Polish Isn’t About The Bugs – It’s About The Shine

There’s a quote from Paul Barnett going around at the moment saying that Warhammer Online is finished and that they are now polishing up the game before release in mid-September. According to Video Gaming 247 (thanks Waaagh), Barnett is saying that he would be comfortable in shipping Warhammer Online right now, and that it’s in a finished state.

That’s what I like to hear.

A computer game developer who actually knows what polish is.

As devoted followers of the MMORPG developer priesthood we often hear, after a game has been shipped, that the game still needs some polish, but hey, that’s normal for MMO games… right?

We then head out to our local game store, buy the game, and scurry home to install it only to find that the quests are broken, the graphics are glitchy, and even entire systems are missing. We hop on to the forums to see 350,000 players protesting the state of the game and another 350,000 defending it. This is a MMOG… they always need polishing after release.

Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once. (Sorry, gratuitous ‘Allo ‘Allo moment there.)

Fixing serious bugs in a game is not polishing the game.

Polish is always the final layer. If you polish furniture where there are serious imperfections in the underlying workmanship, all you will do is magnify those imperfections. Try whacking the paintwork of your brand new car with a chisel and then try polishing out the resulting chip. No matter how much elbow grease you use, it won’t look good.

That means everything else is to be done first. That’s getting gameplay right, getting the systems that you are going to release with in, and — very important — getting the known bugs fixed. Once that is done, the polish can applied.

"But hold on," you say, "All software has bugs. How can we expect <insert MMORPG here> to be free of them?"

Well, you’re right. We can’t. We especially cannot fix what we don’t know about yet. And you can be absolutely certain that the players of Warhammer Online will find previously unknown bugs, even mere minutes after the servers go live. But… what should be fixed, before the game gets its polish and certainly before it goes live, are the bugs that the developers know about.

And of course, we know about crunch time and how the management types often insist on getting the game out the door before it’s ready. Just because game development is a cool profession to be in doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its share of PHB’s (Pointy Haired Bosses.) Sometimes there just isn’t enough time to fix every known bug, or even test the system to perfection. Not every developer has Blizzard’s ability to insist, "When it’s done."

And that’s fair enough. As long as the developers fix all the known major and medium level bugs, and most of the minor bugs, the game can be considered ready for polishing. Then in the polishing phase, the gameplay systems are tweaked, rough edges smoothed off, and minor bugs like spelling errors in quest text can be fixed.

So when Paul Barnett is saying the Warhammer Online is in a finished state, my ears hear that he is saying all of the major and medium level known bugs are gone. That the game has been tested to a high level and that everything is working well. There are no obvious issues that will cause memory leaks, or premature crashing. All quests work and are able to be completed by players as intended. Now the only thing left to do is put the shine on the game.

At least I hope that’s what he is saying.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Wrath of the Lich King Tames The Devil

Devilsaur that is.

Absolutely marvelous I say.

One of my pet peeves (okay so that was a bad pun) with the whole hunter pet system in World of Warcraft is that the final product gets nerfed. I’m not so much talking about fighting ability here, but about appearance.

I’m not sure about the reason, but once a nice fightin’ beastie is tamed, it shrinks down in size. Large critters become a whole lot smaller. Perhaps more understandably, the new pets stats are normalized for their class — cats get standard cat stats, raptors get standard raptor abilities, you get the picture.

It appears that for Wrath of the Lich King, players are now able to tame the mighty Devilsaur. Now that’s a pretty cool pet. And while it still shrinks down once tamed — I guess it’s hard to justify having a 50ft devil compressing itself into tiny passages — it still stands head and shoulders above its new master.

Just a thought. I’d be happy if the Devilsaur kept its original size and could only be used outdoors. It would be so special to let him loose in the battlegrounds.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Wordpress Upgrade Imminent

Okay. So imminent isn’t really the right word, but I wanted to give you a heads up anyway.

It’s been a few months now since the last upgrade and the Wordpress people always want me to keep my blog software up to date for, you know… security reasons.

Personally I prefer to wait a bit and catch some of the other impressions around the web before I upgrade. While Wordpress is usually pretty tight, they don’t always make the decisions that their bloggers would like. It was the last update, 2.5 I think, where they changed a whole bunch of things around and copped some flak for it.

