45 replies to this topic

[Johnny Z]

JohnnyWayne, on 04 October 2015 - 11:43 AM, said:

No. It would not. Why are people claming things with 0 economics knowledge? They would split earnings this way. The current playerbase likes Battletech, the playerbase of an aerotech or what ever Battletech related game is the same. It would steal their customers for MWO away, while aquireing of new ones would be rather low. They'd literally become competitors to themselfs.

They double their costs and efforts for little to no additional gain, it makes not sense for PGI to make a battletech game with flying mechcockpits.

Yes it would be great for BT fans, but it would be bad for PGI.

Every single time anyone mentioned the original mechs like the Warhammer and Mauarder, two pages of this exact same answer followed with a liberal sprinkling of threats of law suits.

The answer to this is the same, while it may have mediocre effect in the short term, the addition of Aerotech in space on the Galaxy map involving cap ships, corvette class ships and fighters in some way would be great in the long term for Mechwarrior Online.

The original mechs being added now has claimed their rights for this title for now and into the future, as well as any aerotech would do. If done right Aerotech or space based combat would be very popular.

The arguement that only Battletech fans like this game isnt true at all. That the inbalance of the clans among other uncool things have driven off so many players over the years is irrelevant. Maybe this game can make it cool instead of lame.

If Mechwarrior Online does space based combat you know who they have to compete with? No one.

Edited by Johnny Z, 04 October 2015 - 01:56 PM.

[Paigan]

JohnnyWayne, on 04 October 2015 - 01:45 PM, said:

Well how many maps have you added to games before? People with no experience tend to spit out comments like that usually.

That's true, however:

Say everyone working on a map makes 80K a year.
Say every employee costs the company twice his/her gross income in total (proportionately bills, management salaries, etc), so 160K.
Say every employee works 200 days per year (365,25 minus weekends, holidays, sickness, overhead)
That makes a (rough) cost of $800 per day.

Costing 450K means ~550 man-days of work or about 2,5-3,0 man-years.

You're sure it takes 3 man-years to build a map?

Edited by Paigan, 04 October 2015 - 01:56 PM.

[zagibu]

Paigan, on 04 October 2015 - 01:55 PM, said:

You're sure it takes 3 man-years to build a map?

For a regular studio? Nah. For PGI? Not completely unthinkable.

[Burktross]

JohnnyWayne, on 04 October 2015 - 01:45 PM, said:

Well how many maps have you added to games before? People with no experience tend to spit out comments like that usually.

This ain't a masterpiece, but bear in mind this is with an engine made in 2004, with tools made in 1998. It's not technically hard, in my experience, as it is intellectually (balance). Cyengine is extremely different, I'm sure, but half a million still sounds fishy to me.

[Kraftwerkedup]

If you pay 7 people 42k a year, have a 2k a month light bill, 5k a month rent, plus other expenses, and a map takes 4 months from start to live server, the costs of a map can easily be 450k.

Its not a case of "I paid this one person 450k to make a map and then the contracts over". Texture artist, designer, model maker, environmental artist, and the map designer themselves, which may or may not do the map code like sounds and animations, are usually all different people. And usually a mix of permanent and non permanent positions.

People misunderstood what they were saying, because they werent clear, and most people dont know how the industry works. PGI is pretty terribad at communication.

Of course its dependent on the engine, team structure, goal of product, etc, there are of course mappers who "do it all" but thats not usually the case for a game like this.

You dont just "buy a map for 450k". You "stay open while the map is being made". His point was, was the time, if theyre spending money (via spending the time of the artists to make it, or hiring them for short contracts) on a map, they arent spending money on mechs, which actually made them more money.

I can whip out an exceptional Source engine map in 40 hours. I used to do it for a living (as well as other engines over the years, Day of Defeat, Hexen and Heretic are my claims to mapping fame, everything else is more obscure).

But thats for myself. I dont have a boss telling me the map needs to fit a design document, and none of the assets for the map im supposed to make from someone elses design, exist. Its entirely different working with a team, at a job, than it is just doing it for yourself.

Looking at Idtech2 Hexen and Heretic, and how easy to use DoomEd was, I dont know if anyone has any experience with it, its hard to imagine it took us months to make a map, but it did. Construction of the layout happened before I got it. Then I started doing the geometry, while sprites were being drawn, textures being drawn, etc. And it was a job, so if you had a week to do 15 sprites. You took a week to do 15 sprites. If I needed those before I went on to the next 'scene' (we did levels by scenes, like on a story board) I got held up. So id test another level, or throw ping pong balls at my coworkers, anything to look busy or amuse myself until it was done.

Thats just Office Life™.

Its easy to imagine PGI isnt that different than any other small studio out there. Despite being two decades apart.

PS

And you can do a model in Blender in 32 hours, and make this amazing thing. Theres tons of youtube videos of it. However, can you also hit the poly count, do something youre not inspired to do for less than you wish you were being paid, make it not stretch or invert when animated, several LOD states, fit the art style of other artists, fit the texturing that will be applied, and make your lead designer happy, while also making update reports, sitting through meetings, deadlines being changed, the model design being changed several times, team building exercises, coffee breaks and illness.

