Selling the Soul

My last post was titled The Death of a Game. The example I gave was from a game I still play, called ArenaScape, which is a very casual free-to-play, text-based game and a cult favorite with a very loyal fan base numbering in the hundreds. For those that may want to check it out, ArenaScape can be found at http://arenascape.net/login.php.

A player participating in a battle in ArenaScape.

As I discussed in my last blog post, ArenaScape has a lot of potential to become a very popular game, and in my mind, it's a shame that the game has pretty much died due to neglectfulness. The game's developer created the game more or less for fun, and after working on the game for a number of years for fun and for the fans, he lost interest and just stopped updating it all together. The game has not been updated in many years, and even the copyright hasn't even been changed since 2008. The fan base has been extremely loyal and many of the players have continued to play, post on the forums, and has kept a sense of a community alive years after the last update. However, the time of neglect has taken its toll and the number of players has really diminished.

I believe that the problem that ArenaScape has had was also one of its key "features" that made the game enjoyable for many: it was free-to-play. ArenaScape did not cost money to play, nor did it have any form of membership feature that did, unlike most other games out there, and advertising revenue was at the bare minimal. The developer of ArenaScape had been known to pay for the game out of his own pocket when the ad revenue was not enough, which may have been often because the game had but 2 ads on the home page itself. After actually logging into the game, the players would not see any ads whatsoever, further cutting down on possible ad revenue.

As such, the game's sole developer may have enjoyed creating and updating the game in the early stages when the game was still fresh and a fan base was starting to emerge, but after a number of years of doing it, I'm sure that sense of excitement was going to wear off... and with it, his incentive to continue to update the game. I noticed that most games will die off when they are no longer updated at least semi-regularly, and the games that continue to get updated tend to do so with a cost involved... most of them are not going to be free, or at least have some sort of optional feature that brings in some revenue.

As sad as it may sound, coming from the free open source and Wikipedia age, I don't think online games can really work the same magic... Online games like ArenaScape will sadly need some form of revenue, if just to give the developer enough incentive to keep the game going and the extra pocket cash flowing. These games will be forced to go with a an optional membership option, some sort of in-game bonus for "donating" money, extra ads, or some other alternative. If they do not, I would imagine that they risk a slow and painful death of neglect just like ArenaScape when the game developer does decide that the continuous updates is just not worth his or her time.

Perhaps you disagree? Post your thoughts down below. Until next time, this is Melos signing off...

The Death of a Game

A little bit about myself; I consider myself a casual gamer, which you may have figured from the title of this blog. Although I enjoy playing many types of games, I really don't play any enough to be truly competitive in any of them. And I'm fine with that. I know a lot of other gamers enjoy the fierce competitive aspect of most console and computer games, and although I also enjoy some competitive qualities of the games I play, I also know I can't pull off the 8 hour non-stop raids in the instances in World of Warcraft, the daily clan practice sessions in Counter-Strike, or even put in the mass hours of grinding in most MMORPG's.

As such, I tend to play quite a few online browser games, since most tend to be targeting casual gamers. These types of games tend to be fairly simple, not system dependent since they don't require top end video cards often just require something like java or flash, or even nothing more than a browser like Firefox, and they usually don't require a huge time investment to advance in them. One such game that I play is the text-based game called ArenaScape, which can be found at http://arenascape.net/login.php.

A player distributing experience points in the skills of his choice, so he may level up his character.

ArenaScape is the ideal example of a casual game. The game is text based, which is something unusual in this day and age, and extremely simple to play. It's also free, and does not have any sort of paid feature, which is pretty much unlike any other game out there. It was actually made by an European college graduate back in 2001 if I recall correctly, and at it's peak, had a fan base of a few hundred players. It was originally created as a fan base game for RuneScape, but branched out and evolved into something much more. It's quite fun, and really doesn't eat up your time like many other games. I could literally play 20 to 30 minutes each week and still make significant progress. It's also surprisingly fun; there are many classes of characters that you can create (such as Templars, Titans, Marksmen, Warlocks, etc.) and for the most part, they are actually pretty balanced, even for PvP. The game does have a competitive side to it with a high-scores board, clans, and dueling, but even so, it's rather limited with players only having a maximum number of fights that they can get into which accumulates over time.

Sadly ArenaScape is a dying game. The game itself is nearly 10 years old, and it hasn't been updated in years. Although ArenaScape has an incredibly loyal following, the numbers of players have really diminished over the 4 or so years due to lack of updates. The game is just oozing with potential, since many of the features that were promised were sadly never implemented, and there are many possible twists and turns that the game could take. It's a real shame in my opinion that this game with this much potential and such a loyal fan following would slowly and painfully die from time and neglect. However, I also see the other side of the coin. The creator of ArenaScape didn't updated the game because it just wasn't worth his time anymore to do so. He wasn't making any money off the game, it didn't provide him any revenue whatsoever, and it simply started out as a fun after college project which developed a cult following. As such, he really doesn't have much of an incentive to update the game... but what can that be? I'll leave that to you, readers, to comment about what you think here.

