Azaroth

Ah! What a telling title!

Actually, what’s been going on is a blog-to-blog topic, spreading around like a virus, on the topic of the lowest end cost of a MMO. Someone said two million. Then someone else said 3.5. Matt Mihaly, in the latest incarnation of the topic, says less than one.

I fully respect and endorse this point of view. Eschewing the silly notion of in-house artists, central offices, and dedicated QA/tech/legal teams - there’s no reason why you should have to budget around something more than a million dollars for a respectably sized MMO.

Brian went on for some time about taxes, benefits, lawyers, “business guys”, PR managers, etc. I say nuts to that. If the budget is what it is, it is what it is. Sometimes things that seem very important when you have larger budgets simply fall by the wayside through the process of rational thinking when you have a set budget, or have a need to ship a product with the lowest possible budget. Suddenly a PR manager doesn’t seem as important as, say, ART FOR THE GAME. You know.

One thing Brian certainly had right was the notion of outsourcing. Find yourself a quality producer of art in India or China and you’re crusin’. Not such a good idea with code.

Can’t find something to your liking overseas? There are plenty of very high quality art contracting solutions in the western world. They’ll cost you more, but budget accordingly. A quality visual presentation is your user’s first impression. Where do you click first when you visit the site of a new MMO? Screenshots!

As far as a dedicated marketing person, I think Mr. Mihaly hit the nail on the head:

5. A marketing person is nice but I don’t think you really need one. A project this size lives and dies on word-of-mouth. Marketing and advertising certainly do not hurt, but thus far I’ve been handling our marketing efforts (though we recently opened a blog on IGN’s RPG Vault with about an article a week written by one of our interns). It’s not THAT hard to get some coverage for your game. Google “earth eternal” and see. I’ve largely just sent out a few press releases that I wrote. A press release is not rocket science. We’ve also allocated funds for advertising but won’t spend on that until we’re into open beta.

Now think back to IPY. For what it was, its population was huge. And that population was created solely by? Of course, word of mouth. Paying $50,000 a year to a dedicated marketing person is overkill when I can personally forge relationships with MMO websites, place a few strategic advertisements in print media, and write press releases with the greatest of ease.

Would a marketing person provide more than a good bang for my buck at 50k a year?

Sure, probably. But what if I don’t have that 50k in my budget. What if that 50k is more wisely spent actually creating a game TO market. I could take the entire budget and spend it on massive amounts of marketing if I want, but if all I had were 3 classes of grey, black, and red stickmen running around on a green 2d field - word of mouth is going to kill me very quickly. Just like, in the ever tight knit MMO community, word of mouth will propel the name of my game and my URL through the cosmos at light speed if I actually have a decent product.

But it all depends what you want to put IN to your game. I suppose word of mouth is hard when you don’t have many features, and/or no specific hook. Matt’s snowball will start rolling from his work on successful and quality text MUDs. My IPY snowball started rolling because of my years of Pre-UO:R rants, where I did that ranting (many very popular websites, including a few of my own), and the main basic fact that I was filling a need with a comfy, visible brand. What better to satiate someone looking to play oldschool Ultima Online with than… oldschool Ultima Online? Now THAT’S marketing.

Would IPY have been as successful had I hired a team of programmers and graphics artists to create a 2d MMO with the exact same ruleset? Or was the name and the familiarity that came with it the most important part?

Of course, word of mouth and popularity can ultimately be a bad thing if your game design is fatally flawed in relation to your market. See IPY. See Darkfall. See the same result. But that’s more of a sidebar comment.

In the end, I totally agree that it’s possible to get a MMO done with a budget of under a million. It just takes creativity, and people at the helm that KNOW they’re not going to compete with WoW (and don’t try).

Now, I’ll warn you. I don’t have any special insight. Anything new I said on the subject would probably be socially unnacceptable anyway, and I think lil’ miss Tilly is about the only one that knows exactly what it’d be.

That being said.

Despire what I’ll say below, I’m no rootin’ tootin’ right wing Texan. I could be a card carrying member of the ACLU, my political direction described most accurately as “Radical Fucking Libertarian”. Now that I’ve made enemies of the entirety of every government in the world…

Let me say this:

The way that this massacre has been taken, swept up, and used as a vehicle for gun control agendas is sickening. I didn’t understand why people could possibly need the right to own guns at one point either, but consider me enlightened.

