Another prescription/crystal ball

  12 Responses to “Another prescription/crystal ball”

1. Mike's News Page says:

   March 13, 2006 at 10:01 am

   Raph’s Website On Trust, Part III The Sunday Poem: Housebuilding Near Montague Farm Hail in San Diego PowerPoint Presentation – Putting the Fun in Functional Shaping perceptions MidnightersAnother prescription/crystal ball Darniaq has seen the future of MMOs A cooking game CAN MMOs be sandboxes?
2. Tess says:

   March 8, 2006 at 10:22 pm

   I always the beginning of Gibson’s Count Zero, where the kid is bitching about his mom hanging out in the virtual soap operas all the time. And I always think, “There’s got to be some way to sell those.”
3. Dranore says:

   March 9, 2006 at 1:11 pm

   It’s called ‘The Sims’ and is why it’s the highest grossing game of all time.

   I like Cosmik’s article better. I love me some structured arguementation! Examples, Conclusions from examples, How conclusions apply to problems, Suggestions as to how to apply conclusions to problems. HOO-HA!

   Good-read. Liked that one.
4. Tess says:

   March 9, 2006 at 6:00 pm

   I like Cosmik’s article better. I love me some structured arguementation! Examples, Conclusions from examples, How conclusions apply to problems, Suggestions as to how to apply conclusions to problems. HOO-HA!

   Hahaha, so true.

   It’s called ‘The Sims’ and is why it’s the highest grossing game of all time.

   While I agree with you, I meant more in terms of multiplayer soapies. Before anyone says booooooring, I should make it clear that soap operas don’t have to be mundane. The soap opera my Mom watched when I was a kid had an arch villain on a tropical island hideout, who was threatening people with a weather machine.

   I don’t watch soap operas, myself, but I’ll be the first one to tell you that RP-MUDs are really just soap operas, with a bit of window dressing. You’ve got the same love triangles, backstabbing, bitter rivalries, scheming, murders, family loyalty, and completely zany story arcs that sound absolutely ridiculous if you try to explain them to anyone after the fact.

   Most people don’t RP, but I think a game like this could be fun even if you don’t. The only problem is that you can’t be properly nasty in a non-RP game, without hard feelings. Unfortunately, however, external threats would really only work for big (arch villain with weather machine) plots. They really can’t drive the day-to-day drama of the game. So, it would be necessary for the designers to devise a motivation for players to work against one another, either openly, or covertly. Family and faction rivalries could be a start. Throw in a dash of secret societies and hidden agendas. Influence, money, political power, business power, underworld connections, cloak and dagger… Season to taste.
5. Kristen says:

   March 9, 2006 at 7:24 pm

   Tess said:

   The soap opera my Mom watched when I was a kid had an arch villain on a tropical island hideout, who was threatening people with a weather machine.

   Ok. This is sad. I not only know which soap but when. General Hospital with the whole Luke, Laura, Robert and the Casadines (sp?) So that would have been 1979. For some reason, we were hanging on the edge of our seats for this and for the next installment of the BBCs Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy miniseries on PBS. 😛
6. Amaranthar says:

   March 9, 2006 at 7:32 pm

   Let me ask something here about The Sims. See, when I bought a new comp once it was on there. I wasn’t interested, but I think they gave you a free sample and then you could upgrade to the full game. I’m not really sure, maybe you folks know. But if they did do this, wouldn’t this have a big impact on the sales of a game, since it’s capturing an audience that wouldn’t otherwise be there?
7. Cosmik says:

   March 9, 2006 at 11:12 pm

   But if they did do this, wouldn’t this have a big impact on the sales of a game, since it’s capturing an audience that wouldn’t otherwise be there?

   Yes, it would. More specifically, the sales of expansion packs because I’d wager a guess that those dozen Sims expansion packs are what EA is trying to sell by giving Mr. and Mrs. New Computer User a taste of Sim action.

   “Upgrade now! And for only a Small Extra Cost recieve the Sims Hot Date. More items and clothes for your Sim! Addiction is gooooood.”

   I can’t say how EA calculated the sales figures of the Sims, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they included the figure of “number of computers sold with the Sims installed upon it”. Not that the Sims sales figures needed that much help, mind you, but its a tactic we’ve seen from many a company. Hello to Blizzard and their PCBaang numbers.

   This installed Sim thing would be akin to the tactic Nintendo is using by packaging Nintendogs with the DS. I could even be so villainous as to draw a connection between this and Microsoft packaging Internet Explorer with Windows in order to beat Netscape, but I won’t.

   Wait a minute.

