What does the CXL news mean for us?
Thu, 01/28/2010 - 10:11
Well, to hardly anyone's surprise, the CXL Planet Offer was a flop... so what happens now? As far as our project is concerned there are some possible ramifications... but they really depend on what happpens with CXL. The wildcard here is that they're continuing the single player game as "CXL 2011"; honestly, that surprised me, I thought the end of the PO would spell bankruptcy for Monte Cristo (I guess it might still).
On the one hand, if MC can't recover financially, it will be a shame to see yet another failure in our favorite genre; but it will mean more people willing to consider new options like Metropolis.
On the other hand, they might succeed in coming through on the promises they made in the Cities Unlimited days and step into SC4's shoes; which would reduce the urgency for a project like this, but at least we'de have a good game to play; Even in that case, though, I still think the community / open-source model is a stronger one in the long-run, so we could concentrate on gathering support more gradually for a successor to CXL :)
What I really worry about (and what might be the most likely) is that CXL will limp along and get enough facelifts and add-ons to be just "good enough" for a majority of players; Not sophisticated enough to really satisfy fans, but not unacceptable enough that people are willing to turn to a more unconventional alternative (us).
Whatever happens, it will be interesting to see how the whole Cities XL saga turns out...
Sun, 01/31/2010 - 22:38
#1
I don't think the that the news necessarilly means much for the metropolis project. First of all, we are aiming for completely different release schedules, so at that time we are not really competitors, allthough Cities XL could be seen as some kind of benchmark.
We should also not look too closely at the cities xl failure. It was very predictable that this would happen already one year ago. They simply didn't have the technical and design skills to pull it off.
Their developement phase is also very, very slow, which indicates their team is very small at the moment. But they need very fast progress to get remaining players to continue support them, otherwise the playerbase will get so small that there's no way they can continue.
The MMO aspect can also not be taken as an example, since it was so poorly implmented. So MMO aspects for city building games cannot be completely burried. What we learned though is that the basic single player gameplay has to be absolutely right first.
Mon, 02/01/2010 - 13:49
#2
I guess my concern isn't so much with CXL as a competitor, per se; but the state of the genre as a whole is pretty important for us. The fact of the matter is, the situation for city builder games right now is uniquely favorable to something unconventional like this project succeeding: there are a substantial group of devoted fans who are completely underserved by the commercial market. That's a situation where people are willing to turn to a novel and untried alternative. I certainly wouldn't be trying to apply this method to, say, a WWII strategy game; even though it would work well in principle, you'd never attract enough interest becuse there are already loads of games on the market, some of them excellent.
Consider what would happen if, tomorrow, EA announced that they were releasing Sim City 5; I certainly wouldn't lose interest in this project, because I believe it will ultimately give us a better, more robust, more fun and more long-lasting game than even EA could. But a lot of people would, and trying to attract support would turn into a much tougher proposition. In short, it's much easier to sell people on the idea that this is our only alternative, not just a better one (although it is that.)
So, I think the sad state of city sims these days, while regrettable, is actually a golden opportunity for something much better to emerge; That's why, in some ways, I think it would actually be a shame for a really good commercial title to come along and dissipate the interest in an open source alternative. A lot of people are afraid that the failure of CXL has scared off commercial developers from the genre for good, but I'm actually more worried about the opposite.
Mon, 02/01/2010 - 17:07
#3
I can see what you mean: far more people adhere to EA's policy of product overload than should, though I think with the failure of Societies I doubt that EA will be focusing on Simcity in the near future (more likely more expansions for the Sims 3).
It will be interesting to see how Cities XL 2011 fares, though if it has the same problems as it did before it'll definately be another short-term nail in the proverbial commercial coffin.
On the flip side, I do like taking crazy chances, and I do believe that this project can work if we can get enough people behind it.
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 10:14
#4
Absolutely; I don't see any competition looming on the horizon from EA; In fact I heard somewhere that they recently laid off most of their staff from the Maxis division. Even if another studio started development tomorrow, that's still a window of years before any game would emerge.
That said, the one big advantage commercial studios have for the average player is instant gratification: you can pay for the game that already exists, and play it the same day; That's hard to compete with, even if you have a concept for something much better, when the player has to pay far in advance of actually being able to play. Gamers are not known for being a patient bunch :) But that's why we're in a really good position to get this project off the ground right now.