I just got back from Disney World and I had a hankering to play RCT 1-3 like you wouldnt believe, because those games so accurately portray what theme park management is about. Queue length issues, crowd control, path management, down-time, amenities... upon leaving the parks, I was convinced I could boot up a fresh scenario in any of the classic RCT games, build a similar park and watch it thrive. Not exactly difficult, but thats the draw of these games; you really feel like youre effortlessly operating a living, breathing system. Then I got home and read the news about RCT4 Mobile. Its modeled after similar Pay-2-Win games like SimCity Mobile and FarmVille. Judging from the screenshots provided in the video, you have three main resources and commodities: coins (currency), tickets, and XP. These are interchangeable with FarmVilles coins, water, and XP, where coins are harvested from crops, water is used to grow crops and regenerates ever-so-slowly, and XP determines your level and what kind of crops you can plant. I know that, as a big publishing company like Atari must be, it was probably really really difficult to resist the urge of making an RCT cash-in like this. The numbers from Zynga are staggering: FarmVille made $230 million from players and $10 million from ad revenue in its first quarter on the market. And thats from a completely new IP! Imagine what an established name like Roller Coaster Tycoon could bring in! And Im begging you, developers (is it still Frontier?), please funnel some of the delicious, sticky money that youll make from RCT4 Mobile on a faithful, sturdy sequel to the first three games. It might be tempting to tie it into the social aspect of RCT4 Mobile and include micro-transactions, and Im pretty confident you guys wont. But SimCity 5 completely destroyed my faith in the ability of a company to respect its customers. If you follow the trend of SimCity 5 and Diablo 3 -- making the game client always correspond with a foreign server to ensure its legitimacy -- it will, and I mean WILL fail. SimCity 5 just released a patch to allow offline play due to overwhelming player disapproval and Diablo 3 is undergoing plans to remove its Auction House -- the singular feature that required an always-online connection in the first place. I dont want to think that the developers originally wanted to make the games this way, because why would they? They wouldnt be seeing any of the additional revenue the Auction House was making; that all went to the publishers. As an amateur game dev myself, I could never see myself making a game that so narrowly restricts player creativity. Maybe Im just paranoid and maybe RCT4 PC will be the second coming of theme-park simulator Christ, but I really felt the need to express my feelings on this. I am an RCT superfan and Chris Sawyer is somewhat of a deity to me. The man made millions by his own hard work and is a shining example of self-determination and integrity. If hes not involved with the PC team, get him a plane ticket and complementary hotel accommodations because hes brilliant and knows more about the inner-workings of this franchise than anyone. Thanks for reading and please consider what Ive written. I really look forward to fantastic sequel!
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 01:36:06 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015