(PEACH = Please Examine And Critique Honestly) First post. Hi. A little background about myself, to begin. I'm 23, a college student, an avid gamer, and a bitter, disillusioned ex-MMo addict. In my off time, I study games. Not a focused course of study, just a general perusal of various aspects of the industry at large, or very specific research into game mechanics of a particular type; it depends on my mood. My education background is in art. I have no business training, have never began, run, managed, or had any affiliation with a gaming business. Now. I was recently in a discussion with a friend about future game types. Our mutual interest is in MMos, which neither of us play at the moment. We've both played our share of them, and when conversing on the subject, enjoy disparaging the current trends, while reminiscing about the "good old days" and fantasizing about the future. One topic that came up was arcade players. Would it be possible to tie them into an online game? For instance, matches between a player at an arcade, and a player at home on an Xbox. Or take that a step further. Would it be possible to play a Persistent online game (MMO) from an arcade? If so, how? What kind of account would it require? How would you prevent abuse (cheating, fraud, farming, etc)? How would you, as far as game mechanics go, differentiate between arcade players and home players? Arcade machines are popular enough to reap profit on their own, what about the other investments required to maintain a network of them? E.g., internet connection, network maintainence, etc. I have my own theories. But what I would like is to hear yours. Does it even sound viable, the extra capital needed to build, program and distribute machines that would cost in excess of $3000 a piece? This is all assuming that your game was built from the ground up with this design in mind, connecting arcade and home users. If we assume that the game itself is a salable product, how would the inclusion of arcade terminals affect the project? Thanks in advance for any replies.

I don't think the technical problems with linking up arcade machines to a MMO network would be that much of an issue. Although I'm no expert on MMO games (I can't play them due to limited internet access0 I'm fairly sure Final Fantasy XI has PC and console players on the same servers, so linking arcade machines would be that much more of an issue.

The main problem as I see it is that the gameplay model is unsuited to arcades. Arcade games are designed on the premise of spending a dollar or two on a few minutes of gaming, whereas MMO games are about extended periods of play. As a consequence, I'm not sure MMO games in the traditional sense would work in an arcade setting. It might be possible to design a different experience for the arcade players over the usual MMO crowd; possibly the arcade players could control enemies with a life expectancy of only a few minutes?

However, I'm really not that sure that it's viable for the small business to consider arcades; the costs in providing enough machines plus the MMO game is way too high, in my opinion.

I've thought about this myself before. One thing is certain though, if you only allow other arcade machines to participate, then preventing cheating would be easy. Arcade machines are far more trustworthy than private PC's. That fact alone can help reduce network demands as you won't have to have such thin clients. Some tasks will still have to be server only repsonsibilities, but the individual machines could be trusted with more of the work.

Quote: Original post by Schmendrick
One topic that came up was arcade players. Would it be possible to tie them into an online game? For instance, matches between a player at an arcade, and a player at home on an Xbox.

The nature of what an "arcade" is, there would not be a need to do this. There are game cafes, game centers, game etc.. that already do what you are talking about. More info on them here. The main point is that arcades do not have internet access readily avaliable, but those gaming centers do.

Quote: Or take that a step further. Would it be possible to play a Persistent online game (MMO) from an arcade? If so, how?

As per my last statement, you'd really have to use a game center. Not only is it more comfortable, they usually have top of the line monitors, computers, and chairs. They are rather nice, although I've never used one, I've just passed though a few before.

Quote: What kind of account would it require? How would you prevent abuse (cheating, fraud, farming, etc)?

Once again, in the environment of a game center, full control is established, so players can be monitored to not use any hacks or cheats before hand. I don't think the game centers care if all you did was farm because they are the ones getting your money [wink] As long as you abide by their rules, it should be fine.

Quote: How would you, as far as game mechanics go, differentiate between arcade players and home players?

Arcade machines are popular enough to reap profit on their own, what about the other investments required to maintain a network of them? E.g., internet connection, network maintainence, etc.

I have my own theories. But what I would like is to hear yours. Does it even sound viable, the extra capital needed to build, program and distribute machines that would cost in excess of $3000 a piece?

This is all assuming that your game was built from the ground up with this design in mind, connecting arcade and home users. If we assume that the game itself is a salable product, how would the inclusion of arcade terminals affect the project?

My opinion is that while it would be cool, given your last statement about assuming games are already made to do that, but none to my knowledge are, so I don't see how it'd be a worthwhile investment until I see proof of concept and demonstration. Games as it is take quite a large budget and lots of time, and that is just for one common platform (PC, console based, or hand held based). When you add in a whole different platform, such as an arcade machine, then, well, that'd be interesting to see how all of that would go. You would have to work together interactions between two seperately different platforms at once, which I'd assume would not be cheap.

So overall, interesting idea, but I don't see it going anywhere. Like I said before, there are game centers that have everything you need if you are out of your house and don't have those systems, and they are already quite popular and well used. Your proposal of a game that can be used by two platforms at once over a network is something 'new', but you'd have to develop that idea a lot more. Very interesting post nonetheless [smile]

MMOs are not suitable to very fast moving high accuracy things (the way a FPS or arcade is).
The reason for this is that the MMOs are usually over the Internet, sometimes on different continents, while usually the FPS games are either played in a LAN or in geographically close locations. For example, playing a FPS on a phone line is kind of hard because of the extra latency (about 90 MS) and the limited bandwidth. So at the very best, you'd have a latency of perhaps 120 MS _IF_ the server is close by.
But playing a FPS from a dial up connection across continents would give you a latency of at least 350 MS, which is usually unanceptable.

Its technically possible but from a business point of view its unrealistic and pointless.

Yes, you could wire up a load of arcades at great expense and build custom arcade machines to run this game but there is no point because people can already play these games on a PC at a cybercafe - in fact this is the main way that MMOs are played in Asia.

Why build a custom hardware unit with a low installed user-base, when there's all those PCs out there with a nice broadband connection?

Sega has experimented with a similar concept (hooking up arcades using broadband to enable multiplayer fighting-games, etc) but unless you have SegaSammy sized pockets (and an existing target audience and channel), that's probably unwise.

In addition, as Obscure mentioned; PC Bangs / Internet Cafe's are usually co-located with Arcades in Asia; the people who want to play LAN or MMOG games usually do so on the PC.

Having said that, I'm sure there's an MMOG idea out there waiting to be born that doesn't revolve around tarting up Ultima Online in a 3D dress. Certainly an action/twitch-based MMOG is possible by now; the Koreans are experimenting with MMOGFPS games with performance-characteristics similar to Battlefield2, instead of the more laggy Planetside.

Perhaps we'll soon see the first MMOG game using a combat-mechanic similar to Ikari Warriors, or Ikaruga.

Allan