He seems like the politician who broke every promise he made and then continues to ask for votes proposing the exact same thing all over again without even admitting any fault. That quote speaks aloud about how Mark Jacobs perceives what he does and himself. 95% of Jacobs attention goes into flattering himself in seemingly indirect ways, and wishful thinking. And if he fails he already has the words ready to continue praise himself about his courage, about making a MMO when it’s not a secure business practice and so on. It’s just about a childish behavior of someone who paints himself into that mythical and praiseworthy figure of the man who defies everything with his courage and ambition. “We’re ready to take chance with design” means absolutely nothing and makes no difference between them and everyone else.
Empty self-praise is the death of balanced judgement. You go nowhere with that because it’s entirely empty of ideas and motivations. It’s “feel good”, complacent type of speech. Does this quote tell anything about the game, or even suggesting a positive stance? The big problem with Mark Jacobs is the rhetoric. I’ll have to wait and see if DAOC2 sounds like it’s right for me, but I’m glad to see a studio talking about wanting to make a particular game, even if that’s a niche. I hope the MMO field invigorates itself by exploring different niches like that, it’s all just been so samey for almost a decade now. I can’t personally get into it, but for the people who love that game there’s really nothing else out there like it. By definition that doesn’t mean that they’re all going to be for me (a lot probably won’t), but it increases the chance of one of these games being right up my alley.ĮVE is a perfect example, it’s definitely not a game trying to (or expecting to) cater to everyone. I think the MMO field could use some niche products and diversification, even if that means they’re not quite so Massive. I mean, there’s no way you’re going to be running a team of 200+ people for a game you are expecting to have fewer subscribers than your previous one. The cost of doing a niche game is going to be that it can’t be as big or as broad in scope. I guess if they don’t have much PvE in the game that will result in some savings.Ībsolutely. I’m not sure how you scale down cost when your target is a reduced number of subscribers. The problem is that the art assets and other things they need to do to build an MMO may not be any cheaper to make than it would take to create those assets for a game with bigger ambitions. Up next: RvR, it’s just not for endgame anymore! What I want to do is take chances with this game that most, if not all, publishers wouldn’t want to take with it and that’s exactly what we are going to do. I could also go out and talk about how this game “Will revolutionize PvE!” and attract another group of players and investors (that whole mass market thing) but yet I choose to make an RvR-focused game that even if successful has no chance of threatening Dark Age of Camelot’s peak subs (250k), let alone something much larger like EQ1. I know it would be very easy just to go out and use buzzwords like “sandbox” lots and lots in describing this game to attract players and investors.
To say this game’s design will be fraught with risks is an understatement. To quote one of my favorite movies, “This is a revolution dammit! We are going to have to offend somebody.”
We are not afraid to take a stance on what we believe will make a great game even if it means angering (and losing) some potential customers. We will take chances with lots of aspects of this game. This is the wrong game, wrong genre, wrong developer and wrong time to be safe. Jacobs’ latest post: “Foundational Principle #1 – Be willing to take risks, even if fortune doesn’t always favor the bold”īeing safe is for tourists and for most casual games.