Murzim Offline

Development of an online game and life - PART II

08/03/2007

So here come the.. much ? expected ? sequence to my first blog spot regarding the development of an online game.

I intent to continue from where I stopped; I was writing about how happy I am with my playerbase. I wasn't doing it in the hope that someone from them sees it and feels happy about me, I was just stating my belief that unless your game has really really many people, support won't be a problem.

But you will have plenty of other problems to worry about and you can rest assured that you will never feel like it is done. I may be an amauter when I feel that my game will never end. Or I may be too demanding from my game. This is I guess a big problem I am facing; I come up with new ideas every day and unfortunately I do not have some dozens of people beneath me to make it happen.

 This is the point that a developer realizes that in order to create something playable, has to do some sacrifices. The choices for me were two; Either lower the demands or increase my workload. Currently, I am still in between! Still gambling my holidays for example. Life can be cruel you know.

 For the sake of a well-structured article, lets make a hypothetical scenario; You manage to find a recipe that works for you, meaning that you get all the needed planning to keep up developing this game, balancing your time as it fits, till its very end.

 This planning should include of course some economical parameters, except if you are already rich enough to donate a game to the public with all the costs a game comes with. Of course the exceptions can be more but I will mostly focus on what most game developers will do. After all, I believe that a good game that wants to also survive in the test of time, must have ways to create income.

 Currently, there are three leading ways of getting money from your game. One is advertising, second is donations/supporter fees on monthly(usually) base and sales of in-game resources. Each way has its strengthes and its weaknesses. But they definitely are going to heavily affect your game.

 I have seen some excellent games that lose so much of their magic due to the economic methods the developers offer. Personally, I refuse to play a game where the winner is decided by who gives the most money. I am all willing to pay for the support of a game or for some extra features that will make my experience more enjoyable or even for a monthly fee that will be same for everyone rather than pay for something that will give me a direct strength in-game. That's just me however and the style of gaming I represent.

 I cannot resist but recall the views expressed by quite many people in this particular site, concerning the many game developers that construct games in a fly, aiming for as much money they can get. Games that in a glance are there to sell fantasy, digital thingies.

 I believe that people are more than this, I believe that many people out there are seeking for quality games. It is no wonder that there are few quality games out there; few developers take it too seriously. And the ones who take it seriously, are either distracted in the run or overwhelmed. but few survive and those who survive are most of the time peaking at unbelievable player numbers. Most of these players are loyal too. And loyal, long lasting players can be one os the sweetest rewards for a developer.

 So, lets say you finally get a game up and running! Must be wonderful eh ? Haven't yet felt it myself, I am still in Beta :P (Yes, send me messages telling me how it feels). Lucky you I guess.. but what's next ? Should I analyze this now ?

 I guess not. After all I feel that I am not the suitable person for this as I am yet midway through. If I ever reach that "after" period, I may try writing one more article about it.  Although that for my future blog posts, I am most favorable to some short, funny, unimportant ones.

Cya! 

Development of an online game and life - PART I

06/29/2007

Here I come back with one more blog post!

 This time I will trouble your minds with the procedure that is needed in order to develop one online game. I will be mostly general and describing, since analyzation won't help you or me as I believe that neither would have interest for an endless article (like my last one ? :P).

 So, I am a young developer. I started developing this thief game some months ago. IT wasn't because I had much free time; In contrary, my free time was minimum and it tends to grow shorter and shorter as days pass and this is not because of the time that my game takes.

 So, I started developing this game for the fun of it, added the prospect of making it either my hobby or my job in the future; you never know how an online game will turn out in the end. If you get lots of people playing it, then you might be pushed to make it commercial, even if your initial planning was different. So I chose to keep my choices open, so that the future won't be able to suprise me.

 In my case, it was the first time developing a game. So I had to plan and do everything from scratch, without having any experience. The first problem I came upon was the choice of server; I needed an economic but reliable server, capable of hosting my game without delays, one thing that would made me the most annoyed of all. In the end, I decided to create the game in a way that the need of the resources would be minimal. This way I could get an economic server for start that would be also reliable. For future ? Well, for future I thought that if the game goes so well, I may invest on a higher speed server, but now, I am sitting still there with no thought of leaving.

   Second important thing is to determine the nature of the game. This is something that I already had created in my mind though, and some scratch papers as well. I have to say that this part had to do much with the choice of server. Generally, real time games tend to be a lot more demanding in terms of server needs.

 So once you get these two things you start coding and creating! You then name your game.. BETA and you start getting people to TEST it! But wait.. ? People I said ? And where these people come from ? That's right, this is the next big issue one has to ressolve. Myself I got the first people from some google advertising and promotion sites, like this one.

   Initially, I thought that one of the greatest problems that I would have to face in an online game would be the support towards the users; I was greatly supprised. At least for my regular 300 player game this is not an issue. Support needed is minimum and its always happy to help other people find their way in your game. In fact, although a many-year online gamer of web browser games, I was and am suprised by the playerbase of my game; They are very passive and show great understanding. Some at times errupt in the way 'Come on, give us this update' But some other pops in and says 'Calm down dude, this game is still in beta, be patience'. This is something good I must say.. understanding.. that is.

