It’s not the spreadsheets, I just don’t dig the fairly bland space-y setting.

And I play theme parks because I enjoy elements of those too. I’m not restricted to liking one thing and one thing alone, surely?

Anyway, good retort. Touché.

This deja vu-inducing poster says that EVE just isn’t for him…it’s not for everyone. He doesn’t want theme parks either, but he plays them anyways, like a blushing school girl that says no but means yes. He doesn’t know why, it’s subjective man, like art, but without the paying 1000 times what some random object is worth part. This snippy superiority of subjectively not knowing what the hell he’s saying kinda irks me, but it’s his surfeit of sibilant snarkiness, I guess.

I *wish* there was an MMORPG with the depth of EVE that he actually enjoyed. But at present there isn’t, because he isn’t voting with his wallet and playing something resembling what he claims to want, and instead joins the herd in sucking that sweet sweet themepark nectar, drugs and all, thereby convincing the gaming execs that sandboxes aren’t commercially viable, even though EVE proves they are even without him and his ilks’ subscription valuta.

(don’t be offended, this is tongue in cheek, I don’t really blame you for playing some boring themepark because EVE is too spreadsheety for you– though EVE is way better than whatever game you’re playing and I blame you for the gaming apocalypse and also the real one in 2 months. Ok, that was tongue in cheek too, srsly, there’s no way I could blame you for more than one apocalypse.)

It’s not for me. It’s not for everyone. I don’t want theme park ad nauseum either, and I loved UO and other sandbox titles, but I tried EVE and it didn’t really grab me. It’s not because it’s “niche”, it’s because, as with most artforms/media, liking or not liking EVE is highly subjective. The snippy EVE worship that marks the conclusion of most of your posts kinda irks me, but it’s your blog I guess.

I *wish* there was an MMORPG with the depth of EVE that I actually enjoyed. But at present there isn’t.

If people had a good long term retention game like EvE to play that they enjoyed long term like some people enjoy EvE, then I guarantee we’d see less “Eve is a niche game” and more “EvE should be more like this”. And then there may actually be a valid argument, provided the game in question had merits and paying, long term players.

As for F2P, I still think the business model can be done right for both MMOs and games in general. It’s simply being abused as a get rich quick/shore up lazy game design scheme and it’s a bubble that will burst, to be replaced by some new big thing. After that bubble bursts, F2P as a model will still exist for those with the capacity to do it right (which might also involve making games that cost money to buy to shore up larger investments).