38 Studios Won’t Be Releasing Its MMORPG

38 Studios financial woes have been in the news over the last week. Despite not being able to make loan payments to Rhode Island, there were sounds coming from the administration that it would try to make it work.

But today there is news that 38 Studios has failed to pay its employees, and has laid off temp and contract workers.

That’s the worst kind of news that an investor can hear. When a company can’t make payroll, it’s not generally long for the world.

What I’m wondering is where that $75 million got to.

Schilling, as I understood it, invested something like $30 million of his own money, which coupled with that $75 million from RI provides a bankroll of over $100M. They’ve had a game release which presumably did well too. Where is all the cash?

It’s not like Project Copernicus has the scope of the $300M budget for SWTOR. Or does it?

In anycase, it’s probably not wise to get your hopes up for the 38 Studios MMORPG. Not unless an Angel Investor swoops in at the 11th hour. Or another studio buys the IP and development assets.

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Have You Ever Wished…

…for a device that can stop time around you and let you get everything done you need to in a day?

Years ago there was a Twilight Zone episode, the newer ones from the 80′s or 90′s not the originals, where  a woman finds an object (a fob watch I think) in her backyard that grants her that ability. Of course, because it was Twilight Zone there was a sting in the tail, but still…

I wish there was such a device at the moment.

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What Is Bioware Doing Wrong?

Bioware used to be the game developer who could do no wrong. They were a strong player in the game industry, with lots of very much loved games under their belt. From Baldurs Gate through to Mass Effect and Dragon Age it seemed they could do no wrong.

But now it almost seems they can do no right. The Mass Effect 3 ending caused a huge backlash among fans. Dragon Age 2 wasn’t appreciated by fans. And Star Wars: The Old Republic appears to be haemorrhaging subscribers, not that long after release.

So what’s happening?

Here are a couple of  ideas I have about where Bioware is going wrong.

#1 Bioware Have Forgotten Their True Fans

Bioware is where it is today because it focussed on one type of player, the RPG player. Through release after release of game they provided the experience that their fans loved. And consequently, they grew that fanbase. They gave it what it wanted, and because of this the fans loved them. Bioware only had to announce the development of a new game, and the fans went wild.

I’m not sure this has happened since EA bought them out, but now with each new game release, Bioware have been stripping away the game mechanics that their fans love. RPG’s have always been notorious for the stats. That’s been the case since, and caused by, the old pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons games. It also attracts a particular type of player, and repels other types of players.

Bioware in an attempt to make RPG’s ‘simpler’ have been removing the stats and attributes from their new games, or hiding them behind other gameplay elements. In essence this makes a game easier to get into and understand and easier to progress, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it marginalises the players who do actually like stats and attributes. If those players perceive Bioware as moving away from the model they love, they’re not going to be fans anymore.

#2 RPG’s Aren’t Just About The Story

In all the time Bioware has been developing games, there has been a huge emphasis on story. And that is good. That’s a big part of an RPG. But it’s not all there is.

As I mentioned above, a good RPG provides character progression as well as features that are recognisably RPG.

Is it possible to emphasize story too much?

In the case of SW:TOR, I think the answer is yes. So much so in fact that the game really comes across as a single player game with other players running around whom you can group with.

Ironically, this is Bioware’s forte. They make great single player RPGs. But for a MMO you really need a lot more than just a class story, you need a huge virtual world, not just a linear progression path. Even WoW has more than that.

#3 Bioware Are Choosing The Wrong Role Models (At The Wrong Time)

I think this one specifically relates to SW:TOR, but it could be applied to some aspects of their single player games too. It seems to me that Bioware focussed on making The Old Republic too much like World of Warcraft. Sure, Bioware puts a very strong emphasis on story in SW:TOR but is this enough to differentiate it from the WoW themepark model?

And even with World of Warcraft we are seeing a significant drop in subscriptions, perhaps the most significant since that game was released.

