Shattered Reality has released Kaos War, a multi-player game with absolute transparency and social network design functionality which allows the players – not a bunch of overpaid and overfed game designers – create future expansion packs and levels based on player requests.
Because of the low overhead, Shattered Realms can build multiple MMO games without much difficulty and build out the environments dynamically rather than building the entire thing – a la World of WarCraft – and releasing it. The game starts out small and players then request special features and maps as the game expands, ensuring that folks can always have something new and cool to play. The game starts out free and they will sell add-ons and new content on-line.
Don Dodge pointed out that it took Red Octane nine tries to create Guitar Hero and that this model, the process of incremental creation and multiple games launched at once, could speed up that process considerably.
Click here to watch the demo SRI gave when it launched at TechCrunch50.
Wow. MMO games at TC? Not fair! They have a CASH MARKET and a great strategy.
sounds interesting, but another kill-monsters-to-get-points game is the last thing we need. i hope it’s flexible enough to be used for something besides these type of games and do-nothing games like second life.
Excuse me?
“not a bunch of overpaid and overfed game designers”
Wow, I had no idea that game designers were a.) rich or b.) fat. Knowing a lot of game designers, from level and gameplay designers all the way up to creative directors, the one thing I’d use to describe them is “underpaid and underappreciated,” probably followed by “nomadic and unsteadily employed.”
Is that a TechCrunch editorialization or a statement from the Shattered Reality guys?
Finally, as player-designed worlds go, many MUDS had player-design capability and there’s something else out there now… don’t worry, it’ll come to me… user-generated content… user-generated levels and architecture…
OH, YEAH – Second Life.
So essentially Shattered Reality is hoping to make a MUD with porn avatars and bad music?
Revowutionawy!
Agreed 100%. The game industry has the highest staff turnover rate and staff burnout rate. They are underpaid, exploited because they love what they do…
As for Agile development… isn’t that the standard development model in every game studio now?
I agree involving the fans is a good idea… but that’s not such a new concept… it’s like beta testing with more input.
Agile/Scrum methodology in game dev is quickly becoming the standard, if not considered the standard already. Even last year’s GDC had an in-depth Agile presentation.
I agree 100% – where do the Shattered Realms guys come off saying something like that? And if it wasn’t them, where does John Biggs come off saying something like that?
One minute trying to navigate the website and I already couldn’t care less about the game. Horrible design and Flash everywhere. If they are going to out and try to steal players from WoW, then they really have to update the site.
Oh well, just my two cents..
Red Octane did not create Guitar Hero, they were the publisher. They were primarily a peripheral company beforehand.. Harmonix were the creators and developers, and spent many years and executed on a number of innovative music games before hitting it big. Harmonix were sold to MTV for ~$200M, even without the Guitar Hero IP, which justified the $100M paid by Activision for Red Octane.
If this is a jouranlistic error it should be corrected, but if it was the speaker it’s a fairly dire mistake.