Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Blaugust Day 4: Dev's Avoiding the term MMO

I was scrolling through my favorite MMO news site, Massively Overpowered, when I came across this story about Dev’s avoid using the term MMO. This actually made me angry.

Angry Dorkus
Tyrannodorkus Angy!

The MMO genre is one of the best in the video game industry, to me. It encapsulates so many mechanics that single player games would be paralyzed trying to add to their game, and they allow for so many players that cooperative and competitive games can’t match. This genre is huge in ideas and abilities.

Now with developers actively avoiding the use of the term MMO to describe their game, I get angry because developers and companies for years have been flooding the market with clones and unfinished dung and now that they made that term unwelcomed they won’t even credit it. So now they decided to continue making the same old same old, and insulting us by trying to say they aren’t. It’s infuriating.

I love this genre and it deserves a lot better. I will continue calling these games how I see it and won’t let these dev’s try to pee on me and call it rain.

You can find more about Blaugust at the 2015 Blaugust Initiative Page.

6 comments:

  1. Lol what a load of rubbish. Honestly if they start treating the term in some negative way, I want nothing to do with it. What new idiocy is this?

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  2. Pardo is making his case for being a moron AGAIN this year just like he did last year. Clearly, Destiny is an MMO-lite at best. I'd call it a lobby shooter with RPG elements. His statement was basically backwards.

    The trouble with the term MMO is not that it's been used to describe the games we traditionally know as MMOs, but that many developers have used the term to describe games that aren't MMOs, like World of Tanks or various MOBAs. That makes consumers skeptical as to what an MMO really is, or if you're just using the term to sell something, fully knowing it's not what you say it is.

    Unfortunately in the business world it's all about the green, and some people stoop low and do whatever it takes to get that green, regardless of if it's the truth or not.

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    1. You're right that the term is used on non-MMO games, wish that would stop.

      I agree about Pardo. He wasn't the only one though that tried to stay away from the term. If I remember, ESO tried to stay away from the term too at one point.

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  3. I don't think there is such a thing as a MMO genre anymore. It's just a kind of game which relies mostly on online connectivity and online communities to keep it going. Regular content additions are included too. I'd avoid the term if only so I don't confuse my customers with what I am not (a true, full-form MMORPG), but I wouldn't be opposed to throwing it around as short-hand for what my game is (online-only or online-first with other players and some degree of persistency over time).

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    1. My view of an MMO is kind of vague, but it does describe what I believe to be MMOs. A game world where thousands of people can come together in the same game at the same time and be in the same space for a majority of the game space. That last part can be kind of hard due to server technology bottlenecks, but the coding could allow it in all the games I consider to be an MMO. EQ, GW2, SWTOR, STO to name a few. I leave the RPG off because that's just another describer. We could have MMORTS or MMOHorror.
      Some of these devs avoid the term because their data tells them to. Probably the same data that got them to this point in the first place.

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