MMO Clerks

In an interview with CNBC, Jack Tretton said:

“Personally, it’s very difficult for me to perceive ‘God of War 3’ being played with the Wii controller,” he says. “It’s a different experience that doesn’t lend itself to certain types of games. [But] I think our [motion] controller can be used with every game that’s on the system now — and every game we’re working on.”

I don’t see how any of the motion controllers, including the PlayStation Motion wand, can be used for an action/adventure game. How do you do 180 degree turns and run back and forth without a stick or d-pad? Every one of the motion tech demos that we’ve seen and every motion-controlled Wii game involves playing a character that mostly stays still and looks forward (baseball, tennis, boxing, bowling type stuff). The PlayStation wand demos that allowed turning the camera 1-to-1, obviously had a limited turning radius due to the fact that the player needs to keep looking forward to the TV.

Can anyone else see how you might control a action/adventure type game such as God of War 3 with the PlayStation motion wand?

If I ever go to prison, I want this modder on the outside. That, gang, is a PlayStation 2 inside Jack Thompson’s page-turning tribute to himself. And yes, GTA III was the first game played.
The…

If you’ve been waiting for a fun, Free-to-play part-magic, part-steampunk adventure to check out, then you’ll be glad to know that Neo Steam has thrown open the gates for everyone as of this weekend. Whether you are more interested in rolling up a magic/steampunk hybrid character from the Elerd Kingdom, or one of the more devoted science-tech steampowered followers of the Republic of Rogwel, there’s more than enough to explore, see and do in this new world.

Addded to the overall fun of launch, the team over at Atlus Online are also throwing a couple of Neo Steam launch contests for everyone. The first of these is a screenshot contest, where entrants should be aiming for the funniest or “epic-est” screenshots. Considering how utterly freaking adorable some of the denizens of Chrysalis are – and how cool thier weapons are – this shouldn’t be too terribly hard. The next competition is for those more of a musical nature; Chrysalis’ two nations are looking for national anthems! The winners in each competition will be given nifty Neo Steam (in-game or out-of-game, depending) swag, perfect for showing off your steam-style. In either case, there’s only a limited time to enter, so it’s best to get started soon!

Filed under: Launches, New titles, News items, Free-to-play, Neo Steam

Neo Steam fires up the live servers originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another day, another TAY. Consider this your Sunday brunch, albeit with more conversation and fewer eggs sardu. However, nothing prevents you from pouring a bloody mary while you chat up Kotaku’s…

Maybe you’ve been following an MMO for years through alpha testing and closed and open beta. Maybe you haven’t been obsessing over it at all but decided to give it a shot anyway. You log in for an hour, day, week, or month. It just doesn’t do it for you and you choose not to subscribe, or in the case of a F2P MMO, simply refuse to log back in.

Given the first month retention rates of most MMOs, it would seem many of us have gone through this experience. I only played World of Warcraft for a couple months when it first came out before running back to Dark Age of Camelot. I stuck with DAOC for roughly six more months before giving WoW another shot. I ended up playing WoW for nearly two years before giving up again after hitting 70.

I rarely give MMOs a second chance because one taste is usually enough for me to realize whether or not I’m going to enjoy a game. That said, MMOs undergo vast changes over time. How many chances do you give an MMO to impress you and what are the factors that affect your decision?

Filed under: MMO industry, Opinion, The Daily Grind

The Daily Grind: How many chances do you give an MMO to impress you? originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In case you haven’t heard, Free Realms just broke the 3M user mark and is averaging 500,000 new users per week. With SOE’s aggressive Saturday morning cartoon advertising strategy targeting kids, it may actually continue to grow at this pace. Any subscription MMO would be happy as a pig in slop at these numbers because of the guaranteed revenue stream, but what about a F2P/RMT MMO?

We recently discovered an interesting tool to guesstimate F2P/RMT MMO earnings called the “89/10/1 Rule.” This rule says that 89% of your players won’t spend anything, 10% will spend the bare minimum, and the remaining 1% will spend extravagantly.

