So I thought for New Years Eve I would talk about two terms that are thrown around quite a bit but have lost a lot of context because people use them so poorly. A lot of times people will say “this game is not sandbox” or “this game is theme park” The language they use generally does not give enough information to indicate what these actually are. So in this New Years article I will look at what makes a game sand box vs what makes a game theme-park.
1. The Sand Box
So you are a little boy and you are playing in a sandbox. You have no toys so what do you do? You make your own stuff. You build castles out of sand. You build little forts to hide in. You cover your body in sand everywhere except for his head… because it’s funny. It is a world of childhood fun where you can make anything you want and do anything you want. Just don’t eat the sand.
A sandbox game then is one that is non-linear (as in does not follow a specific path) and leaves you with options and choices. These games are about being free to do whatever you want.
Some games are recognized as pure sandbox games. These are games designed allowing the player to do what they want. The purest example of this is Minecraft. This game was designed as the ultimate sandbox game. A player can build the world as they see fit and make things do as they please. They can essentially do anything they want by making that ability available.
This does not mean that a “sandbox game” has to be as wide open as that. Sandbox is a philosophy behind a game design. If a game is trying to be open and allow players to do as they please it is a sandbox game. When a game designer seeks to limit what you do it fits into the next category.
2. The Theme-Park
When you go to a theme-park you can go on a large number of rides, it is your choice which one you go on. My favorite is the roller coaster. Unlike that childhood experience playing in the sandbox where you make your own fun this one involves some mechanisms that will push you around a pre-set path. Although it may be fun you do not choose anything, you are merely there for the ride doing what the roller coaster designers want you to do.
A theme-park game in the same way will bring you there for the ride. These games will involve complicated quests or missions involving you moving down a narrow path where you must do certain tasks to move on to the next objective. The goal of a theme-park game is to give you enough content to keep you entertained as you go through the challenges involved in it.
The end of the ride is when the game runs out of linked missions and tasks for you to do. At this point you play another game.
A perfect example of a theme-park game is Chrono Trigger. Although the game may have multiple endings and might be worth finishing multiple times with multiple saves… it is entirely linear and forces you to do very specific tasks before you can do anything at all.
If you were to think of a theme-park think of it more as a movie. It will have a plot structure with a specific order of things. You have to sit their, watch, and enjoy.
Sandbox vs Theme Park
In some ways every MMO that comes out is a sandbox. You are in no way required to raid, PvP, or even level. In other ways almost every MMO out there has theme park elements that will guide you to do specific things and find lesser rewards in doing other things. World of Warcraft for example is a raiding game. You are always directed to do lore specific quests so that you will understand quests. You will gain gear from raiding faster than anything else. Age of Conan was a PvP game so the best gear came from ruling over a kingdom and smashing your opponents while expanding your territory. Both of these games however have a sandbox so that you can do anything you want to do.
The best games these days will include both sandbox and theme park styles. The reason for this is to get the bang for their buck. Some people prefer having a directed experience where they are told what to do and given a group of quest lines or objectives they have to finish. Other people enjoy being able to go out there, explore the world and do their own thing.
As an industry standard traditional sandbox games have incorporated theme-park elements and theme-park games have been more open and free. It just gives people the best of both worlds. This trend will continue until these two terms eventually become meaningless.
For Black Friday the entire Tom Clancy library went on sale each game going for $1.99 and the more recent ones going for $4.99. It was a pretty big deal as some of the greatest shooter and action titles of all time are all available at once for less than $20 total.
I will eventually get around to talking about the Rainbow Sixes, the Ghost Recons, and the Splinter Cell PC ports.
But for now I will be focusing on just one PC port, Tom Clancy’s End War.
End War of course is Tom Clancy’s first (and only) attempt at an RTS game in an attempt to revolutionize the industry.
History of Tom Clancy
I think it is hard to talk about any Tom Clancy game without looking at a history of, the man.
Tom Clancy is for some a pen name as not everything by Tom Clancy actually involves the man. In fact half of his ‘movies’ are not his, they are ghost written by someone else. Tom Clancy was pretty big in the literary world for his war and espionage stories involving complicated military science that only an experienced soldier would be aware of.
