Part of SpaceX’s popularity involves the fact that Elon Musk plans to establish a colony on Mars. That’s the grand vision for why SpaceX was founded - to be a space faring civilization.
That hasn’t deterred people from supporting SpaceX. In fact, it just makes people more devoted to it. As such, I think that mentioning that there’s a grander vision of an MMO emerging out of this (including a reference to the EXISTING FULL GALAXY technology). You can make it very clear that the MMO is not the promise, but that the success of I:B greatly increases the probability for an MMO.
And, mentioning the insanely awesome and already functioning galaxy generating engine with literally billions of systems gives a lot of credibility to the development, which increases trust in the use of money. This part can be mentioned in talking about Inovae Studios in general, so that it’s clear that it’s not a part of Battlescape so that there’s not even a slightly reasonable case to be made for misleading information.
An important part of marketting is clearly setting your product apart from the others. Preferably you should be creating a whole new category of product, because people only have room for up to 7 entries in any given category, and creating a new category prevents you from being drowned out by people offering similar looking products.
So if you push the (unrealistic) goal of an MMO, you’re making Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, Eve Online, and whatever other space MMO your direct competition. The comparisons between E:D and Star Citizen are already bad enough because you can fly your ship in space and look out through a glass cockpit.
Infinity should be distancing itself from the MMO thing as much as possible, and always pushing its differences from other games that look superficially similar.
Personally I think MMOs are far more trouble than they’re worth. They take too much time and commitment for players, and they really set in stone all decisions made by the devs by vastly increasing the cost of iteration. Eve Online for example, a few years ago the devs thought it’d be cool to have titans and supercarriers, thinking that due to their cost, there would never be more than 3 in the game. But they were wrong and now there are thousands of them, and its pure cancer. The devs can’t just wipe the Eve Online universe and start again because they made a retarded decision, so they have to eat it and try to mitigate it some other way.
But with a non-persistent world, or with limited persistence, server wipes and fresh starts are all part of the game. The devs can actually experiment, iterate, and build a FUN game rather than spending all of their time putting out fires caused by the last load of features that were introduced…
The galaxy engine could easily be a part of the “wow factor” of the developer skills without saying that it’s intended to eventually be an MMO.
As for competition with Star Citizen, ED, and everything else: I think that Infinity has the best skeleton of all of the competition. Star Citizen would already be way better if it was just being built into a upgraded version of Infinity’s engine (i.e. millions of dollars and thousands of man hours to vastly increase variety) with everything else that it already has going for it.
I think a flaw in your reasoning is trying to compare the difficulty, impact, and grandeur when making the comparison between colonizing Mars and making an MMO. SpaceX’s popularity doesn’t come soley from it’s goal to colonize mars but the fact that it’s pushing innovation in an industry that has long been stagnant.
The launch industry was expensive and uninspiring to many. We had gone to the moon and then created rockets that launched to LEO for astronomical costs. The most frustrating part was that these are the most complex machines on(and off) Earth and no one’s working to make them better. There is no view of Sci-Fi or pushing towards the future. It’s just was just another revenue stream for a few companies. SpaceX is popular because they are pushing that bar. They are making spaceflight cheaper. They are making it cool again. Have you seen the mockups of Dragon 2? It looks straight out of the future yet it’s here today.
The reason why SpaceX exists is because they want to go to Mars, but what they do today is what makes them awesome. For the same reason, TQFE is why Inovae exists but they need to differentiate themselves and focus on what makes them awesome today. They need some basis to standon. Additionally, marketing TQFE in the KS means that they have to deliver TQFE with KS funds which is very illogical/impractical.
Although I understand the economic realities behind the decision to go for I:B before I:TQFE, for me the dream game is still the MMO and will always be so. If I knew for certain the MMO would never happen, no matter how successful I:B was, I would probably not invest emotionally nor financially to I:B (at least not as much as now). Yes it has the cinematic fighting and the seamless planetary landings we all love. But it still lacks half the pie. A full, living, breathing galaxy!
I still dream of the 400 billion star systems to explore. I still dream of flying between the clouds of gas giants and dodging lighting while trying to fend off an enemy fighter. I still dream about exploring the unknown reaches of the galaxy tens of thousands of light years away from the nearest outpost of civilization. I still dream about giant wars spanning not just entire solar systems but entire regions of the galaxy in strategically important areas not too far away from the Core to be hard to supply but not too close to be under the control of the 3 great factions.
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So by all means distance yourselves from the MMO in your marketing if that is needed at the moment, but please keep the original vision of the MMO alive and close to your hearts. That’s where you came from. No matter how popular the format chosen for I:B will become.
[quote=“LucasFIN, post:7, topic:1233”]
I still dream about giant wars spanning not just entire solar systems but entire regions of the galaxy in strategically important areas not too far away from the Core to be hard to supply but not too close to be under the control of the 3 great factions.[/quote]
I did that in Eve. Fountain War, battle of 6VDT. Its not as much fun as you’d think it would be, especially if all of your shit is timed for AUTZ and you have to set your alarm clock to make it to any battles.
In any case if an MMO does come after I:B, it will hopefully be a good game because I:B will have given the devs a chance to experiment, rather than just making a bunch of random assumptions and then building a big world on top of it.
Agree 2000%. I never got involved in sov warfare because of its implementation. I preferred that 5-15 man small gang fights that were really interesting and tense instead of the lagfests. I have no issues with Inovae going for a test run and getting the mechanics correct before releasing changes as an untameable kraken.
I think Inovae have been making the right decision by focusing on the much smaller scope of Battlescape.
Not only will that be much easier to fund, it will also no doubt give them invaluable experience which will help them with the grander vision.
So no, it should not be in any way a part of KS at this point.
If anything I would want them to wait a while after KS before they decide how to move forward, so they can get a good idea about what works and what does not.
I understand the reasons behind the decision.
Agree with it.
But i too do this for the MMO… and if that means I-Novae has to make IB first then by all means i will help it how i can.
I can wait… just hope i will be alive when it happens
I’m not suggesting that the MMO be a part of the kickstarter in that the funding from it goes to the MMO.
I mean that the eventual vision of an MMO as part of the history of Battlescape’s development should be mentioned somewhere on the page, in text, as should the galaxy engine. Mainly the galaxy engine because that’s one of the sweetest pieces of software I’ve ever seen.
For Infinity: Battlescape they are talking about one or two hundred players on a server. That’s highly multiplayer but not sure that it qualifies as massively multiplayer. Normally what you’d think of as an MMO would allow for thousands of players online at any one time. Battlescape is more of a typical arena game that happens to support a large amount of players.
I don’t think the number matters that much. I think the title MMO suggests that it’s a game that is played in an open world with other people, with objectives that happen in the open world. It’s also continuous.
So, MMO could really just be renamed Open World Multiplayer Game, OWMG. I think “massively” as an adjective also refers more to the type of interaction. That is, massively means that most of your interactions are with other players, and that you’re always or almost always in a state of being in a multiplayer mode.
It’s not hard to imagine some indie MMO that only has 100-200 players all on one server. Like, if WoW had 200 people playing total, it would still be classified as an MMO.
For an arena, that’s already a pretty big number. Always locate: having 200 players on a server is not the same as 200 in an arena. There are other games that have a lot of players but mostly see them in instancied towns or havens.
I mostly agree with @Alkan2: the number is only one side of an MMO, interaction between them being another.
Even if hundreds for a single Battlescape turns out to be wrong. 50 players on each… say… 20 battlescapes adds up to a 1000 players.
Here is the one thing that is entirely clear. Battlescape is not the MMORPG. The MMO part is still part of the scope. just not as persistent as other MMOGs.
