It's a known but little-remarked fact that most multi-player worlds eventually spawn rogue versions. While this was very common in the early days of MUDs (see Bartle's book, chapter 1), it may be surprising to learn that one of the current crop of pay-for-play graphical worlds, Ultima Online, apparently has over 300 rogue copies in existence. That factoid has emerged in the course of a debate about a recently-launched rogue shard that implements a four-year-old rule-set (basically, full nonconsensual PvP), and is free to play. Unlike many other emulators, this shard has rapidly grown, and now has over 8,000 accounts and 1,200 simultaneous users, numbers that compare favorably to UO's official servers.
For more, see this thread on the UO official forums, and this interview with the rogue shard's designer.
Questions for Terra Novans: Once again, we appear to have a behavior that is forbidden by the EULA yet tolerated by the company. And this one, unlike eBaying, quite clearly represents a threat to the profitability of the entire official service. Is server emulation as hard to control as eBaying? If so, why don't people emulate EverQuest and Sims Online? Or do they? I'm guessing that the answer is: it's not the server software, dummy. It's the customer service. You can't emulate that; but, with full-on PvP, you can effectively obviate the need for it.
I'm 98% positive there are Everquest emulators out there. I think the big problem with Everquest emulators is that the game being fun is hugely dependant on a fair playing field. The ability to manipulate that at all from a third party that isn't Sony, ruins the fun for a lot of players. Also ontop of that is the fact that Player vs Player is always unique. It has always been considered a form of self perpetuating content. While I think old Everquest players are extremely nostalgic, they have no desire to go back and kill Nagafen for the first time again.
Posted by: Ian 'anyuzer' Reid | Jan 13, 2004 at 00:51
I am wondering if there isn't more things that game companies could do to capture these opportunities.
It's a fairly well known fact that anytime the developers 're-balance' the world, part of the world loves it and a good number hate it. It's probably the ones that hate it that are going out and setting up a good number of these emulators.
But, I am still wondering, whats to stop a UO from 'balancing' most servers and keeping a few the same. They already have transfer services, and it might be a good way to measure the popularity of a 're-balance' to see how many players prefer the old set of rules.
Frankly, I think it would be interesting to be able to go back and see what the early versions of a game looked like. Granted this becomes a customer service nightmare on scale with trying to support 6 versions of windows, but I think there can be limitations set on what the company supports and doesn't support.
Most PC strategy games have 10-20 different levelers you can adjust to change game play and half the fun is playing and re-playing the same game under a new set of rules. So is there any reason this can't be done with a MMORPG?
-Bruce
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Jan 13, 2004 at 01:36
UO emulation has been around almost as long as the game itself. First there were only FUSE and UOX, but now there's a zillion flavors; it's almost like MUD, even for how short the comparative time span is.
There is an EQ emulator, it's called EthernalQuest. I don't know of any public servers using it, though.
http://www.hackersquest.org/
Azaroth isn't the first person to run a successful emulator UO shard, either. Jeff Freeman, known as Dundee, ran Ackadia, and rode its success right into a job as a content designer on SWG.
Given that Az is now with WTFMan, it's worth pointing out that he has the support of Greybeard, who ran one himself several years ago. I don't doubt Az's designs for IPY were more refined, but 'beard has some stability that Az doesn't.
Given the difficulty of just getting a MMOG functional, I doubt too many development teams or publishers are going to want to work towards creating a toolset that other people are going to run themselves -- the money's to be made in monthly service fees, not box copies. Besides, that market's being much better served with mod-able RPGs like NWN (though Morrowind and Dungeon Siege fit more or less into the same category.)
If there was a way to let certain player groups dictate separate rulesets on official game servers, it might be an option, but unfortunately we have to live in the real world, where people creative and committed enough to implement and run a MUD-like world are few.
Posted by: J. | Jan 13, 2004 at 02:55
J. > There is an EQ emulator, it's called EthernalQuest. I don't know of any public servers using it, though.
Pardon my n00bness, but by referring to the absence of a public server you're implying that there's a private one, i.e., a group of players who have grabbed the EQ software, reverse-engineered it, and now run a version of EQ as a kind of private club. Is that right?
From where I sit, this is yet another one of those eye-opening moments that the community of virtual world users keeps providing. On one level, I am thinking: "reverse engineering for private use. Of course that would happen, of course." On another, though, I never did think it would be that easy or so common. But of course - it will be more and more common, won't it.
And that says something about the future of this technology. Uncontrollable.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Jan 13, 2004 at 03:49
Edward Castronova>From where I sit, this is yet another one of those eye-opening moments that the community of virtual world users keeps providing
Want to run your own private copy of EQ? The instructions for installing EQemu are at http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9648 . Caveat: I haven't tried these, so have no idea if they work or not.
For more general information about emulators, check out http://www.smithysanvil.com/ . It's a site devoted to emulators of virtual worlds, and includes links to emulators for UO, EQ, AC and DAOC.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Jan 13, 2004 at 04:18
Given the nature of the MMOG beast, however, half the puzzle is already solved -- anyone can get the client and data files to go with it, so all that's needed is to pay attention to how it talks to the server.
Reverse engineering is behind half the innovations in open source software. Find something that works, copy it, and make it better. :) It's also how many good game programmers learn the trade.
Posted by: J. | Jan 13, 2004 at 05:24
Hmm. This might tend to get a bit ranty. You've been warned.
One of the wonderful legacies of 3DO running Meridian 59 that we've had to deal with is the fact that they at one time left a fully functioning copy of the server on an anonymous FTP server. Yeah, they're stupid. Oh, and out of business (not a coincidence). Anyway, to make a long story short there's a fully working, albeit outdated, version of the server out there that people can download. The server compresses quite small and runs on very modest hardware.
Of course, this isn't quite the same as a server that's been reverse engineered, but I can speak with some authority on the topic.