Also consider the fact that people who are going to do shit like this are simply going to do shit like this. Whether it be with guns, bombs, knives, or BOX CUTTERS. Restricting access to a type of weapon doesn’t stop this. Stop trumpeting. I live in Canada, and people still get shot in schools. We have an insane amount of gun control. In fact, we have a gun registry system that cost the tax payers BILLIONS of dollars (all of which, I’m sure, went to the places it was supposed to… being that the program was initially said to cost about $3 million - but there’s another reason we need guns that I won’t get into).

Even with this gun control system, we have school shootings. We still have gangs, murders, etc.

All of this stuff is on the rise, actually. Heavily on the rise. Does gun control stop the flow of illegal guns? Does the gang schmuck in Toronto who killed 3 people last week go into the government office to register his guns?

Listen, give me a fucking break. Guns in the hands of normal, responsible citizens is not a problem. I have five rifles sitting downstairs (locked up) right now. I’ve never shot anyone. I don’t intend on doing so, but I also like the idea of a population not being totally defenseless. Call me a fucking nutter.

But above all, fuck off with using tragedies for your own political purposes. I realize it’s somewhat natural, and it’s just going to happen… but for fuck sakes, give it a few days you god damn vultures.

I’m not saying I didn’t have a good time. I did. But when we made the trip up to Ottawa on Wednesday to see the Penguins get whalloped, I had little idea as to the limits of humanity’s raging stupidity.

Now, really - aside from the game. The was one thing. I can go on about this or that, how the Penguins started slow and I could have put on skates and went out there to show them up, the shitty calls that put the game out of reach or the make up calls after it was already over… but this post is, sadly, about the people at the arena.

I had a good time with my dad, I don’t regret going. I don’t even regret the spending of about $500. It was an experience. Something to do. And it was with my father, which makes it all worth it.

But listen, people. Just listen very carefully.

Sports is just sports. It is not life and death. It’s not necessary to, as a sixty year old man, be standing up and screaming death threats at the referees every time a penalty is called. It’s just for fun. Yes I realize that it can be exciting, but in the end it’s called a game for a reason. Because it’s a game. It’s fun.

On the other hand, don’t take fun too far. Getting piss drunk and screaming that you’ll show your “FUCKING TITS!!!!” if the camera guy a row over would just put the “COCKSUCKING CAMERA!!!!!” on you is a bit far. Flashing players in the penalty box - again, too far. Stripping half naked, painted in your team’s colours? Yeah, again.. just a little too far. Dressing up like a character from the movie 300 and acting like a fool? Heckling fans of the other team? See, again, all a bit too far.

Have fun. Have a drink. Hell, even I had an eight dollar beer. But please… don’t have ten. Especially if you’re a one hundred pound female.

But look. Aside from the rotund 4′5 girl sitting beside me who stunk and felt the need to both be eating stinky shit the entire time and have her legs spread parallel so that I had to not only turn my knees but learn over toward my dad because she was taking up a seat and a half… aside from the row of loudmouth drunks behind me… aside from the drunk sixty year old clown screaming death threats and talking shit to me (luckily I don’t make a habit of punching sixty year old men in the mouth at sporting events, or he might have needed some help from the referee he’d been screaming and spitting at all night), aside from the hecklers who yelled and booed at me for wearing a Pittsburgh jersey, aside from the clowns who really did think they were pretty cool for dressing up and painting themselves, and ASIDE from the fact that my team got their fucking asses handed to them in their first playoff game in about six years - I had a good time.

It was a fun experience.

I’d probably just make sure to get a private box next time, because people are fucking stupid.

Remember Fluffy The PK Chicken?

Yeah, this is 100x cooler.

My top score so far: 11459 on Chaos Shrine. This score will increase, due to desperate addiction.

I suppose at this point, my key demographic is myself. Sometimes I fret about writing (rambling) on topics like hockey, because I wonder if anyone reading this cares. Then I realized… I don’t care. That’s probably an entirely different post relating my goals for this blog and in essence, why it’s here. For now, let’s just leave it at “personal exercise”. Which seems to be why I do everything lately.

Being that I like hockey (I’m a rabid enthusiast, not a fan), this weekend has some special meaning. I suppose, namely the Toronto/Montreal game tonight. Due to Montreal’s second half collapse, and, well… Toronto’s general mediocrity… they’ll be battling tonight for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. That’s exciting. Two hockey mad cities will be paying attention. Tickets will be scalped for $1500 (and that’s the bad seats). Two storied franchises locked in a 60 minute battle for their playoff lives. One goes home, one continues into the post season victorious, millions of fans cheering them on.

And all that garbage.

See, even though there will be cars driving down every road in eastern Canada honking horns and sporting little team flags of the victor for the next week, I find it all quite anti-climactic. As exciting as this story seems, and you can be sure the Canadian media will spin this in that very exciting way - for me, it died Thursday night.

