A prince who is not himself wise cannot be wisely advised: good advice depends on the shrewdness of the prince who seeks it.
Niccolo Machiavelli
View next idea in this round »

Universal Game Access System

TomW
TomW is offlineSend a Message to TomWAdd TomW as a FriendSend a Hat Tip to TomW
  • Submitted by: TomW
  • Created: Jul 30, 2006, 4:09 pm
  • Share on Facebook
  • Promote
 

Join Cambrian House

People

Ideas

Businesses
Connect with talented people. Collaborate on ideas. Realize your vision.
Not freeish. Not freesque. It's free!

The Idea

You play Dark Age of Camelot or EverQuest. You"ve heard all about how great the Next Big Thing is (WoW, for instance). But you"re heavily invested in the original game, and you"ll be damned if you have to get a brand new character in another MMO up to level 60! . Luckily, the game you"re playing and the new one you want to try are both members of the UGAS, a game-agnostic service that allows characters from one game to have their profiles transmitted into another game, including a system for class-to-class, ability-to-ability, and level-to-level translation. . WHY WOULD THE PUBLISHERS DO THIS? You get more players if you remove barriers to entry. This is a no-brainer for them, once they embrace the cooperative paradigm shift. . HOW DOES UGPS MAKE MONEY? We get a commission for every player we sign up into any game. . DOES IT COST THE PLAYERS ANYTHING? I"m not sure. Probably not, to build the maximum amount of adoption.

I thought of this idea when I was...

I hear gamers constantly bitching about not wanting to try this game or that game because of this barrier to entry. Guy Kawasaki (in Rules for Revolutionaries) says that you find the pain and then you market the aspirin. This is the aspirin for those gamers, and everyone wins (the gamers, the game companies, and most importantly, the UGAS). . The only trick would be getting older games to adopt this service; I can think of several strong arguments to help encourage them to do this, and so can you probably, but that doesn"t mean its a slam-dunk. Some sort of bouty or residual income could be offered to the exit games, paid by the entrance games.


Comments Posted

Aidan
Aidan Posted: August 1, 2006, 6:21 am

This is a hard sell though. Gaming is so incredibly competitive that people wouldn't be inclined to make it easy for players to leave their game - they'd rather have players enter their game because it *is* the next big thing.

TomW
TomW Posted: August 1, 2006, 4:03 pm

Agreed, this idea has serious business development hurdles to clear.

ArchChef
ArchChef Posted: August 4, 2006, 12:26 pm

It's not going to happen. Games all have totally diffrent economies, diffrent level caps and hardships. For example, in WOW any evolved monkey with an IQ greater then 1 can reach lvl 60, but in FFXI one truly has to struggle to reach even level 60.

It would cause an outrage with players migrating from one game with easy leveling (WOW) to any game with a much stricter leveling structure and economy.

TomW
TomW Posted: August 4, 2006, 1:34 pm

ArchChef, couldn't there be "exchange rates" for the levels?

mccorkle
mccorkle Posted: August 14, 2006, 8:36 am

I'm afraid that the problem would be many fold. First, even if you have a level 60 character on "New Game X", if you are a newb, you are a newb. Level 60 character doesn't do you any good if you have no idea how to use the UI or how to work within the game.

Also, one of the biggest problems I personally have with MMO games that have pvp is that when I come in as a newb, I'm gobbled up by the masses of level 60 players that can whack me with one hit. No fun at all there.

I think I know where you are going though -- and that is being able to save some of the value of all the game time spent on one game when you translate over to another game. I can't blame you for trying, but I don't think this idea will work.

jminkler
jminkler Posted: October 9, 2006, 2:19 pm

Ya, let me go level up in DAOC with my 300 toons, so that I can zap past all 60 levels in WoW or whatever ... ermm Somebody is just whining cause they can't spend the time.

Here's a novel idea, play a game that doesn't base your exp on how much you play the game. MMO's like Eve Online let you gain skill even when your logged off. And with WoW you get all those XP speed up's when you are inactive. There is no way in heck this will ever happen cause of the other whiners on the other end of this who HAVE put in the time to play the game and get to max level.

 

Post A Comment

Got something to say?
Log in to post a comment.

 
Ideas Submitted
7231