After the success of "Network Genesis", EA began planning to network more of its game brands, including "Wing Commander Online (Wing Commander Online)" and "Harry Potter Online (Harry Potter Online)", but both It died midway, and it was not until "The Sims Online" had a second real online game, but this game did not achieve the success of "Network Genesis", and it can even be said to be a failed product.
The "The Sims" developed by the Maxis team led by Will Wright has quickly become popular in the United States since its release in early 2000, and has become a game that many game lovers are vying to experience. One year after its release, the game's sales exceeded 8 million sets, making it the best-selling game in the history of video games, so EA decided to make this game online.
From the perspective of simulation, the networking of the "The Sims" series has a natural advantage, because in "The Sims" every player is already playing a virtual role for life, work, entertainment, and leisure. Players want It is an experience of "living elsewhere" that is different from reality, and networking has not brought any changes to the game model. On the contrary, network interoperability allows players who originally only interacted with computers to have more interaction with real people. Therefore, this concept was quickly adopted within EA, and the networked development plan began less than half a year after the launch of The Sims.
Gordon Walton, a senior gamer with rich experience in online game development, has been appointed as the chief producer of "The Sims Online". Walton has been in the industry for many years, and began to develop online games in 1995, more than a decade after joining the industry. He participated in the development of "Aerospace Warriors" at Kesmai, and later joined EA in 1999, under the leadership of Richard Garriott. Origin Systems participated in the development of UO’s two materials "Renaissance" and "Third Dawn", and has accumulated rich experience in online game development and management. Therefore, EA is in "The Sims Online" Entrusted with heavy responsibility in the development of ".
However, in terms of external publicity, Will Wright's golden sign is more attractive to "The Sims" players, so the initial product exposure work was handed over to Wright. In September 2000, Will Wright disclosed in an interview that the "The Sims Online" is being developed, and said that the game will be released the following year. This is the first time that "The Sims Online" has been released in public. Mention, also successfully attracted the attention of the game industry. After a few months of silence, EA participated in the 2001 E3 Game Show with "The Sims Online", and announced the game's promotional video at the exhibition, which was subsequently exposed in major media. After a series of exposures, "The Sims Online" has successfully attracted the attention of players. In the "Most Wanted Games of 2002" of the famous game website Gamespy, "The Sims Online" is also on the list.
EA has invested a lot of open resources and manpower in "The Sims Online", and it is said that the final development cost exceeds 20 million US dollars. But for the development team, there is not much time left for them. Will Wright mentioned in the first exposure that the game will be launched in 2001, so the development team is extremely tight, and the original Maxis team did not actually support "The Sims Online" because of their Li Fang is on the development of the "The Sims" expansion. By the end of 2001, the game had not yet been completed, so the expected listing could only last until 2002—the game was finally completed by the end of 2002.
At the end of game development, EA began to consider the profitability of the game. On September 16, 2002, Intel Corporation and McDonald's Corporation announced their cooperation with EA. The trademarks of the two products will be reflected in the game "The Sims Online", making this game an earlier online game with advertisements in the game. one. In fact, for the subject of "The Sims", which is close to life, this brand placement is also more advantageous than the online games with a large number of fantasy themes during the same period, and it will not appear very abrupt.
On December 17, 2002, "The Sims Online" was officially released. EA's choice of selling at the golden time of the Christmas holiday clearly shows its high expectations for sales. Generally, the sales of masterpieces released at this time can easily exceed 1 million sets. . For "The Sims Online", the previous sales of "The Sims" including expansion packs have exceeded 20 million sets, and the number of players in the game exceeds 8 million. In theory, it is not particularly difficult to exceed 1 million sets.
However, the sales performance of "The Sims Online" is far from reaching EA's expectations. After New Year's Day in 2003, EA announced that there were about 5,000 players of "The Sims Online" celebrating the arrival of the new year, and within the three months of the game's release, the sales of client CDs of media exposure games were only 105,000 sets. In an acceptance, the EA president stated that a total of 82,000 users have registered for the game, of which 4,000 users have purchased a monthly pass after enjoying the free trial. Although this result is not too bad in that era, it is compared to EA’s $20 million development. The cost is obviously not an ideal result.