Now, I think rogue server operators are by and large the scum of the earth. People who run rogue servers of live games do horrific damage to industry, regardless of intentions. People who run rogue servers of an small, independently developed game should be euthanized. With multiple bullets in the town square. Er, anyway, where was I?
Oh, yeah. On an intellectual level, the problem with rogue servers is that it encourages the field to stagnate. It's like the old "stock MUD" problem that was lamented about a decade ago; without any creativity and without new ideas, nothing moves forward. The time and effort put into reverse engineering a server for a particular client could have been poured into creating a new game server with new ideas. "Rogue" servers also encourage a mindset of clinging to the old ways instead of looking at new possibilities. People able to play a "pre-Ren" UO freeshard are less likely to try out an indie PvP game; it's not just a question of quality of experience, but that the former UO players have a lot invested in their UO knowledge. A game trying to fill the void that the "old skool" UO players demand has to compete against someone using a familiar system with a client they didn't have to pour resources into doing it all for free. Not exactly encouraging to those of us hoping to make a living doing this.
When it comes down to it, a large number of people running a "rogue" server are doing it for the power. It's the same thing we saw in text MUD repeatedly: vocal subgroup of a MUD decided the admins were idiots and decided to run their own game. Sometimes this venture was successful, often it ended in failure as that vocal subgroup either fell apart, got bored with the effort required, or turned into the bastard admins they hated so much in order to run the game effectively.
Unfortunately, this is nothing but trouble for emulated servers. One reason why companies don't give much attention to emulated servers is because they implode quickly. Without the financial checks-and-balances that commercial games have, you start seeing widespread problems. The freeshard in question, IPY, had it's share of soap opera theatrics: One admin got busted for creating gold to sell to players. Another took some lumps for creating a character with high abilities instead of creating it, etc. Eventually human nature takes its toll. People realize why "real" servers cost a monthly fee (especially the admins who realize what a truly thankless task running a game is) and usually quit playing (or running) the "rogue" servers soon after.
Bruce Boston wrote, "But, I am still wondering, whats to stop a UO from 'balancing' most servers and keeping a few the same."
They don't relish fragmenting the userbase, perhaps? What if you hate the new changes but the rest of your guild wants to play with the new changes? Splitting off from your guild makes you more likely to quit the game. Being forced to play the new rules with your guild keeps you in that social fabric. There's other reasons as well.
Edward Castronova wrote, "And that says something about the future of this technology. Uncontrollable."
Wrong. Near Death Studios, Inc. is a small scale company with lawyers on retainer; we have no problem getting sites shut down that deal with "rogue" versions of our game. Give me the resources of an international company like Sony with money to hire someone to worry about this full-time and an on-staff legal team, and I can make all sorts of stuff go away. It's a cost-benefit issue for the large companies, and the rogue server admins do a good enough job of imploding that they really don't need to worry about it that much.
J. wrote, "Reverse engineering is behind half the innovations in open source software. Find something that works, copy it, and make it better. :) It's also how many good game programmers learn the trade."
Actually, the desire to make better software in a collaborative environment is the main drive of open source software. Reverse engineering is often required to get your new software cooperating with the big-name commercial software. People are trying to decipher the file format of .doc files in order to let their open source word processor work with the most commonly used word processor files.
As for learning the trade you could do just as well learning the telnet protocol and working with text MUDs. No, the people that deal with "rogue" servers, particularly those that run them, are doing it for the power and the ease of having a lot of the "hard" stuff done for you. If people were really interested in learning the trade, they'd make their own server so that they could show their independent work on a project. Anyone bragging about running a "rogue" server is going to get the cold shoulder from me when it comes to hiring; anyone bragging about making their own game is going to get their resume put on the top of the stack.
My thoughts,
Posted by: Brian 'Psychochild' Green | Jan 13, 2004 at 07:10
From the social network point of view, communities tend to split off into different groups until they meet a level of equilibrium size. This happens to LARPs (and paper rules are much easier to emulate). Rogue servers are also evidence of this.
From an opportunity POV, it appears that there is a demand that is not served. I think Bruce Boston suggested elsewhere that different types of servers be set up to satisfy certain needs. But in this thread, he only suggest this.
But Brain is right in that they are doing it for power or "self determination" when it comes to separatist governments :)
Ugh, either you go with the NWN model or protect your IP heavily by any legal means.
Frank
Posted by: magicback | Jan 13, 2004 at 10:09
No doubt about the UO emulation market - www.gamesites200.com/ultimaonline The beforementioned Ackadia can also be found here.
Posted by: A Yaxe | Jan 13, 2004 at 11:14
A Yaxe beat me to it.
Rogue game sites
This site has a lot of fan sites for certain games, but if you click into the UO area, it is basically a ranking of all the free shards out there. DAoC has some free shards listed there as well. In terms of UO, all sorts of different types of emulators are out there. Sphere is the type of emulator that I've been playing on a lot, and I've also messed around with some UO post servers as well. I've been meaning to try and setup a UO server just to mess around with it personally, but...time time time, I just don't have enough of it.
This idea of an early UO emulator, like right when it first came out, is exciting. I got into this game when it first came out, and that was the most exciting time I've every had in any game. No matter where you turned, there was danger lurking in every corner. Mostly this was PKs, but you would run into the occasional demon or dragon in the middle of the woods. Combine the power of these creatures with the lag back then, you'd end up dead real quick ;)
I haven't seen any evidence of this yet, but I have a feeling Origin/EA is monitoring some of these popular free UO shards. These developers are coming up with some fantastic ideas and implementing them on the free shards, and I bet some of these ideas make their way into the official servers (after taking some lumps on free shards, then being re-programmed for official shards by professional developers).
Shameless Plug: I play on the Oblivion shard Oblivion which has a large race system, special abilities per race, new artifacts and rares that don't exist in official UO, and all sorts of other interesting things.
