GamersVue

The Sci-Fi channel will [build an MMO] for people to play.  The players will then influence the writers for a TV show based on the game to tell the stories behind the game.   They’ve already got 30 million dollars from investors for this little project.

David Howe, president of the Sci-Fi, talks about this new idea:

“A television show that is on once a week isn’t enough. The fans today want the experience to go beyond that,” Howe said. “For example, we can tell them that there will be an alien invasion at a certain place in the game, at a certain time, and to be there with all their friends and be ready. The outcome depends on them. And then that battle will be part of the universe in the show.”

Now the MMORPG ‘Horizons’ (Now called [Istaria]) had a 10 million dollar budget.  30 million now isn’t squat in the MMO field.   We’ve all seen the piss poor Sci-Fi ‘remakes’ of movies and shows with only a few real hits (thank God for Eureka!)
and now they want to make an MMO?  And WTF does “The Fans today want the experience to go beyond that”..  maybe.. only if the product is good!  BattleStar Galactica lends itself well to something like this.. ‘Ghost Hunters’ does not.

It’s a good idea, but with out someone that really knows the field inside and out that now only can provide a GOOD game to players but also get enough feed back from the game to allow the writers to do something with the data.. it’s just going to bomb.  hard core.  and people will be left wondering what the hell happened…  Hmm.. Wonder if Sci-Fi is hiring.

“We believe that the potential of online is much greater than the performance we’ve seen in the last several years,” the exec admitted. “And to realise that potential, we have to catch up in terms of technological infrastructure and breadth of content and interconnectedness between what we do in the virtual world and what we’re doing in other businesses in terms of e-commerce, in terms of events, in terms of advertising, in terms of social networking.”

There’s a mix of casual MMO and a social network. It’s Flash based, it’s free, it’s part strategy, part RPG, and it’s coming out in the first quarter of 2008. Its name is Coobico.

Game Mechanics: Building your settlement

The first structure of a new village is always the cityhall. Its construction-plan is obtained after picking up a settlers’ quest. Place the cityhall as the center of the new settlement in your most favorite place – maybe you like to settle down somewhere near other villages to take advantage of their infrastructure; or maybe you want to claim your piece of land in a remote place.

The cityhall enables settlers to add more structures to their village. Each structure is build in a similar pattern: pick up an according quest, place the building, then pay for its costs.

A village has a score recorded in Coobico’s leaderboards: its land-value. With each new building, a village’s land-value is increased. This boosts the owner’s highscore, but also raises the price of constructing further structures. Other important city-stats are Wellbeing and Productivity. Wellbeing indicates the quality of living; it’s influenced by a lot of factors like the amount of industrial estates, the level of greening and the quantity of hazard-spots close to the settlement. Finally, a village’s productivity adds up all its economic activities from trading goods at a merchant to harvesting resources – even if bargains in a village are made by non-residents.

Settlers will need to increase their village’s land-value as good as possible whilst balancing their productivity and wellbeing, and, of course, keeping all of their structures in good repair.

About Coobico:

via http://mashable.com/2007/10/04/coobico-mmo-socnet/

Although every MMO is, in fact, some sort of social network, many companies are trying to find that special niche where gaming and social networking meet. Coobico is, as the founders say, a mix of casual MMO (casual, in the realm of MMOs, usually means that you don’t have to leave your family, quit your job and spend the rest of your wretched life living in a tiny apartment, permanently hooked to the screen, to be successful in the game) and a social network. It’s Flash based, it’s free, it’s part strategy, part RPG, and it’s coming out in the first quarter of 2008.

Although this date is relatively near, the game seems to be in early stages of development - concept art and hints on gameplay with an occasional tiny in-game screenshot are all you can find out about the game at this time. An interview with one of the founders, Lutz Winter, reveals that the intended game audience are 30 and 40-somethings which aren’t interested in endless grind, but a more casual mix of fun gameplay, chat, and other social networking features. In the interview, the game is compared with desktop titles like the Settlers but also online successful titles like Habbo Hotel and Gaia Online.

The game is developed by Linking People, a Hong Kong based company founded by three web developers from Germany. S. Wetzel, J. Martin and L. Winter have mostly been designing commercial and promo web sites; we’ll see how well they’ll do in the socnet/gaming arena.

