22 April, 2016
I’ve gotten quite a bit out of my system in the past few weeks. So, I’m going to turn to you guys and see what you would like to have me write about.
I’m open to most suggestions, but will exercise ultimate authority as to what I write about.
Post your suggestions in the comments below!
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Nobody has any suggestions or thoughts?
Comment by Psychochild — 23 April, 2016 @ 4:12 PM
What are your thoughts on Star Citizen? Can it be made?
Comment by Lazrin — 23 April, 2016 @ 4:20 PM
Lazrin wrote:
What are your thoughts on Star Citizen? Can it be made?
Want me to dive right into the deep end of the shark tank, eh? :)
Honestly? I don’t know. On one hand, I’d like to believe it can be done. It would be amazing to see someone make a game of that scale and scope after raising a significant amount of money to do so. On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of developers, even very experienced developers, bite off way more than they can chew when it comes to ambitious games.
A lot of my thoughts echo what I wrote in Double Fine stuck in the publisher mindset; when you raise $112 million dollars (as of the most recent count on their website), the inclination is to make a game to use that $112 million, rather than making a game under the original scale and use the extra money to add on to the game afterwards.
Don’t know if there’s much more insight I could fill a blog post with, but I’ll give it some thought.
Comment by Psychochild — 23 April, 2016 @ 4:35 PM
With the notable exception of Eve-Online, every new MMO I’ve played since the late 90s has felt like a glorified tutorial meant to teach players the ropes before the competition actually begins… Which, sadly, never seems to happen.
On that basis: Are gamers today too “soft” to handle an MMO with the kind of PvP which was the norm in the M59/UOL era? By that I primarily mean tangible death consequences in the form of “exp death” and/or “full looting” appropriate to a given game’s mechanics.
TLDR Version: Is the MMO genre doomed to remain a “Sacred Haven” until the end of time?
Comment by Imperien Cypher — 23 April, 2016 @ 4:37 PM
What’s the most successful (or at least a very successful) design decision you’ve made?
What part of running a live game like an MMO do you find to be the most challenging?
What games (other than yours) have you learned the most from? What non-game things have inspired your game design?
What part of your games do you feel is the most overlooked or underrated feature?
Is there any kind of technology or design would you like to see in a game, but not one that you make yourself? Basically are there any experiences that you’d think would be interesting to play but are outside of the things you want to design (or have time to)?
Comment by Isaac — 23 April, 2016 @ 5:07 PM
A few other suggestions:
Eric Heimburg on Google+ suggested:
Hey Brian! You might blog about different F2P demographics and how the demographic affects the game’s design. (It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot and will probably blog about a bit, too. I’ve been particularly interested in the subtler differences involved in targeting “whales” versus “little fish”.)
Richard Bartle on Google+ suggested:
What’s your most pessimistic (yet realistic) view of the future of MMOs?
Steve Davis via email suggested:
How would you create another game like EVE Online? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/04/21/eve-online-world-war-bee-mittani/
Or something else this engaging?
Paul Gestwicki on Google+ suggested
How about a post on the relative merits of different balancing schedules during incremental development: balancing each feature as it is added, balancing periodically, balancing continuously.
—–
Looks like I have some topics to write about over the next little bit. :)
Comment by Psychochild — 24 April, 2016 @ 10:41 AM
Hey Brian, glad to see you ramping up post frequency recently. Always a great read.
What do you believe is an untapped “thing” for the MMO space that could actually be viable? By “thing” it could be genre, setting, a keystone mechanic, or whatever else. We’ve seen a good number experiments in recent years, but few have proven to be viable. What else is there to try?
Comment by Timothy Lochner — 24 April, 2016 @ 3:02 PM
Dave Toulouse on Twitter suggested:
There’s something to be said about how many indie successes pretty much has to go through Steam and Steam only… thoughts?
Comment by Psychochild — 24 April, 2016 @ 7:19 PM
You should write an article about how great it was in college to have a next door neighbor like Bill. Mostly, I’m just posting to get my first post past your moderation/spam filter.
Comment by Bill — 25 April, 2016 @ 2:56 PM
Well, there’s a blast from the past! :) Welcome to my blog. :)
Comment by Psychochild — 25 April, 2016 @ 7:06 PM