Why is this? Well, frankly I’m not really all that sure. Thousands of words have been written on the topic, and thousands of more will be. All I know that for myself is that World of Warcraft was becoming too narrow in its focus on the endgame. The journey was no longer important, it was all about levelling up quickly in order to raid. I’m not a raider, I’m more of an explorer so once the content was exhausted there wasn’t much point in sticking around. I see this same model in SWTOR, with the exception of (heavily) encouraging alt-ing through the legacy system.

If SW:TOR has been released five years ago it might have been the WoW killer everyone has been dreaming of, but instead it has been released at a time when there appears to be a growing disatisfaction with the subscription themepark model.

I’m not going to say that the subscription model is dead, I don’t believe that for a minute, but there is an equalisation going on between subscriptions and free to play. To survive the subscription model needs more than basic themepark gameplay. It needs, I think, the sandbox. The subscription model is perfect for Eve Online, I doubt Eve could work as free-to-play, but for a long term themepark, much more is needed. SW:TOR for all its beauty, story, and Star Wars-ishness is a very basic themepark. That isn’t going to keep players around.

Goodwill Hunting

Every business has this intangible asset called goodwill. It usually doesn’t appear on the balance sheet because it can be really hard to quantify. How do you tell if your customers love you? Well they keep coming back for one thing; but how much is this worth?

In Bioware’s case, goodwill was the asset they earned when they focussed on making quality RPGs for a generation of fans.

Now it seems that the recent mistakes are losing that goodwill.

What do you think Bioware are doing wrong? Do you think they are making mistakes in the first place? Or will this all blow over and everything will be alright?

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NBI: The Pros And Cons Of Self Hosting

I hope you are enjoying the New Blogger Initiative. Kudos to Syp for coming up with the idea, it’s been great to see so many new and old MMO bloggers participating in this. If you are just coming across the NBI for the first time now, head on over to the forum and check out everything that is going on there. After you finish reading this article of course.

If you have decided to start a blog, the first thing you will need to do is to select a blogging platform. You have a choice between a free-hosted, or a self-hosted blog.

A free-hosted blog platform is one where you sign up to create an account. Then you create a blog. And then you start writing. Too easy. The biggest platforms are fairly well known, with Blogger and WordPress.com being the biggest of the free blogging platforms.

A self-hosted blog is a blog where you buy a domain name, sign up on a shared host, install the blogging software, and then you start writing. These days, also not that hard — it can be done in a couple of hours — but you do have some costs.

Personally, I’m a fan of self-hosting. I like the idea of having control over everything about my blog. Control freak maybe? Still there are some negatives.

Pros of Self Hosting

1. You have control over the software. Some free hosts limit or exclude the ability to install plugin and widgets. A post I saw on the NBI forums this morning asked about the popups that show game item details when a reader hovers over a link. This is done through a plugin or a change to the template code. If you self host you can do this. On a free blog host it may not be possible.
2. You have control over the commercial aspects of your blog. Some bloggers put adverts or other commercial features on their blogs. Some use affiliate programs. If you are self-hosting, you can do this to your hearts content. Some free platforms however, don’t allow any of this. Some will limit it. If you want to make money from your blog, self-hosting is the way to go.
3. You have control over your content. If you are self-hosting you don’t have to worry about a terms of service. Now I suspect that most MMO bloggers wont violate the ToS of a free host regarding racism, illegal content, or porn, but if you want to be controversial you might find that some readers will take exception to it and report your blog to the service. (BTW, it doesn’t matter if you are self or free hosting, some content will automatically reduce your Google rankings anyway.)
4. If you need to change hosting you can. If you find that your web host no longer suits your needs you can, reasonably easily, change to a new host. If you need to scale up to a dedicated server, or a virtual private server (VPS) as your blog grows, then you can.

