I recently came across the game Descent: Underground, which has a couple of similarities to where it looks like Ember is headed:
What's really interesting is a section they have on their forums, where players can volunteer to help work on the game.
There's also Tennogen for Warframe, where players can design skins and remodels of the classes, and if they're accepted, they can be sold through Steam, with the player-designers getting a cut of the profits.
I'm wondering if Ember could include something like this, to help get it produced without having to rely on investors, who ultimately have more interest in making a profit, than a great game.
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[edit] Using Unreal Engine instead of Offset allows this kind of support from players to happen, because it's so open that anyone can pick it up and create content for it, and in it.
I understand that Descent: Underground is even going back to the old system of letting players run their own servers with their own custom content, which is nice to see.
Since the rise of MMOs where everything has to be monolithic to keep the subscriptions or F2P cash shop under control to be profitable, and FPS games becoming franchises with yearly releases, that don't want a strong modding community for the previous version (as that would slow players uptake of CoD or Battlefield n+1), modding has become pretty much limited to single player games like Skyrim.
Personally I'd like to see a game that's an MMO, but also gives players the kind of input and freedom that we used to have back in the period between Doom and Battlefield 2142. That was the last game in the series EA allowed players to run their own real private servers (not just rented ones) with mods, because very few bought it thanks to the huge Battlefield 2 modding community, who added years to the lifetime of that game.
Ember wouldn't be the first MMO to do this, because it's already being done in Shards Online, which connects player's shards with portals, just like how Neverwinter Nights used to do it. Also, although it's not really an MMO, a similar system could probably be added to Minecraft, so long as linked servers were running the same mods, or there was a way to install missing ones on entering a portal.
A 'buy the box, then buy expansions' sales model would actually be a good way to allow this, and keep the game profitable, because you'd still need a centralised log-in system, where your expansion level would be tied to your account.
Keep the game fun, make its price reasonable, and give the players the freedom, and the tools to tune it as they please within the system, and you'll keep the numbers going off and making their own version outside the system to an absolute minimum. Nostalrius being a fine example of a group of players who could have been running a vanilla WoW server within Blizzard's subscription system, instead of 'illegally', if only they'd allowed the players to do that.
- Unreal Engine.
- Kickstarter.
- Small Team.
What's really interesting is a section they have on their forums, where players can volunteer to help work on the game.
There's also Tennogen for Warframe, where players can design skins and remodels of the classes, and if they're accepted, they can be sold through Steam, with the player-designers getting a cut of the profits.
I'm wondering if Ember could include something like this, to help get it produced without having to rely on investors, who ultimately have more interest in making a profit, than a great game.
-
[edit] Using Unreal Engine instead of Offset allows this kind of support from players to happen, because it's so open that anyone can pick it up and create content for it, and in it.
I understand that Descent: Underground is even going back to the old system of letting players run their own servers with their own custom content, which is nice to see.
Since the rise of MMOs where everything has to be monolithic to keep the subscriptions or F2P cash shop under control to be profitable, and FPS games becoming franchises with yearly releases, that don't want a strong modding community for the previous version (as that would slow players uptake of CoD or Battlefield n+1), modding has become pretty much limited to single player games like Skyrim.
Personally I'd like to see a game that's an MMO, but also gives players the kind of input and freedom that we used to have back in the period between Doom and Battlefield 2142. That was the last game in the series EA allowed players to run their own real private servers (not just rented ones) with mods, because very few bought it thanks to the huge Battlefield 2 modding community, who added years to the lifetime of that game.
Ember wouldn't be the first MMO to do this, because it's already being done in Shards Online, which connects player's shards with portals, just like how Neverwinter Nights used to do it. Also, although it's not really an MMO, a similar system could probably be added to Minecraft, so long as linked servers were running the same mods, or there was a way to install missing ones on entering a portal.
A 'buy the box, then buy expansions' sales model would actually be a good way to allow this, and keep the game profitable, because you'd still need a centralised log-in system, where your expansion level would be tied to your account.
Keep the game fun, make its price reasonable, and give the players the freedom, and the tools to tune it as they please within the system, and you'll keep the numbers going off and making their own version outside the system to an absolute minimum. Nostalrius being a fine example of a group of players who could have been running a vanilla WoW server within Blizzard's subscription system, instead of 'illegally', if only they'd allowed the players to do that.
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