This time they added a feature to toggle the XML RPC flag (I think that’s what it is called.) If it is switched on it allows a blogger to use an external program to publish to their blog. I use Windows Live Writer, and on the Mac Ecto can be used to write a blog post offline and then publish the post later. However, in WP 2.6, this feature is turned off by default. If I didn’t know about it, I’d be freaking out, wondering why I couldn’t publish a post. Crommmmm!

That’s why I wait.

So, enough of the rambling.

I expect to do the upgrade tomorrow afternoon my time. That will be sometime in the late evening or early am, US time. There’s a bit involved in this: taking backups, making sure plugin’s are up to date, and then actually doing the upgrade and making sure everything is working.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Random Thoughts

Now that Mythic has announced strongly hinted at a release date for Warhammer Online, will Blizzard make a similar announcement for Wrath of the Lich King? Will the release date be timed to spoil Warhammer’s release? You know what they say: All’s fair in love, war, and business.

With all the fuss over violent games in the media, do we see politicians and crusaders fussing over comic books, TV, and movies like they once did? Just give it another 20 years and they won’t be bothering about games, they’ll all be focused on some other threat to our moral safety.

I’m finding it hard to get all excited over Warhammer Online despite the launch being only a few weeks away. Hmmm. Maybe I’m just feeling cautious this time.

Funcom is not looking like such a hot investment at the moment with their share price plummeting. That sort of thing makes investors nervous. Of course, the economy is really flaky at the moment, even if they are solid financially, a little bit of bad news could drop the share price. Is Age of Conan performing poorly enough to do this?

I’m on a diet. And I’m very hungry. Damn the television for tempting me.

Is it right that WoW Legendary items that took a huge amount of time and effort to attain will eventually be weaker than greens that drop off common mobs?

Again with Funcom’s share price. A lower share price might make them an attractive investment for a bigger company. Will we see anyone take advantage of this? This time next year will we see Activision-Blizzard-Funcom, or will it be shortened to Actardfun?

Are Blizzard and Mythic playing chicken?

Why do we call quests in MMORPG’s quests? They’re not really are they? After all, throughout literature quests are really quite epic things. I’ve never bought a fantasy or SciFi novel and read about the hero being sent off on an epic mission to kill rats in someone’s basement.

Why do we need politicians? No really. Why? They’re no smarter than everyone else and still make all the dumb mistakes, except everyone else pay for them while they keep living the high life. Oh. And they hate games.

Should I make this post all pretty colors and rainbow flavoured?

Hmmm. I haven’t really discussed all these upcoming Superhero MMO’s at all, have I? Should I?

I said yesterday that I wanted to be a Klingon in Star Trek Online. I’d also settle for Andorian, Ferengi, or Wookie… oops… wrong game.

Is MMO the entire focus of the computer game industry? It seems that every developer and his dog are making, planning, or considering making a MMOG. Even read the other day that Halo is up for this possibility. Could be interesting.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I Want To Be A Klingon

Everyone is talking about the announcement by Cryptic that they have taken over development of Star Trek Online. Well, perhaps taken over isn’t the correct term exactly. Cryptic aren’t using any of the source code that Perpetual Entertainment wrote, mainly because they didn’t want to buy it from Perpetual. (I don’t blame ‘em. If PE managed the development as badly as they managed their company, the code would probably have been mostly rewritten anyway.)

Tipa over at West Karana had a bit of a rant about the announcement, and for the most part I agree with her. I’m definitely hoping the boys and girls over at Cryptic think outside the box on this one and try and depart from the Official World of Warcraft MMORPG Developers Guide that much of the rest of the MMOG development world seems to have adopted — or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say the MMOG marketing departments have adopted.

There are certain things that World of Warcraft does that definitely should be retained, but these are mostly usability devices. Things like GUI placement are important to give a sense of continuity. There’s nothing more jarring to a user than to expect something to be one way and find it completely different. That’s one of the reasons for the success of Windows, the GUI elements worked the same way as every other application — but that’s another story.

But that doesn’t mean the gameplay has to exactly emulate every other game out there.

One of the interesting things about Star Trek is that it isn’t about using force to solve problems. Sure. Kirk, Picard and the other in-charge types often had to resort to force, but they did it when all else had failed. More often than not the episodes were about using their brains to solve a problem with the warp nacelles or transporters (weren’t those things deathtraps. They’d never get past Occupational health and safety rules today!) Star Trek Online would absolutely rock if it managed to get this part right.

