It’s slightly sad that in this day and age, a game studio feels that it needs to defend why it’s pouring efforts into crafting an MMORPG. But perhaps that’s also helpful, for studios such as Fantastic Pixel Castle can reiterate why MMOs are worth making.
And in fact, the creator of Project Ghost posted a manifesto of sorts as its second “Ghost Stories” dev blog. Studio Founder Greg Street acknowledged that “MMOs are the hardest games to make” requiring a whole lot of things to go right under pressure of a higher risk factor. So why do it? Why make MMOs at all instead of going for easier projects?
As Street says, “For all of those downsides, when they work, it’s magic. This magic comes (in my humble opinion — though it’s hard to argue against) in the form of other players, whether it’s the guild you’ve raided with for years, your buddy that you run quests with (even if you’re often chatting about life more than progressing), that one dude that helped you kill that one rare spawn, or even the random player you saw across a field and will never encounter again. No other genre can deliver on that experience. In fact, MMOs sacrifice a lot of other things to deliver on that experience.”
Street emphasizes that the team at Fantastic Pixel Castle “loves” MMOs and sees that “the hunger for a new game is there” unlike the market fatigue seen in battle royales or MOBAs. He said that he is “cautiously optimistic without being cocky” that his team has a shot at pulling off a successful MMO based on its experience, “player-first” strategy, support from NetEase, and a smarter business model (the specifics of which he does not clarify, although he hints at a buy-to-play model).