Theres something about an office and internal bureaucracy that sucks the life right out of the creative process. Its not all shine sun and rainbows.

Edited by Kraftwerkedup, 04 October 2015 - 03:40 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Khobai, on 04 October 2015 - 11:18 AM, said:

its hard for a development studio to make "money money money" with only one game title.

which is why their second game shouldve built upon the success of their first game. trans|verse made absolutely no sense from a business perspective. while an aerospace/battlespace game wouldve made perfect sense and likely wouldve been fully funded. building on past successes is how world of tanks was able to become world of warships, world of warplanes, a dumb cardgame too, etc...

I really dont understand PGI. Any game studio that has the licenses for both mechwarrior and wingcommander should be reeling in cash hand over fist.

Wait, what? PGI owns licenses for Wing Commander?

WTF? PGI, pls...

[zagibu]

Yeonne Greene, on 04 October 2015 - 03:28 PM, said:

Wait, what? PGI owns licenses for Wing Commander?

WTF? PGI, pls...

I still fear that PGI might some day announce Wing Commander Online. They already tried to launch a spaceship game, and they have this license. If Star Citizen doesn't deliver, they might find investors...

[Kraftwerkedup]

The market is about to be saturated with space sims. With PGIs track record, and the recent obvious telling of the opinion people have of the company when they announced even partnering with HBS over just the artwork, I dont think PGI is going to be making any more games any time soon.

People dont really 'invest' in video games. Theres not much room for return and a heck of alot of risk. Not very many people have gotten actually rich off video games. Carmack, Miyamoto, Romero, CliffyB, and American McGee. And 4 of those are from the same company. (iD Software Cliff and McGee both got their start there, briefly before moving to Raven where I was, and then on to their own thangs)

Edited by Kraftwerkedup, 04 October 2015 - 03:56 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

It looks saturated, but all of the games seem to be serving very different niches. Some of them are just underwhelming completely, i.e. Elite: Dangerous.

The only recent space games I've seen in action so far that I have any real interest in playing are EVE: Valkyrie and Enemy Starfighter. Elite is a mile wide but an inch deep, Star Citizen is unfinished and completely underwhelming so far, No Man's Sky is a mile deep and an inch wide.

But EVE:Valkyrie and Enemy Starfighter? They hit that cube form-factor exactly right.

[Khobai]

Quote

Bethesda has made a fortune off the Elder Scrolls and Fallout titles

Exactly... multiple game titles. Elder Scrolls is like 10 different games. And each game was built on the success of the previous games. Skyrim didnt just come out of nowhere and people bought it. People bought it because they were fans of Oblivion. And people bought Oblivion because they were fans of Morrowind. And so on...

That is how you cultivate a franchise. Which is exactly what PGI needs to be doing. Since the battletech franchise has been dead for so long in video gaming. It basically needs to be cultivated anew from scratch.

Quote

No. It would not. Why are people claming things with 0 economics knowledge? They would split earnings this way. The current playerbase likes Battletech, the playerbase of an aerotech or what ever Battletech related game is the same. It would steal their customers for MWO away, while aquireing of new ones would be rather low. They'd literally become competitors to themselfs.

0 economics knowledge lmao. You clearly dont understand the first thing about franchising or why franchises exist.

If what you were saying was even remotely true then World of Tanks, World of Warships, World of Warplanes, etc... would all be competing with eachother. But the reality is they dont compete with eachother, its actually the opposite, it encourages people play more than one of those games, and often those players pay money to multiple titles in the franchise.

Also look at Eve Online and DUST514. DUST514 doesnt compete with eve online. It was catapulted off the success of eve online. Yet it provides a completely different play experience set in the same universe.

Quote

Wait, what? PGI owns licenses for Wing Commander?

WTF? PGI, pls...

Yes PGI has the licensing for Wing Commander. But decided not to do anything with it because of Star Citizen

Edited by Khobai, 04 October 2015 - 04:48 PM.

[nehebkau]

PGI didn't do a good job in monetizing this game, imho, so I doubt PGI is making more than what they need to keep operating.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Queek Head Taker, on 04 October 2015 - 11:10 AM, said:

How much money does pgi make off this game or has made off this game in total? I'm just wondering why they making mechs and more mechs and farming the player base like crazy instead of making some new content to keep players staying and playing. I know I know pgi needs to make money.... but how much money as pgi is a business and the entire point of a business is to make money money money!

[Khobai]

Quote

PGI didn't do a good job in monetizing this game, imho, so I doubt PGI is making more than what they need to keep operating.