Posted by: Bart | Jan 13, 2004 at 11:46
One of the UO rogues at the site Yaxe and Bart gave advertises itself as "Largest in Latvia." That says something about how widespread this activity is, and also a hint about where it might be located geographically. That's meaningful in itself.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Jan 13, 2004 at 12:08
The rogue EQ thing is quite interesting. The handful of people I know who have played on them were old-time players who had left the game and came back when the rogue server option presented itself (which is another interesting thread - how you learn about these kinds of things and the way word of mouth can play a role). I found it interesting when they said that what they liked best about the rogue server was how it felt more like the "old days" - more playfulness, less loot-greed/camping, no painfully long queues to get items, etc etc. It was as if the rogue server became a way to reconnect with a game they had truly enjoyed. The other interesting angle of course is these were people who had left the game and came back when there was a non-subscription option. Which makes me want to ask this: could a game like EQ go even further in providing people multiple ways to play (and generate profit for themselves). Server licensing, exploration modes (I know there are some zones I will absolutely never see, but I can tell you that even now I'd probably pay a bit to get access to wander around them), etc.
One other thing I want to pick up on though, Brian wrote "Without the financial checks-and-balances that commercial games have, you start seeing widespread problems." I'm not so sure it's that clear cut. Communities can certainly self-regulate (though it looks quite a bit more messy than other scenarios) and commercial worlds have their share of problems and drama (both in-game and company-wide), sometimes fatal. Of course, in both cases one of the questions is how long we expect worlds to stay alive for. I'm sure most of us know the experience of ghost town MUD worlds, shells of vibrant communities long since past. This never worried me all that much, as long as new ones were popping up. Is the death of a world just a part of its lifecycle and what does that mean now that we seem to be in The Commercial Era ;)
Posted by: T.L. | Jan 13, 2004 at 12:49
"If there was a way to let certain player groups dictate separate rulesets on official game servers, it might be an option, but unfortunately we have to live in the real world, where people creative and committed enough to implement and run a MUD-like world are few."
But as the open-source movement has proven, there are plenty of creative and committed people willing to do it for free. Thus things like rogue servers. Edward was right when he said the technology was uncontrollable. For all of the RIAA's grandstanding and legal action, mp3 filesharing still thrives, because the community is decentralized and the implementation is always one step ahead of the legal and technical ability to restrict.
Back in the heyday of the original Quake, the thing that kept the community running for years was the private aspect of servers. Each server had different gameplay rules, physical laws, custom maps, etc, and even given the simplistic nature of the game, it never really got old--and Id software made huge profits without supporting any of their 'worlds' directly. Which is partly why I think that this statement:
"People who run rogue servers of live games do horrific damage to industry, regardless of intentions."
is premised on assumptions that may not survive the next few years. The service model of revenue (monthly fees) is the industry favorite for MMOGs, but who's to say that market forces won't dictate a new industry model where the game company doesn't directly run any servers? Charge a flat fee for the client software, and the same for the server software. Accept that both forms will be pirated, and only support those who are paid and registered. Communities will govern and support themselves (perhaps even charging a smaller administrative fee of their own), and like RL vary in stability, security and such.
From my admittedly ill-informed viewpoint, the pay-to-play model was developed by IBM long ago for OS/400 and recently expanded by MS and other application developers. Game designers have been the latest to hop on the bandwagon for a model that wasn't developed in the consumer's interest, and there's no reason to assume the market will bear that model indefinitely.
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Jan 13, 2004 at 13:19
I think we're missing an important point about independant servers: Many, or most of the players *still* subscribe to the game.
The trick is that these independant servers will have players who are active, and must support recent versions of the client. These versions can only be (legally) obtained by subscribing to your service.
In this case, you have people working for free, causing some of the people paying you to use less of your hardware and customer service capacity.
Not a bad deal, and legal action against people illegaly distributing your copywritten code is far less of PR-suicide than suing people who have donated their time and money in what is effectively a giant piece of fan work for your game.
Posted by: Kevin Klinemeier | Jan 13, 2004 at 13:59
"I think we're missing an important point about independant servers: Many, or most of the players *still* subscribe to the game."
And most people rented their telephones from AT&T when that was the only legal option :) Now they pay a flat fee, and get a much wider selection of models. Car makers don't try to maintain a proprietary nationwide road system for only their models--driving environments are managed locally, and not everyone who drives on local roads pays for them. It might make sense for everyone involved to separate control of the (software) device from the (server) environment.
We don't quite have the infrastructure for this to be easy yet, but clock cycles and bandwidth are becoming cheaper, and before long it should be practical to maintain hardware that can run a couple thousand simultaneous players, as an out-of-pocket personal expense. We shouldn't forget that giving your software away for free and charging for ongoing use was a major component of the dot-com bust...and I hate to see people defending it on principle when other possibilities are knocking...
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Jan 13, 2004 at 15:26
"But as the open-source movement has proven, there are plenty of creative and committed people willing to do it for free. Thus things like rogue servers. Edward was right when he said the technology was uncontrollable. For all of the RIAA's grandstanding and legal action, mp3 filesharing still thrives, because the community is decentralized and the implementation is always one step ahead of the legal and technical ability to restrict."
Yeah, but I was talking about the (un)willingness of publishers who fund the creation of MMOGs to base a business plan on the efforts of "fans" to modify their game.
Not saying there might have been a growth potential back in the time when UO started and/or when the emulators first appeared, but like many things in early UO, lots of stuff took for granted. Now like every other MMOG in existence, the business rests upon customer retention and constant redevelopment and redefinition of the official game-worlds.
Posted by: J. | Jan 13, 2004 at 15:38
"before long it should be practical to maintain hardware that can run a couple thousand simultaneous players, as an out-of-pocket personal expense"
I'll be suprised if this is the case for a modern VW in the next decade. Let me be clear: I'm defining 'modern' *not* as what we have now, but as whatever players expect at any particular time.