[Via Curse]

Yesterday, Funcom announced that the sometimes-highly-anticipated Age of Conan has had its release date pushed back to “polish the game further” due to the “level of bugs.” From all that I have heard, this was a very good decision on Funcom’s part. The amount of bugs plaguing the game, as well as things like class balance have all been mentioned before, and from what a lot of people have been saying, this was another needed delay.

It’s nice seeing developers finally owning up and reaching out when it comes to delaying their games. Director Gaute Godager has a profusely apologetic Letter from the Game Directer posted up over at the site, in which he extols on how much this delay actually was needed, and how they promise to spend the time wisely. He also specifically mentions being upset over the way that their beta schedule hasn’t been met as he wanted. Whether or not that means they expected to have open beta by now, who knows. Hopefully they really do manage to spend that extra 8 weeks wisely, get an open beta out and last minute bugs squashed, and make a worthwhile release.

Also announced at Funcom’s recent gathering for Age of Conan fan sites, was that their class list is getting reduced from 12 to 10, with the Lich class skill set getting rolled in the Necromancer, and the Scion of Set is getting rolled into the Tempest of Set class. As much as I hate seeing developers having to do things such as this with their babies, maybe down the road this will end up as a good thing when it comes to getting the game out the door.

[Via MMO-Gamer]

After World War 3 the Earth lies in ruins, with all but a small pocket of humanity completely wiped off the face of the planet. A clone-based Utopian society arises, but the strict controls required to maintain such a utopia have begun to garner harsh opposition. This is the world of Earthrise, a post-apocalyptic MMO just announced by Bulgarian developer Masthead Studios.

“This will change the way we play sci-fi MMOs,” said Atanas Atanasov, CEO of Masthead Studios. “Our team is creating a game that will introduce the next innovative approach to the genre, and we feel to MMOs themselves. We based the game in a vision of society’s future, where the technology and economics of today have ensured an unavoidable cataclysm. Earthrise won’t be just an MMO, but an experience in a new, never-before-imagined post-apocalyptic world.”

Players will choose to side with the new world order or toss their hat in with the shadow government seeking freedom from the oppressive regime. It reminds me a bit of the battle between Omni-Tek and the Clans in Funcom’s Anarchy Online, but in a genre struggling to find quality science fiction fare I am willing to forgive Masthead the odd lapse in originality if they are willing to deliver a quality high-tech MMO experience.

PVP sounds particularly interesting, with customizable power armor and mechanized exoskeletons prominently featured - two sci-fi elements guaranteed to get my attention. Add in the intriguing possibilities involved with the potential to episodically reveal what the rest of the world looks like post World War III and you’ve got quite an intriguing little package.

Masthead plans to have Earthrise ready for release in 2009. For more information and pretty pictures, check out the game’s official site at Play-Earthrise.com.

Masthead Studios Unveils the Post-Apocalyptic World

Independent developers to release their debut title Earthrise

January 23, 2008 - Sofia, Bulgaria - Masthead Studios, the innovative independent game development studio based in Bulgaria, is proud to announce its debut MMO Earthrise, a post-apocalyptic science fiction title slated to release in 2009.

In the aftermath of a catastrophic third world war, Earth lies in ruin, and mankind is all but extinct. In a small corner of the world a new society has risen in the years following, populated mostly by the clones of those stored in a massive DNA database compiled at the end of the war. A corporate government has created a seemingly Utopian civilization, but its heavy-handed control over society, its resources, and even life itself has forced a substantial opposition. These rival factions accuse the government of crimes against humanity in its rampant willingness to abuse the cloning process to its own gain. It is at this crossroads that players will find themselves: fight as a champion of the new world order, or take up arms with Noir, the shadow government sworn to overthrow the totalitarian rule.

Masthead has employed its own engine to craft the stunning graphics and atmosphere in the game, as well as to handle its dynamic combat mechanics. Explore the diverse and sprawling capital city of Sal Vitas and surrounding unclaimed territories. Fight with advanced PvP mechanics featuring customizable power armor, huge mechanized exoskeletons, and an arsenal of weapons to control contested lands and their resources. Influence the market-based economy by working for the corporate world or trading on the black market, all based in immense and highly customized crafting and offline play systems. Players will shape the society in the beginning of a new mankind; or they will create their own dystopia.

