Andrew Busey: My Musings

Article from News.com:  eBay bans auctions of virtual goods

Well this makes my weekly tracking report on account sales in World of Warcrat difficult to continue.  I was waiting to restart it once things stablizied, since the release of The Burning Crusade (the expansion) it has been unclear what the right metrics were.  There have been a few level 70 characters up on eBay, but not many.  So given this announcement I’ll delay the report.  I’ll start tracking gold again this week. 

This is unfortunate.  I, for one, think that being able to sell your account is a good thing.  It you put thousands of hours (like most level 70s) into this, you should be able to sell what you’ve accomplished.  It’s a shame a few purists think you should just have to throw all that away. 

Games are a big hobby for many people, most hobbies involve collection/building and generate some value (although are not often wildly profitable).  MMORPGs are no different - as you play you collect stuff for your characted and you build it up.  This has some value - no where near the time you put into it - and you should be able to extract that value if you leave.  It is unfortunate that some game companies do not take this broader view.

Please also read The Prince, The Pauper, and The Purist, if you are interested in this topic.

I’m a pretty heavy MMORPG fan, although somehow I’ve never played Everquest (or EQ2).  I started in MUDs, moved to Ultima Online, then Asheron’s Call, then a break, then to World of Warcraft.

Any objective observer in the MMORPG space can see that World of Warcraft has been a genre shattering success with around eight million subscribers.  Clearly this game has broken beyond the initial MMORPG and fantasy game playing crowd.  Since the biggest (non-Korean) MMORPGs were only at a few hundred thousand users this is a big deal.

World of Warcraft has been out for over two years.  On January 16th it’s first expansion, the Burning Crusade, will be released.  No doubt this will get everyone excited and re-energized about the game for some period of time.  

So, in pseudo-case study form, I ask:

You are the Publisher / GM / CEO / Studio Manager / Executive Producer of a MMORPG.  Your MMORPG has a little buzz in the hardcore fan community, but no one outside the most 10-20k most rabid game fans have ever heard of it.  You have two choices:

• Release on January 30, less then two weeks after the biggest MMORPG in history (by a lot) releases its first expansion.
• Defer your release by sixty to ninty days which results in you losing some revenue, but allows you to make the game better and more polished.

Ok, let’s take what we know about MMORPGs for supporting information:

• MMORPGs consume a lot of time.  They are typically monogamous games, meaning people play only one MMORPG actively at one time.
• MMORPGs have high switching costs.  If you have played World of Warcraft any length of time and are level 60 (or close), you don’t want to walk away from that.  Especially since now you can go to level 70.
• MMORPGs are expensive - often $50 for the game and $10-$20/month for a subscription.

Now, taking that all into account.  Let’s take a look at Vanguard (official site).  This game has been in development quite a while by some of the original team from Everquest.  Original it was going to be published by Microsoft, but subsequently changed publishers to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) which publishes Everquest I and II and Star Wars Galaxies.

So I follow this market.  I remember reading about Vanguard a few times.  While writing this post I went back and read some other articles.  It looks like World of Warcraft with a little more capabilities for character crafted items and one big “selling point” which is player housing.  Fun.  So I looked at the screenshots.  They don’t look as good as World of Warcraft.  Oh and I watched the movies… which focus almost exclusively on flying mounts, which probably seemed innovative and exciting at the time.  But, woops, they are in the World of Warcraft expansion too.

This is a big problem for MMORPGs:  If you are making a persistent world MMORPG like World of Warcraft, you are going to have to get WoW players to play your game.  The first thing they are going to do is go look at your reviews, screenshots, movies, etc.  And if they aren’t at least at parity with WoW, what would make you think they would even consider shelling out $50 and a lot of time to try it? 

ESPECIALLY WHEN THE WOW EXPANSION JUST SHIPPED.