I really, really hope that the first away missions don’t involve getting sent off to kill ten space rats that are infesting the Jeffries Tubes, or some such thing.

In any case, since Cryptic aren’t using PE’s code, and by the looks of it, they aren’t using the art either, then I expect it will be some time before we can play this one. Maybe I should start a pool… 2010, 2011 anyone?

So there’s plenty of time for discussing the finer points of Star Trek Online as more info is revealed.

And just a personal request to the good folks at Cryptic. Please make sure that you have a good smattering of Star Trek species (they’re NOT races people!) for us to play.

Please. I want to play a Klingon.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Funcom’s New MMOG – A Casual Browser Game?

Late last week, I received a Press Release from a MMOG middleware company called Unity Technologies. Unity Technologies have recently been selected to provide the engine for a couple of new games, one of which was announced last week. That was the Cartoon Networks casual MMO game for kids, Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall.

FusionFall appears to be a particularly appropriate title, since the game fuses together a number of the cartoons that they show. These include such widely disparate toons like Ed, Ed n Eddy, Ben 10, The Powerpuff Girls, and Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends. A game like this executed well could be quite successful since these are all well received cartoons.

But the big news, not sure — am I breaking this? Is that the Unity Engine has also been selected by Funcom for their new, get this, casual, web browser, based MMOG.

Here’s the press release:

Unity Supports Development of Virtual Worlds &

Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) Games

In-Browser Experience Sets Unity Apart from Competitors;

Cartoon Network with Grigon Entertainment & Funcom with Artplant

First Developers of Unity-based MMOs

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – July 24, 2008 – Unity Technologies, a leading 3D game development tool provider, today announced support for the creation of virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. Already the cutting-edge choice for creating visually rich, 3D games on the Web, Unity now boasts a full roster of MMO features, including multiple terrains for virtually limitless environments and new on-demand streaming features that benefit game developer and player alike.

“The Unity engine with the additional MMO capabilities elevates the in-browser experience – resulting in the best and most comprehensive MMO game development engine on the market today,” said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. “The Unity engine has been tuned to support the unique needs of virtual world/MMO development, resulting in the fastest downloads, smoothest game play and limitless 3D environments.”

Unity was recently chosen by two leading developers for MMO creation. Cartoon Network’s 3D virtual MMO for kids, Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall, which is being developed with Grigon Entertainment, is slated to debut this Fall. In addition, Funcom, the maker of Anarchy Online and Age of Conan, along with its partner Artplant chose Unity 2.1 for development of their new casual market MMO currently under production and under wraps.

Lucas Meijer, lead developer of Funcom/Artplant’s casual MMO said, "Unity 3D enables us to create game content for the Web, with higher production values than we’ve ever been able to do before."

New MMO/virtual world features supported by Unity 2.1 include:

ï‚· Multiple Terrains: Unity 2.1 is the only engine to support multiple terrains in any given scene and to load the terrains on-demand and on-the-fly. Multiple terrains instantly immerse gamer in an endless landscape, based on streamed data, which is critical for the success of any virtual world/MMO.

ï‚· Streaming Resource Files: Unity 2.1 loads assets on-demand with new streaming features. With the new streaming capabilities, developers can add to or update deployed content without having to completely republish content. This results in significant workflow efficiencies for developer, while delivering the quickest download/smoothest game play for the gamer.

Funcom’s secret in-development massive online game is not something we’ve heard too much about so far. Every now and again I’ve read a few comments on various blogs and news sites, but there’s been no hard information about it.

That Funcom have chosen to go for the casual market next is an interesting move by them, and it might be something that will pay off. The casual MMO game market is growing at a rapid pace. It fills a huge gap between gamers that like to spend a little time each day with browser based casual games and the hardcore gamers that spend huge amounts of time tweaking every aspect of their character.

The thing that casual games are missing is the sense of continuity. You log on, play for a while, and then log off. The only persistence is the scoring ladder. On the other hand, casual gamers don’t have the time or inclination to spend thousands of hours raiding, PvPing, crafting and the like. These new browser based games should allow them to meet in the middle and progress by spending as much or as little time as they’d like.

If you’ve got an idea for a casual browser based MMO game, and you’re looking for some middleware with which to build it, check out Unity. Prices for licenses range from $199 for the Indie license up to $1998 for the full Pro version.

Popularity: 12% [?]

What The Hellgate?

Some interesting news from Massively.