Then, he made his first big movie Patriot Games. After this he followed up with The Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, and the Sum of All Fears. All of these movies were massive successes and gave Tom Clancy a name in the movie industry as a standard. Executive Orders is the last movie he makes before switching to the video gaming industry. After this other movies are ghost written for him.
Tom Clancy took a pretty keen interest in video games. He was specifically interested in making the games that no one else was making.
His first shot was to make a first person shooter. People had stopped making these games simply because everyone was doing it. It was really hard to break into the shooter industry. For whatever reason 1998 was a year that innovative FPS designs came out. Valve released Half Life with a puzzle solving first person shooter element. In the same year Tom Clancy looked over the development of the first Rainbow Six. This game would uniquely tie in a military team who would handle missions together.
Since then most games involve NPCs with intelligent design using actual military moves.
But Tom Clancy did it first. He did a tonne of research into military weaponry, military tactics and espionage for this game. Most people wouldn’t even notice that your team mates will move into a defensive pose from all directions that is most commonly deployed by Navy Seals.
There were other “Tom Clancy” games before this one but they were never made, written or directed by Tom Clancy.
Rainbow Six would go on to spawn 16 sequels over 12 years, all very successful (some of these were expansion packs). The first Ghost Recon is the only one Tom Clancy oversaw, the other ones were continued and improved based on his format.
The next game Tom Clancy would make is Ghost Recon. Ghost Recon is a first person shooter, from hell. This game is retardedly hard. In most FPS games you walk around hallways and in set linear areas and just shoot for headshots as you move along. Ghost Recon was a game in which you are ghosts, a team of soldiers who when captured would deny being affiliated with the United States. The game gave a concept to movement and sound in games. If you moved too fast and made too much noise you would be found and they would open up on you.
While Rainbow Six had pretty smart computers who you could command this one had insanely smart AI. These guys would deploy certain roles and can be commanded or uncommanded to work technocratically.
But once again, this game was hard as all hell. It takes me 70-80 hours to finish one of these games on the Xbox.
Ghost Recon was insanely popular due to it’s high difficulty. It has spawned eight sequels. While every game is pushing multiplayer Ghost Recon has survived based on it’s well written storylines and it’s insanely hard difficulty.
Moving along Splinter Cell is released a year later. Splinter Cell is regarded by many as the “Metal Gear Solid killer.” It was designed specifically for the Xbox and was made to try and cripple the PS2’s largescale control on the market. Many people attribute Halo and Splinter Cell to the wide scale popularity of Xbox over PS3 and Nintendo Wii today. Splinter Cell, much like Ghost Recon is based on a group who if found will deny working for the United States. This espionage game had insanely good controls, insanely hard difficulty and an amazing storyline. The game felt very rewarding when you actually do something right. I can remember doing the first level and spending an hour to do a single take down. When I did it I felt like a million bucks.
The game was also popular. The stories he told about global conflicts, treachery and counter-espionage were insanely popular and despite many failed and botched multiplayer attempts the game survived and flourished. The game has had 5 sequels (one more than Metal Gear Solid) with a sixth and final one on the way.
So with so much success with Splinter Cell, Tom Clancy in his infinite immortality felt the need to move to new genres to innovate them. He saw flight simulators as being relatively weak and spent a lot of time on his recent title H.A.W.X. But before H.A.W.X. was a real time strategy title, EndWar.
EndWar is light on story. Tom Clancy only spent a little bit of time crafting this story. He was more interested in the gameplay and technology than making an interesting tale. So the campaign for this game was shorter and easier than any of his previous games. The game was designed for multiplayer with a unique kick, voice activation.
Tom Clancy felt that voice commands was going to be the future of gaming. He saw the development of an early Xbox Kinect as an avenue for future game designs. Instead of the current quickness of fingers and accuracy of a stick of mouse he would trade it out for motion and sound controls.
EndWar would require you to clearly give commands instead of do them by finger tips. This model failed and eventually Clancy was forced to also put in some typical RTS controls.
The Synopsis
For the record while I was playing this game I only did it with voice commands. At no point was I ever interested in doing this with the standard play. Using voice commands did slow me down quite a bit but without it the game wasn’t as interesting.
In this game you are a general of whatever nation you choose to fight for. It is the eve of World War 3. America is preparing to launch an anti-weapon satellite in space. Europe has unified into one nation and has deployed large laser satellites (think Moonraker). The Russians have risen from their former ashes and are preparing for a war with both America and Europe.