So since Vanguard doesn’t look as cool as WoW (at least from the screenshots and movies I saw, I’m probably not going to try it.  If the WoW expansion sucks (unlikely) I may be motivated to give it a try.  It’s possible I buy it and try it so I can blog about it - either as a review of a pseudo-major MMORPG release or as a follow-up to this post.  But thinking purely as a player, I would wait.  If it got really popular and people were raving about it, I might try it.  Otherwise my monogamous persistent world MMORPG relationship will continue with World of Warcraft.

Anyway, this seems like a dumb move.  Lecture 2 will be in a month - two weeks after this is out to see how it goes for them. 

Oh, one other thing…  A lot of user comments out there keep saying this game looks good but it isn’t finished.  Blizzard (the maker’s of World of Warcraft) are known for pushing game release dates (a lot) to make sure the game is finished and good.  This has made them a lot of fans and is at least part of the reason almost all of their games are spectacular sellers.  Shipping a game that competes against them and isn’t ready yet:  even dumber idea.

Some user quotes from Gamespot:

apanizo
Heh, they spent 4.5 years and the largest development budget for an MMO to make a bad WoW clone with Eq2 graphics. Everyone point and laugh at SOE, again.

Khimarhi
I am very disappointed in the beta so far. . was thinking about jumping ship from wow to Vanguard. . but not now. . this game is boring in everyway. . good graphics are nice but animations are poor . . and if they are still planning on releasing it at the end of the month then they are making a big mistake. . way too many problems. .

There were, to be honest, a few (not many) positive comments.  Mostly from the few people who don’t like WoW or have an overwhelming love for player housing.

Stay tuned for the next round.

I’ll admit two things up front:

1. I don’t use Second Life.  (I would say play, but IMO Second Life is a social experience and not a game.)
2. I’ve really resisted writing about anything Second Life related.  (Although I did briefly mention it and Anshe Chung once.)

Now, on to the good stuff.  There have been a ton of recent articles about Second Life, largely started by a set of articles / press releases about an avatar named Anshe Chung (in real life she is Ailin Graef) becoming the first real world millionaire from Second Life.  Uhm, I’m not sure I said that right, but you get the point.  If not, well you can find it.

So this spat of Second Life press took a turn for the worse (well from Second Life’s perspective anyway) a week or so ago when Clay Shirky questioned their numbers.   That’s an interesting story and relevant to any high profile web company - numbers are important.  Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that either, I’m just catching you up in case you haven’t read the billion Second Life stories that are all over the place.

In Second Life users can own property.  This is different from other MMORPGs where the game company claims ownership of everything (which creates a ton of issues, but again that’s another story).   So Anshe Chung owns property in Second Life and, in a sense, has become something of a celebrity.  Possibly the first real celebrity avatar….

So, she has some press conference in a digital theater in Second Life.  I don’t know what it was about.  (But I’m going to guess she was talking about how rich she has become or how great she is based on all the stories I’ve seen.  Oh wait, disregard that.  I’m a respectable blogger and I’m not supposed to start rumors.)   During this event a group “sabotaged” the even with giant animated penises.  LOL.  She didn’t like this.   I say, hey if you want to be famous, well you can’t expect everyone to love you.

So this really isn’t that interesting.  Celebrities and politicians face protests, hecklers, etc. all the time.  Right?   Right.   How is this any different.

I got this from News.com:  The legal rights to your ‘Second Life’ avatar

So this is what makes it interesting (from the article):

Afterward, a video of the attack was posted on YouTube. When Anshe Chung Studios filed a complaint with the popular video service claiming that Graef’s copyrights had been infringed because images of her avatar were used without her permission, YouTube promptly removed the video.

A quote from the Guntram Graef (her husband), also from the article:

“I have to point out to you that you, most likely by accident, posted an image that contains artwork copyrighted by my wife Ailin Graef and by Anshe Chung Studios, Ltd. and without obtaining our permission to do so,”

Uhm, well, I disagree.  I’m no lawyer, but if Anshe Chung is famous, well she can be stalked and her unflattering pictures can be posted everywhere.  Or at least that is what my understanding the law through analogy logic says.  I’m sure Britney Spears doesn’t like having all those pictures of her with no panties on floating around either.  (Well maybe she does, but that’s beside the point.)  It’s news.  Just like the “sabotage” was news.   So hey fair use and all.