In my next article, I will continue this discussion with what I think about the matter... so stay tuned.

Ogame: The Final Frontier

Today I'll bring to you the fourth and final blog post discussing a possible improvement to the online browser game OGame (http://ogame.org/) with regards to the Expedition game mechanic, as discussed in my previous blog post.

The different ships available in your shipyard.

As I also stated in my previous blog post, Expeditions in OGame have a lot of potential, but fall short on a number of fronts. Gameforge, the developers of OGame, really didn't take into consideration the pros and cons for a player that was wondering if they should partake in an Expedition mission. Expeditions require researching the appropriate Astrophysics technology, which really isn't such a negative anymore because of how Astrophysics has recently changed so as to allow players to colonize more planets. They also require a fleet of ships that the player wouldn't be using elsewhere, and the fuel to keep them on their often lengthy journey. Expeditions grant players an incentive in partaking them in the the form of finding resources, collecting Dark Matter, acquiring new ships, and even obtaining a contract with a Merchant.

However, the real problem falls down to that the very basics; the risks outweigh the benefits. Players risk frequent attacks from pirates and advanced aliens, having their fleets take longer (and even shorter) amount of time to return from their Expedition mission which puts their fleet at risk indirectly because it changes their fleet times and allow other players to exploit it and even hunt down these fleets while the player is offline, and even a chance of completely losing your entire fleet to a black hole or other mishap. If the rewards for partaking in expeditions were high, it might be worth the risk, including the chance of losing your entire fleet, but as it is now, it really isn't worth it. The amount of resources you typically obtain barely pays off the fuel cost if you take into consideration all of the missions that your fleet obtains nothing of value. Acquiring small amounts of new ships doesn't even come close to replacing entire fleets lost by mishaps, or even the damages done by fighting off pirates and ever dangerous aliens. The only real reason most players partake in Expedition missions is for the chance of obtaining Dark Matter and contracts with Merchants, which could only otherwise be obtained from purchasing with real money, and even then, you obtain such small amounts that it really isn't worth it unless you really can't afford to buy it.

So how can Expeditions become more interesting and useful? As I said before, Expeditions have a lot of potential and could really become a very fun part of the game with a few changes. Here are a couple of suggestions I have to improve the Expeditions game mechanic in OGame:

Recycling Expedition Debris
Recyclers that are sent with an Expedition fleet to collect the debris from ships that were destroyed in battles with pirates and aliens. As of right now, obtaining a pirate or alien encounter can only be summed up as one thing: bad. Even if the player is luckily enough to not lose any ships from the battle, the player still losses out on time and fuel. If they did take losses, that must also be factored in the price paid in partaking that Expedition mission and obtaining that event. Allowing players to obtain profitable parts from the debris of destroyed ships may make Expedition missions a little more worthwhile for some players, and at the very least, cuts down on one of the disadvantages that keep players from partaking in them.

Expedition Related Tasks
Unlike most other online browser games, OGame completely lacks quests and tasks outside of the tutorial. Expeditions can remedy that. Being tasked with hunting down pirates, exploring certain parts of space, finding a missing merchant fleet, discovering alien planets, etc. with appropriate rewards for finishing those tasks, such as payment in bonus Dark Matter, would give many players a larger incentive in partaking in Expedition missions. Also adding task specific encounters, like hunting down a pirate boss, or helping a planet evacuate from an alien armada would add a lot more story to OGame as well.

Multiple Encounters
This one is a rather simple change. What if a fleet could mine resources from an asteroid belt and also make a faster than normal return trip back? Or what if a fleet could find a "deserted" pirate base and steal the ships docked there, but on the return trip, get attacked by the pirates looking for revenge? Allowing fleets to partake in multiple encounters on a single mission could make things very interesting if done correctly. If done incorrectly, it could become a huge problem, with chains of negative encounters being the norm. Who would want to have their fleet attacked by pirates and then aliens? Also, if multiple encounters were ever implemented, reducing the chance of obtaining a complete fleet loss would be needed to keep it balanced. No player would want to see their fleet find something useful and then get swallowed up by a black hole  because they took a wrong turn returning back home.

I'm sure that there are plenty of other interesting and creative changes that can be implemented to make OGame even better, but I'll leave that for you to think about. Hope you enjoyed my chain of blog posts about OGame. My next post with be about a different game, so stay tuned.