Cons of Self Hosting

1. More expensive to run. You need to buy a domain name, and rent a shared server. This isn’t that big of a cost. A domain costs about $10 per year, and a shared host under $10 per month.
2. No (less) support. If something goes wrong with your blog, if it’s hacked perhaps, you’ll need to fix it yourself. This has happened to me. It ended up taking about five hours one evening to fix. And of course that happened when I really wanted to do something else.
3. Shared hosts are shared. For the most part this doesn’t cause problems, but some cheap hosts are notorious for packing as many accounts onto a server as possible. Your blog may share a single server with 20, 30, or even more other websites. If you find your blog is slow this may be the cause, or perhaps another website is using too many server resources.
4. Lack of automatic scalability. What I mean by this is that with self hosting if your blog grows and gets too many visitors your cheap shared host may decide that you are using too many resource. In this case you’ll have to either upgrade to a more expensive plan, or find a dedicated server, or (the better option in this case) go to a VPS. A free-host like Blogger will scale allowing your blog to continue to grow its visitor numbers indefinitely.

Your Choice

Ultimately you will have to decide for yourself what level of control you want over your blog, but this will be based on the direction you want to take your blog. If you want to use certain plugins that aren’t available in a free host, you’ll have to self-host. If you have no budget to get a domain name and pay for hosting, or you simply don’t want to pay anything, then a free blog host is the best option. If you are having difficulty deciding what to do, then do the following.

1. Plan. Get a piece of paper and write on it everything you like about other blogs that you read. Be analytical about it. Do you like the popup links?
2. Now write on a separate list, what you want to do with your blog. Based on the list you generated in step 1.
3. Go to bed. Sleep on it. Leave it for a couple of days.
4. Now prioritise the items in list 2. Work out what you must have, and what you can leave out. Make sure this is a long term view. It can be harder to change later.
5. If the must have items require self-hosting, then that’s what you will need to do. If they don’t, then free hosting will work for you too.

Other Resources

If you choose to self-host here are some resources. The links are just plain links and are not affiliate links or anything like that.

• I use Namecheap for my .com and other domain names. For .com.au I used CrazyDomains. (Avoid Godaddy like the plague. Elephant killers, and just plain bad news.)
• For hosting, I like Site5 and Hostgator. Stropp’s World is currently hosted on Site5, and has been since I started the blog.
• If you have the technical expertise to set up a server, then Rackspace has some Cloud Hosting products that start fairly cheaply from around $11 per month. (I set a server and site up for a client last year.) These will scale easily, Rackspace have a UI that lets you set the resource level, at the click of a button.

If you have any comments you’d like to make, or any other pros or cons, or even some other resources for new bloggers (non-affiliate links only please) feel free to add them in the comments below.

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EA: Lying Liers Who Lie

I’m a big fan of indie games.

For one thing they tend to be fairly inexpensive. An indie game usually costs less than 24USD instead of the 60+USD of big publisher AAA games. Indie game developers are free to experiment with their games. Of course they need to put food on the table, but they’re not driven by the marketing department and the need to keep shareholders happy. (Unless the spouse is considered a shareholder.)

But most of all, many indie games are fun games to play.

So yesterday when I read that Electronic Arts is releasing their own indie bundle my first thought was WTF!

Obviously some marketing droid realised that the humble indie bundles were highly successful and figured why not grab a piece of that pie.

Folks, EA is not an indie company and has no right to co-opt the term indie to push their own marketing agenda.

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NBI: So You Wanna Be A Superstar?

Ahhh the timing…

Along with the gaming blogs that I read, I have a number of non-game related blog feeds on my Google Reader. There’s a bunch of gadget, programming, and IT based blogs; some game developer blogs. And of course blogs about blogging.

That’s another NBI tip I have for you. If you want to get good at anything, first you have to actually practice it, but second you need to study it. You might think you are not that great of a writer now, but believe me after you’ve written a quarter of a million words** you’ll be a much better writer than when you started, even if you don’t actively study to improve your writing.

