Wargames

by Acebloke
Wargames
[AMT] Join the war or build a city
ID:1696339
 
Keywords: wargames
March. March was the last time I posted something about Wargames.

This isn't the first time there has been a significant lack of info coming out about development of the game, but the reasons are much the same as any other major break:

Basically something happened 'in real life' where I made a dopey mistake and took a considerable amount of time to get back on my feet. The dopey mistake has nothing to do with game development or even games, but just one of those things idiot adults like myself put me through.

Needless to say, I've just about got myself onto the same footing as I was back in March, and the first thing that I thought about was this game.

Go back a couple of years, and it was always a case of "just a little more, then I'll try advertising the game and generate a bit of revenue again", well that never really happened, but 2.0 was supposed to be my big shot at trying it properly. The update has been delayed and delayed, originally slated for sometime in 2013, delayed to early 2014, then stagnant since March in a "I'm nearly there" post.

In terms of revenue, I've probably now made about as much money in the past week in my regular job as I have on BYOND over the past two years. The factors involved in that are essentially: 1) I've stopped hosting myself 2) I've stopped updating the game/2.0 beta 3) I've stopped looking at the files and 4) Even when someone or myself is hosting, I no longer have the time to meet and greet like I used to years ago.

There are two reasons for the above, and they happened about the same time, 2-3 years ago: Birth of my son, and regular work. Marriage was not a problem, I married back in 2008 when Wargames was still reasonably being updated, and I was working full time then too. When I lost my job at the time some of that time went directly into Wargames which was probably about the last breath it really had. We've gone down to 400+ player servers over a 2 week period to 200, 100, then in the last couple of years struggling to hit 60 or 70.

Simply put Wargames doesn't fit the model anymore. Cheap, sale price games at a much larger quality often 3D are simply more value for time and money than investing in Wargames. If 2.0 was released 2 years ago like it should have, it might have been jumpstarted, if it was released 4-5 years ago, then it might have even got somewhere.

I'm never really entirely sure what my intentions are when I write posts like this, but I think its clear that Wargames is no longer any kind of competition even within BYOND these days and facebook and flash online games have already taken the Wargames model and made it saleable to the public, to the point that they now advertise on tv as well, and no doubt I'd be accused of 'cloning' them like I was accused of cloning Tribes and Evony despite being around longer.

I won't say the game is dead, I opened the files today and did some work on it, but I'm 50 50 whether even the 2.0 version will get released and I'm pretty darn close on it too. I always hope that I get a spark that sets me back on it again and that has happened in the past, but this could be the message before its official death if I don't make something happen soon.

The problem with the gameplay around Wargames is its essentially a social game, those large servers years back was perfect and kept both new and old blood in the game. Though round based, being either weekend, weekly, fortnightly or monthly limits that rebooting and renewing, while giving a sense of ending and new beginnings when the next started was demoralising to players who felt they worked up their nations only for it to be periodically wiped. Lack of regular updates tops off the list, making these three reasons the ones I would say have killed off the game.

Wargames survived when I pumped 20 or more hours a week into it, now I find it hard to put 2 hours a month into looking at the code and deciding what to do next. I'm considering "making it a day" with the original Wargames and focusing on the session based Wargames 2 and Chrono Wars instead.
I really don't see an issue with abandoning what is essential a legacy game at this point and focusing on the sequel instead. Just leave up some hostfiles for people that want to play the old game and call it a day.