Also something that was in the works for a while, but now it’s officially announced: Massive Magazine from the editors of Computer Games.
A few years back, there was MOG, but it’s gone now. Recently Beckett launched an MMO mag as well, but I haven’t seen it yet.
Well, it’s been rumored for months, and now it came true. Mythic has sold to EA. Congrats to Mark Jacobs & the rest of the crew!
What this means?
Well, it means that EA is once again trying to get into the MMORPG market, and they decided that they needed a reasonably sized license plus outside expertise. They did this before when they acquired Kesmai, but most of the talent subsequently fled the EA.com debacle.
One thing EA can do is apply serious funds towards Warhammer, making it into a viable competitor for WoW.
One hopes it also means that EA’s historically bad track record keeping independent studios alive with their own culture is due for a change. But we’ll have to wait and see on that one.
It also, alas, means the disappearance of yet another of the true veteran companies in the space. Virtually none of the major players from the closed services generation remain intact today; Simutronics is probably the only one left.
David Edery has a nice list of reasons why user generated content works.
The big rap against user-generated content, of course, is that it’s directionless. It leads to a hodgepodge, and users who enter an environment built from it quickly feel that there’s nothing to do, because a rather small fraction of user content is actually finished. (Which just goes to show that the most needed attribute for a creator in any field is persistence!)
This was a man with wooden hands. He danced to heavy beats
but in the silence of his closet Mussorgsky bellowed.
He greeted with an hidalgo turn of wrist, and breathed the country,
inhaling its people and brushing the industries off his upper lip
like the foam from stiff beer. The kind of man
Who searched for the foundation stone of mountains.
(Raph’s player lifecyle) + (If players spend less time in each MMORPG that they play, since all the MMORPGs practically the same) =
1) You’d expect to see MMORPG subscriptions get more “bursty” as everyone tries the new game, gets bored of it in 2 months, and goes on to the next new thing. (This effect is offset by new players that have never played MMORPGs before.)
1a) The burstiness encourages guilds to form social structures outside the game, such as their own BBS and chat rooms (or voice chat). Thus, guild members can socialize no mater what game they’re playing. => “Social ties” don’t lock players into a game as strongly as they once did. (Is this true?)
2) Those that get permanently bored will (a) stop playing altogether, (b) go directly to PvP in something like Halo2 or a PvP-specific MMORPG (Eve online), or (c) go directly to a free chat room.
3) It all leads back to innovation and pushing the envelope so that (a) and (c) players come back.