BTW, if you want to be a novelist the rule of thumb is that you will need to write somewhere around a million words before you’ll get published, but I digress. You will also need to study your craft if you want to be really good at it. To study blogging, the sources of information to look for tend to be blogs on blogging.

On my feed today is a post called How To Become A Blogging Superstar.

While you might not feel the need to be the next MMORPG Blogstar, there is some good advice in that post in any case.

The big thing to take home is that the more you post, the more readers you will end up with.

** Think 250K words is a lot? So do I, but that is how many words have been published on this blog since I started writing in 2006, and I’m not really that prolific a blogger.

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NBI: Just Do It

Here is the first bit of Newbie Blogger Initiative advice I have for you. It applies regardless of what type of blog you want to set up. Hell, it applies if you are starting a blog, a business, or a relationship.

Don’t wait. Take action now. Just Do It.

Nike used that last one as a slogan for years. It worked. It worked because it was true.

Here’s the thing. It’s easy to wait until you have all your ducks in a row before you start.

The problem with that, is that most of the time, your ducks will do what they do best. Waddle all over the place.

If you wait until everything is just right, not only will you never start your blog, you’ll probably never be able to finish a post.

Just do it!

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Newbie Blogger? Show Some Initiative

I get it. You’ve been telling yourself you want to write a blog for a while now.

You love games. You might play a bunch, or maybe you’re focussed on one game in particular. Every time you play something happens that you’d like to write about. You may have a collection of several billion screenshots that you’d like to show the world. Maybe you just want to talk about games in general, or even vent your frustrations at the state of gaming today.

You may have no idea where to start. Or perhaps you’re just procrastinating, waiting until you have time. (Here’s a tip. You’ll never have enough time to start blogging. You may as well just dive in.)

Wait. What’s that, in the sky? Faster than a speeding bullet?

No, it’s not Superman. It’s the Newbie Blogger Initiative.

A few weeks ago, Syp of Biobreak and Massively got in touch with a number of game bloggers and asked us if we would be prepared to help out with encouraging aspiring bloggers to take the plunge and start their own blogs. Thus the Newbie Blogger Initiative was born.

Here’s the rules.

The NBI is essentially a blog carnival. A bunch of bloggers who have been writing for some time will post articles with advice about MMO blogging during the month of May. This advice might be about getting started, or it could be about running the good race with your blog. At the end of the month, all of the articles from contributing bloggers will be collected, and each blog will post these links. Oh, and the NBI forums will also be used to link to these posts, along with being a place where you can ask questions about MMORPG and game blogging and get some answers.

If you are considering starting a blog, this is a great opportunity for you. It can be hard work building a popular blog, especially in the early days. (It can be very discouraging to check your stats and see only 1 or 2 visits that week.) The Newbie Blogger Initiative will help you get some early exposure, and get people reading your blog. That, more than anything else will help you keep going.

(BTW, just a little bit of pre-advice. Work out what you want from your blog before you do anything. Even choosing your blogging platform dictates the direction your blog can take, for example if you want to have any advertisements or commercial links, the free WordPress platform is out. If you want complete control over your blog, then you probably want to self-host. I’ll go into this more in my advice article, coming later.)

So give it a go. Head over the NBI forum and check out the advice articles. As the title of this post says, show some initiative and create your blog.

When you create your blog, and write your first post, be sure to let me know by using the Stropp’s World contact form. I’ll make sure to create a post with links to your blogs.

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SOPA — Bad For Gamers, Bad For Games

This article on the TechDirt blog just came up on my reader.

I’ve been hearing about this SOPA bill that is being pushed before the American legislature for a while now. It used to be called EPARASITE, which seems a fitting name, as it seems to be about to unleash a parasitical attack on the worlds innovative industries.

It also appears to be an attack on gamers, especially those gamers who devote creative activity around the games they enjoy.

