Scott: I dislike you. Todd: Tell it to the cleaning lady on Monday. Scott: What Todd: Because… because you’ll be dust on Monday. Scott: Huh? Todd: Because I’ll be pulverizing you sometime over the weekend. Scott: I’m sorry… what? Todd: And the cleaning lady… cleans up… dust. She dusts. And she has weekends off, so… Monday. Right? Envy: What in the hell are you talking about, Todd?
The above quote is from Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, and is a wonderful example of trash talking gone horribly wrong. Granted, Todd beats the crap out of Scott until he has his powers removed for violating the ways of the vegan (note: neither gelato nor chicken parmesan are vegan.), but irregardless he loses in the end.
I don’t get the same glee or satisfaction that others do when a developer does bad or has to shut their game down because of a mistake in development or post release that drives their customers away. I didn’t throw Realtime Worlds into the dirt like a lot of other MMO news websites did, but at the same time I didn’t baby them. I called out the mistakes and called out the positives, voiced my opinions on the future (which were not very positive) and called it as I saw it.
So I hope Undead Labs is wearing a sturdy faceplate when the door slams open on them. Rich Foge of Undead Labs, currently working on a zombie themed console MMO, made a statement that will no doubt spark console vs pc flaming, as well as some ire from the PC MMO community:
“MMOs get breaks because of their social nature, but if you really look at them closely they’re barely even games. Mario 64 (nearly 15-years-old at this point) feels better than any MMO I’ve ever played. MMOs aren’t even close to keeping up with cutting edge videogames from a gameplay or presentation perspective.”
Foge wants an action console MMO, one where your abilities are directed by your skills with a bat, and your ability to dodge with the buttons, not by mathematics, random number generators, and skill balancing. A game with physics, and intelligent AI, and a living breathing world where objectives are done not for gear but for the betterment of the world and those that inhabit it. A game where you and a bunch of buddies can drive your armored car up to a gas station, and while one guy fills up the car and another guy protects him, two more burst into the building through the windows and start stocking up on Kraft Mac and Cheese while gunning down zombies (okay the mac and cheese was my addition). And you know what? Undead Labs are gamers and they’ll be damned if they just sit back while this game is not being developed!
If this pre-release hype doesn’t have you foaming at the mouth, you are likely a long-time MMO player and have heard this drivel a thousand times over. I have a theory that the bigger the company’s mouth is prior to release, the more disappointing the game is. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the games are bad: What I am getting at is that the hype is so much over the feasible game’s quality, that the end product is nowhere near what was promised after cutbacks and delays, and that is where the disappointment comes from.
Undead Labs wants to do a combat based shooter MMO? Alright. Will it be instanced? If so, you can take your pipe dream for a subscription and throw it into the garbage now. If not, hopefully you have a system to combat inherent lag, similar to Planetside.
Even so, I’d like to think that more people each year become attuned to the pre-release hype as the meaningless drivel that it is. For people like myself, who have to turn around and write about the hype, the talking points get old fast. In fact, I lose another thirty minutes off of my estimated lifespan whenever a company uses the term “innovative” in its advertising which, thankfully, Foge did not use even once.
So being the seemingly contradictory hopeless optimist that I am, I’m going to stay over here with the pessimists, who keep me grounded and to earth with regards to my expectations.
And if any of you think that Undead Labs’ MMO will ever make it to the Xbox 360, you are out of your mind. That is all I will say on the matter. The Xbox Live community has a better chance of Microsoft making the service free.
MMO Fallout 