Outrage and Revolt!

Just a recap last week several of the Databases were lost in a hardware failure and a failed backup system meant that it looks as if several of the Gameworlds are not coming back.

It’s not quite outrage but some of the beta testers are starting to get a bit shirty with SI on the forums. It’s a bit unfair as the timing of the big crash for SI is a disaster and I’m sure they got more invested in the game than any beta tester. I feel privileged to have been part of it and I’ve got my fingers crossed that the game has a commercial future.

I thought I’d speculate on the future so here goes. Several customers in a few countries won’t be able to buy the game for whatever reason and SI have already stated the they will have access to a perpetual beta. I’d imagine that Universe One will remain in beta forever and eventually run as an open beta.

This serves two purposes they can offer a demo version and a decent beta environment to test new features.

The way that Si have chosen to announce the release is pretty clever. If the game isn’t up to scratch in October they can just either slow down the release by only giving the green light to a handful of Gameworlds and slowly work towards more until their full public release in February 2009.

Naturally whilst Beta testers are prone to bite their tongue come release then it’ll be open season for outrage should any downtime occur once users start paying for the game.

So stability wise it’s not the pressing issue I thought it was, naturally if running 14 Gamworlds requires too much maintenance in terms of manpower then by February FM Live could be pulled. This is a long way off though and I think they can nail the issues by then.

The game itself is more Fantasy Football than FM2008 it’s not too my taste and I’d prefer more of an FM08 experience but it’s still a great game to play. However looking back at GW6 (these figures are pulled from memory) then we’ve had around 3000 users in the last six months and only around 300 remain active.

A retention rate of 10% doesn’t bode well so I’ve two concerns from this. First, if you play a long term game with a youth policy you could quite easily be playing in an empty gameworld in a few short months. Second, are there enough potential customers who’ll get the bug and keep playing.

It’s a big risk, if FM Live survives then Gamworlds can be tweaked and have themes resulting in a broader appeal. If we get that far then you are looking at a massive game but the next six months or so is a critical time.

The real test is SI’s finical independence and vision, both I’d expect to be tested quite thoroughly.