It looks like Hellgate: London has a knight in shining armor coming to it’s rescue. Bandai-Namco has apparently put up a page on its website — though I just had a look and it wasn’t there — which indicates that they will be running the game.

I did read somewhere else, that a transfer of the Hellgate: London IP to Bandai-Namco would be problematic since the IP was used as collateral by Hanbitsoft. That makes sense. If Flagship default on the loan, the IP passes automatically to Hanbitsoft.

But does that stop Flagship entering into a partnership with Bandai-Namco (herein referred to as B-N) where B-N operate the game in North America and Hanbitsoft continue operating the game in Korea?

If B-N are coming to the party with some cash, it could allow Flagship to service the loan to Hanbitsoft and escape the default situation. One thing though, if Hanbitsoft saw a good opportunity to grab the Hellgate and Mythos IPs, they ain’t gonna be happy. They’ve already threatened legal action to claim the IP, will they do the same to prevent the B-N deal?

Hmmm. Not sure what the legalities of this situation are. Does anyone know what the deal is with this?

Popularity: 11% [?]

Will KotORO Be The Game SWG Wasn’t?

I’m getting a little ahead of myself here considering it’s still probably two or three more years before Bioware release the now more than rumored and slightly less than confirmed, Knights of the Old Republic Online. But still I’m finding a bit of excitement building. I really am a big kid.

In fact, it’s probably the same level of excitement I felt all those years ago well before the release of Star Wars Galaxies when I read on the official forums and FAQ that players could be Jedi and do cool things like build their own lightsabres. That excitement slowly ebbed away as I continued to read the announcements of features like permadeath for Jedi, Blue Glowies, and only one character per server rules. The official forums erupted into two camps, those that loved these features and those that hated them.

The biggest problem with Star Wars Galaxies, as I saw it, was the selection of the era that the game was set in. Sure, the galactic civil war was raging, but there were only two Jedi (Luke and Yoda) and two Sith (Darth Vader and the Emperor.) It’s pretty hard to satisfy your players if they cannot play the iconic ‘class’ of the movies, and it’s pretty hard to keep the lore lovers happy if you do allow players to Jedi.

Even before the game released, I was starting to develop the opinion that SWG should have been set in the New Republic timeline. The Sith were crushed, but force wielding enemies were still around. Luke has begun rebuilding the Jedi Order. The galaxy is in chaos. There are plenty of novels for guidance, and a number of single player games for reference. It was the perfect setting for a MMORPG based in the Star Wars Universe. The developers could have lots of latitude.

Of course the other perfect setting is The Old Republic, and that’s where the KotOR games are set.

Like the New Republic timeline, The Old Republic has plenty of scope to experiment with new ideas and scenarios. In some ways it offers more to a developer than even the New Republic, since the New Republic has a huge amount of canon lore that already exists. Aside from The Knights of the Old Republic timeline, created by Bioware anyway, there are relatively few novels and stories set in this era.

Bioware also have the big advantage of having seen the mistakes made by SOE with Star Wars Galaxies from the beginning, especially in how the Star Wars fans reacted to some of the decisions. Hopefully, they can learn from them.

Still, without knowing what Bioware has planned for KotOR Online, it’s hard to say that KotORO will be the Star Wars MMORPG that Star Wars Galaxies wasn’t. But if Bioware’s game making record, and their experience in making games in the Star Wars universe, count for any thing KotORO should be a much better game than SWG turned out to be.

Like I said earlier. It’s an exciting possibility.

Now, once we have KotORO, someone just has to make a Spaceballs MMORPG and I’ll be in heaven.

May the Schwartz be with you.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Subscribe To Stropp’s World – It’s Free

Every now and again the question comes up regarding the subscription options that are available here at Stropp’s World.

You’ve probably noticed the two reasonably large graphics at the top of the sidebar. These provide the two methods for reading Stropp’s World other than coming directly to the site.

So what do they do?

Subscribe to RSS

The Subscribe to RSS image will add this blog’s RSS feed to the feed reader of your choice. RSS is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication and works by providing an XML file containing the blog post that is read by another program called a feed reader.

There are two kinds of feed reader. The first comes in the form of a standalone program that lives on your desktop. I use Thunderbird as my eMail client, which has the functionality to add RSS feeds to its own reader functionality. You can also find any number of programs that just act as feed readers and don’t have any other function.

