Want to Make the Next World of Warcraft?
With the large number of MMOs currently in development, I thought I’d relate a personal story about a recent run-in with a developer and the research that I initiated afterwards. I ran across a whitepaper that you might want to take a look at…
The other day, I was at the beauty shop (there aren’t any barber shops in Alpharetta that I can find, so that’s my excuse) and I ran across a guy wearing a t-shirt with the phrase “I pwn n00bs” on the front. I couldn’t help but comment, so we struck up a conversation, both of us sensing a kindred soul.
We talked about online gaming and the communities we belong to. He isn’t the 360 freak that I am, so we didn’t have any games in common, but we both liked and disliked the same types of games and had the same frustrations about game design and interfaces. After a few minutes of talking, he let slip that he worked for a local gaming company who was developing a new MMO. I didn’t want to get him in trouble by finding out too many details about the game itself, but I did ask a few questions about the company, how it was started, and how he got involved. I knew that Kaneva was developed in Atlanta, but I didn’t know that there were other major (or semi-major) studios here.
I found out that the company he works for is an off-shoot of a larger company that was started just because a guy wanted to make a game.
A guy wanted to make a game, so he started a company to make one. Genius.
Maybe not genius, but it is interesting that investors are taking the gaming industry seriously and starting to put real money behind things being developed. The conversation and information I learned in it, got me thinking about the history of gaming development and how other games got their start. I always assumed that good games were developed by studios that grew from basement start-ups by nerdy game developers who had a great idea and the ability to design an engine and an interface.
During my poking around, I ran across a whitepaper from IBM that offers a very interesting look into the online game development process and a sort of history of that process. I found the paper on KnowledgeStorm.com which was actually a huge surprise. I work for KnowledgeStorm, and had no idea that we had gaming material hosted. Yay us!
Anyway, the paper is called The Interactive Entertainment Industry and is subtitled: Objective advice in structuring your next online game project. The paper talks about what you have to think about when planning a game, from the team who creates it to the servers who host it, and what pitfalls you might stumble across when going down the path. The most interesting thing in the paper for me, beyond the insight into the different people it takes to make and produce a game, is their speculation as to where the industry is going next.
They state that the trend is going to be for more and more people (everyone wants to be the next WoW) so the infrastructure has to be larger and more stable than ever before. Real thought and money has to be poured into the servers hosting the games so running these games will be a huge expense for the developers, long after the boxes are on the shelves. The paper speculates that the time for a single-purchase model is over, and that companies will have to continue to charge subscription fees for the games and will have to come up with non-traditional revenue sources to deliver the best possible experience for their players.
To that last point, I am in 100% agreement. I have stopped playing games because the servers couldn’t keep up. I dropped Ultima Online after my second character was purged on accident, and I gave up on Chromehounds when I couldn’t establish a connection with my Live Friends on a regular basis.
If you are going down the path of creating a MMO, wanting to work for a game developer, or are just a fan of the process, this would be a good article to read. It’s free and not all that long.
Oh, and have I said yet how awesome the Halo 3 Beta is? I’ll be posting more insight into the game after the weekend.
Filed under: Real Research, Games and Gamers
