[MUD-Dev] Online Games Fighting Terrorism

[Koster]

From: Sean Kelly
> Dave Rickey wrote:
 
>> Herz explains that "as a design and engineering challenge, in
>> sheer scale and complexity Star Wars Galaxies rivals the
>> construction of a space station."
 
> Quite a compliment :)

I have trouble believing it, personally. I was commenting to others
recently that really, SWG is being made relatively cheaply for a
top-line MMORPG these days. We have a team of ~50 for example--not
100, like another top-line MMO currently in development. We are into
8 digits in terms of cost, but the first digit is still a 1, not a 2
like another recently launched MMORPG.

The thing that scares me, personally, is that it won't be
implausible NEXT time around. The content bar is growing ever
higher. The base-level features required for a commercial online
world to be competitive is growing rapidly--housing and robust
crafting having been added to it, and more soon to come. The
technical bar is also climbing rapidly. What used to be one 64x64
texture a couple of years ago is now a 256x256 texture plus a normal
map plus alpha plus whatever other fancy things shaders permit these
days, PLUS the shader itself, which requires a programmer to
write. We are heading straight for movie-sized budgets, with no
commensurate growth in audience.

Games which don't have these things are going to be a tougher and
tougher sell. It's really rather disturbing, given that the entry
cost is climbing so high, and the break-even line for subscription
figures is also so high.

Nichification is definitely coming with further games, but at the
current economics of the biz, it won't help that much, given that a
from-scratch competitive product is going to require a pretty large
niche. Tightly focused products are failing to get much above 50,000
subs, and I doubt that's viable for companies who are having to
develop their technology from scratch. Maybe middleware can
alleviate that huge cost, but most middleware takes massive rework
before it works within a given project...

There's time left, but in another product cycle? I really don't
know. :(

-Raph

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