[bf1942] Anyone have a popular non-ranked server?

Mark J. DeFilippis defilm at acm.org
Tue Aug 23 21:47:56 EDT 2005


I hear ya.  I  hope you are not right.  I wondered the same thing
about WOW, and whether the FPS genre was going to die
to the MMOG RPG's when they all ran for WOW and the
servers emptied. That is still playing out, and I was working that
one hard. Asked many for opinions. Many members that quit
the clans started coming back.  Bored with WOW.  Took a
whole 6 months. I am much less concerned. They will co-exist.

I was disappointed to see WOW hit the 3Mil mark. But I was
rejuvinated when Guild Wars, free, achieved 1/2 the user base
of WOW in well under 1/2 the time. (Source: Guildportal.com).

Could you imagine paying $50 for a game and having a handful
of games you like, all with $20/mo memberships.  Then don't forget
the kids.  Avg family of 4, with 3 players, and 2-3 games could be
looking at serious usage bills.  Unless the middle class grows,
(and it is shrinking), that model won't fare well if that model
grew out to the number of current FPS's in the Genre. Not
enough discresonary income for that to scale.

As a person that has been doing strategic engineering all my
life, the only thing that seperates me from other strategic
engineers that are unemployed is being right. I have
been lucky.  In fact, you are wrong once, cost $$$Mil, it don't
matter how good you WERE, you are only as good as your last
strategic assessment!  Like building a bridge... If you built 30 of the
best in your lifetime, but you built one that collapsed, you would
not be remembered for the 30, but the one.  Well that is what
strategic engineering is all about. Taking in all you can as input
and coming out with the best strategic assessment you can.
And that is what I have done.

I hope I am right about the MMOG, and I hope I am right about
EA's model.  You are right, EA will continue to do their own thing!
They kept backing "Triple Play Baseball" when 3DO was kicking
their butt for years.

There is way too much bitterness caused by this model.
I honestly, from a strategic standpoint, do not see how this
model will survive as it currently exists.

Also, yes, they did create an infrastructure for BF2 without
investing in all the infrastructure.  However, they were not
the first.  Gaming companies and clans (whom gaming companies
want to sell servers to) have long had this.  But Global
high scoring you say is new? ... seeing your name on
"high score" on a "new pinball machine" is cool, but it
gets old eventually with the game.

Lastly, What EA is doing is indeed a Monopoly.  American's
don't care much for them.  Yea, we live with Microsoft. But
that is the OS, and EA is no Microsoft...

I think we are all hoping this model fails.  Other alternatives
are a different  master server system, and open up the weapons.
There are more unregistered than registered.  Delisted?
If we were to create our own list of servers using our own
master servers, EA is rendered harmless.  If it is a central
point, EA would sue to the end of the world. But if it was
a distributed list, built in to the unranked server as a mod,
they can't sue everyone that runs an unranked server...
It is simple to write a secure protocol that in itself protects
the server buffering the data, and the data itself so the server
can not modify the received server data it passes on, or it
is rendered useless.  It can only add itself. Not tough
to do for the very talented.... Nice thing it supports itself.

The list mod.  Server/Client side mod.  Bet it would be
very popular....  Thoughts on such an entity?

Mark


At 12:08 PM 8/23/2005, you wrote:
>Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:08:17 -0500
>From: Mike Swain <mjswain at charter.net>
>Subject: RE: [bf1942] Anyone have a popular non-ranked server?
>To: bf1942 at icculus.org
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>
>I don't think the decision makers at EA are as stupid as you think.
>If I was a giant game company and wanted to bring  a large chunk of
>game hosting "in-house" as an additional revenue source then I would do 
>exactly
>what EA is currently doing with BF2 which is basically testing the waters
>with a monoplized ranking system without investing heavily in its own game 
>hosting
>infrastructure.
>
>If all goes well with BF2's ranked servers, then EA's next FPS will also 
>have a
>ranking system and by then EA will have its own game hosting 
>infrastructure in
>place to take full advantage of their monopoly on ranked servers. I can 
>picture
>the many spins that EA uses to explain their reasons for doing this and it 
>will all be
>for the "benefit" of the gamer.
>
>My biggest concern is that other game companies will start moving in this 
>direction if
>they see EA having success which could be the beginning of the end for all 
>you game
>hosting companies  :(
>
>Those of you who are now participating in EA's ranked server program may 
>be reaping
>some short term benefits but I think you are failing to see the bigger 
>picture. It's too bad
>there isn't some kind of "Game Hosting Union" where all the hosting 
>companies vote on a course
>of action to take and act in a unified manner. Without this kind of 
>organized action your fledgling
>industry is easily manipulated.
>
>I'm not saying that game companies don't have a right to design a game so 
>that it allows them to
>bring as much game server hosting in-house as is possible (it is their 
>game after all) however it
>will be more difficult for them to do this if the current game hosting 
>companies banded together
>and acted in ways which benefited their industry as a whole.
>
>I hope I'm wrong and EA has no such plans however there have been so many 
>things that EA
>has said and done that make me think I'm not too far off the mark :(
>
>-Mike
S1,-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark J. DeFilippis                    defilm at acm.org
                                       defilm at ieee.org


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