The Higher the Fewer: Supporting Lower End Systems to Capture Market Share
MMOs have changed in many significant ways over the past 10 years. Much of this is a result of continuously improving technology. However as the technology has continued to increase it is tempting for developers to continue to support these latest features. In the rush to support all of these wondrous new technologies have we forgotten what is most important, the user. As the budgets and timelines for MMOs grow ever larger the costs of failure become even higher. Yet when we look at the landscape of successful MMOs we see many instances of games that do not push the technological envelope and still do impressively well. World of Warcraft and EvE online are both praised for visual quality, yet have comparatively low system requirements. Runescape and Puzzle Pirates are arguably not strongly visually appealing and yet are successful and well made games. This talk will focus on these kinds of issues and the impact that they have on design and production from the early stages of game development onwards.
Intended Audience: Producers, designers and developers who are interested in reasons and methods for ensuring that your game runs on low and medium end hardware.
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of MMO terminology and market trends.
Format: Lecture
Track: Design
Date/Time: Tuesday, 3:30 PM
Room: Seaport