After chatting with Massively staff who play FR, we came up with some numbers to play around with. The bare minimum in FR is $5 per month for a basic subscription. We also think the average heavy spender could easily drop $30 in a month. Let’s apply the rule, shall we?

• 2,670,000 spend nothing ($0 total)
• 300,000 spend $5/month ($1,500,000 total)
• 30,000 spend $30/month ($900,000 total)

The grand total using the “89/10/1 Rule” is $2.4M revenue per month. That fancy, made-up number isn’t too shabby at all. A subscription MMO charging $15/month would need 160,000 subscribers to pull in the same amount. Now, if only we could get some confirmation (nudge nudge, wink wink)…

Filed under: MMO industry, Making money, Free-to-play, Free Realms

Free Realms: Guesstimating monthly revenue using the 89/10/1 Rule originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the term ‘unlikely hero’ is pretty familiar to most, it’s not often we think of unlikely villains. But this is the case with the latest ‘big bad’ that Cryptic Studios has revealed for Champions Online — “Gigaton”. His story begins as Tim Colton, a perfect and loyal soldier and thus an equally perfect candidate for Project Sunburst, ostensibly a military war game involving nuclear strike scenarios. It was more than theoretical, however, and Colton became the military’s unwitting guinea pig in actual nuclear tests. While most other test subjects died as a result of the tests, Colton developed superhuman abilities after being bombarded with radiation. Although he remained in perfect physical condition, requiring neither food nor water, he was inexplicably comatose.

Despite the slight drawback of being perpetually unconscious, Colton’s bio-nuclear powers were off the chart. This came to the attention of a major villain in the Champions Online setting, Doctor Destroyer, who had Colton ‘liberated’ from the army’s facilities. Colton was revived and given a new purpose in life by his villainous benefactor, to join forces with Doctor Destroyer’s organization, the only real option open to Colton after being betrayed by the army. From that point on, Colton became Gigaton, and is thus the latest villain announced in the Champions Online lineup. Cryptic has put together a villain profile for Gigaton outlining the character’s past, and of course his superhuman abilities.

Filed under: Super-hero, Lore, Champions Online

Champions Online introduces new villain: Gigaton originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The technical director for Criterion (Burnout Paradise) wants to put a stop to a persistent cliché in development: The idea that some game or project is maxing out a console’s capabilities.
Such a…

Awhile back we posted about Marc Cellucci and how he created an RPG for the Dreamcast’s VMU. He now has his own company in Japan that does various types of games. His company, Mission One, has teamed up with Japan’s Micro Magazine, Inc. to bring us P.S. Triple comic strips to our iPhone/iPod Touch handhelds.

Instead of me telling you what the series is about, i’ll just quote Marc Cellucci himself:

“It’s a comic series called “P.S. Triple”. Translated from a popular online blog in Japan, P.S. Triple takes popular (and not-so-popular) game consoles and transforms them into cute pop stars — they sing and act in productions that are based on real-life video games. It stars Triple (PS3) as a lovable loser who’s having a hard time living up to her family’s legacy, and includes other notable characters like Whee! (Wii), Dee Cast (Dreamcast), and even 32-EX (you can guess the console). It’s a series that is made by and for gamers, and is jam-packed with esoteric game references. Of special note to Sega Nerds, the Sega character (called Saygah) is featured prominently, and there are tons of Sega in-jokes.”

For more detail background on each character, check out their 1up blog. You can get the app in two versions, one is called Lite Pack and that one is free. The second choice is called Volume 1, comes with over 50 comics. Volume 2 will be coming out on July 7th.

With all the new iPhone/iPod Touch application posts, you would think we would own one, but we don’t. If Apple is reading this, send us a free iPhones (worth a try!) .

I’m not sure anyone explicitly said it would have online multiplayer, but I’m also not sure anyone explicitly said Ghostbusters for the PC wouldn’t. Some are saying explicit things about the game’s…