The main reason for this situation is that, in addition to the fact that online games were not as popular as they are today, it also has a lot to do with the player composition of The Sims. The players of early online games were mainly core players, while the players of "The Sims" were mostly casual, and half of them were female players. These players didn't have much interest in online games at the time. They just wanted to play another selves in the game-self-entertainment, rather than being watched by other players.
The design of "The Sims Online" also failed to interest most players. Many fans of "The Sims" did not choose to pay to continue the game after the trial. The first few hours of the game are quite attractive, but it will soon fall into boring repetitive operations. The gameplay restricted by the economic system makes its stand-alone version much less fun than the stand-alone version. The design of the most important economic system of the game has also failed. The setting of money earning and consumption is very unreasonable, and the economic system is very unstable. In addition, for attracting and maintaining, stories, tasks, and events are all very helpful, and these elements are rarely seen in the game.
The boring content and unstable economic system make the game lack of interest to the players, and for the players who enter the game and become interested, they can feel the most well-known saying of the philosopher Paul Sartre in the game " The meaning of "others are hell": The benign casual interactive environment that EA hopes to create has not been realized. Under the voyeurism of some players, many players who desire leisure have got some bad experiences in the game, which makes them very fast Exit the game and return to the embrace of the stand-alone version.
Although EA still had hope for the game in the case of early losses, but one and a half years after the game was released, "The Sims Online" was still in a state of sullenness, which ultimately disappointed the executives, and Gordon Walton also left. EA, bid farewell to the most failed experience in its many years of online game development. However, even after his departure, Walton repeatedly mentioned the correct development concept of "The Sims Online" on various occasions-half a year after the release of "The Sims Online", it was established by Linden Lab in San Francisco. Lab) released a simulated online game "Second Life" with a similar theme and achieved impressive results, which to some extent confirmed Walton's philosophy: adding network functions can make virtual The elements of simulation play become more abundant.
The concept of "Second Life" comes from a novel read by Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale when he was a teenager-"Snow Crash" by science fiction master Neal Stephenson. )". In this novel, a virtual space called the "supernatural world" is depicted. After reading it, Rosedale dreams of building a virtual environment like the "supernatural world" so that human dreams can be extended in this environment. And when he established the Linden Laboratory in 1999, he worked hard to realize his childhood dreams in the laboratory and created a magical virtual world.
Before establishing Linden Lab, Stephenson was the manufacturer of the famous RealPlayer player and the CTO of RealNetworks. He was young and promising. However, in 1999, Stephenson left and founded Linden Labs, and hired a large number of employees from high-tech companies such as EA, eBay, Disney, Adobe, and Apple, and began his virtual world construction plan. In the beginning, the name of this world was called "LindenWorld", named after the studio, and in 2002 began to recruit people to participate in the Alpha test, but the test threshold is relatively high. In April 2003, "Second Life" was open to the public for beta testing, and it was officially launched on June 23, entering the charging operation stage.
"Second Life" builds an open 3D multiplayer online community, and hopes to bring players a "second life experience". This concept is no different from "The Sims Online", but it is similar. Comparatively speaking, "Second Life" has a higher degree of freedom. The main gameplay of the game is to allow players to use simple 3D tools to create their own custom content, including their own shape settings, houses, furniture, clothing, or invent new weapons or other items. Or cooperate with others to build a large residential community or even an entire city.
Community is the biggest selling point at the beginning of the game. In "Second Life", players can chat with anyone they meet in the game like reality, or communicate with friends privately through the in-game instant messaging tool. The game has a large number of actions and expressions designed to satisfy the players. Interaction needs. In the game world, players can participate in a variety of interesting activities, including dance parties, treasure hunts, private parties or fashion shows, everyone can also invite other players to participate in their own party.
As a game developer and operator, Linden Lab does not set too many rules for the game. The reason for this is to reduce development and operating costs on the one hand, and on the other hand to allow players to explore the game on their own. In the world of "Second Life", you can use weapons to conquer others, you can also trade in the world to accumulate wealth, or participate in sports competitions to get rankings, or independently invent and create fame. Everyone can choose one that is difficult in reality. The road to life.