As you play through the campaign you see that there are players in all governments trying to start this war. Much like World War 1 it is as if all the chips are in play and someone (or some people) merely have to push the buttons. In the campaign you play as all three nations defending attacks from various nations and attacking them. The campaign introduces you to the various multiplayer modes: Take and Hold, Defense/Assault, and Annihilation. The names are exactly what they sound like. Take and Hold means take and hold points. Defense/Assault is a simple mode involving an attacker (with more powerful units) and a defender with weaker ones. Annihilation simply is a 1v1 battle involving equal forces where one wipes out the other.
The game does not feature resources nor the construction of any vehicles. Unlike a traditional RTS you simply deploy your forces and use a limited number of forces to beat back the enemy.
The game has a very simple mechanized philosophy. Tanks Beat Transports. Transports beat Gunships. Gunships beat Tanks. It’s a circle that gets complicated by the inclusion of ground forces, artillery and WMDs. Engineeers are strong against all mech units and because they can take over buildings and take cover they have a powerful strategic advantage against them. Infantrymen are strong against engineers and drones and are also the only unit able to capture a point. Drones are purely defensive and are strong against engineers and gunships. Then there are WMDs which are the answer for everything.
Maps involve the deployment of as few units as four and as many units as 10.
The game will force you to issue commands using voice commands. Selecting units and issuing orders with a mouse point is available, but not as fun. The game will make you say something like this:
“Unit 1 Attack Hostile 3”
By saying these words you will make whatever unit is designated 1 to attack whatever hostile unit is designated 3.
The game also features cover and bunkering for infantry units. Certain structures and posts will provide cover for your units. By deploying them behind cover they gain a defensive bonus. When they are bunked in buildings they gain bonus vision of fire and range.
This is necessary because every unit in the game has a shield. The shield will regenerate over time and units will not take life damage until this shield is deployed. This allows you a minor amount of microing where you must pull back injured units and keep stronger ones up front.
You can do this by issuing the command “Retreat.”
The game’s tactics is entirely based around slow pushing and maintaining stronger defensive positions. A common tactic for example might be to take control of some forward buildings, keep armor and gunships behind the engineers/infantry and then use artillery to fire on his units. He will be forced to move away from his defensive position to get in vision of your forces so that his will gain vision of you or he can also flank you and snipe your artillery.
The game has a pretty direct rock scissors paper element. If you place a gunship on a tank, it will wipe that tank out fast. But if you place the same gunship on a transport then suddenly the gunship can barely do any damage to it, even if the transport never fights back.
Graphics – 9/10
One thing this game does not lack is graphics. When you load up the game you will see tones of great visuals and amazing graphical details. When you load up missions you will be greeted by animated commanders who will speak to you with lips synced with the sound. When you load up missions you have this great tactical map that is sharp and aesthetically pleasing… and I haven’t even talked about what happens when the game starts.
Every single graphical shred of this game is amazing. You can see all the little parts moving on your tanks. You can see the individual animations of your troops. When they are idling you can catch a Euro soldier taking a smoke. All of the facilities look like real buildings instead of the normal blocks you get in most games. The sand bags have the individual details of the sandbag down to the point that you can almost make out a brand name on the bag.
The game’s camera is the most stunning. When you select a unit it will move to that unit. Before doing so it will give you a slight blur and then it will run the full path between where your currently selected unit is and where the next selected unit is. On this path you will see closeups of all of the structures on the map and all those little things… like actual traffic.
However the graphics might take away from the game. There are some games when their graphics are too good it makes the game functionally poor.
A great example of this is Pacman 64. I wanted for so long to write about Pacman 64 as a piece of nostalgia but I could never serve up the courage. Here is a game that was supposed to be the next step up on the original Pacman (which sold 3.4M copies, still a lot by today’s standards). Pacman 64 as a 2d platformer is great. Despite having shotty graphics and poor mechanisms you ignore these because the core game mechanics are fantastic.
When they made Pacman 64 the graphics were actually great but because it represented a 3-dimensional format the play was terrible. It is one of the few games that I have sat down and played for 10 hours and just quit without trying to finish it.
