Post by Arne on Jul 22, 2011 16:14:53 GMT -5
Seems like they're trolling. Is that channel confirmed as official?
Had they been serious about fan contributions... well, running only 7 activities, providing no feedback during, picking a single winner from each, that seems more like token fan involvement to me.
Example of real fan involvement: Open dev rooms, make subforums, e.g. Reaverbots, Environments, Characters, B-plots, then ask for cool ideas/drawings (provide guidelines and requests). Comment in the threads, then have an inhouse artist refine and eventually 'lock' concepts (discourage further modification) for potential inclusion/modelling. Also make a public subforum for only inhouse devs, posting progress reports, screenshots, funny bugs, non-spoilers etc. I'm not saying this approach would have worked, but it would have been fan involvement and it would probably have excited a lot more people.
I think they just wanted more Hype. It failed because of language barriers, sparse progress reports (letting any hype subside), and no willingness to go beyond token fan involvement. The 3DS isn't doing very well either I hear. I think it's difficult to translate 10k+ forum accounts to future sales. Most games in progress don't even have people knowing about them up until they have sort of come together.
Edit: Though as a counter argument, look at the Diablo 3 forums. Big developer, aged series. Not sure if the devs post there, but looking at the post dates, the forums seem highly active. However, Diablo 2 is still played a lot, so maybe it's not a good analogy.
forums.battle.net/board.html?forumId=12007
I've already gotten several offers from people who want to work on MML3 projects. It's extremely difficult to make a game with that scope/quality, and I don't think anything but a few tech demos and half baked character tests will come from it. Won't stop me from occasionally working on my own though
(Inafune knew, lol)
Had they been serious about fan contributions... well, running only 7 activities, providing no feedback during, picking a single winner from each, that seems more like token fan involvement to me.
Example of real fan involvement: Open dev rooms, make subforums, e.g. Reaverbots, Environments, Characters, B-plots, then ask for cool ideas/drawings (provide guidelines and requests). Comment in the threads, then have an inhouse artist refine and eventually 'lock' concepts (discourage further modification) for potential inclusion/modelling. Also make a public subforum for only inhouse devs, posting progress reports, screenshots, funny bugs, non-spoilers etc. I'm not saying this approach would have worked, but it would have been fan involvement and it would probably have excited a lot more people.
I think they just wanted more Hype. It failed because of language barriers, sparse progress reports (letting any hype subside), and no willingness to go beyond token fan involvement. The 3DS isn't doing very well either I hear. I think it's difficult to translate 10k+ forum accounts to future sales. Most games in progress don't even have people knowing about them up until they have sort of come together.
Edit: Though as a counter argument, look at the Diablo 3 forums. Big developer, aged series. Not sure if the devs post there, but looking at the post dates, the forums seem highly active. However, Diablo 2 is still played a lot, so maybe it's not a good analogy.
forums.battle.net/board.html?forumId=12007
I've already gotten several offers from people who want to work on MML3 projects. It's extremely difficult to make a game with that scope/quality, and I don't think anything but a few tech demos and half baked character tests will come from it. Won't stop me from occasionally working on my own though
(Inafune knew, lol)