For example, it's true that current personal systems right now are capable of running very large MUDs, but I wouldn't say that's where the market is.
Future games will involve more physics simulation, more dynamic environments, fluids, state changes, etc. As we talk about greater immersion and reality, what we're also talking about is moving from a simulated environment to a modeled one. There's a lot of processing that can't be done right now on a dozens-of-players scale. (deformation, fluids, elastic materials, particles, erosion, state changes...)
My main point, though, was that when you own the copyright to the client, rogue servers aren't necessarily competition. This doesn't compare to phones and roads, because owning the client means defining the protocol.
You *do* define a proprietary roadway, and proprietary phone lines. And, you've already got thousands of people signed up to use them. Now some other people are providing services for those clients which can only come from you. I'm not saying that action is big enough to support your entire business model (nobody's writing just clients), but it doesn't hurt your subscription based system. They're still *your* subscribers.
You're right that it should be possible for some kind of "general" client to be written, but I think things are going to be too optimized and game-specific for that for quite some time.
Also, roadways and phone lines (your examples) are both either built or regulated by the government. Market forces don't often create open standards, sadly (see instant messaging), so when it does happen, I think it's pretty likely that it is the open source community that writes it. Then we're all selling services and artwork.
Posted by: Kevin Klinemeier | Jan 13, 2004 at 18:03
So-called "rogue servers" are usually known only by the players for whom they were intended; i.e., the hardcore. As marketing experts remind us every so often, the largest growth market for any game is the complete newbie.
Awkward fact: Early efforts to run "emu shards" for UO attracted far too many people who got banned from "real" UO for exploiting to bring much success. Those who run these servers have to work that much harder to maintain a healthy community. Getting banned from a free server is less of a risk if you didn't have to pay for it, especially if you think it's more fun to break the rules than to play by them.
So I basically agree with Klinemeier. :)
Posted by: J. | Jan 13, 2004 at 19:51
“Rogues” essentially forces VW devs to move from a proprietary business model towards a more open model.
Another developing movement spotted by Edward is for enthusiasts who are unable to afford the monthly subscriptions (mostly in developing nations) to create free shards for themselves else they have to work on VW farms to pay for the privilege.
The more entrepreneurial of them will reverse engineer and even develop better versions, not to “steal” money from the original developers, but to give them the opportunity to enjoy a new technology while staying within their means.
Frank
Posted by: magicback | Jan 13, 2004 at 21:38
So here's a question, is there a new MMORPG business model here?
In the business world one of my favorite business models is Franchising. Someone goes out and figures out how to create a business, and sells the business to would be local business owners.
Given that game companies are often complaining of escalating customer service costs, would they be better off selling bulk licenses to would be MMORPG operators?
So, Game Maker X knows that they could sell 50k copies to people living in France for an average of $75 upfront and $15/mo. But, they have to pay the manufacturing/distribution channel 70% of the $75, and bandwidth/live customer service costs, etc, run the service $10/mo. So what if they just sold 50k licenses to some company in France for $25/each plus $7 a month. At some point, its got to be cheaper for smaller groups to run the actual local deployment of these games.
Maybe for $25 a month a local player could get a subscription to EQ, Sims and Horizons, from your local MMORPG host, as customer service and bandwidth costs don't go up linearly as you add more games to a subscribers list of choices.
I think this could add to the community aspect of these games as well. As it would be easier to keep friends that were locally based. But, now this is sounding very close to the business model of a LAN club.
While I understand that this might make it easier to switch games, I think in a market that is expected to be a bloated over the next few years, a few of the smaller MMORPGs could certainly raise their spot on the value scale up to where they could collectively compete with the 2-4 games that are going to capture the majority of the market.
But, back to the question, is there a new business model here?
-Bruce
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Jan 13, 2004 at 23:33
Rogue servers don't force a damned thing. They aren't profitable yet, and they serve a segment of the gaming population that wouldn't play the official servers anyway. It might suggest new opportunities for future projects, but no one's going to muck with UO's profit stream on the success of IPY.
Never assume that MMOG players are all addicts who MUST play SOMETHING. If they aren't having fun, most will not play at all.
Posted by: J. | Jan 14, 2004 at 00:24
"So, Game Maker X knows that they could sell 50k copies to people living in France for an average of $75 upfront and $15/mo."
The sad corrolary of that is we start dicing up the VW market into real world geographical regions. The person buying the franchise for France will want guarantees that:
1) No other franchises will be set up in France
2) France based players can't play on other franchise servers.
In todays globalizing society, it is always depressing to see the drive towards such artificial segmentation. If I happen to live in France for a year, I shouldn't be unable to play Game X with my friends from my former location.
You can point out that quite a few MMORPGs have already got away with this sort of segmenting, and for largely the reasons you have given. However, industry has also gotten away with Region coded DVDs.
Now, the REAL form of franchising that would be powerful is if I could get a franchise license of UO to run a globally available shard with its own specific ruleset. The right way to dice VW is not on geographical boundaries (which is the very thing many of us hope VWs start to erase!) but on content boundaries.
- Brask Mumei
Posted by: Brask Mumei | Jan 14, 2004 at 10:52
Rogue servers, much like many macroing tools, I feel are just filling a nitch that the industry hasn't taken too seriously yet. Neverwinter Nights was in the right direction but still didn't go the full distance. The main idea? Allow players host thier own small limited lisenced servers to do their own things.
Players do come back to play live servers and in many cases, the rogue server players maintain a live account because the large live servers tend to have so much more to offer in general.
Why isn't the time invested in creating new content intead? Such as their own game? The first and perhaps the biggest answer to all of this I say is Art/Animation/Model content. You can get 4-5 programmers to spend countless free hours to hack away and reverse enginner a project till they can use the resources it hides to their full extent. It's nearly impossable to even get 1 artist to spend anytime, specialy when your trying to persuade them to do it for FREE, on a project. Some do, but if you look at a great number of the small free open source gameing projects, you'll see most of them have very low quality art resources.