What’s my point
My point is that the souped up RTS graphics are just not fitting of an RTS game. Being able to zoom in and see all of your units doing stuff is amazing and great. However having to see all of your units from a 3rd person RPG view and having the lag time between the shifts to see what is going on insanely cripple the speed at which you can issue orders.
The tag line of this game is “command at the speed of thought.” The game however is nothing short of slow. A large part of this is how the graphics are handled. High rating for great graphics, brought down for simply not having the right graphics for the job.
Noobie Friendliness – 9/10
Upon starting the campaign you will come to a voice calibration screen. This is no doubt the thing that will shy away most players. The game is not calibrating to your voice. Instead your are redundantly fine tuning your voice to be understood by their machine. Of course the poor noobie will not know that you can make voice recognition easier in the options menu. But you will more than likely do this after you spend an hour try to get this thing to ‘calibrate’ your voice. It’s a poor design and poorly implemented… especially for people like myself with rich Canadian accents.
The game starts you off with something insanely basic and then continues to bring you into more basic elements until you realize the whole game is basic. This is a great way to run an RTS, you slowly feed people more units and more strategies until they understand all of them. Tom Clancy has a very strong grasp on how people learn and how people will figure out things.
All of the controls are insanely simple. You have a set number of groups and you command them using voice commands. If you do not know what voice commands are available that is fine because an on-board menu will always inform you of what is available.
If you do not want to use the voice commands you can merely point and click unit commands. There is no complicated microing required, you just fight a war of counters.
Most importantly to the noobie experience is the loading screen. Most games will have some sort of large loading graphic. This game only has tips that you are almost forced to read. They give valuable information into what you are going to do with these units.
The game overall feels like you can pick it up in a heart beat, a great experience for someone new to RTS. Since this game was made for the Xbox 360 it is obviously going to be picked up by a large number of RTS noobies.
Opinion – 4/10
Considering the price this is a great buy. For a mere $2 I was able to squeeze out a full 12 hours out of this. A lot of people don’t think of buying games as a money-time investment, merely a money investment. $2 will get me nothing. I can’t even buy a beer for $2. If I can spend two nights (well I did this game in four sittings, I’m a busy guy) then it is definitely worth such a small coin.
That does however not take away from the overall crappiness of the game.
The voice commands are fun and they will keep you interested. This is because the game is insanely slow and most of the time you just sit there watching. Whereas most RTS games will feature between 100-500 units this game only features between 3-10. Because of having so few units it limits your responsibility. There are no production buildings to worry about so really, what are you doing when all of your units are attacking the right stuff.
The answer?
Nothing.
You sort of just sit there and watch. Given it is amazing to watch as the graphics are pristine it does not take away from the sheer laziness of the game
Most RTS games follow a formula. A match will start slow and slowly wind up until it becomes so insanely complicated that you become an APM machine. This game does not have it. It is a purely tactical game in a very slow style of warfare. 99% of the missions I won by just taking one node and wiping out the computer who would try and zerg me.
You might enjoy this game for a few minutes, but the gimmick of voice activation will lose staying power very quickly. In the actual heat of the moment you will turn to your mouse.
The campaign is insanely short and is devoid of a real story. Instead the campaign merely sets up a battle and you are supposed to be the one telling the story. After the main campaign you are launched into a free-style of play where you can choose who you want to be with (Russia, America or EU), and who to attack. You can also get attacked and lose territory.
This concept interested me largely because this is the AvA styling of Global Agenda. However as I played more of it, it just did not seem all that fun. Instead it just became repetitive.
There is a multiplayer in this game.
Well sort of.
The game was mildly popular among Tom Clancy fans but that would be about it. The game never had any real staying power because the gameplay never had much breadth.
A great RTS is going to last between 4-5 years.
What games do I consider great RTS?
Warcraft 3 and Command and Conquer: Generals
Both of these games despite being dated and old are both played today. This is because the games at first appear to be very simple and the campaigns can be chopped up piecemeal… but as you add in multiplayer these games become complicated and challenging.
EndWar is missing that, challenge. There are simply not enough units and not enough things to do to possible make this game hard. If this game could actually be hard it would be so impossibly hard that no one would want to even play it. Think Ninja Gaiden and those stupid gulls that would knock you into every single hole on the map every single time you jumped.