The second kind of feed reader is the web based reader. Example of these are Google Reader (pictured below,) Bloglines, and Netvibes. I don’t actually use Thunderbird as my RSS reader, I use Google Reader after switching over from Bloglines some months ago.

As you can see, I’ve got a lot of blogs listed in Google Reader. You can also get RSS feeds of web forums, and some companies provide feeds of news. I’ve got a couple of MMOG developers news feeds in my reader so that I get breaking news when it happens.

It’s real lucky I am a very fast reader or I’d never be able to read all the feeds every day.

Subscribe to eMail

The other subscription option that I offer is the ability to get blog posts delivered by eMail.

I first looked into this about eight or so months ago when my friend Gitr told me that Stropp’s World had been blocked by his works web filtering software. Bummer!

So in a stick-it-in-your-ear sort of gesture to these killjoy web filtering companies, I decided to provide Feedburner’s eMail delivery service as an option to my readers who don’t get the opportunity to enjoy the quality witty and insightful writing (cough) that appears on this blog.

However, at this writing, there are only four who have taken up this generous offer. I can only imagine that there is a belief that I will send much spam their way, perhaps of the male enhancement or breast enlargement variety.

Such a mistaken belief. The eMail subscription is handled by Feedburner, and it simply provides the eMail version of my posts. If I write three posts in a day, those will be bundled into one eMail and sent at a specific time. I do have access to the addresses, but I’ll never spam to them. Feedburner is also owned by Google, that adds another level of trust.

So Why Subscribe?

I used to have a daily ritual of visiting each blog or website in my favorites list. While I still do that, I find it’s easier to just check the feed reader to see if there’s any new content. That’s also really helpful on weekends when blog posting slows down a lot.

Subscribing with RSS will ensure you get the latest articles almost as soon as they are posted. Subscribing with eMail, as long as you whitelist the address, will ensure you get the articles delivered as well, no messy web filters to deal with.

So what are you waiting for? Subscribe today. It’s free.

If you have any questions, doubts, or other comments about subscribing, drop a comment below. Alternately, you can use the contact form to eMail me.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Open Sourcing The MMO Game

Or, should game developers release the source code and other assets of a game when they go out of business?

It’s always been the case that, aside from the employees of a defunct game developer, it’s the players who lose out when a game developer turns out the lights in the server room.

Not only do they lose the characters they’ve created when the game servers go down, they also lose the relationships that they’ve built up in the game, and the sense of community that MMO games encourage.

Over the years there have been a bunch of MMO games that have closed down. Earth and Beyond, Auto Assault, and Asheron’s Call 2, to name but a few. None of the developers or publishers behind these games, to my knowledge have ever released their MMO game as open source — despite, in some cases, calls from the player community to do so.

A Long History of Open Sourcing Games – Id Software

Id Software, the creators of Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein have a long history of open sourcing their games. They usually release the source code to a particular game to the community a couple of engine generations later. For instance, Id released the Quake source code when Quake 3 was released.

This was done to allow the community of modders to benefit, and to reward them for their support of Id Software games. The source code was released under the GPL to prevent it from being closed up again in someone else’s commercial game, and if a player wanted to play a modified game they still  had to buy the original since the art and sound assets were not open sourced. But still the fans of Id games definitely appreciated this.

Unfortunately, Id Software are the rare exception. Not many developers or publishers open up the source code to their games when they stop selling them. A few make their games freeware, but even that doesn’t happen very often.

An Alternative – DIY

Some players not content with being shut out of their favorite game and the refusal by the developers to release the code and assets, follow the do it yourself path. This happened when Earth and Beyond was shut down. There was a fairly large outcry by the fans to get the game started up again. When EA remained silent, a number of the fans decided to create their own server software to emulate the old EnB servers. The Earth and Beyond Emulator project has been going now for nearly four years.

Which in itself is probably the major downside of this sort of project. Open source projects typically take a lot more time than their closed source commercial counterparts. In part that’s because there is no real commercial pressure to get things done. But it’s also the case that the contributors just simply can’t spend forty to fifty hours a week working on it, even if it’s a labor of love.

And in the end an emulator version of the game can only ever be enjoyed by the people who purchased the original game since it’s illegal to distribute the original client and graphics. By the time the emulator is complete enough to provide the same experience as the original servers, many years have passed and the original players have moved on. It’s really only an option for a small number of people, the diehard fans — note that the EnB Emulator provides a single player version.

