GDC: The Future of MMOs

Indelible — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:58:29 GMT

IGN have posted a very intersting article in which they discuss The Future of MMOs, courtesy of a panel of top names from the MMO industry.

Present on this panel were such names as Rob Pardo from Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Miller fron NCSoft and Jack Emmert from Cryptic Studios. As well as these veterans of the MMO Industry, Ray Muzyka was there to give his 2 cents as BioWare enter the MMO genre.

The session started out friendly enough with Jon opening up a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of working with established properties or branching out to create entirely original worlds. The main issue, according to Ray Muzyka, is whether or not you fairly assess the potential risks and rewards of investing in marketing a new setting or paying license fees for an existing one. According to him neither way is substantially cheaper than the other so it's purely a matter of opinion and what works best for your game design.

This gives an interesting insight into what the future may well hold for the MMO genre. With BioWare and Blizzard both working on as yet un-titled MMOs, Cryptic working on a new superhero based MMO and NCSoft continuing their portfolio approach to the market, the coming years promise to have some nice surprises for us all.

They also discussed the idea of micro-transactions versus monthly subscription. Nexon pioneered the micro-transaction approach to P2P back in the 90s and is now outdoing NCSoft in the Korean market. Despite this, Emmert and Miller both stated that the micro-transaction system of payment isn't friendly in the American and European market due to the fact that the consumer is so used to paying monthly subs fro services such as telephones, televisions and mobiles that it just makes sense. BioWares Muzyka was on hand to give his impressions of the two systems, which may give us some insight into what BioWare plan to do with their MMO come release.

BioWare's Ray Muzyka suggests that the choice of revenue model should be driven by the design of the game. Some, he argues, simply work better under one system than another. A better solution would be to have it both ways, charging a nominal monthly subscription and offering micro-transactions on top of that. Both World of Warcraft and City of Heroes allow users to spend additional money for things like server transfers or extra emotes, and that added status is worth it for players who desperately want to invest a little more money to enlarge the game's they really love.

All in all, the panel was very informative with some interesting topics being discussed.

You can read the full article courtesy of IGN here.

Bioware and Lucas Arts to team up

Indelible — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:12:00 GMT

Taken straight from the mouth itself, Lucas Arts and Bioware have today announced that they will be teaming up to deliver a new interactive entertainment title.

LucasArts and BioWare Corp. today announced that they have entered into an agreement to create an interactive entertainment product. The product, details of which will be unveiled at a later date, will be developed and published by BioWare and LucasArts, and will push the boundaries of the gaming market by utilizing the strengths of both companies to deliver an innovative, high-quality experience.

“LucasArts has a deep commitment to developing compelling stories and characters for the unique medium of interactive entertainment, and we have been searching for a developer that shares this value. We found this in BioWare,” said Jim Ward, president of LucasArts. “Through our previous collaborations, we know that BioWare has an impressive ability to blend gripping stories with technological advancements, and we believe that our upcoming product will deliver an experience that will span the traditional boundaries of video game entertainment.”

“BioWare’s mission is to deliver the best story and character-driven games in the world, delivering powerful emotional experiences to our fans.” said Ray Muzyka, chief executive officer, BioWare Corp. Added Greg Zeschuk, president of BioWare Corp., “The collaboration with LucasArts allows us to combine our passion for creating high quality and innovative experiences with those of a company dedicated to bringing only the finest games to market."

The last title that Bioware and Lucas Arts teamed up on was the multi-award winning Game of the Year, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The title proved to be a massive success for Lucas Arts and Bioware alike. Despite this however, Bioware did not sign up to work on the follow up to the title, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, with Obsidian taking Biowares place.

Recently, Bioware announced that they would be developing a brand new MMORPG title, the first to come out of the veteran development team and many fans of the company began talking about what the title might be. Many fans settled on a new IP or a new Star Wars MMO when rumours that Bioware had approached Lucas Arts with the offer of a collaboration on a new project emerged. This announcement will serve to reinforce the rumours that Bioware are indeed working on a new Star Wars MMORPG set around the time period first introduced in the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game.

Along with the announcement, a new website to reprisent the partnership has appeared where you can read the official press release.

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GDC: The Future of MMOs

Bioware and Lucas Arts to team up