<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions --> <!--X-From-R13: Oqnz Ivttvaf <nqnzNnatry.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 18:01:36 -0700 --> <!--X-Message-Id: Pine.SGI.3.96.980930170806.24026C-100000#zazu,angel.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Reference: 11A17AA2B9EAD111BCEA00A0C9B41793EDBEF1#forest,origin.ea.com --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, [MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:adam#angel,com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg01392.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01394.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg01389.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01390.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#01393">Author</A> | <A HREF="#01393">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#01393">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: "'<A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A>'" <<A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A>></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions </LI> <LI><em>From</em>: Adam Wiggins <<A HREF="mailto:adam#angel,com">adam#angel,com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 18:07:52 -0700 (PDT)</LI> <LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Koster, Raph wrote: > > From: Adam Wiggins [<A HREF="mailto:adam#angel,com">mailto:adam#angel,com</A>] > > Which, of course, leaves you with two primary options: one, to try to > > not innovate too terribly much, and instead just do it "the old way", > > except do it > > really really well, and maybe put some twists on it that no > > one has ever seen before. Legend falls into this category, as (I'd > guess) > > most of our favorite muds (Arctic, of course, is mine, and most > > definitely qualifies > > in this category). > > Hmm, I really wonder whether an awareness of the "old way" as a "way" > was really present, if you know what I mean. Meaning, how many decided > to view the split between simulationist and storytelling as an aesthetic > choice, and how many actually just made the hodgepodge because it was > all they knew? Good point. At least in the case of Arctic, they started up shortly after the diku codebase was released, and many of the things they did then were semi-revolutionary (heavy emphasis on skills, spells learned from spellbooks found about the world rather than in the guild, free pk/psteal with a justice system) but now are considered fairly standard. I doubt they weighed the different approaches they could take: they started with a certain codebase, and tried to make the best mud they could. In time many of the originally very scripted elements became more simulationist; many objects in rooms that were originally just extra descs became real objects that could be manipulated in a more consistent manner. I would say that one of the best things mud dev has done is made potential new admins analyze the existing art a little more carefully, and maybe realize that they *do* have a choice as to how they are going to approach it. Then again, maybe not. It's a nice thought, though. > > Ultima Online is > > another, and has > > experience wild success the likes of which the world has never seen > > before. > > Hurm... how successful was Gemstone III in its heyday? I don't actually > know the numbers, but I bet that it made a ton of money, because of the > amazingly high fees. So it'd depend on how you defined success, I guess. True. In this case I'm not referring to monetary success, but rather impact on the gaming population as a whole. Perhaps it's not fair to Gemstone that the (potential) online gaming population is now much larger to due availibility of both computers and cheap internet connections, but there you go. I'd say that no online game has ever had the immense impact upon both the online gaming community and the gaming community in general (ie, people that wouldn't normally play multiplayer, mud-like games) as UO. This is how I am defining success. > > A tangential question this raises: Raph, how much of UO's > > success would you attribute to cutting edge game technology, > > That being? What we're talking about, a simulationist engine. :) > Graphics? The fact of graphics in itself was not new. > The display engine? Bitmapped 640x480 16 bit color was nifty when we > started, but was just up to par when we shipped, and is now dated. Indeed. I would refer to the art as "functional" (it works well and there's a ton of it), but not really pretty. Ultima 8 probably was more aethetically pleasing. > The capacity of the servers? New, but not earth-shatteringly so, and not > done so well as to blow the world away. Well, certainly it's impressive enough, but that's still not what I was referring to. Since we were discussing the pros and cons of a simulationist versus a (traditional) scripted quest/"storytelling" game, that's what I meant by "technology." Sorry, I should have been clearer. > > and how much to just having a ton of marketing > > UO actually had very little marketing, in that we ran a few ads (I think > there were five) prior to release, and had no online ads. We had a Bah, I remember your post to the Legend message board asking for beta testers, you think