Codemasters cancels Dragon Empires

Codemasters cancels Dragon Empires

So, Dragon Empires joins Mythica, True Fantasy Live Online, Ultima X Odyssey and Warhammer Online on the list of MMORPGs that never made it.

Another sad day for virtual worlds, definitely, but also a very sad day for me personally as both MMORPGs I've worked on have now been cancelled.

Dragon Empires cancellation comes as less of a shock than Warhammer's as it took far more risks. Focusing on a PvP game and trying to develop a new fantasy IP in a crowded market was always going to be hard, whereas bringing Games Workshop's much loved Warhammer world to life looked like a safe bet.

In both cases I can take solace in the knowledge that I held my end up. Neither Warhammer's server tech nor Dragon Empires design were cited as reasons for the cancellations, but I don't think the reasons given for project cancellations ever tell the full story or hint at the plethora of difficulties that must be overcome to launch an MMO.

It's going to take a while for this to sink in and I'm sure I'll have a roller coaster of emotions over the next few days, just as I did after Warhammer Online's cancellation. I'll comment in more depth in the days to come. In the mean time I'd just like to say thanks to all the people who made working on the 2 projects a huge amount of fun even when it was really tough.

I hope all of you won't lose heart and will join me in using the lessons we've learned from WHO and DE to make better virtual worlds in the future.

Comments

[Jon Rumion]

1.

I think we should try and convince them to release it open source now.

[Dave]

2.

Haha. The game was canned for techincal issues. You wouldnt want the source code

[Edward Castronova]

3.

There's a powerful difference between long-run and short-run horizons in this market. Short-run, there's more supply than demand. Long-run, I don't see an upper limit to the demand (talking in terms of decades here). I keep thinking we'll enter a pause state, halting all new development for a few years, but it hasn't started yet. Still many projects in the pipeline.

[Timothy Burke]

4.

I see two branches to the long-run. One is that this market just keeps shuffling around the same consumers and doesn't grow, that while videogames overall become a dominant mode of cultural production, persistent-world massively multiplayer games just become stagnant, with occasional shuffles of the deck chairs on the Titanic. To bee more like Edward's projection, the genre is going to have to make some more fundamental breakthroughs on a whole range of points, in any one of five or six directions. I don't think the limitless future is inevitable: I can easily see a future in which MMORPGs are like adventure games, a form which flourished and then mostly died.

[steve patterson]

5.

"Still many projects in the pipeline."

Is there a comprehensive list of all the biggies still in development? (over 30 developers, real budget, etc.)

Here's the ones I can think of, sorted from most to least likely to ship:
WoW
EQ2
Guild Wars
Vanguard: Saga of Bland names
MEO - middle earth online (third try's the charm!)
D&D online
Tabula Rasa (is it still alive?)
Auto Assault (I'm dubious)
Saga of Ryzom (Don't know anything about this one)
Wish (magic eight ball says signs point to 'no')

what did I miss?

[Karl Barrus]

6.

How about Matrix Online?

[Flatfingers]

7.

I see three branches on the MMOG evolutionary tree, similar to Tim's two but with a slightly different twist.

Down one branch, MMOGs survive ("linger" might be a better word for it) as a niche market for years. They don't die out, but they never really contribute genetically to more meaningful successors -- the VW equivalent of the platypus.

The second branch is the "breakthrough" game that the computer/console/internet-owning public jump on in the same way that my cats tell me that yes, they'd like some milk, please. I personally suspect that this breakthrough game will have to wait on two key technologies: Internet2 and "Microsoft Windows: The Game".

The idea that "big pipes will change everything" is an easy prediction. More interestingly, by the time I2 is widely deployed I think Microsoft will have embedded avatar-like properties into Windows. The user/machine and machine/internet distinctions will blur; you'll use the OS as your representation in all digital spaces. The result will be that the entire Windows-mediated world starts looking like a social sim, where if you have more specific interests (combat, racing, sex, etc.) they'll be developed as add-ons.

Just my guess, of course.

And on the third branch, MMOGs as we know them go extinct... only to rise again in a healthier form years later. AT&T had "picturephone" technology working 50 years ago, but no one wanted it. Only now, when cellphones have become ubiquitous and LCD technology has made it cheap to power viewscreens, has the picturephone found its proper time in history.

I suspect the third branch is the likeliest, at least over the short- to mid-term. But that's not necessarily a Bad Thing. Sometimes products have to go away until the world is ready for them -- trying to impose excessively anticipatory products on consumers by force or Marketing just puts a bad taste in the mouths of potential users. Trying to keep pushing The Big MMOG on a public that doesn't want it yet could spoil the industry for decades.

So a fallow period in MMOG development might actually be useful. To paraphrase slightly: "MMOGs are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our virtual lives are rounded with a sleep."

That doesn't make it go down any easier when it's OUR project that gets cancelled, of course.

[Jim Purbrick]

8.

I'd be very surprised if you saw any DE source released by Codemasters and I don't think it would do many people much good.

What I'd like to see is a full, honest gamasutra postmortem for the project, so as many people as possible can learn the lessons that Codemasters learned the hard way.

