Aug 5
What if They Threw a MMOG and Nobody Came?
Officials from South Korean-headquartered MMO publisher NCsoft have released details of the company’s second quarter financial results, in which NCSoft saw a small loss, despite an increase in sales, partly due to Auto Assault’s disappointing market performance … The downturn in income was explained by a write-off of 12.6 billion won ($13.1m) in costs related to the failing MMO Auto Assault. Without this significant failure, then operating and pre-tax income would have grown by 64 percent on the previous quarter and fallen by a less marked 17 and 11 percent, respectively, from the same period a year ago.
Gamasutra - NCsoft Slips To Loss As Auto Assault Disappoints
At only slightly more that 10,000 subscribers, I wouldn’t call Auto Assault a failure so much as a debacle. Every other title NCSoft has released to date has had some measure of success. Lineage 2 has never been the bee’s knees here in the states, but abroad it seems like it has quite nicely taken up the reins from the original title. City of Heroes/Villains is a cult favorite, with its 150,000 some players enjoying the game for what it is. A new expansion, or bright-n-shiny new content, will undoubtedly bring those numbers up again for a while too. Guild Wars is very much its own thing (no numbers on MMOGChart, of course), and Dungeon Runners looks like it’s at least going to be pretty.
The spectacular failure of Auto Assault, then, is very disheartening. This isn’t a company with a dodgy track record or some new kid on the scene. NCSoft is one of the real powers in this industry, and their failure to get this thing off the ground really says something. Massive Online Gamer might suck, but they did provide a few pieces of information:
- 44 People on the Auto Assault development team.
- 15,000 objects in the game
- 15,000 special effects (wtf?)
- 240,000 work hours were spent making the game
- 600 square miles of space inside the gameworld
The only one that really matters to me are those 44 people and their 240,000 work hours. What a waste. 240,000 hours of time spent on a game that some 10,000 people are playing. All that time spent on assets and content that will never really see the light of day.
So what happened? Why the splat when it hit? Is ‘Car Wars Online’ too niche for most gamers? The overwhelming attraction to fantasy titles should have prepared the company. The knowledge that they wouldn’t do amazing well should have been self-evident given the current state of the industry. I’m all for non-fantasy MMOGs, though. EVE’s done a tremendous job, and with titles like Tabula Rasa coming up to the plate the non-fantasy MMOG may soon have its day in the sunshine.
I don’t have answers. I’d really love to know. I do know that, personally, I was never interested in the title. A friend of mine played the trial period, and other than some vague amusement with the amount of destroyable scenery, he said it was pretty much a waste of time. The failure of Auto Assault, I think, point to something larger. WoW’s 50% of the MMOG market isn’t just a number.
It may actually be getting harder to garner interest from a market that has-the-game-it-wants-to-play-thank-you-very-much.
In the August issue of Edge, they take a quick look at LOTRO. Their opinion isn’t that it’s boring and a waste of a license.
“… in a market that has been slow to capitalize on WoW’s success - following it with a slew of strange imports and niche experiments - LOTRO’s matured, formulaic approach is almost as strong an asset as the license.” - Edge Issue 165, pg. 34
Niche is apparently bad. Imports are bad too, apparently. I disagree, but I’m one man. I respect Edge’s opinion, and in this case actually fear it. Is this really what the lesson of Auto Assault will be? That if your game doesn’t have elfy-welfies, it’s doomed from the get go?
That’s not a MMOG industry I want to be ragging on. That’s a MMOG industry I’ll just watch from the stands.
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Or maybe AA simply sucked.
I see this time and again…a game fails and OMG THE MARKET IS SATURATED. The game just sucked.
It has a free trial. Go, download, spend a few minutes and perhaps your writings on the subject will have a bit more insight.
Dear Entire God-Damn Industry: please stop listing functionality present in 90% of your competition as “features”. They’re no longer features, they’re founding assumptions. It would be a feature if you boldly didn’t do it.