It’s hard, but it’s pointlessly hard.
Conclusion – 7.3/10
This game is not Ubisoft’s first attempt at a strategy game. Ubisoft gave us both Anno 1404 and Anno 2070. Ubisoft gave us The S.E.T.T.L.E.R.S. Ubisoft gave us R.U.S.E.
Yet with these great strategy titles behind them they somehow overlooked how terrible this Tom Clancy title was.
I cannot stress how much I detest this game. It is a terrible game and somehow every reviewer on the planet felt it was worth 4 stars and 9/10 when it is in fact an unplayable piece of shit.
Tom Clancy should stick to what he’s good at, writing great stories. I enjoyed all of Tom Clancy’s other games and I enjoyed the experience of being a part of a story that is greater than me.
It’s not that I didn’t give this game a chance, I really did. I was so excited for a new RTS when I got it and I played it immediately. Keep in mind, I purchased over 40 games during the Black Friday sale. Out of the 40 games, I chose this one to play first. All I got was disappointment and upset. I continued playing it thinking that as the game became more complicated with more units it would eventually get better, it did not.
All it did was make me feel bad for having a slight slur of the English tongue. How dare I not have an American accent! No, I can’t say I liked this game and unfortunately they are going to launch a sequel to this game next year.
The main question is, will the sequel be as purely terrible as the original,
It’s been a while since I thought back to the 90s. But when I went to Steam and saw some Sam and Max games I could not help but think of an old game of the 90s, Sam and Max.
Personal Experience
Sam and Max first shows up in comic strip format. The comic was rather unique because the characters in the story were very much aware that they were in a comic. The characters would always relate to the fact that they’re just characters in a comic strip as they resolve their crimes. Sam is a dog detective who has a nose for an investigation. Max is a psychotic rabbit who supports Sam but mostly gets in the way and makes things harder.
The comic strip was released as a television series and as a game at roughly the same time. It’s kind of interesting, the code for Sam and Max was made in 1988 as generic coding for Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion, arguably two of the most popular games of all time. The game does not get released until 1992 and is titled “On the Road.”
The game was agrivating. You had to find objects and use them at the right locations. In a world without walkthroughs I might have spent a full session just looking for a stupid washroom key only to find out I never needed it.
The game featured a detective playstyle that will permeate throughout the years in various detective stories. The genre is actually insanely popular. Every CSI game ever made will involve this sort of stuff. Might be a little improved but basically the same thing.
I never did finish Sam and Max. During this time it was not exactly a crime to not finish a game. Most games just went unfinished. This is because skill caps went insane near the ends of games and games were mostly designed around not being finished. I mean if you finish a game, won’t you stop playing it? Interestingly enough game developers would start making games that are easier to finish so that they could sell their next title.
The game was fun though. It had a lot of great humor and you would frantically waste all of your time trying to solve these investigative puzzles to try and get to the next humor bit. The artwork in the game was also fantastic and all done by a single artist, the comic book author, Steve somebody or whatever.
So what happened to Sam and Max?
The genre was flushed full of the detective story. Monkey Island was a far greater success than Sam and Max and because of this Monkey Island spawned 5 billion sequels and until recently Sam and Max was left in the dust.
It’s not without effort.
Shortly after Hit the Road a sequel was in development based around a space shuttle shaped like Max’s head. The project was cancelled.
In 2001 again another sequel is being announced once again with a space theme. In 2003 LucasArts cancels it again due to the market not fitting this genre.
The LucasArts hold on this title did not expire until 2007 when a company called Telltale Games started pumping out Sam and Max titles.
These were not natural sequels to the game. They had simply gone too far in time. This is nearly 15 years after the initial success of Sam and Max that they are making these.
These games were developed for the casual gamer and went on sale for less than $20 a shot. Sam and Max has simply become the discount title in a genre that might be far too saturated.
A friend of mine once said that there are no female pro gamers. That’s not true, they exist, they’re just thin and few.
Female gamers take the traditional plight of military servicewoman, female doctors, female lawyers, female presidents, and journeywoman in trades…. lack of inclusion.
There has historically been a blatant sexism involved in every single job field. Professional gamer being a unique leisurely profession that is highly desired leaves fierce competition.