Unfortunately, the games industry likes talking about its few successes far more than its numerous failures, even when the lessons learned on failed projects are arguably more valuable.

I think the best we can hope for is that the people who worked on DE will take the lessons with them to future projects where the powers that be will listen to their voices of experience.

I think these cancellations mark the .bomb period for virtual world projects started to cash in on the success of EQ. Companies like Codemasters are learning that money doesn't grow on trees (again?) and that virtual worlds are hard to build.

However, like .coms I think we'll see a period of consolidation where companies who know what they're doing will build on their success. I wouldn't be surprised to see more cancellations of virtual worlds built by inexperienced developers at the same time as seeing new projects signed by the established players. I want to work on one of those.

[Brask Mumei]

9.

Flatfingers: Only now, when cellphones have become ubiquitous and LCD technology has made it cheap to power viewscreens, has the picturephone found its proper time in history.

I don't think the cell-phone with camera and picture sending capability is used in any way like the old Picture Phone. I don't know what the 50 year old picture phone technology looked like, but I'd suspect the designers expected people to use it to see a video feed of the person you are talking to.

Cell phones, on the other hand, are largely used to take pictures of the surroundings. As such, it is more the convenience of having camera-on-phone than any revolutionary step. (Much like a lot of people have given up on watches in exchange for the front panel of their cellphone, or the default screen on their PDA)

- Brask Mumei

[Tobold]

10.

"Still many projects in the pipeline."

Just a comment on Steves list of games in the pipeline: Saga of Ryzom is in the final open beta, and will be released on the 16th, so it should be a lot higher on the "likely to be shipped" list.

Unfortunately it is also quite high on the list of games "likely to disappear in a year or two". The open beta shows that the game still has a lot of issues, both technical and game play. The company Nevrax and the brand Ryzom are unknown. And it is quite likely that the near-simultaneous release of Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft in November will create a "giant sucking sound" that will leave many smaller games with a severly reduced player base.

[Matt Mihaly]

11.

Jim Purbrick wrote:
"What I'd like to see is a full, honest gamasutra postmortem for the project, so as many people as possible can learn the lessons that Codemasters learned the hard way."

Gamasutra post-mortems are nothing but exercises in white-washing the past. Nobody wants to burn the bridges that public finger pointing and actual honesty would burn.

--matt

[Erin Branch]

12.

[quote]Is there a comprehensive list of all the biggies still in development? (over 30 developers, real budget, etc.)

Here's the ones I can think of, sorted from most to least likely to ship:
WoW
EQ2
Guild Wars
Vanguard: Saga of Bland names
MEO - middle earth online (third try's the charm!)
D&D online
Tabula Rasa (is it still alive?)
Auto Assault (I'm dubious)
Saga of Ryzom (Don't know anything about this one)
Wish (magic eight ball says signs point to 'no')

what did I miss?[/quote]

Dark and Light - argueably the most innovative and promising virtual world being developed. They've got some amazing technology and developers backing this little known title up - set to release early next year. Look out for this one, it's going to be big in terms of bringing a change to the stale and insipid MMORPG genre.
Darkfall - might make it to release... but then again they have been stagnating along for awhile now.
Mourning - another iffy, but they just might have the guts to make it.

Saga of Ryzom - this one is actually scheduled to hit the store shelves on the 20th of this month. Whether it can get enough subscribers to last may be a different story, but it seems to be popular with the europeans so perhaps.

[Young Freud]

13.

Is it me or all these upcoming games steve listed and Erin amended, aren't these all fantasy genre games, save Auto Assault and maybe Saga of Ryzom (big iffy on that)? Could this also be the part of the problem, genre oversaturatization?

[XP]

14.

A few words about Ryzom since I've played the first open beta.

It's not exactly fantasy, though you get swords and spells. It's set in a very strange and peculiar universe, a living tree-planet.

There's a mix of Sci-Fi, post-apocalyptic references and fantasy. The universe has a very specific identity, at least in its graphic design.

SoR introduced a very interesting "brick" concept where you can build your actions and spells with bricks like "cost 8 mana" or "bleeding".

It's also supposed to have a kind of dynamic universe.

Unfortunately, the open beta just pointed out how little the game was ready for shipment. As a result, the beta went back to closed (I think there's a second Open right now) and the game postponed for 3 months.

I'm not even sure if the dynamic storyline will be there at launch. There are still a lot of gameplay issues.

I'd go (sadly) with the "will tank after release" evaluation.

DnL.. Yeah it's got a BIG world and a nice engine. Two points that have been illustrated in a number of screenshots.

It's also got a long list of promised features that sound like they could renew the genre.. If they go beyond the wishlist stage.

Supposedly, the developers use a specific development method that forbids explaining or showing anything more..
Sorry, but on the MMO scene, most often "features held secret till later" mean "not implemented at all".

My personal feeling on DnL is that it's well-meaning vaporware.

[Scott McMillin]

15.

I'll throw Pirates of the Burning Sea into the hat, as I am really looking forward to it. I hope it makes it:

http://www.burningsea.com/