Dear Aspiring MMO Game Developers,

Stop trying to make MMO games. You will not be successful. Even if you get a GREAT first couple months, players will drop off when they run out of content, get bored, and/or can’t convince their friends to quit Word of Warcraft.

You will never get a critical mass of subscribers to not only recoup the costs you wasted building the game and setting up infrastructure, but to fund the development of new content.

WoW was a fluke. It was in the right place at the right time, with a company and franchise behind it that most of the PC gaming world adored.

It doesn’t matter if your game is better. The graphics could be better, the gameplay could be better, there could be more variety, exciting combat, deep character building, and weapon crafting mechanics.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer IP behind it. Star Wars, Star Trek, Warhammer 40K, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, etc - irrelevant.

It doesn’t matter if your subscription is cheaper. It doesn’t even matter if your game is FREE to play.

You won’t succeed because everyone who is into these sorts of games (eg masochists) are only playing WoW because that’s what their friends are playing.

This means that in order to succeed in this market, you need to “convert” entire guilds en-masse away from WoW - which isn’t going to happen; and even if you do, you’ll lose them as soon as Blizzard announces a new expansion.

How many of these titles need to fail, and how many dev studios need to close doors before the industry comes to realize this? Stop making them - please. Think of your families.

You’d have a far better chance at success with peer-to-peer, instanced, co-op multiplayer games like Borderlands, and Diablo which require no central server to maintain persistence, and won’t require you to charge a subscription to play.

Those who follow me on Twitter are likely very aware of the fact that I’m a big fan of Starcraft, or more specifically the recently closed Starcraft II beta.

Given that beta keys were in limited supply and I didn’t manage to get a key until about half-way through, I found there were several YouTubers casting high-definition replays with commentary of high-level play.

With the explosive popularity and enthusiasm around the Starcraft II beta, two of the better commentators, HDStarcraft and HuskyStarcraft managed to organize a global tournament with some of the best players in the young Starcraft II scene.

I’ve been following the tournament closely on YouTube and have found it extremely entertaining to watch. If you haven’t ever really gotten into Starcraft before, or are curious about the hype, this tournament is probably one of the best ways (outside of learning the game and playing yourself) to get a taste of what makes the game so entertaining to spectate and play.

I’ve included links to every match in the tournament after the cut. I haven’t included player names to avoid spoilers.

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I was talking to thechenry today over IM when the topic of the joys of turning digital soldier’s faces into raspberry jam came up (as it always does).

This conversation inevitably turned to the recent re-release of Perfect Dark on Xbox Live Arcade. I remarked how I missed the days when FPS games let you Rambo through levels, indiscriminately piling bodies in fits of homicidal glee justified by the game’s assertion that you’re the “good guy”.

…but then I thought. Are you ever really, truly, given the sense that you’re the “good guy” in Perfect Dark?

Your character, Joanna Dark, is under the employ of a shadowy non-government organization that operates outside the law - The Carrington Institute.

• Carrington Institute’s mission and/or agenda is unclear
• You are constantly advised to not question your missions
• The institute seems to operate soley at the whims of one man - Daniel Carrington
• The Carrington Institute is in league with extraterrestrial beings whose motives and plans for Earth are also unclear
• Carrington sends you into Area 51 where you proceed to murder hundreds of American soldiers. This cannot be considered anything less than an act of war against the United States

Joanna Dark isn’t a heroine. She’s an ice cold, homicidal, bitch.

…at least Bond only killed Russians. They don’t count.

Dear game developers,

As the gaming population ages, they have less time to game. Asking a gamer with a full time job, relationships, family, children, cats, to spend “60+ hours” on your game just isn’t happening.

Make shorter, more concise experiences. This isn’t an excuse to be lazy. In return I want better production values, more elaborate encounters, better level design, tighter mechanics.

I want less pointless fetch quests, grinding, collect-a-thons, repetition.

Raw length is NOT a selling point - in fact, it causes me to avoid titles.