Two struggling teams, making a push. That’s nice, good for them. Really, that’s fantastic. But they have been absolute crap up until their pushes, which is why they’re fighting for the last playoff spot.

So last week, it was destined. These two teams would, possibly, eventually, come down to a crucial, do-or-die Saturday night game (Saturday night hockey being a CBC institution in Canada, an absolute event called Hockey Night in Canada or HNIC). These two teams even, the most storied of all Canadian franchises. Maybe of all hockey teams period, and it’d come down to the very last game of the season. Wow.

Except this:

On Thursday morning, everything had played out as was prognosticated by rabid fans everywhere. The teams were on a collision course. If they both won their games that night, they would meet on Saturday for a final showdown to make the playoffs. Exciting.

If one team lost and the other won, the winner would go on to hold the eighth and final playoff spot - the loser would go home. Both teams had to play hard.

Exciting.

Then, something very sad happening. Something that made my sack of care for this situation empty onto the street with a very loud clamour that sounded something along the lines of ohwowholyfuckidontcareanymorebangboom.

They both lost.

Not only did they both lose, they both lost pathetically. They both turned in bullshit, terrible efforts.

In a fashion very true to the pathetic, or at best ‘mediocre’ seasons they’ve both been having, they both lost.

But that, of course, means that they’re still tied in the points standings. And will still have their fairytale showdown on Saturday. Everyone is still all hyped up.

I’m not.

Why should I be?

With mediocre efforts and pathetic outcomes on both of their parts, they have turned a dramatic showdown into a yellowbellied consolation prize. One of those kids games where nobody finished, but they gave the prize to little timmy the handicapped kid because he wheeled his ass the furthest from the starting point, whereas everyone else just ADDed the fuck out somewhere else to flick boogers and sniff toaster ovens.

But they media will hype it up the same as if they were two weary warriors, coming off of huge wins to allow them this final chance at glory, you know. They need the ratings, the website hits, the ticket sales, etc. They want people buying things at the arena because of the desire to remember that they “were there” during this galactic showdown of two failed, mediocre teams in a battle to the finish (or something close to it) to see who is less of a fucking loser.

Yeah. I don’t buy it.

On a side note, I purchased tickets to game one of the Ottawa/Pittsburgh series (Hey, go Penguins) for myself and my father yesterday. Only, of course, to be scared shitless by the sad state of affairs that is the NHL once again. It seems that NBC would like to broadcast some of this series, and is picking up a couple of games (at least) to broadcast…

In the afternoon.

Now, I don’t know how many hockey fans will be reading this. But anyone that knows hockey, knows that afternoon games are the absolute cream of the crop when you’re trying to invoke a large yawnfest. Players don’t show up. The atmosphere isn’t there. It’s not the same thing. For my American friends, imagine starting a Baseball game at 8:30am. It’s just not the same thing, not by a long shot.

But it’s the time that, apparently, NBC likes to broadcast hockey games. You know, because everyone is at work, and they have to show “The Donald” telling someone that they’re fired at night time.

Well, maybe it’s time to parade Mr. Trump into the NHL offices for this disgrace of a sellout, only topped by the contract signed with OLN (oh, sorry, VERSUS) for the national television rights.

Mr. Bettman: You’re fired.

Alright, maybe not. But the cap system is a disgrace and has delivered on nothing it promised, the national TV ratings in the US are atrocious, attendance in many US markets are on the heavy decline (NYI had 14,000 Thursday night for a game against the Leafs, a must win game in their playoff push…), general popularity is in shambles compared to the 80’s and 90’s, salaries are again on the rise creating parity through nothing more than mediocrity, and so on.

Now you’re ruining what could have been an incredibly classic series between the best upstart since the Oilers dynasty of the early 80’s (not that they’re stay together and create the dynasty that they’re capable of, thanks our new and “improved” cap system) for the sake of nestling under the balls of NBC, so they can broadcast (very, very poorly I might add) a series nationally, that nobody will watch because they games they’re broadcasting will have start times of of 1pm and 3pm EST.

But, on the bright side, it looks like Ottawa will take home ice advantage tonight. If that’s the case, my precious game one tickets will be good for a 7 o’clock start, as usual. Beauty. If not…

Anyone want some Sens/Pens tickets?

Who wants ‘em who wants ‘em, great seats, $400 for the pair.

But no, my actual plan would be to buy tickets for a game five, six, or seven. Thus further supporting the current NHL management regime that keeps screwing this shit up.

And strangely enough, I’m looking forward to each and every minute of it.