Was reading an interesting article today called “10 Games Businesses that are doomed”. Was an interesting read, and while I rarely re-post someone else’s post, I thought you might enjoy this.
CCP are the Icelandic developers of Eve Online, the mind-bogglingly intensive MMO set in space. It has committed fans, a strong revenue stream and has been running Eve successfully since 2003.
How can I possibly think the company is doomed?
Well, to be truthful, I don’t think it is. I think it has a perfectly good future as a lifestyle business (I don’t think it’s sellable – though that’s a topic for another post).
But Dust 514, on the other hand, there’s a product that’s doomed.
I used to be an investment banker and one of the first rules drummed into me was this: “If you are going to advise someone to make an acquisition, suggest buying a business they understand in a new country, or a new type of business in their own country: buying into a new sector in a new country is a recipe for disaster.”
The people at CCP are experts at building a free-form space game with a subscription model on the open architecture of the web.
Dust 514 is a first-person shooter.
On a console.
With a never-done before connection between a console world and a PC MMO.
It’s wildly ambitious but also, in my view, totally pointless. The integration between the console game and the PC-based MMO will be as unnecessary and expensive as the film maker in The Movies or the customisation features of APB.
It will be hugely difficult to implement, actually subtract from the gameplay experience and cause CCP endless headaches.
I was terrified when I saw the presentation of the game at a conference earlier this year. Every fibre of my being screams that CCP is over-reaching wildly.
I hope that I’m wrong.
Full article is HERE
ROC'S RAMBLINGS 
“I used to be an investment banker”
Don’t trust too much in what these guys have to say, they caused the current financial climate, so really, wtf do they know about buisness…
I’m personally excited for DUST 514, but I can appreciate his point of view from a business perspective. It really is an ambitious, never before attempted project, and really they have no control over its success. It’s entirely based upon the general public’s readiness for such a connection between PC and console, and if they release it before or after that state of readiness, it will fail.
Or perhaps it will be the game to set the new standard for immersive experiences between PC and console, as CCP hopes.
I hope so too.
He gets more credibility since he said “used to be”. The breed of moron that caused the financial crisis was from a small percent of people who made a series of amazingly bad decisions.
Not to mention his premise makes perfect sense to me, especially if you factor in that console players probably could care less about EVE, and EVE players are just going to be sad when random buildings explode.
That, or it will actually have fun gameplay, and major alliances will require their members to play Dust for 1-3 hours a day. Actually, that might even happen if it doesn’t have fun gameplay.
Somehow, the thought process as to the author’ reason why Dust 514 won’t work, seems eerily familiar to the reason why Fedex wouldn’t work either…
That being said, once Dust514 comes out.. I would be tempted to buy a Console system and the game.. especially if it turns out to be useful.
Dust514 will probably not be an epic flop.
I accepted that long ago – it is way too ambitious, it has too many variables, and several factors that say it’s got to fail. (Attention span of a console FPS player < 6 months – they want it to be persistant like EVE)
But there's a small chance that it will be the most ludicrously awesome thing ever done in a console FPS.
The concept gives me tingles – it's Tribes + EVE + Something Genuinely Innovative. It's never been done before.
And for that, you have to respect them.
That and hope that in spite of the odds against it, it somehow manages to do the improbable and be a long term success.
But CCP do appear to be partly on the right track for some of it, they seem to realise that long-tail means not aiming for opening day record breaking sales. If they follow the same continuous enhancement as EVE, it's just crazy enough that it just might work.
*Probably will be an epic flop, I meant.
I’m not sure with the attention span thing. CoD 4 still has a heathly player base on the Xbox 360. That’s what? Four years old. A lot of console players would still be playing Madden 07 if EA hadn’t switched the servers off.
One of the reason for console game churn is that its the only way for the manufacturers to generate new income. Release a new version of the same game to help keep the revenue stream up. DLC on the console does generate some income, but its not as much as new games.
I’d like to see Dust work. The idea is a good one. Its problem won’t be attention span though, it will be the connected nature of the play. Will there be an offline campaign? Something that people can do when not connected to New Eden. If not then it’ll be a very niche game.
well maybe the attention span to a normal FPS is 6 months. but i think that also dust will get 2 expansions per year (as eve does?) and also you can conquer the universe with your corp, helping eve corps and allies. does not everyone want to conquer the universe with a FPS 🙂 yes, it has not been done before, and i never played a more painful game than eve. eve is not a game but a “sweat it out contest”. nevertheless it has survived for a lot of years now. the only thing i hate ccp for (a bit) is fucking up with you guys from capsuleer. its a damn shame and you guys did so good work. pls give me capsuleer back. u guys rock!
i close with a saying that i invented: eve is “learning by dying”. :))