What's wrong with current BBGs?

[Gads]

Hey Cortrah,

Thanks for picking up this thread, it is a very interesting topic and something that is on my mind alot as we develop Ilkor.

As I read your comments I found myself agreeing with pretty much everything. I had to re-read what my own quote was about!

Maybe I didn't explain myself well enough as I think you've gone off on all the elements of those games that I really dislike!! :-)

I totally, 100% believe that the on-line media is the way to go. I also think the game needs to be turn-based and I've blogged on this a number of times already explaining in some detail how I think this can be achieved online, balancing the best of the internet with traditional PBM.

Depth is also a key element to Ilkor. It isn't going to be a game that you can succeed in in a couple of weeks or even months. We've already worked out that to reach 15th level, the player would have to have played for at least 4 years. The player isn't going to be able to achieve this my buying his way up the ladder, nor spending hours online, nor clicking on an 'attack' button 100 times. The only way to advance will be to find a strategy that works for your style of play, to interact with other players and to plan ahead for the long term gains not the short.

As you can see advancement is going to be slow, as will the pace. We however hope the depth of the game and it's richness in detail and history will help the players immerse themselves into the roleplaying and storytelling, get involved in shaping the history, populate the guild libraries with info to share with others and to study strategy.

The games like Farmville and Mafia Wars have done alot right however, despite all the game features that PBM gamers tend to dislike. I think we need to look beyond the game mechanics, features and playing style and see the game strengths. For example, their architecture is amazing to learn about, how they host the game, how they handle load and are able to scale, their caching and datastore implementation, the way they make use of the various cloud based internet services. It's seriously hardcore stuff. It's not rocket science, nor is it expensive to achieve, but they have been there and done it. It is something we should learn from.

The same goes for their marketing. The games integrate with many of the social media services out there, especially facebook. They also ensure that their games can be accessed by almost any browser and phone. The introduction into the game is also generally well put across, often shielding the beginning player from some of the game's complexities and guides the player through the setup and early stages of the game.

There is also plenty more we can learn from such games (revenue stream - the newer games have some very interesting ideas here) but maybe that is for another discussion.

So it makes perfect sense for companies like ours to look long and hard at such games and see what we can learn. For me there is no doubt that they have succeeded online while PBM to-date has not.