I think theyre doing pretty okay. They were obviously able to pay off the initial cash injection from their publisher IGP. And they were able to buy the game outright from IGP when IGP went bankrupt. And the fact they were looking at doing another game title means they have cash to spare.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Yeonne Greene, on 04 October 2015 - 04:01 PM, said:

No Man's Sky is a mile deep and an inch wide.

that looks amazing

[MechaBattler]

They're working on getting ready for Steam. So maps got reworked and continue to be. They opened new servers. Mechwarrior Academy was added. Big rebalance is being worked on. The group queue is being tweaked. They promised to put the re-scaling of mechs in the production line. But Russ made the caveat it's in the queue along with the mech packs, supposedly sometime after one of the packs, I forget which.

PGI has never shown a capacity for big content. CW is their idea of big content. They're more about adding features to the existing base game. If you look at CW. It's just the base game with a few extra features and an interactive map.

Russ did say they were going to hire some programmers to work on AI while they continue the development of the game. But he also put out the idea of elementals and tanks as consumables way back in the first few Town Halls. We've not heard anything on that idea since, so temper your expectations.

People really have to limit the scope of what to expect. They're going to continue releasing mechs because that is what keeps the game profitable. If they can hire some of those AI progammers. I think it's very much within the realm of possibility for them to do PvE content. Just expect it to be a bit shallow. The base game with scripted scenarios and some voice acting if we're lucky.

It could be worse.

[Trystan Thorne]

Yeonne Greene, on 04 October 2015 - 03:28 PM, said:

Wait, what? PGI owns licenses for Wing Commander?

Khobai, on 04 October 2015 - 04:31 PM, said:

Yes PGI has the licensing for Wing Commander. But decided not to do anything with it because of Star Citizen

Sorry guys to dissapoint here, but a gaming mag asked EA if PGI really owns the rights to publish a Wing Commander game and EA denied it.
So WC license is still with EA (to probably newer be used again ).

[Bishop Steiner]

Kraftwerkedup, on 04 October 2015 - 11:55 AM, said:

Be a one man, or very small team, devote yourself entirely to your one game, and make a game that no one ever has before, that is fairly easy to get into.

Minecraft comes to mind. Its not complicated, it was mostly completed by one guy, and sold a ton of copies. Dwarf Fortress and Project Zomboid as well. Very small or single man teams, making very complex deep and approachable games (for their fan bases, if you liked Rougelikes, DwarfFortress was easy to play, not for someone with no experience with the genre however).

Toady makes about 30k a month entirely from donations. This is huge when your overhead is literally your own rent and electric bill.

That said, this is also almost like winning the lottery. You cant just make a game then profit. It doesnt work that way. Otherwise Uncanny Valley or Technobabylon would both make bazillions. You cant always predict what games will "go viral" so to speak.

Mechwarrior has reached its peak. You can get onto steam and get new customers, but every game peaks in its 'reach'. MWO has peaked. So if people are thinking "Well this year theyre gonna make 50 million and we'll get aerospace!" well...I hate to tell you, thats not going to happen. They very well make aerospace and such a reality, but they arent going to suddenly find themselves flush with an incredibly higher amount of income. Its been around long enough that metrics for its 'trending' are pretty spot on.

PGI is at the point now where they literally fund things with mechpacks. Big mechpacks = people get hired two months later.

THAT you can set a clock too with PGI.

having that unique spin, and marketing it though, is the trick. Tons of very good games never make it, whereas tons of crap like candy crush, do.

No matter how you slice it, unless you have huge pockets and reputation, catching lightning in a battle still entails a lot of dumb luck, and still fails far more often than not.

Just having that unique and marketable idea, is not exactly something that happens every day.

[nehebkau]

Khobai, on 04 October 2015 - 04:52 PM, said:

I think theyre doing pretty okay. They were obviously able to pay off the initial cash injection from their publisher IGP. And they were able to buy the game outright from IGP when IGP went bankrupt. And the fact they were looking at doing another game title means they have cash to spare.

Maybe I should have said, "Too much more than they need to operate" I don't doubt they are making some profit.

[Bishop Steiner]

zagibu, on 04 October 2015 - 03:40 PM, said:

I still fear that PGI might some day announce Wing Commander Online. They already tried to launch a spaceship game, and they have this license. If Star Citizen doesn't deliver, they might find investors...

well, supposedly that is what Transverse was supposed to be, until in development cycle, they found out Chris Roberts was working on his own overhyped vaporware WingCommander 2015(ormaybe16....no?17?)..so decided not to go that route (whether for altruism, as claimed or realizing the backlash that would hit..."PGI screws Roberts out of his own Title, film at 11!" (despite the fact that Roberts is the one who let the title go).

Or so the story goes.

Love who much pissing match there is between 1 overhyped underdelivered microbudget game, and another that is just as overhyped and underdelivered...on a budget that is literally over 10x the size.

lol.

Ah well. I'm sure WingCommander2020...er.... StarCitizen will indeed be nice someday. And might even deliver on half the hype. That is more than we can say for MWO.

Shrug

[Flaming oblivion]

LMFAO yes pgi paid IGP off

You realise PGI and IGP are the same company lmao?

Why are people buying into that left hand right hand.

They just cut off the right hand hoping the internet dwellers were daft enough to buy it.