Players see the clients as just a bucket of resources they can use to make whatever it is they want. Specialy with the Ultima Online client that was so well made that it allowed for instant on the fly rendering of custom menus and dialog boxes without patching the software. Players then learned how to modify the map data, and insert their own artwork into the game as well. In the end, UO became the most popular often because it was the most flexable to work with. With rogue server developers often remakeing the game completely in new ways such as adding hard classes, completely diffrent skills and stats, and new spell systems.
And perhaps in a very twisted sence of the term, they do it for the love of the game. If anything, I would think a smart developer would see this as more of a large market to fill then a bane of any new project comeing to existance.
Tony
Posted by: Tony Hoyt | Jan 14, 2004 at 12:25
Brask,
Part of the reason for regional or national servers is language. But an even more important part is law. For example the EU has much stronger protections on personal data than the US so some companies run seperate servers for EU customers that are compliant with EU privacy protection laws.
I agree with you that content boundaries are a better way to split of VWs but they operate in a world with legal boundaries and the companies that provide them have to cope with this.
Posted by: Tom Hunter | Jan 14, 2004 at 12:53
Brask> Now, the REAL form of franchising that would be powerful is if I could get a franchise license of UO to run a globally available shard with its own specific ruleset. The right way to dice VW is not on geographical boundaries (which is the very thing many of us hope VWs start to erase!) but on content boundaries.
Ok, works for me.
So this begs the question, would 'open market preferred' be one of those specific 'rulesets'? Would there be value in selling an IGE 50k-100k licenses to set-up and run an 'open market' version of UO, EQ, or SWG?
I can't imagine what exclusive rights to 'open market preferred' would go for, but I'd love to get in on that action.
-Bruce
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Jan 14, 2004 at 13:11
Whoops, 'action' should be 'auction', but I guess that works too.
-Bruce
Posted by: Bruce Boston | Jan 14, 2004 at 13:13
[Regarding 'game' worlds in particular, rather than 'social' worlds] This direction of discussion seems to raise the question: would most players prefer to play on a huge central server with thousands of others, or would they be happier to play in a gameworld just as geographically expansive, but finely detailed to their personal preferences, with a few dozen other players they knew relatively well? The technical means exists for either. The high-population world can't be easily subdivided for small groups, but the low-pop worlds could be connected, or clustered around some sort of central/common server area. Greg Egan's Permutation City and Diaspora come to mind.
Some MMOGs let you buy a house, which you can customize and restrict access to...why not expand that house into an entire world, and let those worlds be connected via the "ether". It's not something that we have appropriate code for yet, but if the economies of scale that are current MMOGs follow the trend of history, it wont be long before worlds are cheap and easily maintained. At which point business models that offer only a single world option aren't going to prosper. Maybe the franchise idea could work, or you'd need to pay your monthly fee to EtherCo. for a connection to the other worlds.
In the other direction...Tom: FFXI shows that ignoring the traditional language and jurisdictional concerns is no barrier to a highly successful VW. For the lawyers out there--is there any reason why a US game company would have to forbid EU gamers from their site? I know the EU likes to pass laws demanding that other soverign states comply, but without any enforcement mechanism (and rightly so), is this worth more than passing consideration? I see that France is about to pass a law which "will oblige service providers to filter net traffic for illegal content, with criminal sanctions for companies that fail to block pedophile images, material excusing crimes against humanity and incitement to racial hatred." [http://www.computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/C1F6A082562EB682CC256E160006A48E?OpenDocument] Aside from the the fact that this is technically infeasible, how can French gamers hope to play on worldwide servers under such law?
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Jan 14, 2004 at 13:24
Euphrosyne> For the lawyers out there--is there any reason why a US game company would have to forbid EU gamers from their site?
If you look at most games' EULA/ToS, the agreement explicitly states something along the lines of "The individual must be a resident of the United States" and/or "Any local rules apply."
Just as an example, here's part of Sony Online Entertainment's (SOE's) Terms of Service for using The Station. (Note that The Station is their portal for all their online games.)
/BEGIN SOE ToS QUOTATION
13. Jurisdictional Issues
This site is controlled and operated by SOE from its offices within the State of California, United States of America. SOE makes no representation that materials in this site are appropriate or available for use in other locations. Those who choose to access The Station from other locations do so on their own initiative and are responsible for compliance with local laws, if and to the extent local laws are applicable. Software from The Station is further subject to United States export controls. No software from The Station may be downloaded or otherwise exported or re-exported (i) into (or to a national or resident of) Cuba, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Iran, Syria, or any other country to which the U.S. has embargoed goods; or (ii) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Commerce Department's Table of Deny Orders. By downloading or using the Software, you represent and warrant that you are not located in, under the control of, or a national or resident of any such country or on any such list.
/END SOE ToS QUOTATION
Now imagine that the proposed French law you mention takes effect, thus imputing liability to an ISP. Sony's ToS probably wouldn't help them much in that case because the onus of compliance is on them (the ISP) if they are found to be subject to the jurisdictional purview of France. Thus, assuming they are subject to French law, the best (most efficient) way for Sony to protect itself would be to explicitly forbid French citizens from playing its games.
Thus, while a game company may not "have" to restrict access based on a user's RW location, it may be in their best interest to do so. (Plus it explicitly sets out the country or countries' laws with which the game is assumed to be in accord.)
Second Life comes to mind here because I remember reading back with the release of v. 1.2 or thereabouts that Canadians could now legally play SL. (That Linden Labs had amended SL's ToS to explicitly allow U.S. AND Canadian citizens to play SL.) Unfortunately, this being my computer at work and an unfriendly one at that, I am unable to find the revised clause in SL's ToS without installing the Flash 6 plugin (which I fear might make this thing explode or function poorer than it already does).