However, in the early stage of game operation, this design that allows players to play freely did not produce much effect. For most online game players who come to the game, let the players create content independently as the main way to play "Second Life". It is not low, and the game itself does not design purposeful guidance for players. Most players lose their purpose and become idle and lose quickly. For a long time after the official operation, the number of paying players and the number of concurrent users of the game were relatively low.
But all this was completely reversed because of an operating strategy, that is, Linden Lab opened the game currency Linden coin and US dollar swap. Linden Coin is the economic circulation currency in "Second Life". Some purchases and sales, rental behaviors and services in the game use this currency. Open exchange means that the currency acquired by the player in the game can be exchanged for real-world currency. The US dollar has become the "purpose" for many people to enter the game. One of the players, Anshe Chung, has achieved great commercial success in the game, which has attracted countless people.
Zhong Anshe is a German female overseas Chinese who was a teacher in a German school before playing "Second Life". In "Second Life", the studio established an art studio named after herself. She first earned the first pot of gold by selling her own painting and animation works to other players, and then bought a large amount from Linden Lab. Use computer software to draw different backgrounds for the land, such as adding forests and rivers, designing and building houses, and then selling or renting them to other players in the game. In this way, you earn a lot of Linden coins and convert them into After the US dollar exceeded one million, after CNN reported her deeds in December 2005, influential media such as Business Weekly, Fortune Magazine, Red Herring and others reported her deeds, making the game "Second Life" follow suit. It quickly became popular, and a large number of players poured into the game with the purpose of panning for gold.
On October 18, 2006, the number of registered users of the game reached 1 million, and less than two months later, it exceeded 2 million. For the first time, 20,000 residents were online at the same time on the server. Since then, the number of game registrations has increased exponentially, reaching 21.3 million in November 2010, although many of them are players’ trumpets or purely admiring users. While the number of registered users increased, the number of simultaneous online games also increased. In May 2009, the number of simultaneous online games reached 62,000. Although it declined a year later, there were still 54,000 in 2010.
The exchange rate between Linden and the U.S. dollar initially fluctuated around 270:1, but the exchange rate gradually increased with the influx of players. Although Linden coins can be exchanged for U.S. dollars, people’s desires are endless. After obtaining the first pot of gold, most people consider expanding reproduction to earn more U.S. dollars, rather than directly washing their hands with the gold basin, but to satisfy the economy. The demand for currency flow brought about by growth, Linden Lab had to issue more Linden Coins, which caused inflation in the virtual world. When players wanted to convert their Linden Coins into U.S. dollars, the exchange rate was already very high. It's outrageous, and Linden Lab doesn't have enough U.S. dollars to redeem. Therefore, in the end, only a very small number of people earn real income through the game. According to statistics from Linden Lab, as of February 2009, only about 64,000 people made money in the game, but the level of differentiation is also very serious-38,524 people earn less than $10, and only 233 people have earned more than 5,000. Income in dollars. (Supplementary note: This data is a bit old. After the column was released, a friend added it. After the bubble burst in 2009, the economic system in the game gradually returned to normal, and the number of users who rely on their own creativity to achieve value has increased a lot)
The bursting of the gold rush caused most of the most purposeful players to leave the game quickly, but the remaining users were also gradually lost due to the freedom of the game. At the same time, the game also encountered system instability problems, all of which made Linden The operating conditions of the laboratory are getting worse and worse. For a long time, "Second Life" only has monthly card fees as a source of income, but at the same time, the costs to be borne are not only the operation of the game, the salary of the staff and the exchange of Linden coins, but also some subsequent development investment and capital acquisition. In the end, we have to rely on capital injection from the outside world. In June 2010, Linden Laboratories announced 30% layoffs. At the same time, Stephenson, who had left the CEO position for two years, also returned to the position of CEO, hoping to lead the laboratory out of the predicament. But after 4 months, Stephenson resigned again, and some of the corporate culture he built was gradually cancelled by his successors.
But to this day, "Second Life" still has tens of thousands of people online, and the operation of the game has been in a stable state. As a brave attempt to create a virtual world to connect reality and the Internet, many of the bold innovations in "Second Life" are worthy of respect and have also been affirmed in the field of game development. In 2008, "Second Life" together with "World of Warcraft", "Endless Mission" and other games won the 59th Science and Engineering Emmy Award, which is the greatest affirmation of its courage to innovate.