games without frontiers, er, futures

[chronovore]

An article at Gamespot outlines the possibility of LucasArts withdrawing the Star Wars license from SOE for Star Wars: Galaxies and delivering it to another developer.

I don't have a SW:G character, and am not invested in playing the game, but it made me realize that there is a potentially problematic situation with MMORPGs in general. If the company decides not to run the game anymore, the game goes away. If the licensor decides not to let a publisher have their license anymore, the game can go away.

If a player has signed on to play in a Star Wars game, they are likely emotionally involved with their character, a participant in the Star Wars universe. The player has paid money for the boxed game, and paid more money in monthly fees, and part of the intention of MUDs MOOs and MMOs is that we aren't just playing for today, we are playing to have a better time tomorrow. Most of the level grinding that happens can be pretty unfulfilling; people are mainly playing to get to the next level, right? The idea of continued play, potentially endless continued play, seems implicit in the agreement between the player and the publisher/licensor, although you won't find any language along those lines in the EULA.

Just realizing that the company can pretty much "take their ball and go home," leaving me without a game and without recourse, has put me off from starting any MMORPG.

(crossposted: gamers)

Comments

[imlac.livejournal.com]

My brother and I had a very interesting conversation about how people are paying huge amounts of real cash money for premade characters, items and other virtual goods in MMORPG worlds. There are all sorts of interesting questions about intellectual property, economics, value theory and free trade that arise in this context.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

It's too bad you weren't having it in chat, or you could cut-and-paste it here.

I've nothing against people paying for virtual items; in many ways, purchasing downloadable music is similar to the virtual items, characters, and real-estate (there is an interesting term yet-to-be coined). Particularly when the music has DRM that requires authentication, as the data is potentially as-useless as virtual gold in a game that has gone offline.

[sdemory.livejournal.com]

That's been a source of concern for me, actually. I definitely have some degree of proprietary pride at my City of Heroes and City of Villains characters, and the possibility of that world ceasing to be before I can achieve the arc I want to achieve is troubling at best.

Of course, there are games out there like EVE Online that are pretty much GM-free and entirely based on player interaction. In those cases, you'd just need stable server space and a cadre of fanatics.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Well, not really; stable servers are easy to find, fanatics for a good game are easy to find, and frequently have the propellor-heads necessary to run the servers, but I think you'd also need the server-side software (hard to get) and the permission from the IP-holder (even harder to procure; it can't be reverse-engineered).

So, yeah, games that will still run on SNES, PlayStation, whatever; as long as the local machinery is there, w00t! = good. If you like, you can run internet enabled games of Doom, Quake (1&2 are free now, 3 is rumored to follow (or maybe has already)) because they do not require a central server. You can't run CoH except with NCSoft's servers there as the backbone.

Games that require things beyond that are really only open to be run by the company, and the players' continued interaction in that world is up to the publisher to support. As pointed out in the gamers thread, UO has user-supported servers; I guess user-controlled would be the more accurate term.

[sdemory.livejournal.com]

No! It's not true! My game will never die! Sebastian Saint, bow-wielding mass murderer, will be able to become the King of All Crime someday, even though I don't play every day!

It'd be nice to see a full-on user-controlled and supported MMORPG. Alas, I'm still snob enough to think that pros'll do a better job of creating content.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Well, there are plenty of user-created mods and other content out there that say that Amateur Hour can be just as good as pro content. There will be a day when open source game engines on shared servers will have their own marketspace -- or lack-of-market space.