

Controversial MMO developer Evony sends in lawyers to attack blogger - halo
http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?showtopic=212602&st=0

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electromagnetic
Okay, I've been conned out of money by game developers forever, since pong
kept taking my quarters and since Maxis and EA released a quadrillion
expansions for every game they produce.

Seriously, how is this any different, they just use a different tactic. Except
that a guy is allegedly being sued, despite it being a claim on some unknown
forum by a guy who I can't even find the blog of. IMO it's all made up because
this moron has taken a hating to a game instead of ignoring it and letting it
go the way of a million other webgames.

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Novash
Interestingly enough, this game is a clone of Civilization, which happens to
have a multiplayer mode, and a very active community which basically gives you
endless online game time, if you so desire. Why would one take this game over
the original one?

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wlievens
It's browser based iirc. You don't have to install a client.

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Novash
Being browser based actually would make me even less likely to play it. I
dropped both Free Realms and Cartoon Network's MMO because they were both
browser based. Free Realms was specially poor designed to handle slow
connections since it downloads everything on demand, every time it is
demanded.

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wlievens
I'm not saying Evony is a good game. I even won't play it on principle (boob
ads? wtf?). But being a browser game is a competitive advantage (if your can
deliver quality) because your users threshold to try it out is orders of
magnitude lower.

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Novash
I disagree. I believe the user threshold to be higher because it does require
a good connection. And good connections are not common.

You may probably have a good (or even a decent) connection to the net, but I
have a painful 3G connection that lately have been dishing out a performance
worse than my old US Robotics 33.6 Modem.

Playing browser based games nearly mandate that you have both a good and
stable connection. Stable being a often forgotten keyword. Connection spikes
can kill you easier than the challenges you face, even very small spikes can
bother you severely.

However, desktop based game tend to be very network-cheap. Civilization can be
easily played on a 56k dialup connection, without much hassle. But the latest
batch of MMOs are very network demanding, which is the main reason I won't
even bother to try them for a good while, even the desktop ones. Devs seem to
be only cattering to the very small percent of the gamers that happen to have
good connections.

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wlievens
The kind of browser games I'm referring to are no more demanding on your
internet connection than the average News site.

I seriously can't see how you can disagree with this. Having to not
downloading something lowers the threshold to give it a try. That's so obvious
to me I can't explain it any more clearly than that, sorry.

------
halo
They've also sent in a legal complaint to The Guardian over their article from
earlier this year
([http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/jul/15/g...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/jul/15/games-
evony-spam-internet)).

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elai
Where do they get the money for their large advertising campaigns? Does the
game really make up for it in money?

~~~
teej
You would be surprised. Games like this have micropayments built in to the
gameplay. While the number of users who fork out cash is low (~1%), the amount
they pay on average is high (~$50). With good metrics, you can A/B test your
way to doubling those numbers.

------
henning
MMORPG Marketing LOLcat sez: "Marketin ur game. ur doin it rong."

