The Green Monster

Curt Schilling's MMOG startup venture is attracting a great deal of attention (e.g., see 1., 2.), less for its proposition than for its messenger.  Over the years Curt has built a considerable reputation in the off-season as a dedicated online game player and ferocious advocate of MMOGs to the mainstream.  From my perspective, as significant are his contributions to a declining board wargame culture (Advanced Squad Leader):  it is hard to dress this up as fashionable.  I guess it must be passion.

Most of us would probably agree that this will be a "tough row to hoe."   There must be far easier (less risky) ways to earn a return on investment than launching an MMOG. 

As for the messenger, successful or not, a benefit of diversity can be subtle: more people involved in the same activity can drive folks to consider a broader range of views.  Or at least drive everyone to explain themselves more thoroughly.

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Green Monster Games.  P.S. for those of you unfamiliar with Boston, consider this other Green Monster.

Comments

[ContentKing]

1.

Desperately trying to fathom the objective of this post. Is it an observation that MMOGs are hard to make? Is it an observation that people with the means will nearly always follow their passions, for better or worse? Is it perhaps just an attempt to get me to write a post?

I sentence you to write this 100 times:

"I will not waste 1,106 bytes of drive space on pointless posts."

[Ryan Shwayder]

2.

After seeing Curt's passion and dedication (and hearing his philosophy), and seeing who else was willing to join, I decided I had to be part of GMG. I'll admit I was skeptical at first as well, but this is the genuine article.

[Mikyo]

3.

http://www.aut.edu/english_prog.htm offers some fine remedial english courses.

[nate combs]

4.

ContentKing>
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I'm sure there will be more "pointy" things to write about in the future as this effort develops and facts about it are published. Consider this as an FYI with a few teasers thrown in to think about. A mash-up of Red Sox, MMORPG, and ASL is too good to not at least introduce here :)

I think it is important to avoid straying into a lot of detailed speculation with these sorts of topics. If that means we lose a few folks along the way, as far as I'm concerned, so be it.

[magicback (Frank)]

5.

Hmm, the objective sounds simple to determine:

Curt Schilling's new MMO is attracting more attention because of Curt's fame and background. Aa a result of his involvement and attention, more diversity and better cultural understanding of the industry.

[magicback (Frank)]

6.

OOps, Nate beat me to my comment.

Note to self: blog software needs good abstract or tagline tools. Look into microformatting structures.

Frank

[ContentKing]

7.

Nate >

I can't agree with that. If you're going to lose readers, lose them because you irritated them or repeatedly made statements that they could not stomach. Do not lose readers because the content was so lacking that they decided to wander off and not return....

... I've returned for a second round. Next time, tell us what you really think. Thanks much.

PS to any who doubt GMG: Ryan Shwayder is a straight shooting guy and if he says GMG has magic, then it most certainly does.

[Arnold Hendrick]

8.

The game industry is littered with great intentions that ran up against thorny problems involved in actually assembling the software into something that works. I sincerely hope that they concentrate as much on the technicalities of making code work and smoothing art production paths as they do spending time and money on great visions. The GMG team might be well served by simply buying an existing MMORPG dev studio and layering their creative vision on top. Of course, such business practicalities are really want Terra Novans want to talk about. :)

[nate combs]

9.

Arnold>

Hi Arnold, feel free to submit an article on this.

While in this case there seems at this time to be a lack of hard information on the "business practicalities" of GMG, a discussion of the cautionary experience of the industry would be very worthwhile.