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I hear ya. I hope you are not right. I wondered the
same thing<br>
about WOW, and whether the FPS genre was going to die <br>
to the MMOG RPG's when they all ran for WOW and the<br>
servers emptied. That is still playing out, and I was working that<br>
one hard. Asked many for opinions. Many members that quit<br>
the clans started coming back. Bored with WOW. Took a<br>
whole 6 months. I am much less concerned. They will co-exist.<br><br>
I was disappointed to see WOW hit the 3Mil mark. But I was<br>
rejuvinated when Guild Wars, free, achieved 1/2 the user base<br>
of WOW in well under 1/2 the time. (Source: Guildportal.com).<br><br>
Could you imagine paying $50 for a game and having a handful<br>
of games you like, all with $20/mo memberships. Then don't
forget<br>
the kids. Avg family of 4, with 3 players, and 2-3 games could
be<br>
looking at serious usage bills. Unless the middle class
grows,<br>
(and it is shrinking), that model won't fare well if that model<br>
grew out to the number of current FPS's in the Genre. Not<br>
enough discresonary income for that to scale.<br><br>
As a person that has been doing strategic engineering all my<br>
life, the only thing that seperates me from other strategic<br>
engineers that are unemployed is being right. I have<br>
been lucky. In fact, you are wrong once, cost $$$Mil, it
don't<br>
matter how good you WERE, you are only as good as your last<br>
strategic assessment! Like building a bridge... If you built 30 of
the<br>
best in your lifetime, but you built one that collapsed, you would<br>
not be remembered for the 30, but the one. Well that is what<br>
strategic engineering is all about. Taking in all you can as input<br>
and coming out with the best strategic assessment you can.<br>
And that is what I have done.<br><br>
I hope I am right about the MMOG, and I hope I am right about<br>
EA's model. You are right, EA will continue to do their own
thing!<br>
They kept backing "Triple Play Baseball" when 3DO was
kicking<br>
their butt for years.<br><br>
There is way too much bitterness caused by this model.<br>
I honestly, from a strategic standpoint, do not see how this<br>
model will survive as it currently exists.<br><br>
Also, yes, they did create an infrastructure for BF2 without<br>
investing in all the infrastructure. However, they were not<br>
the first. Gaming companies and clans (whom gaming companies<br>
want to sell servers to) have long had this. But Global<br>
high scoring you say is new? ... seeing your name on<br>
"high score" on a "new pinball machine" is cool, but
it<br>
gets old eventually with the game.<br><br>
Lastly, What EA is doing is indeed a Monopoly. American's<br>
don't care much for them. Yea, we live with Microsoft. But<br>
that is the OS, and EA is no Microsoft... <br><br>
I think we are all hoping this model fails. Other
alternatives<br>
are a different master server system, and open up the
weapons.<br>
There are more unregistered than registered. Delisted?<br>
If we were to create our own list of servers using our own<br>
master servers, EA is rendered harmless. If it is a central<br>
point, EA would sue to the end of the world. But if it was<br>
a distributed list, built in to the unranked server as a mod,<br>
they can't sue everyone that runs an unranked server...<br>
It is simple to write a secure protocol that in itself protects<br>
the server buffering the data, and the data itself so the server<br>
can not modify the received server data it passes on, or it<br>
is rendered useless. It can only add itself. Not tough<br>
to do for the very talented.... Nice thing it supports itself.<br><br>
The list mod. Server/Client side mod. Bet it would be<br>
very popular.... Thoughts on such an entity?<br><br>
Mark<br><br>
<br>
At 12:08 PM 8/23/2005, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 11:08:17
-0500<br>
From: Mike Swain <mjswain@charter.net><br>
Subject: RE: [bf1942] Anyone have a popular non-ranked server?<br>
To: bf1942@icculus.org<br>
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I don't think the decision makers at EA are as stupid as you think.
<br>
If I was a giant game company and wanted to bring a large chunk of
<br>
game hosting "in-house" as an additional revenue source then I
would do exactly<br>
what EA is currently doing with BF2 which is basically testing the
waters<br>
with a monoplized ranking system without investing heavily in its own
game hosting<br>
infrastructure. <br><br>
If all goes well with BF2's ranked servers, then EA's next FPS will also
have a <br>
ranking system and by then EA will have its own game hosting
infrastructure in <br>
place to take full advantage of their monopoly on ranked servers. I can
picture<br>
the many spins that EA uses to explain their reasons for doing this and
it will all be<br>
for the "benefit" of the gamer.<br><br>
My biggest concern is that other game companies will start moving in this
direction if <br>
they see EA having success which could be the beginning of the end for
all you game<br>
hosting companies :(<br><br>
Those of you who are now participating in EA's ranked server program may
be reaping <br>
some short term benefits but I think you are failing to see the bigger
picture. It's too bad <br>
there isn't some kind of "Game Hosting Union" where all the
hosting companies vote on a course <br>
of action to take and act in a unified manner. Without this kind of
organized action your fledgling <br>
industry is easily manipulated.<br><br>
I'm not saying that game companies don't have a right to design a game so
that it allows them to<br>
bring as much game server hosting in-house as is possible (it is their
game after all) however it<br>
will be more difficult for them to do this if the current game hosting
companies banded together<br>
and acted in ways which benefited their industry as a whole.<br><br>
I hope I'm wrong and EA has no such plans however there have been so many
things that EA<br>
has said and done that make me think I'm not too far off the mark
:(<br><br>
-Mike</font></blockquote><tt>S1,-------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
Mark J.
DeFilippis
defilm@acm.org<br>
defilm@ieee.org<br><br>
<br>
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