Achilles Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 Frankly, they'd be kinda stupid not to make a MEMMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Primogen Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 Sometimes I think making an MMO in this current market is pretty stupid. Or maybe it's just that everyone tries to imitate the goose that lays golden eggs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Totenkopf Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 If they want to MMO ME outside of the Shep storyline, fine with me. Unlikely to bother with it, but it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthParametric Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 Could be that the the false Liara flag only happens if you don't speak to anyone in ME1. As I said there are conversation progress values stored for Ashley/Liara/Kaidan, so maybe just speaking to one of them once is enough to avoid that. Or maybe it is a bug that only affects a limited number of people. Most of my ME1 Sheps voluntarily pursued Liara, so I never had the opportunity to experience it first-hand. I'm just going on what I have heard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liverandbacon Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 Frankly, they'd be kinda stupid not to make a MEMMO. I'm not so sure. There are so many already running, and so many coming out, that it's tough to get a good playerbase. They'd even be competing against another of their own games for subscriptions from those MMO gamers who would be interested in a SciFi MMO, and haven't yet gotten so far in another game that switching wouldn't make sense. I know some people play multiple MMOs, but it doesn't seem to be a majority. Even they generally seem to have one 'dominant' one, and stop subscribing to the others after a short period of time, cycling through new games. Most people interested in a Mass Effect MMO would probably be interested in a Star Wars one, so I can't see it attracting many players they wouldn't get anyway, instead simply dividing subscribers between two games. The divided playerbase would weaken both games' chances of long-term survival and profitability. The only way I could see this as anything but a bad choice is if they decided that TOR will be terrible, and won't come into competition for players with an ME MMO. Even in that case, the smarter thing to do would be to just center on making TOR as good as possible to get players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Achilles Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 I apologize for sounding dismissive but this seems akin to saying that because people will buy chocolate ice cream, no one should make vanilla. People that like Star Trek will play a Star Trek MMO. People that like Star Wars will play a Star Wars MMO. People that like Legos will play a Lego MMO. To say that the people who want to play Sci-Fi will play Star Wars seems to fail to understand how consumers of goods and services behave. Yes, in a market without a specific good or service, consumers may seek out substitutes, but sometimes (like when the good or service is not essential) they won't. This is kinda like why every car manufacturer has a selection of models and there are dozens of car manufacturers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynk Former Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 I apologize for sounding dismissive but this seems akin to saying that because people will buy chocolate ice cream, no one should make vanilla. People that like Star Trek will play a Star Trek MMO. People that like Star Wars will play a Star Wars MMO. People that like Legos will play a Lego MMO. To say that the people who want to play Sci-Fi will play Star Wars seems to fail to understand how consumers of goods and services behave. Yes, in a market without a specific good or service, consumers may seek out substitutes, but sometimes (like when the good or service is not essential) they won't. This is kinda like why every car manufacturer has a selection of models and there are dozens of car manufacturers. This. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Primogen Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 Yeah, but Star Wars has a considerably larger fanbase than Mass Effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Achilles Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 Help me understand why this is significant? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Primogen Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 Fanbase = Customers = Income = Money = Profit = ??? = Success. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Achilles Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 That doesn't help me because that can be applied to anything. Help me understand why a ME MMO is a bad idea because more people like Star Wars. Better yet, help me understand why it is that any company makes anything other than a Star Wars game using the very same logic that you use above. P.S. Please be sure to include subscription rates for Star Wars Galaxies, since it's release, in your response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Primogen Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 My point is that Mass Effect doesn't have -that- strong of a fanbase compared to Star Wars, and you need a very strong fanbase or something seriously innovative to survive in the MMO market with Goliath stomping around. I don't think Mass Effect has that, and I don't have a lot of confidence in BioWare's ability to really innovate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Achilles Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 My point is that Mass Effect doesn't have -that- strong of a fanbase compared to Star Wars Nothing does. Star Wars has been a powerhouse franchise for almost 40 years. and you need a very strong fanbase or something seriously innovative to survive in the MMO market with Goliath stomping around. I don't think Mass Effect has that, and I don't have a lot of confidence in BioWare's ability to really innovate. And you may be right. But you could also be wrong. Tell me where the World of Warcraft franchise was before the game came out. A lot of people have played ME and I'm willing to bet a fair share of them would play an ME MMO. I think the mistake that you're making is that you're not accounting for the fact that just because someone doesn't play MMOs now that they wouldn't play this and/or that they are already playing something else and wouldn't switch. I also think you're undervaluing ME as an IP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leXX Posted April 13, 2011 Author Share Posted April 13, 2011 Bioware's main men Dr. Greg Zeschuk and Dr. Ray Muzyka talk about Mass Effect 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic, future unannounced games, and much more in an exclusive interview with Game Informer. Since Mass Effect 3 is the end of the trilogy, will fans face a Mass Effect drought for a while before they get to revisit that universe? Zeschuk: We’re pretty big. We have lots of teams. Lots of possibilities. Even though we will effectively finish the trilogy it’s not like it’s over in the sense of “Hey, we’re going to put the Mass Effect world on the shelf forever and never come back to it.” We’ve already been thinking about that. We’re deep in development on 3 and it’s chugging along. So really an objective for us at this point is get that done but also think of the future of the universe. One thing that’s really clear is people love the Mass Effect universe. We really want to make sure that what we’re doing next is going to satisfy them and really move it forward. Judging by that it's obvious that ME3 is not the end of Mass Effect, so I'd have to agree that an MMO is a strong possibility at this point. I think they'll probably wait and see if TOR is a big success or not first and then make a decision. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynk Former Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 I like Primogen's "can't compete, don't try" mentality. We'd have a lot less games made and a much smaller industry if developers and publishers felt that way too. And before anyone says it, I'm sure BioWare and EA have already done their market research on this whole Mass Effect MMO idea long before any of us ever knew it was a possibility and have come up with promising results to get the idea this far. Whether you AGREE with what they're doing or not, if they feel that can profit from it, they'll do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liverandbacon Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 I apologize for sounding dismissive but this seems akin to saying that because people will buy chocolate ice cream, no one should make vanilla. People that like Star Trek will play a Star Trek MMO. People that like Star Wars will play a Star Wars MMO. People that like Legos will play a Lego MMO. To say that the people who want to play Sci-Fi will play Star Wars seems to fail to understand how consumers of goods and services behave. Yes, in a market without a specific good or service, consumers may seek out substitutes, but sometimes (like when the good or service is not essential) they won't. This is kinda like why every car manufacturer has a selection of models and there are dozens of car manufacturers. The only way MEMMO would have success is if they made it very different in gameplay from TOR. Seeing as most MMOs seem to be very similar indeed, this is unlikely, but hey, this time it might be different right? Assuming the gameplay is as similar as even the most 'creative and different' MMOs have been, I think the number of people who would be willing to buy a Bioware Mass Effect MMO but not a Bioware Star Wars MMO is small compared to those who would. TOR would likely get all the sales+subs from (in addition to the SW-only crowd) those willing to play it either because they like Star Wars in addition to Mass Effect, or their love for Bioware. Because the dev is the same, and the settings are very similar in nature (not just 'SciFi'; Mass Effect is way closer to Star Wars than say, Eve Online's universe), even if MEMMO wasn't made. I think this would be a substantial amount of MEMMO's potential playerbase. The only new sales+subs MEMMO would create would be the group of people who like Mass Effect enough to get an MMO of it, but not Bioware (regardless of setting) or Star Wars (I'm having a hard time thinking of anyone who would buy a Mass Effect MMO, but not another Bioware MMO in such a similar universe). I'm not convinced that this would be anywhere near enough people to make MEMMO very profitable. Even if it did manage to get a bunch of people who would have otherwise been happy to play TOR, while it might make some money, Bioware would just be taking subscriptions from itself, getting no more money, but spending more in order to create and maintain two games rather than one. Your car brand argument helps mine. While they may release many models of car, one brand will generally not simultaneously produce multiple car models of the same 'type'. For instance, one brand is unlikely to release multiple 7-seat hybrid minivans at the same time. You don't compete with yourself to fill a market niche, you use the budget to make one product that will dominate it. Otherwise, you get two less successful products likely to get pushed out by a rival who consolidated things. Even if one is a runaway success, the other is then by definition not, and the funds used to make it were pointlessly spent. The same applies to game devs. In summation: While obviously they wouldn't have a perfect 1:1 substitution rate, I believe TOR would get most of MEMMO's potential sales, leaving too few people left over to make MEMMO profitable. If I understand you correctly, you believe that there are plenty of people who would buy MEMMO, but not TOR, despite the shared dev, and similar settings. That has nothing to do with either us not understanding very basic economics (it may have been 8 years since I left uni, but I haven't forgotten that much), instead relying on our own estimates of where fanbase loyalties lie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimartin Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 Well TOR was officially announced in the fall of 2008. Here we are in the spring of 2011 (in case you didn’t know the year) and TOR has yet to be released. Since a ME MMO hasn’t even been announced, just how long before any possible release? Next question is how long is EA/BioWare license agreement with LucasArts? My understanding is BioWare had been working on TOR for almost 3 years when they made the press release in October 2008. So if TOR is released by the end of this year and ME MMO takes about the same time to develop as TOR, would they really be competing with each other in four or five years? Or (depending on the success of TOR) could ME MMO be BioWare/EA’s next cash cow after TOR? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynk Former Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 I'm actually assuming that the gameplay for an ME MMO would be similar to the original trilogy of ME games with MMO type additions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mav Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 Yeah I agree with mimsy, launch gap would be significant enough where the success or failure of TOR will be already known prior to any MEMMO-ness. The next Mass Effect game will be a co-operatively developed affair with Zynga anyway. TuchankaVille an FB game where you can invite your friends to your desolate clan to help fertilize your Krogans and combat the Genophage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimartin Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 By the time it comes out, you will be able to plug the game directly into your brain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Primogen Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 I just see a Mass Effect MMO as a waste of resources that could be better allocated to making a good single player game. Like Jade Empire 2, an actual sequel to Mass Effect, Dragon Age III, or a new IP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimartin Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 Don't worry about EA, they have the resources to do all that if they believe they can make a buck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynk Former Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 I just see a Mass Effect MMO as a waste of resources that could be better allocated to making a good single player game. Like Jade Empire 2, an actual sequel to Mass Effect, Dragon Age III, or a new IP. BioWare has expanded greatly over the years... what makes you think they're not capable of working on multiple games at one time when they're doing just that right now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthParametric Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 Bioware started the Austin studio explicity to develop MMOs. It's inevitable they will produce more after primary development on TOR finishes (or even beforehand). The two other studios, Edmonton (the original Bioware) and Montreal (the ME2/3 studio) will continue on with traditional SP games. I doubt they will be overly taxed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mav Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 what makes you think they're not capable of working on multiple games at one time when they're doing just that right now?Clearly he knows a guy, who knows a guy whose gay roommate at Brown had a misanthropic uncle who has a friend whose son works for BioWare, as a janitor and he knows all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.