 Well, my space here grows short... I have a bad habit it seems to create big posts! /me modifies the topic to.. PART I

I will continue it in some days.. with the hope to keep you hooked :) 

Online Gaming; MMORPGS

04/29/2007

Have you ever played World of Warcraft ? Guildwars ? Or perhaps Lineage ? Well, I have played all three of them and I find myself happy enough to announce that they all failed in making me a regular player.

I must admit though that they were all highly addictive but in some way, I managed to escape from investing my life on them. Mostly because I was prepared to endure the addictiveness, I was well informed of how catastrophic these games can prove for ones life.

MMORPGS tend to be this nowdays; real life destructive tools. They are quite well packaged though and sometimes their concept is really interesting. For example remember how many people were waiting for DnDonline (but it did not do well eventually). Or Lord of the Rings which just got released.

Sometimes, the concept of one game will be very promising, able to drag even more players into the mmorpgs gaming. For example, myself still waiting for the Pirates of the Carribeans MMORPG to be released by Disney at September and I have been waiting for it for around a year now, since they change the release date every once in a while. Or many people wait for the MMOG football manager Eidos is making (to be released in around a year).

Eventually, the above mean that the market is growing. MMORPGS are able to gain even more players as time passes and if the prices were somewhat lower or even free, the players would be even more.

As a reasonable person I try to be, the above assumption troubles me. I should not look onto the reasons as they can be millions but instead I will jump into questions.

-Playing guildwars and reaching to the top level, completing the main mission and entering a guild, has made me happy. It was really good till there. Then.. I had to "farm". This was the chapter I did not like. I still remember my final play before resigning. It was when I firstly initiated a big mission where you could earn one of the best bows in the game (Guildwars:Factions). It was a party of 12 people and in the end, IF the mission was succesful, two of us would be extremely lucky to earn one. Well, I was lucky to earn one, and the best one out of the two. Then I looked back; 6 hours for one mission, for one item and I was lucky! And unfortunately, they were right; I was extremely lucky. I felt lucky! Just by thinking the rest that got nothing... Play for pay ? Yeah, prolly this. I don't call this a game though. Do you ?

-Have you ever heard of the "chinese game workshops" ? Make a utube search and I guess you will find something interesting, in case you never knew.

-Are you aware of how many spoiler sites are out there ? For games like wow especially. They offer spoils of the game for your good money.

-I would be really interested to hear on a comment, the current exhange rate for gold/dollars/euros in wow currently. Please update once in a week, I am interested in investing.

Bottom line, I don't have anything against MMORPGS. I consider them very nice games which in fact can offer a unique experience. Nor I am against the people playing it, I am an occasional player too after all.

What I don't like is when a MMORPGS ceases to be a game. I dislike it when it starts to simulate life in the hard way. I don't want to WORK in my game! Is this too much to ask ? If I have to WORK I prefer to do this with ONE single click! I don't like to farm for hours, just because some other did this before and got better armor than me.

So, to sum up all the above;

I hate farming! Farming destroys MMORPGS! I don't play them for this :P

Ok, I feel better now. Perhaps I should have only wrote this but I felt like going deep on it.

-Rev

PS: Next post: online gaming; browser-based games

pss:I said last time that I will write about my game on my next. I changed my mind :P Perhaps next next time :D

New Month - New Post

04/03/2007

Here comes my second attempt to post a rather interesting blog. My biggest motivation in writing in this blog, is mostly my desire to appeal to a handful of readers, with the ultimate purpose being of creating numerous "fans" of my posts, who will religiously read them, while waiting for my next one.

My reasons are, firstly the obvious; which is of course promoting my game,  and secondly; the personal pleasure which will be greater if a lot of people get to read my blog posts.

I must admit that I have fallen into this habbit some times, waiting for someone to post a new entry in a blog (or a forum). Blogs however are much different than forums.

Today was a very good day for me as I got a new job. It seems I will work for a regional newspaper from now on, which is quite good news for me, as it is something I enjoy, eventhinking at the prospect, makes me happy.

This few for now, I guess next time I will talk about my game, I keep not reffering to it! Isn't this bad ?

Yours,

Rev 

Adjusting myself with GalaxyNews

03/23/2007

  I have to start praising this site developers. It's definitely a new, fresh approach in gaming sites which seems very promising, especially for the various game developers. And I feel that this is very important.

  Considering myself, I am a relative young game developer, happily pacing through the 23rd year of my life. My only project till now is a thief-oriented game, named Booty Master.  

 I have to admit that till now, I never started a blog, for any reason. I am a many-year gamer of online games and I consider myself a "native" user of the internet (if there is such thing!). However, blogging has been till now out of my interests. So, here I am now, writing my first blog post.

 As I write this lines I am thinking "which should be the nature of a blog post ?". And I reply to myself writing here: Blog posts should be natural, coming through your mind directly to the page. This way the post remains as a thought and keeps a nice distance of being a post that has been artfully crafted for a specific purpose.

Yay! This was nice :) I will post again :)