Argument #1: Against Women in the Army (and Pro Gaming)
Kingsley Browne, a known sexist author argued fiercely against women in the army. He said “if in a combat situation men will throw themselves into harms way to save them when they otherwise would have left them to die.” It’s actually an insanely old argument that has existed for centuries dating as far back as World War 1 where the concern was men running over the trenches to save women.
This argument often gets confused. People too often think that this argument is about men acting irrationally. Although I’m sure that is a part of it, the main part of it is fraternization in the work place.
I mean, why are these men supposedly throwing themselves into harms way to protect these women? It’s not because men will throw themselves in harms way for any women. Imagine there is this completely hideous woman in the bar. So a guy pushes her and knocks her down. How many men are going to jump and get involved? Probably far less if she was smoking hot.
That’s particularly the problem with women in pro-gaming.
Pro-gaming is a leisure based profession. It is like playing golf or professional party thrower. I mean, yes it’s work but it’s not real work. You don’t produce anything. In that regard these jobs are pretty high demand and will require you to have a family background that can support you as you try to get yourself settled away at this.
It’s one of these oddball professions that requires foundation first. When Steve Wyzniak and Steve Jobs pioneered the first personal computer they did it from their parents garage. If he did not have said support, he would not be able to make it work.
Case in point, girls who want to pro game are going to be hot. They’re going to be able to afford all those ‘cute’ and ‘attractive’ things on top of playing games. That’s why gamer girls at any convention at all get hounded like crazy. Some of them end up being attention whores like this former pro gamer.
Because of girls like this one guilds and teams will not want to pick up girls. Girls just cause drama for the team.
WoW guilds aren’t too bad and honestly you see a lot of girls playing WoW guilds. But who cares about WoW guilds, people don’t really get sponsored in WoW as much and the guilds that do get sponsored…. probably don’t have girls in them. If they do have girls in them, well the girl is probably the novelty that has gotten them sponsored in the first place.
Professional teams on the other hand LIVE IN THE SAME HOUSE. Do you know how much fraternization that’s going to cause? I actually agree with a lot of these SC2, Counter Strike, and Halo teams who have a no girls policy…. it’d be retardedly bad. It’s not that there is no SC2 female pro gamer, just no team will pick her up.
Argument #2: Girl Gamers Don’t Appeal to Guys
I think when we watch a lot of sports we think “that could be me.” We feel like we’re a part of the action. Women can enjoy men’s sports because well, women are allowed in men’s leagues. However it’s REALLY hard for a man to enjoy female only sports because well…. men aren’t allowed in there.
About 3 years ago there was a girls team called Team Foxy. They actually showed up at tournaments but…. could never get sponsors. On top of that they really could never attract the highest quality of players. You’ve probably never heard of them because they really only existed on MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook.
Girl gamers really only appeal to guys in the sexual sense. As a simple example of this E3 was once a simple trade conference where game developers would get together in a conference hall and show off their new games. It was done so that store owners and franchise owners could get an idea of what games and consoles they should put on display.
Today E3 is huge. And every single game that has a presentation booth is presented by very sexy ladies. It’s an odd transition but it gets men’s attention.
Unfortunately this leaves female pro gamers in the role of fringe for fans. I’m sure there is someone out there who would like to see a great female golfer… but it’s not this guy.
Argument #3: Girls don’t go to college to learn stuff
The most common program for a first year female student at any university is… psychology. It’s a field that will offer them no future of a job nor any chance for a future. Because the truth is, girls go to college to socialize. University represents an atmosphere with men who will be able to provide for them.
Girls don’t play games to have fun, they do it… to socialize. If you’re decent at a game you will want to be around people who are equally or better than you. I mean honestly, it really sucks being the best in your group. You always feel like you are carrying the team.
In a social setting where you’re not seeking to be the best you are likely to lag behind and instead be felt like an anchor weighing down the team.
I can recount the first time I had a sponsored guild. It was a pretty cool feeling, free gaming mice, free mousepad, free ventrillo server, and free guild web site…. yep not such a high life. But because we were given resources that were pretty rare at the time we were able to put together a killer team and actually start getting into competition with guilds.
