#45: And Now a Word from Our Sponsor ...

[ShannonA]

Thoughts on my newest article, on developing for a commercial environment?

Shannon

[Dariel]

First things first, the logic used in the article is of course flawless.

A professional setting as proposed by pay-for-play makes for more freedom in developing (y)our games, but at the same time, as soon as you charge money for your product, you take on a lot of responsibilities.

Quite a challenge, I'd say.

Suddenly, your paying customers have a right to criticize your product. Luckily, it seems at least the CM community is more than lenient when stuff happens due to glitches during upgrades and the like. After all, I couldn't play 24/7 anyways. Still, that might be one thing that maybe should have been addressed more explicitly in the article, as it should go a long way to make people understand the virtues of pay-for-play...

On a more intuitive note... is it just me, or does this article sound like an innuendo to raising the Skotos price tag? Outlining the virtues of a principle usually precedes a change in that direction...

But maybe I'm just paranoid. I'd probably continue to pay anyways.


Have a nice day.

[Methander]

Hey, I am migrating to Skotos games from playing Asheron's Call and Everquest. I don't have the computing power to play the next generation o fgames, like Anarchy Online or Dark Age of Camelot. I'd love to see one of those games have the potential for story telling as Castle Marrach, and the complexity and role playing of The Eternal City. I am getting them *both* for the same $10 a month I paid for either of those games, and I am not paying anything for the game itself. So I am pretty happy.

Would I like to see a graphic oriented game with these features? Sure, I would! I'd also like a new computer, but that won't be happening in the near future, either. Sacrificing the pretty pictures, I get an environment with the flexibility of text expression.

And (my idea) . . .

By sticking with a text game, we are presenting a limitation that will discourage the l33t d3wds from joining the game. They want to see the latest outfits, the largest monsters, the biggest explosions, and the slimiest deaths. We just have words. The limitations of the medium promote the playability.

And I am paying money! This isn't adware or someone's hobby between jobs. This is a company trying to make a profit, and I can expect improvements to the games and new games to try. I can save $10 a month easily by ordering one less pizza!

Meth

[ShannonA]

Originally posted by Dariel
On a more intuitive note... is it just me, or does this article sound like an innuendo to raising the Skotos price tag? Outlining the virtues of a principle usually precedes a change in that direction...

But maybe I'm just paranoid. I'd probably continue to pay anyways.


Most days you could ask me the source of an article and I couldn't really tell you what it was. About three weeks ago, before the world got really crazy, I decided I wanted to write about pay-for-play and the title "And Now a Word from Our Sponsor" jumped into my head.

It seemed like a good topic, so I wrote.

By relatively sheer chance Scott Roberts writes on a fairly similar topic on the newest Mummer's Dance, which should be available at http://www.skotos.net/articles/ later today.

Shannon

[Atama]

Meth,

I'm a former EQ person too. In fact, I found Skotos by looking up graphical MUDs at Mudconnector. I guess the little map on the right makes it a graphic game. *shrug*

Anyways, I don't think that a real graphic game, like a 1st-person 3D game or a top-down UO game could ever have the potential of a text game. Just as no movie or TV show will ever be able to capture what you get from a really good book.

Not saying that text games are better, but they are different in a way that a graphic game will never be. Text games are more personal, because the descriptions are in your head. Like when you read a book, and get to hear the voice of the character in your head, then you watch a movie based on the book and are never satisfied because the actor doesn't "sound right".

Unfortunately, depending on the game, l33t d00ds can still show up. Just cause there's no 32-bit color polygon pic to ooh and aah over doesn't mean they can't show up and want to get to level 50 the fastest and easiest way they can so that they can lord it over the "wussies" (sometimes cheating or making life miserable for others). But I will agree that it does sort-of discourage that kind of thing.