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Why the subscription-based business model is broken
After Scott Jennings' departure from NCsoft earlier this month, he quickly announced his newest home at the small casual game startup John Galt Games, most-famously known for their Web Wars browser-based game. But to add insult to injury, Lum the Mad, as he's most affectionately known, took this opportunity to let us all know how he felt about the current subscription-based business model with most popular MMOs. It's "an arms race that few can even hope to compete in, much less win," says Jennings.This issue is often a heated debate among players and developers alike, but what does Jennings suggest we do about it? "Embracing open source development, crowd-sourcing content, targeting different platforms such as the Web or mobile phones, all of these are valid," suggests Jennings. He also points to the increasing costs of MMO development these days, and how some smaller-budget MMOs like Club Penguin and RuneScape have does much more with much less.Now that an industry heavyweight like Jennings has made the leap, and we see more big-name online games shutting down or losing staff, will others soon follow?
Web Wars: EVE details revealed - all your base belong to Google
The EVE Fan Fest is winding down, and John Galt Games has pulled back the curtain on WebWars: EVE. It's a browser based war game that focuses on conquering and controlling territories, but in this case the territory are websites. The value of a territory (website) depends on how popular that website is. The game is free to play; however, players can purchase WebWars money (isk) with real cold hard cash for faster enhancements that I'm sure will lead to quicker beat downs. If you want to earn isk the hard way, take over websites (grind) earn cash to further advance your fleet (money sink). Every website on the internet is a valid territory and a new battle starts every 10 minutes. I wonder how much WoW Insider and Massively will be worth? WebWars EVE is being developed by John Galt Games, not CCP and is completely independent of EVE Online. WebWars: EVE does borrow from the EVE Online universe; familiar fiction; ships; etc. but the game is a different beast. You can sign up for the beta here. Another screen shot from inside a station viewable on Trey Ratcliff's personal blog, CEO of John Galt Games. My comments follow the jump:
John Walt Games announces EVE Web Wars teaser
This is veddy, veddy interesting for all EVE capsuleers that love anything to do with EVE -- including Gallente pride under garments, yep, I went there. John Galt Games has launched a teaser site dubbed EVE Web Wars with absolutely no information but a stay tuned message, leaving us to cling until Eve Fanfest 2007 this November 3rd where further information will be revealed. Stating the most obvious assumption on what the game is given the title, EVE Web Wars sounds like a crossover web browser PvP game based on EVE Online. There is a collectible card game based on EVE, called EVE: The Second Genesis, it could be a web based card game or just a stand alone PvP game based on Eve Online. My google-fu is weak. I didn't find any additional information on EVE Web Wars. However, for those really looking to scrape the bottom of the barrel there is some information regarding the John Galt Games CEO, Trey Ratclifff. On his personal blog Ratcliff mentions an article he was interviewed for that the fancy pants Financial Times penned on EVE Online, barely scraping the surface on EVE Online's living breathing economic masterpiece and it turns out Ratcliff himself used to be a hardcore EVE player, managing a corporation that had over 1,000 members. [via: Crazy Kinux]