Why Don’t Publishers Open Source Their Defunct MMO Games?

I guess that’s the million dollar question, and there are only a few reasons I can think of why MMOG publishers don’t open source retiring MMO games.

1. They have future plans for the IP and don’t want to dilute it or endanger their trademarks. Turbine is still running Asheron’s Call, so I can see why they might not want to release Asheron’s Call 2 into the wild. It’s also entirely possible that they’ll have another bash at the Asheron’s Call IP at some time in the future. However, it’s pretty clear that games like EnB and Auto Assault have gone the way of the Dodo. Even the developers have washed their hands of them, so there’s never really been anything holding back the open sourcing of these games.
2. A third party has some say over the IP and won’t allow it. Mythos and Hellgate: London, if Flagship Studios does end up closing, could be open sourced except for the claims made against them by Hanbitsoft. Apparently the Comerica bank also has some claims on one of the IPs. This would make it almost impossible for Flagship to open source these games. They’d have to legally assert ownership before that happens.
3. Trade secrets and proprietary techniques. A lot of games use third party libraries, some are built on third party engines that are licensed just for that one game. Opening the source may not be allowed, much for the same reason as the previous point. Not only that, but the developer may have tricks up their sleeve that they don’t want everyone else to know, perhaps something that might offer a competitive advantage. If making their game open source removes this advantage, the developer may decide against it.
4. They can’t be bothered. In some ways I think this is the most likely reason that more games are not released as open source. There’s nothing in it for the developer (which I think is wrong, see below) so why bother going to the trouble?

Several Reasons To Open Source

Despite the arguments against open sourcing a soon to be canceled MMO, there are several good reasons to open source a soon-to-be-closed game.

1. Ongoing sales of the client. This would have to be one of the more persuasive arguments for a company to release the code as open source. Money. As we’ve seen with Id Software, opening up the source doesn’t mean opening up all the assets, which means that in order to play the game, the players are still going to have to buy the client. The developer/publisher still makes sales without having to go to the expense of running servers.
2. All the work of development doesn’t go to waste. Developers tend to make a large time and emotional investment in their creations. Take it from me, every project that I’ve been involved with that’s been canceled has left me feeling disappointed, and I’m not even a game developer! Software and game development is as much an act of creativity as it is a science. No one likes seeing their creations abandoned. Releasing the soon to be defunct game, allows it to live on in one form or another. Immortality FTW!
3. Building up player goodwill. Closing a MMOG down doesn’t usually make for happy players. Unhappy players may feel burnt after shelling out for the client and also feel upset that they’ve lost all their hard played characters and gear. Allowing the game to continue, run by someone else, may go a ways to alleviating that angst.
4. It’s the right thing to do. Even though there are no promises made that the servers will remain open forever, players have a reasonable expectation that that shiny MMOG will be around for the long term. With games like Everquest, Asheron’s Call, and Anarchy Online hitting their seven and eight year anniversaries, a one or two year run (Auto Assault, Earth and Beyond) isn’t even short term. If a company is going to close a game after just one or two years, they’ve let their players down and should strongly consider making the source code of (at least) the servers available.

Going Half Way

So, there are some good reasons for a company to open source the game that it is soon to retire, and there are a couple of good reasons against. What to do?

If opening up the client is not an option, open up the server code. This would allow the open source community to take the software, install it on a community server and open it up to the fans. Other players might want to grab the source and create their own private servers, perhaps with different rule sets for PvP and the like. The life of the game could be extended for years, supporting a thriving community.

A non open source option could be to sell the whole thing to a smaller niche oriented company. A game that isn’t profitable for a large company could be wildly successful for a niche game publisher. And the game survives.

A third option, if the server source is unable to be released, is for the developer to encourage and provide support to an emulator project.

What Do You Think?

As always, I’d like to hear what you think about this topic. Would you play a canceled game that had been revived as open source, or would you just prefer to go on to the next big commercial game? Would seeing a developer open source a canceled game change your opinion of that developer? In what way?

I’d also like to hear from any game developers who might be reading this. What do you think? Would you prefer that your game be consigned to cybernetic oblivion, or would you like to see it continue? Would you even go so far as assisting the open source project in your spare time?

Do you have any other reasons for or against open sourcing a MMOG?

Please leave a comment and let us know.

Popularity: 52% [?]