Gamespy interview, Feb 2004:

Chris Lye (Microsoft product manager): The massively multiplayer genre is a hugely crowded and competitive space.

The Wikipedia entry notes: “Some commentators said at the time that the cancellation was evidence that the (English language) massively multiplayer market had become saturated.”

Hugely crowded huh? 10 months later, November 2004 would see the launch of World of Warcraft. I guess it wasn’t really all that crowded and saturated in Feb 2004, was it Chris and “commentators?”

And this part is just for amusement:

GameSpy: Based on the “evaluation of the MMORPG landscape,” in MS rethinking True Fantasy Live Online for Xbox as well?

Chris Lye: Plans for True Fantasy Live Online are the same as always. They are completely unaffected.

True Fantasy Live Online was cancelled less than 4 months later, on June 2, 2004.

Over the last decade or so, there have been a lot of horrendously wrong predictions and opinions about the MMO industry offered by insiders, media, commentators, etc. Please share some of your favorites!

“The present invention provides a system in which video games may be widely distributed and played without the need for multiple platform-specific hardware units or purchase of an optical disk to play a particular video game,”

That’s incredibly obvious and completely undeserving of a patent. So obvious that there are other companies doing it already, like David Perry’s Gaikai. I attended Perry’s talk at GDC Online, and his company has been doing this sort of thing at the same time. And just in case there was any doubt that OnLive intends to abuse the broad scope of this joke patent:

“Therefore, the following description should not be considered as limiting the scope of the invention.”

Freakin’ disgusting. Intellectual property law in our country is absolutely broken in nearly every way.

Fallout rights holder Bethesda Softworks has made good on its threat to sue developer Interplay for allegedly failing to hold up its end of agreements inked in April 2007.

The plaintiff said because of the alleged trademark infringement, consumers have become confused between the makers of the pre-existing Fallout games and Bethesda’s more recent Fallout 3 — a situation that Bethesda wanted to avoid.

I have to say, if I saw “Fallout Trilogy” for sale, I would assume it was Fallout 1, 2, and 3. Obviously, I’d read carefully, but a lot of people won’t. And when they eventually realize they didn’t get Fallout 3 in the “trilogy” pack, they’d likely be pissed and assume it was Bethesda’s fault. That’s some pretty sleazy marketing on Interplay’s part.

Apparently Interplay also licensed the rights to make a Fallout MMO, but they had certain fund raising and progress goals they had to hit. Bethesda claims they failed. One of the tough things is that the agreement said it had to be in “full development.” Well, any of us who have worked on games know that “full development” can mean a lot of things!

When MMO Drama Causes Real Life Violence

Some of the stories are pretty shocking. I definitely do not think MMOs themselves are at all to blame. You get enough people engaging in a certain activity, and conflicts will arise. But still… the circumstances and events are pretty outrageous.