At some point our little 40-man guild started becoming insanely social. It was all lead by one chatty person in guild chat… who ended up being a girl. It was revealed and after guys starting hawking on her she was kicked from the guild, along with the people she ‘seduced.’ In truth she wasn’t looking to raid but instead simply wanted to be a ‘fangirl.’
Today it’s a little different since there’s less sponsoring going on in WoW it’s far less serious. There are tones of girls in raiding guilds and without a money involvement people do not take their position in the guild as seriously.
If there was no money involved women could easily become pro gamers. But once you put the money on the table the politics get more complicated. There are simply some industries out there that are very unfriendly for women to get into. Pro gaming is no different. Pro gaming is still a boys club that will bring out the best or worst in people.
When World of Warcraft posted numbers exceeding 14M people everyone decided it was time to get into the online game. The gamer market is roughly 250,000,000 people. Out of that 250,000,000 about 80,000,000 play MMOs. Out of that 80,000,000 you have 14,000,000 people playing World of Warcraft.
That leaves sum total 66,000,000 gamers who could potentially be courted to play your game. Or you can choose to court the smaller player base, that is 14,000,000 people to try and get your slice of the World of Warcraft subscription monies.
World of Warcraft represents a very small and niche market, fantasy. If you look at the top 10 books of the last year (2010) you will find that only one of those is fantasy. And one is only slightly fantasy, it is more of a Christmas book than a fantasy elf type thing.
The problem with fantasy is that it is something that has been here for all time. Fantasy is the single most published fiction genre. it is a market designed to attract the attentions of young men who are rather uncertain with themselves (geeks) and young girls. I mean that’s all Twilight was about right? Girls wooing over two different gentlemen.
This literary tradition transitions over into the MMO market as well. People have been making fantasy games for all time. I can remember the first Windows 95 game I played, Baldur’s Gate. Here is a fantasy RPG that did well and since then the market has bloomed full of fantasy RPGs.
Fantasy RPGs do terrible in the gaming market. You need to have a massive blockbuster game to even make a dent. Elder Scrolls is a pretty big exception but for the most part people just dodge RPGs like there is no tomorrow.
So why is that exactly?
#1: WoW Did It
When you play a fantasy RPG it has a beginning and an end. It is a fairly short experience usually not exceeding 80 hours of play. It is a central focused story that you must follow along with. In this regard a standard RPG is going to have a chance in the market because it is telling a single narrative designed to interest a specific gamer type. The game is, targetted towards people who like these games.
This was the case with Final Fantasy 4 which offered you a rich narrative involving a radical group of individuals using the powers of some sort of magical being to beat back evil.
But when Final Fantasy 4 ended, that was it. That was the end of the game, you moved on to the next one.
With the MMORPG though you have a central focus and then you have an almost infinite number of sub-stories. Each fantasy MMO will have a central focus.
World of Warcraft had Illidan, Naxxramas, Arthas, and Deathwing as different central focused stories for each expansion. But with every single expansion came 20-30 sub-stories involving various factions having their own personal grief. I forget their names but there were these furblog people and these froggy people in the Basin. They were at war with each other and you chose a side. They redid this a couple of times and it got repetitive. They had stories of knights, undead knights, disease spreaders, ghouls, goblins, bears, tree people, night people, old people, ancient people, Egyptian people, spider people, and stone people. There are so many factions with their own stories in WoW that they have almost put themselves out of a job in writing lore.
WoW has even moved on to the panda people just because they’re running out of stuff to write about. On top of that they have had to rewrite tales and expand stories. I have two examples of this.
In Eastern Plaguelands there was a faction of people who wanted to cleanse Naxxramas and purify the land of undead influence. This had to be reinvisioned to create a combined faction of undead knights and knights of the light. This new faction would push into the frozen wastelands of Northrend to try and take out Arthas. They removed tones of quest lines involving the former faction trying to wipe out Naxxramas, moved Naxxramas to Northrend and reworked the story to make it more dynamic.
A second example is the Cenarion Circle factioned featured in the vanilla game. These were keepers of the woods who were interested in keeping the world in tact. They fought with you against the AQ dungeons and the various spider and gargoyle bosses that came out of it. This faction moved to Outlands and was given the name Cenarion Expedition where they were dedicated to stopping Lady Vashj from destroying the natural habitat of the marsh she was occupying. As you found out she was taking water from the lake and pumping it out for some reason no one really understood.