Dungeon Runner’s features list ls particularlly guilty. “Your character will progress in power as you gain levels and acquire unique treasures.” Wow, really? “Adventure alone or form your own team of heroes to battle the menaces that plague your world.” Why hasn’t anyone else thought of that? “Gather in public meeting areas, then adventure in instanced dungeons.” Instancing? What an innovative idea! It just goes on and on. There is some promise hinted at in there, but it’s obscured by all the filler crap.
I actually _was_ looking forward to Auto Assault. So when the beta popped up on Penny Arcade I downloaded it eagerly.
What I saw was:
* Unpopulated worlds that looked like a 6 year old game.
* Frequent segment loading (unlike the huge seamless WoW experience). The world was basically segmented into arenas. No reason or excuse for this.
* Really bad network interpolation and prediction for other players. They would bounce and blink around. You really don’t get the impression of auto combat from that.
I think the concept would have some niche appeal if it was done well, you could probably get 100k people playing the game, maybe more. This game looked like the company bit off more than it could handle, and had to ship *something*.
“Is ‘Car Wars Online’ too niche for most gamers”
This may or may not be true, but you couldn’t possibly refer to AA as Car Wars Online.
Cars Wars was a turn-based wargame/boardgame.
The indie game Darkwind is much closer to being a true Car Wars Online..
The main trait I saw that Auto Assault with Car Wars was that it had cars with guns in it. The game play, the feel, the strategy, the immersablity that I’ve enjoyed from the 20 year old Steve Jackson Games original just can’t be put into a FPS genre, I’m sorry. I found this website because I started a strickly Car Wars MMO web search after I pulled my old Car Wars boxed editions out of storage today. I’m taking college courses currently into game and simulation design, and I’m starting to have some serious thoughts of adding my hat into any attempts to make a truely Car Wars feeling software game.
I liked Auto Assault, I played it for at least 2 months when I bought it last year. But it completely lacked the customizability, strategy, and role playing concepts I’ve enjoyed from SJG’s Car Wars for so long that I’m bringing it out of storage and showing to my 12 and 11 year old kids. I’m having a storm of ideas of how to translate this timeless classic into a fully viable video game that is something this old gamer would love to play and buy if it were available today.
I may not be an expert on the subject Auto Assault but I find myself needing to be the devil’s advocate to statements such as “It may actually be getting harder to garner interest from a market that has-the-game-it-wants-to-play-thank-you-very-much”.
I don’t think that people have the game they want. I just think it happens to be the best thing out there at the moment. Sadly that best thing is a pretty poor product.
I played WoW for a long time and eventually got bored. I’ve yet to find an MMO that will entertain me with great gameplay combined with a great community since playing Neverwinter Nights online. I’ve tried a bunch of other MMO’s, such as Final Fantasy xi or Tabula Rasa, the firsts gameplay just didn’t entertain me, what with the useless grind, I did however like the community of players that I met. Tabula Rasa on the other hand made me feel disconnected from other players. I felt like I was constantly alone, though able to watch many others scramble around the world.
A friend and I eventually grew tired and I convinced him to try and play Diablo 2 again, a game we hadn’t played for about six years. I quickly realized that Diablo 2, while a classic, was now a horrible game for our time.
I’ve been trying to find a new online game to play for the past three years. I understand that games such as Neverwinter Nights now have nothing to offer me due to the aging it has gone through. Of course I realized quickly that its poorly handled sequel also offered me nothing. After a bit of thinking I think that perhaps what people need is a successful version of a game similar to NwN that offers a system that can be moded successfully into persistent worlds that groups of like minded people can shape into what they want. Rather than hoping some developer will do it for them. If this can be done, then said developer would probably have one of the most successful games on their hands.
I understand that something like this would be against what the people selling these products would be into. it would probably not help said company to earn the most money, through say subscription fees. Thus the likelihood of such a product is nil. People now can only hope that a company will come along and create their perfect MMO. Sadly I doubt something like that will be achieved any time soon…..
my 2 cents.. and a bit of ramble…