Posted by: Alan Stern | Jan 14, 2004 at 14:06
I Imagine most game companies have standard liability-limiting language in the TOS, but specific to the France question, SOE isn't an ISP. But if the French government requires French ISPs, under threat of criminal punishment, to censor the forbidden topics, in all online forums--how could any game world survive? As soon as one avatar, say, "incites racial hatred", the ISP will have no choice but to block the entire game server from all French customers. It's not like blocking a web page. Now, obviously, this is not a workable proposition, so I'm not too concerned with it. More likely it will be selectively enforced as is politically convenient.
The other issue: even if SOE were liable under French law, or would be liable if they were a French company, does SOE in CA have anything to fear from another country's government? They can't be sued afaik, so why is it in a company's (eg SL) best interests to exclude foreign players? (The counterexample being Square and FFXI)
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Jan 14, 2004 at 14:42
Why couldn't SOE be considered an ISP? Depends on how they define the term. If they wanted to, they could include online service providers (such as SOE). You're right though, enforcement alone makes this a ridiculous legislative proposal.
The question of "can they be sued in France" equates to "is SOE subject to French jurisdiction." The answer could be yes, depending on circumstances. This goes back to the usual internet jurisdiction question and I think SOE, if it has any assets in France, would be subject to French law. Relevant case law on this would be the Yahoo! case(s) involving the auctioning of Nazi paraphenalia. A French court's judgment was entered against Yahoo! but not enforced by a U.S. District Court (N.D.Cal). The district court cited a number of concerns including (but not limited to) the First Amendment rights of Yahoo!, the provisional nature of the French judgment (it could be appealed) and the optional nature (in that case at least) of a U.S. court enforcing a foreign judgment.
Personally, I don't know enough about the enforcement of foreign law in the U.S. to give a definite answer. However, I do know that an ounce of prevention can save numerous headaches. By excluding French players, the game company wouldn't even have to bother spending time or money (read: their lawyers' time and fees) on the problem. It's a preventative measure designed to reduce their liability and help avoid potential lawsuits and related expenses. Lawyers love those kinds of clauses since, if they are appropriately structured etc., they will have a blanket effect of (hopefully) ultimately reducing expenses.
Looking at the Yahoo! case mentioned above, regardless of whether the French judgment is enforceable against Yahoo! in the U.S., just think of the time and money expended by Yahoo! in reaching that conclusion. What if instead they had disallowed French citizens access by way of a clause in their user agreement? If that were enough for the French court, Yahoo!'s expenditures would have been significantly less.
Posted by: Alan Stern | Jan 14, 2004 at 15:30
Euphrosyne, I think SOE as a whole (not just in CA) has a good reason to fear violating the laws in France. SOE is a part of Sony, and Sony does a lot of business in France (I would imagine) that isn't related to Everquest.
Also, for our current crop of games, a major part of distribution and mindset is initial and ongoing storefront box releases of the game and its expasions. If you can't sell the boxes in the stores, it makes it more difficult to enter that market.
Posted by: Kevin Klinemeier | Jan 14, 2004 at 16:10
Thanks for the legal illumination. By ISP in this case, and in general, I understand a provider of the data connection to the Internet, not a provider of content.
"What if instead [Yahoo] had disallowed French citizens access by way of a clause in their user agreement? If that were enough for the French court, Yahoo!'s expenditures would have been significantly less."
I would think that the reason why Yahoo didn't do something of the sort when they had the chance would be loss of hypothetical advertising revenue--likely a fair counterbalance to potential lawsuit expenses.
Kevin, the problem as I see it is this: SOE can create a clause disallowing players from France, but they can't really enforce it. The French government then realizes that French citizens are playing a game in violation of an unrelated French law. Obviously, Sony can't be liable for players who violate the TOS, other than removing their accounts--but compiling a full list is impossible. France presumably forsees this impasse and moves to make French ISPs criminally liable for foreign content: in effect, putting the impossible enforcenment burden of online censorship (which the government realizes it cannot manage) onto private business (or are all ISPs in France perhaps state-run?). This still leaves SOE with no incentive to enact French policies on US servers, and it leaves French ISPs with no choice but to cut large holes out of the Internet. The losers are the "good" content that is cut out with the bad. I'm just pointing out that such a policy effectively makes online gaming impossible in France, because even if SOE had a French server following French laws, if there was one offensive player in a game world, it is still the ISPs responsibility to curtail that content--ie, the entire game world.
Making medium providers responsible for content is just a really bad idea.
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Jan 14, 2004 at 16:49
Two things SOE could do to further comply with that law: Not sell their product in France and not create a French-language version of the product. RW actions that would help to better effectuate a RW law that unrealistically intrudes into VWs.
Another semi-related case is the recent RIAA decision by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. (RIAA v. Verizon) The court stated that Sec. 512(h) of the DMCA does not authorize issuance of a subpoena to an ISP acting solely as a conduit for communications, the content of which is determined by others. (This is part of the DMCA subpoena provisions.) Translation: If an ISP only provides access to the net and doesn't retain control of the content users provide (i.e. via P2P), one cannot use the subpoena provision of the DMCA to obtain information about the ISP's subscribers. (Take that, RIAA!!!)
Note that SOE's games are easily distinguishable since the core gaming info resides on a central server, explicitly within the control of SOE.
Posted by: Alan Stern | Jan 15, 2004 at 09:20
Of note on this story specifically, apparently OSI approached the admin of In Por Ylem (the rogue UO shard being talked about in this article) and basically revealed that they were going to make their own version and offered the admin a chance to evangelize for it - something he had been doing for years already, but of course, no one wants to work for the Man. (If you can handle the angst involved, there's a loooong diatribe about this up on http://www.wtfman.com/).
The interesting part is that OSI recognized from a very popular rogue shard that there was a gameplay segment they were missing and could easily satisfy. I'm not sure I like this personally (I tend to agree with Brian Green on the whole please-don't-steal-from-me thing) but it is pretty interesting.
