IS COD and other FPS's DEAD? On topic and off topic unfortunately!

[Mark J. DeFilippis]

As much as I have seen the traffic on this list drop, I am also seeing the 
ladders at leagues
drop as well. At it's peak, the COD HQ 4x4 ladder had 235 clans, of which 
probably 150+ were active.
Now, it has 30, perhaps 12 are active.  Similar drop in TDM.

The COD:UO ladders are not doing much better.  It also does not seem to be 
limited to COD.
Noticed the same for UT2004, and even Counter Strike has been impacted.

Friends are closing up clans left and right, and people I know that own 
server leasing companies
are consolidating as they lose people.  Even one of the cheapest guys out 
there, like ET.

Supply and Demand?  I don't think there is much.  There are diehards that 
are excited about
BF2 and COD2 coming out.  I am.  SO that should bring back life again!

I don't think so.  I think, and have predicted that the FPS Genre is going 
the way of
the Combat Flight Sim.  If UBI had released LOMAC (Lock-on) had come out 
when that
genre was hot, that small Russian team would have been wealthy.  Instead, 
it is a great
sim, the best I have seen to date IMHO (A FX5950 would get down to 9fps at 
times), and
the newer 6800 during the same demo code run still only hits 43fps!  But it 
would have been
huge, had the video card technology been what it is.

Where are all the clans going? Why are their members leaving?  Look at the 
ranks
of World of WarCraft, Final Fantasy, Matrix On-line.... Massive On-line Gaming.

If COD2 was going to be a MMO game, with Borgs, Trolls, and Flying Faeries
we could put lead in to, it might have a chance. ;-)  I wrote some pretty
recent editorials to PCGamer, and submitted this observation as an article to
them for publication. They have contacted me back, and I am still talking with
their people.  It is clear I am not the only one to notice the trend.  My 
communications
with TWL's admins, and competition managers I have come to know I don't think
want to see it, but they notice the dips in ranks.

I became friendly with many clan founders over the past 2 years while 
running {TRv},
and several were multi-gaming. COD, COD:UO, BF1942, BFDC, UT2004, SOF2, with
25 active players, and over 100 on their rosters that were active on their 
servers
and played via rotation via sign-up.  Shut down last week.  Large healthy clans
here one day. WOW comes out, and a month later, gone.

Matrix was a DOA. WOW seems to have brought it back to life.

I can take the death of gaming perhaps, but not the Genre.  At 43, I grew 
up in the Atari
era as a 18+teenager, my early years were Mainframes, PDP11, Byte mag was 
12 pages long
and carried the ads for Imsai 8080, and Altair systems. 8KB Ram.  First 
multiplayer game
was StarTrek on a Dec Vax at work. SO the Atari era was great.

I would hate to see the death of the Genre.  I didn't like "Scott Adams" 
text adventures
back in the Era of TRS-80's and Atari, and I don't like the current Genre, 
which is where
I feel WOW, and Matrix-On-line.

If somewhere COD:UO, and BF2 became RPG's and FPS's, where did WOW become
a MMO RPG Adventure and 3rd person shooter.

I know there are many on this list that have gaming server companies.  I 
sure would like someone elses' view of what we are seeing.  The calm is 
eerie, and I hear that "Death rattle", that once you hear it
they say you never forget it....

Over the years through COD, and UO, I have come to know and respect many of 
you for many
reasons, some of which includes knowledge and opinions. Please take a 
moment if you have some thoughts, to share them.

PCGamer did not turn my article down, they said they would get back to me 
with commentary
on content, and I provided some "food for thought"...

I sure would love to be wrong.


Best Regards

Mark D



S1,-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark J. DeFilippis, Ph. D EE          defilm at acm.org
                                       defilm at ieee.org


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