saw a change in graphics and move towards an FPS: The final video was from 2009 and showed a greater movement towards turning Deadlands into a more FPS, less hotbar dependent title: It still all looks very rough, … Continue reading
Filed under Industry …
Five Reasons Why SWOR Is A High Risk MMO: #3 The Subscription Fee Model Is Falling From Grace
Star Wars: The Old Republic is a high risk title because it is being developed for some good and bad reasons, and will cost too much… and because its core way of collecting revenue is currently on the downhill slide. Although BioWare has been coy about its revenue model, EA management is talking subscription fees. … Continue reading
Five Reasons Why SWOR Is A High Risk MMO: #2 It Is Going To Cost Too Much
Following on from reason number 1, the next big problem that Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to face is that it is going to cost too much.
Cost estimates for SWOR vary from the US$150m mark up to the US$300m mark, which is a big range, but regardless of its true cost it is EA’s self-proclaimed biggest project ever and even BioWare sees it being multiple times bigger than anything they’ve worked on before. The reason is will cost too much is that combination of profit, business practicality and ego I mentioned before, but the development costs are actually what could cause the most problems post launch.
To understand this, you have to look at how MMOs actually make money: box sales, subscription fees and real money transactions (RMT). Continue reading
Five Reasons Why SWOR Is A High Risk MMO: #1 EA Is In It For The Wrong Reasons
It’s been a good week for internet video game drama. There was a nice warm-up with Nick Lovell’s contribution to the masses on 10 doomed games / businesses / products, followed by the main course of EA Louse spewing bile at EA from the inside. Putting aside the validity of EA Louse’s posts – and … Continue reading
Layoffs At Paragon Studios; And The Unluckiest Man In The City
News has come out that nine people have been laid off from Paragon Studios, including fan favourite / big forum presence Christopher Bruce, who posted under the name Back Alley Brawler (or BABs). BABs, along with Floyd Grubb aka Castle, had been among the most visible Paragon Studio developers on the forums. CoH/V forumite players … Continue reading
It’s Important For Tech Companies To Update Their Websites Too
One rough sign of company health in this modern age is the state of their website, notably how often it is updated. This is especially true of companies in the technology space, like Cryptic. Of note is that their Executive Team page is wildly out of date (alterations are mine): Craig ‘Zinc’ Zinkievich announced his … Continue reading
RealTime World Employees Not Getting Last Set of Wages, Benefits
In a very quick time, RealTime Worlds has gone from an exciting new MMO entrant to smoking crater in the ground, all fueled by over $100m in investor capital. At launch they managed to pick up 130 000 odd players, but that obviously wasn’t enough because the money is gone. In fact, it is so … Continue reading
APB: Well, Since Everyone Else Is Doing It…
The failure of All Points Bulletin is a current hot topic, especially since it looks to have pretty much destroyed the generally well-regarded developer Real Time Worlds. A great look at this toppling can be seen at GameBrief – the only thing that appears wrong are claims that APB only sold around 10k copies, whereas … Continue reading
Did Bill Roper Get A Golden Handshake?
This is me combining two different bits of information that may actually not be related. Bill Roper is leaving Cryptic Studios. He joined as the Executive Producer on Champions Online before being promoted into the role of Chief Creative Officer. Roper claims he’s leaving to explore new opportunities. Back when Infogrammes / Atari bought Cryptic, … Continue reading
Another Two For the Chopping Block: Earth Eternal and Chronicles of Spellborn
Following up the announcements of Exteel’s cancellation comes the separate announcements that Earth Eternal is up for sale (and will close if it can’t find a buyer) while Chronicles of Spellborn is finishing up in the near future. Again, there is too much competition in the MMO market for stragglers to be able to turn … Continue reading
World Class Villains 