Basically though, that was what my brief Horizons experience was like, and since then I've done my utmost to ignore its plague like existence. That all said, the copious amounts of free booze basically erroded my will, until I finally wandered over with Onyxraven, to see Horizons being plugged by none other than David Bowman himself.
I doubt the name means anything to you, but he has worked on several MMOGs including, drumroll please, the one, the only, Asheron's Call 2. Another red headed bastard child of the industry that would've been better for both mankind and history, in my opinion, if they were viciously aborted sometime around when they started, you know, sucking. Hardcore.
David Bowman is an interesting guy, not too tall, lanky, glasses, kind of nerdy, but in some bizarre way, charismatic. Yeah, it's like nerd charisma. I don't know how that works. It's a pheremone or something. Either way, he's just a hard guy not to like and a hard guy not to get excited about whatever he's hyping.
Really. I'll admit my dirty secret. I didn't tell anybody, but last year, at E3, I thought Horizons looked pretty damn cool. Yeah, I was sold.
Then I played the game. Then my brain oozed out my ears. Then I fell to my knees, covered myself in soot, wailed and gnashed my teeth at the inhumanity of it all. No Bowman, I don't like your game.
So this time, I stumbled over to him and I gracefully slurred something along the lines of: "Looksh yoush, yer game sucksh"
"Have you played it recently?"
"Nosh"
"You've got to try it again man, it's great now."
"Nosh"
"No really. It's great now."
And this was repeated many times. I said it sucked. He rebutted with, "not anymore".
This is just something I don't get. Why do MMOG developers always tell me to try their games again? I don't want to try your game again. I wanted it to be fun when I first played it. Please, really, sincerely, take your game and get bent. Releasing crap and patching in fun shouldn't be a justification for your game not sucking when it was originally released.
I know you guys know this, but I felt it needed to be said.
So then I asked about how many subscribers Horizons had, and we got into more industry related talk. He said "Oh, we can't tell you how many subscribers we have" (which I expected) but then went on to say they've sold over 50,000 boxes. Uh. Okay. Sure Bowman. And I'm the Duke of Borneo. Heh. Borneo.
Actually, I can believe it's sold 50,000 boxes, I hear religious groups are burning it in effigy by the semi full. Subscribers though? He wouldn't tell me how many they have, and I think it's because they only have two, one of who which is a monkey who was accidentally sent a Visa, and now spends his time trying to figure out how to cancel his Horizons account.
I queried on how many subscribers he would like Horizons to see. He said 300 Million Gillion. A million gillion. Wow. This is another pet peeve of mine and it's going to be a pet peeve of mine the entire conference. I talk to MMOG devs. I ask what sub numbers they're shooting for. They say a trillion.
Hey. Know what? I know you did estimates. You had to have. Nobody would let you make an MMOG if you didn't. Why not say then: "realistically we're shooting towards 100k to be a success, anything else is just bonus". That's something that would tell me a lot more about your game and your game plan than telling me: "as many as possible".
What was interesting though, is we talked briefly about the future of the industry, and he said the future of the industry is in companies offering a slew of titles under one subscription. Ala, SOE All Access Pass. What scares me about this, is I think it means Bowman may have another game in mind using the MMOG tools they developed for Horizons.
I wonder if they have a Sign Tool where they can imprint any object with:
SUCKS -------->
All I know is that somebody needs to stop this man. For the children. I still like him, I just think he needs to be forcfully removed from MMOGs, as his track record currently isn't that good (though he was involved with Asheron's Call 1 which was successful). Either way, at least I found some brief redemption in getting to tell somebody who actually made the game in question, that it was less fun than sticking needles through my tongue.
And my Warhammer Online interview was interesting, so when I get a chance I'll be writing about that next. Back into the fray. I've got Sigil coming up, Saga of Ryzom, and still want to hit up the NCSoft and Blizzard booth today. Oh and I got to see the MMMOG Mu. Yes. Mu. They claim to have 40 million subscribers. Hilarity ensued. More on that later.