Bringing Order to ‘Anarchy’
The world of online games, which began as humble, text-based role-playing games, has become especially enticing to many publishers in recent years.
Although casual game sites have yet to demonstrate a viable business model, so-called massively multi-player games have grown into mouthwateringly lucrative franchises, with profit margins in the range of 30% to 40%.
“EverQuest,” “Ultima Online,” and “Asheron’s Call” sold hundreds of thousands of CD-ROMs. Gamers then pay about $10 a month to role-play with thousands of others over the Internet.
Many of these games are based in fantasy sword-and-sorcery worlds. “Anarchy Online,” created by Funcom Inc. of Norway and released in June, seeks to break that mold with its science-fiction setting.
“Anarchy Online” has had a rocky start, with a number of technical glitches. Funcom says it has resolved many of those problems, particularly the lag, though players continue to grumble. But that is hardly unusual. Most online multi-player games launch with a host of problems because of the sheer complexity of connecting thousands of players in real time.
Will “Anarchy Online” succeed in attracting a new audience? Tommy Strand, 27, producer and lead designer for “Anarchy Online,” believes it will. The game has attracted 60,000 paying subscribers and is on track to hit 100,000 by the end of the year.
Q: How does “Anarchy Online” advance the genre of massively multi-player games?
“Anarchy Online” has more focus on the casual gamer. If you don’t have much time, you can still play. We have an auto-content system that generates content for you on the fly. The mission is generated specifically for you or your friends. In “EQ” [“EverQuest”], you spend a lot of time looking for people to group with. You also have to camp for hours waiting for your turn to attack a monster. In “EQ,” they have static content, so the same monster will pop up every two hours or so. If everybody on your server wants what that monster has, there will be many people waiting and you have a queue. In “Anarchy,” we will generate a new area just for you. It’s a unique mix between single-player and massively multi-player.
Q: How else does “Anarchy Online” differ?
If you die in “EQ,” it can take you hours to recover your corpse, and you can’t log off until you do, or you lose all your items. So we replaced that system with an insurance option. It saves the state of your character at the time of its death. Your items also are sent back to a reclaim booth. You get to decide for yourself how much risk you want to take. We added an epic story that will last four years. In four years, the game will end with a grand finale. You can be part of the story. The story will be updated monthly, but there will be smaller events throughout the month.
We also have many appearances for you to choose from. You can be thin, fat, short or tall. We have thousands of clothing variations. In other games, it’s easy to find someone who looks exactly like you. In “Anarchy,” there is much more variation.
Q: How did you engineer social interactions?
We have a chat system for both in-game and out-of-game. So you can chat with your buddies at work, even when you’re not playing the game. We also have more social animations. You can clap your hands, wave, greet, dance, listen to the ground. People have created plays between their avatars and their pets, and people will gather around to watch your play.
We also have organizations where players can create their own hierarchy. You can have leaders and advisors. If players want to pay a salary, they can. All players in the organization must pay a tax. It’s up to the organization to choose the billing cycle, salary, etc.
Q: What about voice chat?
We don’t have that option. To do that, you need a centralized server that will send out different streams of audio and set the volume depending on the location of your avatar. The problem is that not everybody speaks English. Others have a voice they don’t want to project. The role-playing aspect is limited when you have a voice that doesn’t match your character. And when you have to stream a lot of audio, that creates a lot of bandwidth costs. We’ve had very few requests for that anyway. Not too many people seem to want that.
Q: Do you reward cooperation? What about competition?
Yes, you will be rewarded for grouping. But it will be perfectly possible to play on your own. In every epic setting, there are always two conflicting sides--good and evil. We also have a neutral position. Neutral characters will always be attacked because the assumption is that if you’re not with us, you’re against us. There’s also player-versus-player combat in the game.
Q: Soon, there will be a plethora of new massively multi-player games on the market such as “Galaxies” from Sony Online Entertainment and “The Sims Online” from Electronic Arts. Do you think this will create saturation in the marketplace?
I don’t think competition is bad. “Galaxies” and “Sims Online” will pull in a lot of people who are not now playing massively multi-player games. “Sims,” for example, will draw people who play the game offline who have never played online games. With “Galaxies,” you will get all the “Star Wars” fans. We see “Galaxies” as our main competitor. But when it comes out in two years, “Anarchy” will be near the end of its four-year life cycle.
Q: Where did you get your inspiration for the game?
Most of the things in our everyday lives influence how we make our games. Since we are Norwegian, our perspective will be somewhat different. People have a different view of things here. The attitude is more closed in than Americans, who are more open and friendly. We also have been influenced by movies such as “Star Wars” and “Blade Runner.” And we draw some from the Bible. Our story has elements of a hero dying and coming back to life. It is an epic story of good and evil. The setting is 30,000 years into the future, and it replays the history of man.
Q: “Anarchy Online” has been plagued with technical difficulties. In particular, players have complained of lag within the game. What happened, and how are you dealing with it?
Before we went live, we had a beta test with thousands of people playing at the same time. Even though we tried to cover every base, and had staff on hand 24/7 to hold the servers together, there were things we hadn’t thought of. In the first week, more people logged on than we had anticipated. That caught us off guard. So the first week was a little bumpy. After the first week, we had a few recurring problems, but we found out where our bottlenecks were and we opened them.
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Times staff writer Alex Pham covers the video game industry.