“This will change the way we play sci-fi MMOs,” said Atanas Atanasov, CEO of Masthead Studios. “Our team is creating a game that will introduce the next innovative approach to the genre, and we feel to MMOs themselves. We based the game in a vision of society’s future, where the technology and economics of today have ensured an unavoidable cataclysm. Earthrise won’t be just an MMO, but an experience in a new, never-before-imagined post-apocalyptic world.”

Further information, initial concept art, game lore and a growing community around Earthrise are now available at www.play-earthrise.com.

[Via kotaku]

World of Warcraft has hit the 10 million mark..  Yeah.. that’s $149,500,000  a month
no wonder there’s a metric butt-ton of MMO’s out there. =)

I hate it when people steal my ideas.  Here I was, a couple of days ago, thinking about what predictions I will be making for 2008 when I thought of how cool BioShock would be if re-tooled into an MMO.  A quick Google showed that I’m not the only one who thought of that idea.  (JERKS!!!  )

However, most of the posts where just about ‘yeah, it would be cool’ but no mention about HOW to pull it off.  So that got me thinking more along the lines of Game play.  How could BioShock be re-tooled into an MMO that wouldn’t be just another WoW clone or another cluster frack that many other MMO’s fall into.

Thought #1:  What makes BioShock a good game to re-tool into an MMO?
The whole story of Rapture and it’s people are pretty well thought out with in the game.  Rapture has such an atmosphere that draws people into it.  You can see the decay in the walls and in the mind and body of the splicer’s.    The world of BioShock is set up right before you with enough depth to allow for a huge verity of game play options. 

Thought #2: What MMO style lends itself to BioShock?
I believe a game setup like HellGate: London would work perfectly.  BioShock is already a first person shooter and already kind of has ‘hubs’ set up, so it makes perfect sense to set up the BS-MMO (BioShock MMO) game play with the style like that of HellGate.  Just give your BioSock character real inventory and expand the game to allow for network play and you’ve already got 90% of the game.

Thought #3: How would the story be moved forward?
Ahhh.. now this could be cool.  In my thoughts the BS-MMO is set after the events of the first game.  The governments of the world now know where rapture is (though, in theory, they already did)  and with Raptures leaders dead, what’s to stop them from sending in military and other personal in order to study the technology that Mr. Ryan help to create?
From there the story could be moved in a number of ways from the addition of new areas that weren’t found in the first game to new plasmids, weapons, and other steam-punk items
found in hidden areas and other labs the player didn’t/couldn’t find the first time.

Thought #4: What about the game play?
I’m thinking an PvP MMO style of play.   Rapture lends itself well to hoards of splicer’s coming to rip you open for your Adam and what if those Splicer’s where other players?
If you where dropped into this world would you power hungry and get as much Adam and plasmids as possible?  Would you kill for that power? 

Maps could be set up like contested areas that would allow players to battle each other, sending in teams of warriors to destroy the freaks (since you both think each side is freaky)
Which side can hold Rapture?  

Perhaps players could also be scientists.. with ability’s and game play elements that would allow them to create new plasmids.  Still others could be turned into something like the little sisters to allow them to harvest more Adam for their side.

There’s still more unknown then known down in the belly of Rapture.  Anything is possible.

Just some thoughts and ideas and If you happen to work for 2K,  and like these ideas, I’m available for consultations. 

from Tobold’s MMORPG Blog by Tobold
Thoms alerted me to the following news from Massively: The EVE trinity premium client patch deletes the Windows XP boot.ini file, making it impossible to reboot your computer afterwards. Massively has detailed instructions on how to fix the problem, but if you already restarted your machine you’ll need to enter command line commands into the recovery console you can only start with a Windows XP CD. So right now I can only advise you to not patch EVE before you are certain that all the problems are resolved.

As Massively says: “CCP is on the verge of earning the title of having the worst expansion launch in the history of the genre.”
====================================
[PogoWolf]
  Wow..  This made me laugh so hard my co-workers where pairie dogging the cube farm looking to see what was going on!    Delete the Boot.ini?  WTF, mate?!  LOL