Posted by: Scott Jennings | Jan 15, 2004 at 09:37
Kevin wrote: I think we're missing an important point about independant servers: Many, or most of the players *still* subscribe to the game.
I'm not so sure this is the case. I know it's not the case for me personally, and it's not the case for a lot of people that play on the some of the other 'rogue' servers I've played on (UO). The reason I started messing with these servers is because they are free. I still enjoyed the public servers when I played, but I didn't play enough to justify spending $$$ anymore. Depending on my schedule, I may only log in once or twice a month to refresh things. To me, that's not worth the $$$.
Now on the free servers, if I don't have time to play for 6 weeks, it's no big deal. I'm not paying to play, so it's no skin off my back.
Posted by: Bart | Jan 15, 2004 at 11:53
"Two things SOE could do to further comply with that law: ... and not create a French-language version of the product. "
Yes... Because we know that all french-speakers are in France, and all of France are french-speakers?
Anyways, the whole discussion of the potential legal liabilities of not prohibitting out of country players is missing the point. The real reason for most of the segregation I've seen is to respect the empires set up by the real world publishers. It's like arguing that DVD region coding resulted from a need to ensure european censors could rate & control their local movies.
- Brask Mumei
Posted by: Brask Mumei | Jan 15, 2004 at 13:54
Scott, I think you are giving Azaroth a little too much credit. While I suspect some conversation occurred between Azaroth and somebody who works for OSI, I pretty sure that person was probably not speaking as any official representative of OSI. What likely occurred was Azaroth and one or two of the old school PvP crowd at OSI ended up talking on ICQ/IRC and starting playing the game of “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” Azaroth in his vanity merely played it up to better secure his self appointed position of patron saint of old school UO.
I sincerely doubt that IPY taught OSI anything they didn’t already know. It has long been acknowledged at OSI that the hardcore old school PvP segment is being underserved. The Siege Perilous shard, factions, champion spawns, and the removal of stat loss were all attempts over time to try to reach that audience. The idea of a retro-shard has been around for years. The “success” of IPY is hardly so ground shaking as to effect design and development planning at OSI.
With respect to the whole regionalization issue, Shadowbane demonstrated another wrinkle. Wolfpack developed the game, but they got three separate companies to produce the game in the US, Asia, and Europe. Each producer would be in charge of the servers and for marketing and distributing the game in their assigned region. As a side effect of this arrangement, they made the rule that players that lived in a particular region would be forbidden from playing on another region’s servers. Part of the reasoning was that if a producer spent the cash to market and distribute the game to a region, then they should reap the benefit of any subscriptions from that region. The down side was that many of the guilds who planned on playing Shadowbane had memberships that spanned the three regions, which meant they would be unable to play together.
Gor'bladz
Posted by: George Short | Jan 16, 2004 at 12:59
Bruce Boston
> here's a question, is there a new MMORPG business model here?
> In the business world one of my favorite business models is Franchising.
>Someone goes out and figures out how to create a business, and sells the business to
> would be local business owners.
I think there are two relevant business models of this type: franchising and white labelling.
With franchising the brand is retained: KFC is KFC though an outlet is owned by a franchisee. The relationship with the KFC company tends to be a very tight one – there is all the branding stuff, the supply of materials etc. Most relevant here the brand is maintained so the franchising company has to spend money / hence get revenue to support, a level of QA that maintains its brand position. The successful franchisees are very good at this, the less successful ones, well we wown’t have heard of them as they will have gone under.
The while label model is one where a product sold to a company and they put their brand stamp on it. Often either the maker creates slight variations in the product for customers or they do it them selves. The relationship there after is a B2B one that the public are often un-aware of – do you know who actually makes your mobile phone or cable / pvr box ?
This second model might be a better one for MMO makes as it keeps the brand of the world separate – of course if all the in-game assets look pretty much the same, then there are issues. But this is less of a problem if we are looking at future business models – when on creates a white label product the design is based on being able to swap in and out bunches of things that each business customer might want changed.
Ren
Posted by: Ren | Jan 16, 2004 at 15:51
Oh, white labelling can also side step a number of trade mark issues.
Posted by: Ren | Jan 16, 2004 at 15:52
This isn't the same sort of 'rogue server' that meridian59 is dealing with: The server wasn't pirated or stolen from OSI. Eric Swanson wrote a scripted server (from scratch - not borrowing one single line of code from OSI), and I wrote scripts to implement the gameplay elements (in World of Dreams and Ackadia), most of which were quite a bit different than the game systems used by OSI (and again, not borrowing one single line of their code).
Side note: Eric Swanson also works for SOE now, on the planetSide team.
Raph has practically been a mentor to me via email, usenet and so on from the time I started on those emulators (while he was still at OSI, incidentally) 'til my office was right next to his.
I was able to do new and different (sometimes very good, sometimes very stupid) things on both shards and learn a lot about design and implementation. To compare this to just chucking-up a stock MUD or stealing server-code is really unfair, and grossly inaccurate.
I never had more than a couple hundred users (I think WoD is ~300 or so now, Ackadia is less), but even though that wasn't on the same scale as IPY, I think the same thing applies: Those people playing on that shard aren't going to go back to paying OSI and playing on OSI's servers even if IPY does get shut down. If the rules are different, then it isn't the same game, and they don't *want* to play that other game.
Posted by: Jeff Freeman | Jan 16, 2004 at 16:00
Open Source has already started to provide the tools needed for the type of franchising that has been mentioned here. CrystalSpace is an OSS game engine that is easily as good as the original EQ, and completely free to anyone who wants to use it or tweak it. At least one game, Planeshift, is already well advanced. Whether they can keep the game operational is another matter.
Cheap hardware, free game engines and OSS modeling/graphic tools are already available. Microsoft has made many mistakes, but at least they have enough awareness to realize that the rapid proliferation of free software (both free as in beer and free as in air) is a serious threat to their business model. VW companies might do well to open their eyes.