that didn't get people excited? :) > website two and a half years in advance of release, of course. The > magazine coverage we got was just about all initiated by the press > themselves, rather than by our aggressively pursuing it. Whether it was internal or external marketing, it still boils down to the same thing for the purpose of my question. Simply by coming from Origin rather than (say) KosterSoft, Inc. generated quite a bit of buzz. Only 5 ads, really? I could have sworn I saw both that one with the picture of the back of some woman's neck and the one with the Tim Hildebrant painting on the back of at least a couple game magazines for many months running. I call that a fair amount of marketing, especially since the ads were well done (in contrast to the ads for games like Kesmai and MPath, which have usually looked pretty amatuerish). > > and one of the most popular single-player RPGs whose > > shoulders you could ride on? > > That's a honking huge advantage, unquestionably. It resulted in a LOT of > press interest, for example. Press that Meridian 59 never got, and that > The Realm never got, and that Lyra's Underlight or Lords of Empyria > still haven't gotten. > > I think, though, that what caught the initial fan base's attention was a > combination of the name, and the approach to the design: basically, a > simulationist world. People thought the idea of living in a virtual > world that they knew well from past games was very appealing. Early fan > writings and websites are full of "oh wow, you'll be able to do THIS in > it!"--the "this" being stuff that generally muds don't support, like > being pirates or running shops or whatever. In other words, you DO think the simulation element had a big effect on the size of the playerbase and the game press' interest in it. > > If you did the same (or similar) game but > > not Ultima and minus Origin's marketing, would it have done > > as well, or nearly as well? > > Minus marketing, nothing does well. :) True, but you know what I mean - KosterSoft, Inc releasing their simulationist, multiplayer game The Legend of Legend! With 16-bit, scrolling graphics! Be a fisherman, a tailor, or an alchemist! etc. > Minus a brandname, everything > does less well. It's very very rare that a new brand is established in > the games market and becomes a major hit. The industry right now is > seeing the vast majority of titles fail to make money. I think the > common phrase is that 90% of the money is made by 10% of the titles. The > ones that do tend to make it big usually have a strong franchise behind > them (read: sequels) and a major publisher behind them with lots of > marketing money. Very true. A similar effect is happening elsewhere, as well: movie studios, record companies, and other entertainment publishers want to put all their money behind sure-fire successes and bump off the less likely candidates. People are only going to see X number of movies or buy X CDs or play X computer games during a given timeperiod, and they'll tend to choose the "best" (== most hyped up) ones. So it's much more worthwhile for a publisher to put serious money behind a big contender and make sure they are on everyone's must-have/must-see list rather than invest in a bunch of small ones that will probably all get overlooked. The statistic I heard is that 300 new computer games get released every month. Of those, the average software store stocks the "top" (as rated by magazines and other market tests) 50 or so. At the end of the month they clear most of those out to make room for the next 50. It's a very, very tough market right now. Multiplayer games are in a slightly different category, of course, but still not completely immune to these effects. > > If they had done Ultima Online as a standard, scripted > > Ultima game with multiplayer capability and a burly central > > server, would *that* have done as well? Would it have done better? > > Good question--there you are asking if UO done as a storytelling instead > of a simulationist game would have done better. Who knows? Nobody's done > a storytelling game at that scale and with that sort of presentation > yet. Everquest is about to try it, though they are lacking the brand. > Meridian was also lacking the brand, and its presentation wasn't quite > there. Also, at the time that it came out, Diablo had just made it to > market and was doing phenomenally doing basically what you describe... True, but Diablo wasn't an ongoing world (with, I might add, an ongoing pay-to-play), so it missed its chance. But this raises another good question: could Blizzard have turned Diablo into a game with the scope and long-term playability as UO, and still be going just as strong today? Or would people have gotten bored of the same-sameness, and this is the reason why UO's approach was "better" in the long run? Likely somewhere inbetween. An interesting question to ponder, however. Incidentally, I ran into Ron Millar about six months ago, at his new start-up. He was the senior designer for the first Diablo. I asked him a bit about why the design for multiplayer Diablo worked out the way that it did; he said that he was largely ignorant of what could be done at that time, but he had recently gotten into playing these cool text games called "muds" and in fact had downloaded a diku codebase and begun to fool with it... I sent him an invite to mud-dev but unfortunately he begged off due to lack of time. > For that matter, UO done the way it WAS done could easily have done > better in the market than it did, if we'd just taken slightly different > approaches to things. Such is hindsight. All told, though, it went #1 PC > software in Japan (not #1 game) and looks to do it again, top ten game > in the States (top 40 for the year), was the fastest selling product in > EA history, is now in the top three bestselling Ultimas ever, and blah > blah blah. Secondguessing seems a bit like looking a gift horse in the > mouth. :) Nod. More than that though - it's longevity. Normal computer games are dead and off the shelf in a few months, or a year or two at best if they are extremely successful (again, reference Diablo). Regardless they are generally close-ended enough that people will get bored and move onto the sequel or the clones. (Witness Quake...) UO is only gaining popularity, it seems; and better yet, Origin gets to real in $10 a month per player, every month. Diablo only gets sold once. Question: could Origin have given away the UO client and still made money? I wager so. I know in my own case, I spent ~$30 on the game itself and then was a paying customer for nearly a year, amounting to $120. (Of course, I wasn't playing most of that time, I just kept forgetting to cancel it...) > Doing it as a storyteller environment, and coming out six to > nine months earlier, maybe it would have traded places with Diablo > (which makes the above accomplishments look puny). I disagree with the last part. Certainly I think UO has made a bigger impact on the gaming community as a whole, but if you want to use the simplest judge, money made, I see it like this: Diablo: (1 million copies) X ($20 a pop back to Blizzard) = $20 million UO: (.5 million copies) X ($20 a pop back to Origin) + (60,000 players a month) X ($10 a month) X (12 months) = $17.2 million (If my numbers are way off the mark, let me know, I'm just guessing. I realize you're probably not allowed to "speculate" on such things, but if I'm dead wrong just say so.) And consider that UO is going to continue making that money, while Diablo is mostly through. I don't think that looks "puny" at all. Or were you refering to something else? Adam W. </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="01389" HREF="msg01389.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> "Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com></LI></UL></LI> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01392.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01394.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01389.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01390.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#01393"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#01393"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>[MUD-Dev] Re: Simulation (Was Re: Room descriptions)</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="01378" HREF="msg01378.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Simulation (Was Re: Room descriptions)</A></strong>, Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt <a href="mailto:hhs#cbs,dtu.dk">hhs#cbs,dtu.dk</a>, Wed 30 Sep 1998, 11:35 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01381" HREF="msg01381.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Simulation (Was Re: Room descriptions)</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:adam#angel,com">adam#angel,com</a>, Wed 30 Sep 1998, 17:03 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </ul> </ul> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="01376" HREF="msg01376.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>, Matt Chatterley <a href="mailto:chattemp#ee,port.ac.uk">chattemp#ee,port.ac.uk</a>, Wed 30 Sep 1998, 08:57 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01389" HREF="msg01389.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>, Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Wed 30 Sep 1998, 22:47 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01393" HREF="msg01393.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:adam#angel,com">adam#angel,com</a>, Thu 01 Oct 1998, 01:01 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01390" HREF="msg01390.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>, S. Patrick Gallaty <a href="mailto:choke#sirius,com">choke#sirius,com</a>, Wed 30 Sep 1998, 23:15 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01391" HREF="msg01391.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>, Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Wed 30 Sep 1998, 23:35 GMT </LI> </ul> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01284" HREF="msg01284.html">[MUD-Dev] Room descriptions</A></strong>, Koster, Raph <a href="mailto:rkoster#origin,ea.com">rkoster#origin,ea.com</a>, Sat 26 Sep 1998, 22:31 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01289" HREF="msg01289.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions</A></strong>, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Sat 26 Sep 1998, 23:30 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>