Skotos TT& T: Failing at Succession (was [MUD-Dev] Majestic and Failure of Episodic Games)

[Christopher Allen]

Shannon Appelcline has written an article called "Failing at
Succession" at

  http://www.skotos.net/articles/TTnT_62.shtml 

which discusses the failure of our Skotos game "Galactic Emperor:
Succession".

The article is a followup to my comments here in Mud-Dev about a month
ago:

--<cut>--
From: "Christopher Allen" <ChristopherA at skotos.net>
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Majestic and Failure of Episodic Games

>  There is an interesting article on the failure of EA's Majestic
>  at

>    http://gamepen.ugo.com/gamepen/Features.asp?itemid=130&pageid=1

>  The article's main point was that in general, the 'game play'
>  sucked.

>  I didn't ever play Majestic, but Skotos released a quasi-episodic
>  game called "Galactic Emperor: Succession" last year, and it has
>  not been a success either.

>  We thought that GE:S would appeal to the less avid gamer who
>  could not commit the time to play an intense long-term RPG-style
>  game, but who could afford a single's weeks commitment. However,
>  it is exactly this that I think is the source of the failure of
>  the game -- because each week everyone starts over, there was
>  little opportunity for a community to form. We had lots of people
>  play the game once, but it didn't suck people into a community.

>  >From what I've seen of Majestic, a similar thing happens. When
>  you start the game, you are assigned to a group of 16 other
>  players. You play with them for the month, to try to understand
>  the mystery of Majestic. As many people drop out, and secrets are
>  such a part of the game, the chances of you forming a community
>  are very small. I also saw no sign of any attempt to create a
>  meta-community of all successful players either.

>  So if there is to be another start for episodic and/or casual
>  games, I think the designers need to start much earlier in the
>  design how to encourage and support player communities to form.

>  -- Christopher Allen

>  P.S. At least it didn't cost Skotos millions of dollars to
>  discover our design mistakes. One of the joys of our medium is
>  that we can afford to experiment more ;-)
--<cut>--

------------------------------------------------------------------------
.. Christopher Allen                                 Skotos Tech Inc. ..
..                           1512 Walnut St., Berkeley, CA 94709-1513 ..
.. <http://www.Skotos.net>               o510/647-2760  f510/647-2761 ..



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