Just as people post cute pictures and videos of themselves, their pets and their kids singing and dancing to copyrighted works, gamers of all ages routinely post pics and stream video of themselves during game play. All of these things have, for the most part, been considered “fair use” under the law. Tens of thousands of videos currently available online featuring game play from popular games like Call of Duty, Halo, Starcraft and others could be made illegal under these laws.

From what I can gather, SOPA allows anyone who calls themself a rights holder to issue a notice to an ISP and have any offending content taken down immediately, without any notice or recourse to the originator of the content. The rights holder can also conduct even more draconian action if they wish.

For instance, if I posted a screenshot on this blog of a game I am playing and the game developer took issue with that, they could conceivably not just issue a takedown to my host and get Stropp’s World taken offline, they could also complain to my domain provider and I could lose the domain too. And just like a bad set of steak knives, that’s not all. If I have a donation button on the site, SOPA allows them to go to PayPal and have them block my account.

All without any due process or legal recourse.

Now while that exact situation is a bit unlikely, game devs tend to like fans promoting their products, I wonder if there are situations where a bigger publisher could exploit this legislation to their own end.

Could SOPA be used to take down a blog that put a negative review of a game up? Hey if it uses trademarked phrases and screenshots or video segments it could be fair game. This could be a great way for unethical game publishers to do a bit of reputation management. Complain and the bad reviews just magically go away.

How about the recent trademark fight between Notch and Bethesda? Under current legislation Bethesda had to go to court. Under SOPA all they have to do is to issue a takedown. It doesn’t matter if Notch is in Europe, the domain may be registered in the US. The site may be hosted there. And the payment processor is almost certainly US based. All Bethesda has to do is get in first and Notch wouldn’t have stood a chance. That’s justice right?

Even worse, because the burden of proof is lowered even further, it may become rediculously easy for game publishers to take out the competition. Just claim copyright infringement. Right now you cannot copyright an idea. But since there is no due process anymore, just a claim that the competing developer has infringed might be enough to close down the competitor. This might not work between two giants like Activision and Ubisoft, but what about Activision claiming against an innovative indie developer?

There’s no way an indie can fight that sort of fight. Right now indie developers are enjoying a golden age as the web has opened up lots of opportunities for them. How easy would it be for SOPA to end all that?

All this legislation is being sponsored by politicians who are in the pockets of the *IAA’s and big corporate lobbyists.

Political donations == legalised bribery.

Sometimes I wonder if Americans are fooling themselves by thinking that they are in the land of the free when their freedoms are being eroded inch by inch by the greedy and corrupt.

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RIP Steve Jobs

I just heard on the radio that Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple and the force behind Apple’s recent wave of innovative products, the iPhone and iPad, has passed away at the age of 56.

There are going to be hundreds of testimonies to Steve Jobs popping up shortly, giving details of everything the man had done in his too short life, but I just wanted to talk about how his work affected me.

You see Job’s and Wozniak directly influenced the path my life took.

I was in high school in 1981 happily working my way to a career in electronics. I was planning on studying for a degree as an Electronic Engineer at the time, and was quite the keen hobbyist.

But in 1981, the school purchased two Apple 2e’s and put them in the annex to the physics lab.

The competition was immediate. Most of the guys interested in using the Apple’s during recess and lunch sat there playing games, and to be fair I did that too. But I ended up taking the manuals home most every night, and poring over every detail of the electronics and learning how to program. I spent as much time in the computer room as I possibly could.

I ended up writing two programs.

One, the second project, was a clone of the arcade game Defender.

The first was a practical joke on another student who was trying to get a program that broke copy protection on games. I wrote a simple little 6502 program that accessed the floppy drive and spun it up, while printing “please wait” on the screen. That’s all it did. I had this guy on the hook for two whole lunch periods trying to work out why his games weren’t being cracked, until another student whom I told about the joke, let him off the hook. I would have had him going for a few weeks if I could!

Anyway, that experience led me to the love of programming. And from there my parents purchased my first computer a Vic 20, and the rest is history, a 27 year (so far) career as a software developer.

Thanks Steve.

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