So I say boycott Anshe Chung for being Second Life’s biggest hypocrite.   Anshe:  You can’t have your cake and eat it too. 

• If you want Second Life to be like reality - which I assume you do since you are bragging about making millions of real dollars in it
• And you want to be famous - which I assume you do with all the heavy self-promotion, even if it is just to drive up virtual real estate prices to make you more money
• Then you have to accept being famous with all the goood and the bad that brings. 

So to Anshe Chung, perhaps the world’s most famous avatar, I say welcome to reality.

Oh, and I respect Linden Lab for saying this (from the News.com article):

“Copyright law is applicable to works created in Second Life. Copyright law includes fair use and it includes provisions regarding infringement,” Linden Lab wrote to CNET News.com in a statement Friday.

So I recommend that everyone that cares about these issue avoid transactions with Anshe Chung and her affiliates.  Let the boycott begin!

We are two weeks away from TBC, the first expansion to World of Warcraft.  It’s a big deal, largely because, well quite literally, it will change the game.

The biggest thing:  the maximum level moves from 60 to 70.  Why is this so important:

1. People have been sitting at level 60 for about two years.  This means that level hasn’t been that important as a differentiator for a long, long time.  So since everyone has been stuck at 60 they’ve differentiated across different axes:
• Equipment:  There are currently 3 tiers of equipment that are dramatically different.  Even the people with tier 1 are dramatically more “powerful” than those in “tier .5″ or “tier 0″…   And there are very few with full sets of tier 3.  But basically all this stuff will be obsolete withing a few months of the expansion release (since people will be 70 and the level 70 stuff is better than even tier 3).
• PVP:  This has been fun.  The rewards, however, are all equipment.  So all the PVP people have been doing was a fun game, but all the “output” again gets washed away.  Start over when you get to 70. 
2. People haven’t “levelled up” in a long time.  Getting a PVP rank used to be comparable, but they took that out in Decemeber and it was crazy hard (like 80 hours a week) past a certain level.  So the feeling of advancing a level will be back, at least for a month or two, which will be fun and energize people.
3. New areas — there have been a lot of patches with new areas in the two and half years of WoW, but they were almost exclusively dungeons and battlegrounds.  There will be new dungeons and battlegrounds in the expansion too.  But, more importantly, there will be a giant new land mass.  This will bring back the joy of discovery and exploration.  I think it will be a lot of fun.
4. New races — this will appeal to the hardcore folks who want to try something new.  It might also be good for new people who now have some vague advantage to entering the game now (they get to be one of the new races).

So I think there might be a resurgence of playing, but I’m not sure.  I have not been to Outland (the big new area) in TBC, although I have played the beta.  I messed around as a dranei and a blood elf (the new races) and it was pretty fun.  But I couldn’t bring myself to level up to 70 only to have it wiped when the expansion is released, so I haven’t seen the high end stuff.  I’m looking forward to checking it out.

Maybe I’ve been living under a rock or something, but this is the first time I’ve seen this:

Hilarious!  Got to love it when genres (or perhaps age ranges) collide. Grand Theft Auto meets Mario Brothers! Brilliant! Robot Chicken is funny.

This is a pretty cool article from Bungie’s website: Et Tu Brute?!

It’s got a video about the brutes (a minor race in Halo 2) that will apparently play a major role in Halo 3.  It’s really cool, not just because it features some nice clips from Halo 3 but also because it talks about how they developed the brutes.  Interesting insight into how they developed this new race and gave it its own unique feel / character. 

Definitely worth watching.

From Reuters:  Video games ease pain for sick kids, parents

It’s good to see video games being lauded for helping people instead of being accused of driving game players into killing rampages.  I think this illustrates what games are good at:  helping people escape.  Books, movies, music, games - they help people escape from reality.  In this case the media could put a postive spin on it.  In other cases, they put a very negative spin on it. 

