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What about web games?
May 24th 2007, 15:55 CEST by Gunp01nt First off, let’s get some facts and figures. Runescape reportedly has 9 million active accounts. OGame (spiritual successor of Planetarion) has 2 million. But people who have played these games will know that they’re far from AAA quality we’re used to on our l33t gaming machines. Yet these games attract lots of players. Maybe because they’re free, maybe because they’re available on any computer with a browser and don’t require a shiny new console or gaming PC. Who can say for sure? Well, maybe the proprietors of pioneering web game Planetarion. When they were forced to start charging for accounts after the dot com crash, their userbase dropped to an estimated few thousands. So does that mean the web isn’t a platform where money can be made? I don’t think so. Let’s restate the obvious and well-known advantages of the web: - Accessible almost everywhere thanks to the ubiquity of internet connections - Always up-to-date - Web pages can look good without requiring fast client hardware. That’s how the information web was sold to consumers 10 years ago. Now apply these advantages to the position of game developers, who increasingly go for a multi-platform release to maximize profit. There are two free web browsers for the Wii, one for the PS3 and apparently they’re all somewhat Web 2.0 friendly. That creates the possibility of bringing rich web games to a very wide audience.* It’s surprising that games like OGame and Planetarion fail to make use of AJAX and other staples of Web 2.0, especially considering games seem like one of the few places where the excessive level of interaction and activity offered by AJAX is justified. Addition of these things could bring web games to a higher level of interactivity and UI and make them more appealing to a wide circle of users. What we need next is a solid business model. These days, ads just won’t cut it and would deteriorate the perceived quality of web games anyway. But as the many subscriber MMORPGs have shown, people are willing and able to pay for a game service if it’s good enough. Other options could be a fantasy sports approach: picture a space strategy game where people can start and run their own game universes for a fee. That’s just one example. What do you think, could subscription based web games work on a larger scale? Will the increasing presence of browsers on consoles open up a wider audience? (* Arguably, console owners usually have a PC for internet purposes and are more likely to use that for web games. That, or their work PC’s) |
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word on the street is that assassins used the UE3 engine. |
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Jibble, you don't know what you are talking about. Of course not. Anything to take a small reprieve from my new job. Lady, people aren't chocolates. But you know what they are, mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.
Blog. 203 lbs. 23 to go. |
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Gamecube discs hold 1.5GB of U3. "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" — "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
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You got a new job? "Games are not novels, and the ways in which they harbor novelistic aspirations are invariably the least interesting thing about them." - Steven Johnson
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By new job I think he meant babymaker extraordinare. Actually, the liberalism of the media - as a general thing - IS a major fallacy. What the media is, is a whore. -LP Johnsen Family
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#1797 by Greg Isn't Crackdown based on the UE3 engine? Newp - Uses RenderWare. #1801 by bishop word on the street is that assassins used the UE3 engine. Joke, right? "…a four-dimensional real vector space equipped with a nondegenerate, symmetric bilinear form."
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Hugin, That's exactly my point. The language in the lawsuit mentions other developers, which is why I made that list. No one knows why those games were delayed, and especially considering that RS6V was released in Nov of '06, speaks volumes of the state of the engine and support material at that time. So what this appears to come down to is SK's inability to work with what they had, when others apparently did so without issue. |
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uh, yeah, gaggle. Assassins is the mod greg made for SOF2. That doesn't change the fact that the word on the street is that it used UE3. |
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By "new job" I mean someone in my department quit, so my superior took most of their workload and I've been temporarily assigned to do all of my work plus most of her work...with no raise in pay. They've given me faint assurances that I'll be compensated at some point, but I get the feeling I'm going to have to raise some shit if I want any of that to actually happen. You'd think that after three or four people quit in a short span of time, they'd start to think something was actually wrong with the way they're handling things. Lady, people aren't chocolates. But you know what they are, mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.
Blog. 203 lbs. 23 to go. |
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!quote 24 |
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Yeah, it happens. It happened to a lesser extent last year when we had to shift gears and start running some things in-house. They gave me an award (which came with cash) later in the year. I presume this will result in the same (with a larger award), plus a bump in my job code that would result in a pretty hefty raise. I'm just pessimistic because I don't like being tossed into situations like this. The wife and I just got back from the pool...haven't been down there in a while. There were some kids in there, but they cleared out after about fifteen minutes. I swam some decent laps, which I haven't done in years. I'd forgotten how good a workout it is, considering that pretty much every muscle in my body felt like it had a good workover. No wonder I was totally fucking ripped when I was 14. Lady, people aren't chocolates. But you know what they are, mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.
Blog. 203 lbs. 23 to go. |
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Providing crappy support isn't "unethical". If you promised good support in writing, and then reneged on it knowingly in order to sabotage the competition, that is for damn sure unethical. I'm so fucking sick and tired of Economics 101 'experts' excusing every damn immoral, unethical and selfish act under some guise of 'it's just business'. Apologists like you are weasel-wording us to death. My company had a huge technical problem this year that affected millions of customers. Instead of weasel-wording out, we refunded fifteen million dollars to the people affected. Huge damn hit on the bottom line, erasing profits that would have put us 15% over estimates, definitely 'bad business' to the Rand-loving neo-shits, but the street loved the gesture so much our stock actually rose. Wow, imagine that. Business that treats other people with dignity and respect. Wait, stamp that shit out PRONTO. Profit! Business! Capital! I took an economics class, I know, it's just business! PS, yes I'm a fucking grouch. |
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#1808 by bishop uh, yeah, gaggle. Assassins is the mod greg made for SOF2. That doesn't change the fact that the word on the street is that it used UE3. Haha okay then, my bad. "…a four-dimensional real vector space equipped with a nondegenerate, symmetric bilinear form."
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Can't wait to murder doubleclick and their java based shit. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
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I know that some companies are having a lot of trouble working with UE3 in regards to the PS3. I don't know whose fault that is though. - words and stuff -
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Whoa, I sounded really angry there. I'm gonna go re-up my prescription for chill pills. |
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