Perhaps this month has just been one of those months with rampant hypocrisy and pandering to the media for free press. Hearing EA’s latest CEO call for more innovation in the gaming industry was certainly a telling omen of more to come.
In a keynote speech at the Develop Conference in Brighton, UK Richard Garriot denounced the industry saying, “there are many things that have now become the standards and, although they’re great in ensuring people become obsessed with the games, they’re not the right way to go for the future.”
Although MMOs have been around for 10 years, we’ve barely become competent in story telling. Basically missions are just a case of going somewhere and killing someone. You don’t know why you’re doing it and you can pretty much skip all the text.
Leaked beta reports about Richard Garriots own MMORPG Tabula Rasa claim that not more than your first hour into the game you’ll encounter the same collect 10 or kill 5 mission gameplay he chides the MMO industry against. The missions featuring ethical decisions made in conflict with other NPC’s have also been said to be a extremely small part of the content and easily skipped through.
Garriott’s claim of Tabula Rasa, “starting from scratch to innovate in as many areas of game design as possible.” just doesn’t match up with what we’re hearing on his current MMORPG title.
Rather than using standard respawning as a gameplay mechanic Garriot went on to explain, “everyone is involved in this kind of intergalactic war. When a control point is taken, then all the shops in that area go offline, for example. The world is different.” How does Tabula Rasa handle respawns? Drop ships fly over beaming down fresh troops which appear instantly.
It’s hard to not respect the man for what he’s accomplished, especially the release of Ultima Online back in 1997 as a MMORPG pioneer, but 2 months shy of 10 years since your last serious defining contribution to the MMO space? You can’t fool your fellow developers, nor the MMO gamers that have been part of this game genre since UO and EQ for nearly 10 years.
This market desperately needs innovation, but the next time an industry icon wants to make the call to action, all we ask is he takes care of his own game first and forgoes plugging it over 20 times during the speech as an “example” to the rest of the industry.
As my favorite movie quote goes, “Either you’re slingin’ crack-rock, or you’ve got a wicked jump-shot. Nobody wants to work for it anymore.”
I’m afraid the MMO industry right now is still all about the easy money slingin’ the WoW crack-rock. -DR
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