I am neither a programmer nor an artist. But even I, stricken with an almost complete lack of talent, was able to use the free tools and produce some bare bones game worlds. Someone who knew what they were doing and was motivated could easily produce a game that was at least as sophisticated as the early MMOGs. True, they would not be as pretty as modern games, but on the other hand they could be made free with unlimited options for customizing a game world.
Assume a game like Planeshift turns out to be technically acceptable. Then picture a local ISP, or a regional ISP for that matter, deciding to host a MMOG server as a service to their customers. Just as some of them host FPS servers now.
Free software. Free access because it is a fringe benefit from their ISP. Local control over content, since the ISP is going to be far more interested in making their local customers happy than maintaining uniformity with other servers. An online community of local people, who share the same language, and many of the same regionally based preferences (culture, politics, etc.). Size limits in accordance with local preferences, but in any case unlikely to become large enough to make it a management nightmare.
I haven't seen too many mainstream game developers take this growing threat seriously.
Given a scenario like that, I can see someone being willing to put up with inferior graphics.
Posted by: B. Smith | Jan 20, 2004 at 00:54
A quick mention here for a new column at Skotos by Noah Gibbs. Entitled "NeoArchaeology", it has "open source MUDs" as its brief. Its primary concerns are textual worlds, but hey, open source is open source...
http://www.skotos.net/articles/neo1.phtml
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Jan 20, 2004 at 03:05
As I mentioned earlier, I think we have the technical capacity today to create and run these free servers on a large scale. A major reason why there aren't currently any "big" free/open-source MMOGs is probably the organizational difficulty. But as technology continues to allow new and more efficient means of connection and organization, that obstacle will diminish, so I see open source MMOGs as a definite growth area.
Discussion of what the customer wants can sometimes miss important points; I'm personally more interested in what the player wants. A subtle distinction that our market-oriented discussions often miss.
Posted by: Euphrosyne | Jan 20, 2004 at 12:35
Bruce wrote:
"But, I am still wondering, whats to stop a UO from 'balancing' most servers and keeping a few the same. They already have transfer services, and it might be a good way to measure the popularity of a 're-balance' to see how many players prefer the old set of rules."
You'd have at least two sets of code, running on two different build paths. Have you any idea how difficult that is to test, deploy and maintain?
Posted by: Jessica Mulligan | Jan 23, 2004 at 13:33
At over $1 billion in revenue for MMOG's, the design problem is one of economics, but of the ability to incorporate good design ideas. Our economic model is to let a 1000 flowers bloom. When a particular part of the gaming community, hardcore pvp, leaves the mainstream for their own inhouse solutions, sooner rather than later designers will lure them back in with products better suited to that community's perceived needs.
Look, 2003 has been a stinky year for PvP'ers, various offerings bombing. So they temporarily leave and set up their own, so waht. A better economic model, which the above posters have discussed, is franchising the software to others who could then modify the core game to meet that customers need. Think of a game without ingame chat, and a 3rd party reworking their version of the game to add a chat channel; nbd.
Inevitably, in a battle that is a large part design ideas, game companies will figure a way to incorporate outside ideas into their product idea, like they do now in other media areas. Media companies don't write the books, play the music, mostly don't make the films (and have cost problems when they do), so why should they design the games? Game companies haven't figured out a good model yet, but they will.
Posted by: isia | Jan 30, 2004 at 11:23
i don't have comments
Posted by: george kizilis | May 05, 2004 at 04:06
Im Tryin To Figure Out How To Make These Free UO servers Fill me In Please I wanna make my own lil server..., Oh Ya And Can Others Access It?
Posted by: robin | May 23, 2004 at 13:59
In asia, DSL is 11M up/download, it's only $20-30 per month. I'm just hoping that SBC DSL will go for 3M download in near future
Posted by: Need Faster DSL | Jul 30, 2004 at 00:11
You know, I work as a programmer. I know the importance of making money with a game. But My God! It seems like every article discusses the importance of finances and such. Hey, I Like Games. UO signed away their rights and now there's free UO shards everywhere. Maybe they did it for free debugging purposes, or maybe they were just dumb. Or maybe, just maybe, they did it for the love of the game.
Too many people weasel their way into the world of production with dollar signs in their eyes, and that ruins alot of games, alot of technologies, and yes it leads to monopolization of things. Don't you love your product? Don't you love the quality of your craft? Or is it not about providing a quality product anymore? I salute UO for opening up their servers' rights. I salute UO for being the best darned gaming experience out there for over a decade. They paved the way with vision of great gameplay.
Posted by: tygrmouse 'the tightwad' | Oct 19, 2005 at 05:23
i cant get on the stupid game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: mather111777 | Nov 04, 2005 at 16:15
For a sweet EQ experience, check out Shards of Dalaya (google it) and be amazed. The server has it's share of bugs, and they took out the PoP books, bazaar and any PoK. Actually, they only support the original game, Velious and Kunark. Beyond that, you're without. Bards have been nerfed so they do not pull (it isn't that bad, trust me) and you don't lose xp when you die (you get an xp debt you must pay off, and that's easy to do). There is no monthly fee and they moderate quite often. If you think you can get on here and twink your character, you're wrong. You start out a n00b, you earn your keep as a n00b, and you enjoy the game for what it's worth to the SoD development team, not the lazy players surrounding you and them (and trust me, they know what they are doing; it isn't bad in any way). I love this as I don't have time to play but maybe twice a week, and I do it w/o having to pay for it. I gave up a Lvl 70 Clr for this, and I'm not regretting it in any way. You get what you pay for; if you want the uber things EQ has to over, stay on Sony's list; if you want to enjoy the game as a true role-player, join me on SoD and let's do some questing... forever.
Posted by: ForeverQuester | Jan 17, 2006 at 13:03