I envision a world ten years from now where no one talks to anyone else because they are afraid to hurt someones feelings.  That all entertainment is happy pink bunnies that dance around, but never touch or talk to each other - because, well, that might be offensive or encourage someone to do something they shouldn’t.  You’ve read about this world before in books like George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World. 

Well, we’ve seen a lot of moves towards control of distribution of video games here in America.  Personally, I don’t see why they are any different from movies.  So if R rated DVDs require that the buyer be guarded, I would be ok with M rated (see ESRB ratings) games getting the same treatment.  Why should they be different?  (Other than that the MPAA probably has more lobbiest and movies have been around longer.)   Promoting ESRB ratings and parental responsibility are good things.  What we haven’t seen, yet, is a move to actively censor games.

Germany looks to be moving in that direction.  This article, German gamers face jail for acts of virtual violence, discusses proposed legislation that would impose fines and up to a year in prison for “promotion or enacting in-game violence”.  They quote the law as saying:

“cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters”

What is a human-looking character?  Are undead creatues human looking?  Hmmm, seems like a problem there.   But, let’s continue.  My favorite part is this quote:

“It is absolutely beyond any doubt that such killer games desensitise unstable characters and can have a stimulating effect.”

Which attributed to Gunther Beckstein who is apparently the Bavarian interior minister.   Of course, scientifically speaking, this is open to a lot of debate as there is no concrete proof of this.  But, that is not what I like the most.  I like “densistise unstable characters“…. Let’s think this through - if they are unstable, a lot of things could set them off.  Because they are already unstable.   That’s just dumb.  I mean, what if the unstable character watched Hostel?  (Which from what I understand is a pretty disturbing movie.  I’m too chicken to see it.  Although I do enjoy a good game of Unreal.)  I bet that would set him off too.  I won’t even mention all the violence in books from Harry Potter to, ahem, the Bible, that are open to all ages.

Anyway, this was all set off when an 18-year old kid, that not surpisingly played violent video games, shot and wounded 37 people in his old school and killed himself.  Just like America.  A high profile event and some jackass politician jumps on it and starts spewing out non-sensical crap to grab headlines and fuel the fire.  One high profile event caused by a psychopath and boom, it’s the fault of games.  What about the millions of other people that play violent games that don’t do this?  Ah ha, no mention of them because that isn’t a good media story. 

Well, soon enough all these politician who are too old to understand computers (and think the internet is made of tubes) will be out of there and maybe we’ll get some people who are connected to modern reality in office who won’t make such stupid grandstanding comments.

Sometimes politicians scare me.  Uhm, I mean most of the time.

/rant

This is a good article comparing the two on C|Net.  The article market research firm NPD as providing the following numbers for November sales:

• Xbox 360:  511,000
• Wii:  476,000
• PS3:  195,500

Obviously it’s a lot easier to get an XBox 360, but outselling the PS3 by a lot and a one year headstart are a significant advantage.  What did they think about the quality:

The problem is that I didn’t agree. I looked at Gears of War and it looked great. But so did Resistance: Fall of Man on the PS3. To my eyes, which are admittedly not trained to see the minute differences that can show up on an HDTV, the two war games seemed about equal in quality.

And his conculsion:

I just hope these guys realize that for all the differences, the similarities in the performance of these two boxes are remarkable.

Given that the Xbox 360 has been out for a year longer, is substantially cheaper ($200 less comparing retail prices of premium versions), readily available, and has sold at least 5-6 million more consoles…. this seems to me a pretty strong endorsement.  If I’m Sony with my new technological marvel, the PS3, that I’m trying to sell on the basis of its serious performance enhancements over anything else - this is not a good thing to hear.

Red 5 Studios announced they have closed $18.5 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and Sierra Ventures.   Mark Kern was team lead on World of Warcraft.  I wish him and his team the best of luck on their new game!

They are using the Project Offset engine, which if you haven’t seen it yet - you really should.  It looks amazing and the videos are really impressive.