   Damn.
8. Cael says:

   March 10, 2006 at 5:06 am

   Thing is, this reads the other way around too. This says to many people, The Sims was important enough to be included as a merketing tool. It says that not only EA but also some hardware vendors thought so highly of the Sims that they used to try to tip the balance between where people spend their $1000 on a computer.

   Maybe some people even spent $1000 purely to be able to play The Sims?

   Nevertheless, that kind of confidence from a hardware vendor is pretty damn’ impressive.
9. Amaranthar says:

   March 10, 2006 at 6:12 am

   Well, this is an old tactic. Years ago, when kitchen cabinets were being transformed from the built in, flat door, usually birch wood installations to what is called stock cabinets (pre-made stock sizes) there was a man named Merillat in Chicago who had an idea. He owned his own business of stock cabinets, and was seeking ways to grow his business. What he did was establish contact with all the Chicago based architects, and convince them to spec Merillat Cabinets on all their blueprints. If you understand the workings here, this means that unless the architect ok’s a change, the job is supposed to use only Merillat Cabinets. Of course, especially on smaller jobs, many a blind eye oversaw the dealings. But the overall effect was nothing short of amazing. Merillat Cabinets became the largest cabinet company in the world. And it had nothing to do with choice or open markets.

   Anytime you can capture the audience, it works wonders. We know this is nothing new. I would be more surprised if I didn’t see these tactics in this industry.

   By placing the Sims on computers, they were not only the first in line for prospective customers, they opened new lines of communication to people, informing them that there were games like these available in the first place. Everyone who bought a new computer, at a time when computers were making their way into American homes for the first time at such an astounding rate, was given a chance to play a new kind of game….The Sims. The combination of the product and how it was “spec’d” into homes across America, and probably around the world, wasn’t lost on someone. Just like with Mr. Merillat.
10. Dranore says:

    March 10, 2006 at 12:09 pm

    Tess: There was The Sims online… if they ever take The Sims 2 online… that will be interesting to see.

    You guys are talking about this prepackaging on computers as if it’s what made it the successful game it is. I’m afriad that’s not the case. I’ve read a number of articles on the success of the game, and it’s nothing to do with that so much as it’s broad appeal your mom and your 10 year old daughter can both play The Sims because it’s a toy. The Sims is in that class of game that isn’t really a game. There is no structure it has no should allow you to create goals for characters like… Get 40 Girlfriends and Get to the top of X career patgoals except the ones you make. The only real room for advancement is in your job and your personal points with no explicit rewards beyond some new furniture and money. Yet it appeals to many many different kinds of gamers while some not at all for that very reason.

    You can experiment with The Sims because it’s a transgendered dollhouse (by which I mean a doll house for boys and girls). You can make your little people do whatever you want. If you don’t like them, you can torture and kill them. You can take them out on the town. You can make them have lots of promiscuous relationships, married or unmarried, hetrosexual or homosexual. You can raise children and play with the things you buy. You can design clothes for them and build them houses. Behind all of this is a social engine to control interaction of the personalities behind the dolls (which you can customize when they’re yours). All in all it allows for alot of variety in terms of interest and play style that appeals to a very large segment of the population. THAT is why The Sims and it’s sequel are such a valuable franchise.

    I still standby that they should have a user created goal system… So you could have some goal like, “Get 40 Boyfriends and Advance to the Top of X Career Path”… or something like that… It would allow people to aim towards non-arbitrary goals and bring in people who aren’t interested in “toys”.
11. Amaranthar says:

    March 10, 2006 at 1:32 pm

    You guys are talking about this prepackaging on computers as if it’s what made it the successful game it is.

    Yes, I am saying that. What I’m not saying is that it wouldn’t have been very successful without the packaging.

    My main point is that it’s hard to compare Sims to the rest of the market due to this successful packaging concept. Is it really that much better than a competator? I don’t know, I don’t even know if they have a competator.

    I think the same thing can be said when comparing EQ2 to WoW. The games are very similar (aren’t they? I never played EQ’s) but WoW had alot more going for them in the Blizzard following as well as the Warcraft following. What this tells me, personally, is nothing except the value of a predefined market. But anything about the games themselves? No, nothing, except that they are both high quality as a production maybe.
12. Tess says:

    March 12, 2006 at 8:07 pm

    Dranore:

    Tess: There was The Sims online… if they ever take The Sims 2 online… that will be interesting to see.

    The Sims Online is absolutely nothing like anything I’m talking about. As far as I could tell from the beta, the Sims Online is a game about making pizza, pissing, and sleeping.

    I could say many other things about The Sims Online, but I can’t really critique the game with any real professionalism. I fear I might be prone to waxing entirely too hyperbolic about the things that were wrong with it. The game had fantastically talented designers working on it, but from what I understand, the game was a bit like a rag doll being used for a tug-of-war game, and the doll lost.

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