One MMO story that very quickly subsumed by recent events was that Marvel Heroes (MH) actually released some real information about itself. Headed by Diablo developer David Brevik, Marvel Heroes will be a Diablo-style MMO… just like Gazillion’s other output, the now-closed Fortune Online and kid-oriented Super Hero Squad Online. Looks like Gazillion has a … Continue reading
Filed under MMOs …
What’s Wrong With The AAA MMO Industry, Using An Imperfect Baseball Analogy
You’re the head manager of a new baseball team. You’re passionate about what you want to achieve, have some great ideas in mind and have at least enough money to get things rolling. When you tell other people about what your team is going to achieve, they sound excited too. You know that you are … Continue reading
38 Studios: Striking Out
Concluding my previous look at 38 Studios and possibly how all the money got spent is the news that 38 Studios has shut down, laid everyone off (including the Big Huge Games team) and will likely now be carved up and sold in order for Rhode Island to possibly get some money back. There’s an … Continue reading
Embers of Caerus: If I’m Snarky About Kickstarter, At Least I’m Consistent
Another day, another Kickstarter in the gaming “press” (which loves it, let’s be honest – it’s super-easy content to write regardless what happens). What caught my eye about the Embers of Caerus Kickstarter is that it is so that a group of 50 volunteer, amateur developers can develop an investor prototype that may eventually be … Continue reading
38 Studios: Incentivising Your Own Destruction, Plus Hot Chart Action!
In my previous bit of armchair expert analysis on 38 Studios current situation I ended with the statement that the “financial maths” hadn’t been done correctly, or had been ignored. But then I thought that may not have been clear what I meant. As such: charts! I’m basing these charts predominantly off this article’s timeline … Continue reading
City of Heroes / Villains: A Limited Bounce
When the first quarter of financial data landed following City of Heroes / Villains conversion to a free-to-play model, it showed a positive-if-only-moderate bump from 2812 million Won (or US$2.41m) in Q3 2011 to 3435 million Won (or US$2.97m) in Q4 2011. Going F2P saw about a 20% jump in revenue. It certainly wasn’t in … Continue reading
Path Finding and Kick Starting
As previously discussed, I’m fairly cynical of Kickstarter for video game development. Backers see it as supporting something they are interested in; I see it as companies leveraging off their previous reputation and gamer hope to get money gifted to them. Because that’s what the money is: a gift. Once the pledge target is met … Continue reading
The Secret World: Fighting The Previous War
There has been one MMO that I’ve been interested in for a long time and that’s The Secret World (TSW). I joined the forum back in June 2007, but my account had issues with posting in threads, plus I’ve long since got over my interest in taking part in the “wouldn’t it be cool if…”-style … Continue reading
How Many Players Did City of Heroes / Villains Have After Launching Freedom?
Converting from a pure subscription-based title to a hybrid free-to-play (F2P) is something than more than one MMO title has seen happen. And generally the indication from the studio is that such a move makes mad bank. When Cryptic Studios converted Champions Online to F2P, they said revenue went up 1000%; when Turbine Studios converted … Continue reading
An Update That Promises Further Updates
So NCsoft’s Q4 2012 earning results are out now and although City of Heroes / Villains saw an increase in revenue after going F2P, it isn’t the huge jump you might expect to see. This could be one of the reasons why Paragon Studios has made the move of introducing variable ratio randomised rewards you … Continue reading
World Class Villains 