So then comes Northrend. Blizzard decides to re-imagine this faction of tree people fighting evil who were destroying this world as extremist environmental degredation protesters. They were given the name “P.E.T.A.” to explain this. You were given subtle hints that these druids were the same ones since you would get Cenarion rep for completing these quests.
The big problem is, WoW did it.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker ran into the same problem when they were having problems coming up with show ideas, because Simpsons Did It. it’s a problem when there is a king of a genre who does everything possible. It has come to the point where Simpsons is on and off with blandness because they are repeating themselves.
WoW has invested in damn near every single story line possible to the point where no matter what you do, it will look pretty similar to what WoW did.
#2: Fantasy is Limited
There are only so many types of stories a fantasy world can cover. For their second expansion World of Warcraft did the mixed fantasy-scifi theme that a lot of fantasy publishers are forced to do to keep alive. I mean look at Final Fantasy’s whole series, it is a fantasy game that involves guns and lasers.
Fantasy is a very limited genre and is best played in short RPGs. This is because the very beginning of the game is designed to limit the game so that you can make sequels involving more fantasy themes.
What does fantasy offer?
Vampires-werewolves
Elves-dwarves
Goblins-ghouls
And then… that’s pretty much it. Fantasy authors are always struggling to tell stories because they are entering a very limited realm.
I think I’ve said before in one of my blogs that I have watched a single Harry Potter movie and never read a single one of these books. The one movie I watched was Deathly Hollows Part 2. This is a great example of an authorship having nothing else to write about. From what I gather from the other books they introduce the school, the minor villains and it all leads up to this final vision.
SPOILER ALERT!
There is this dark haired school teacher who the whole time has been kind of a douche to Harry Potter. But in a sudden plot twist it turns out he was being a douche to be his friend. The author ran out of creative juices and decided to throw in this massive twist that absolutely made no sense and the story of the movies did not have anything to do with. And then it is suddenly forgotten almost instantly and does not matter.
Fantasy is really hard to write because you really only have so far to go with it. You run out of a lot of room to work with and you slowly write yourself out of content. You have to finish up the story and then write an expansion to try and tell another separate story of this adventurer. But that story is extremely limited too. The expansion is going to be themed and so everything should be expected to fit into those parameters. Rift for example is limited to these rift invasion creatures who you are preventing from destroying the world. Well that limits the sort of mobs, the sort of stories, and the sort of encounters. The game starts (as Defiant) at the end of the world where Regulos and Aselbeth have destroyed the world.
Once you have played one fantasy MMO it almost feels like you have played them all. You need the same sorts of classes and the same sorts of characters. If you show up in a fantasy MMO with something radically different it will not appeal to the limited fantasy MMO niche market you are attempting to get at.
#3: Nobody Likes Elves
Let’s get this out in the open… nobody actually ever likes elves… ever. Every single elf in every single book, movie, or feature are always assholes who think they are better than everything. They are always douchebags that emphasize how much better they are than everyone. Sometimes elves are spiritual in nature… but they still have that sense of being better than everyone.
Think of Lord of the Rings. The premise of the elves was that they thought of themselves as so high and mighty that they abandoned mankind to Sauron in favor of protecting their people in some distant land Sauron could not touch. Why not just take all of the humans and all of the land with them? Why fight at all? They thought themselves so high and mighty and so special.
Yet every single fantasy MMO out there features some sort of elf or elf-like race. They are tall. They are skanky. They are ‘clever.’ They think of themselves as being out of this world. And they were for some time, insanely popular. This popularity has dwindled over time and this is because we are over-exposed to elves now. It is no longer cool to be an elf, in fact people hate elves.
There is an odd popularity for elf-free games. Global Agenda advertised specifically on being elf-free:
The scifi-space genre has become more popular for story telling because it is elf free.
The main problem suffering from the fantasy genre is that of elves, the same stuff ad infinitum. The fantasy MMO genre really has nowhere to go, it is mostly capped in the number of people doing it right now. Yet more and more fantasy MMOs keep coming up every month to try and steal away some profits.
The World of Elfcraft is diluting me thinks it is time for developers to look elsewhere. Hopefully Ubisoft decides to go elsewhere for their upcoming unnamed MMO.
TheGameGuru.Me 