Problems with browser games or clone attacks

In a relatively recent time, I became interested in game devs, and more specifically in the development of bbmmog. Having many years of gaming experience behind him, I decided to summarize my feelings about the problems of modern browser games in a text form.

My first acquaintance with browser games occurred about eight years ago, in an era when in some areas the Internet was still considered to be quite a rare phenomenon. I was sitting on a zyxel modem and trying to figure out this new form of entertainment for me. Impressions then were mixed. On the one hand, after PC games, the graphics, the interface and the general implementation of browsers, to put it mildly, did not deliver at all. This could be understood, since the era of webdvanul was just beginning, and in runet it was still only on the horizon. But on the other hand, she seized the opportunity to play not with silicon brains, but with the same people, moreover, without excessive time costs. It is for this reason that I often avoided multiplayer in regular games, they, as a rule, require, albeit one-time, but more continuous gameplay. In this light, the slow flow of time in browsers, the ideas of which largely migrated from MUDs and TBS games, was more acceptable to me. Looking ahead, I want to note that with the cost of time things are quite different than they initially imagined, but more on that later.



Being a fan of strategies and, in particular, global TBS, I became acquainted with such games as D & C and Ogame, which can now be quite confidently called a kind of pillars of the genre and trendsetters in their own fields. By the way, the “acquaintance” with the latter has been going on for the 6th year in a row, and, despite its considerable age, it still attracts many, many players. It is difficult to say how many “Ogi” clones exist now, especially after the widespread distribution of the source code of the old version and the introduction of a redesign on official servers. However, there is a mass of just similar games that copy its concept or borrow some aspects of the gameplay.
Actually, in addition to the games described above, I tried many other projects, some were really interesting and quite original - for example, erepublic, virtonomica, europe1400. But, ultimately, back to the original version. Why? Then I didn’t particularly think about it, reducing my reasoning closer to the likes / dislikes, no time, no hook, etc. Now, having left most of them, it is much easier for me to draw conclusions and assess the situation, let's say, from the outside. So, the discussion will go further into the strategic bbmmog issues, although much of the above applies to other genres.
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For starters, what makes us spend hours of our lives staring at a browser window?
Any mmog games are terrible first of all addictive. Getting used to the account / character, addiction to property, achievements, addiction to the game world and its well-established community, finally. In combination with this, browser games just look like an ideal dependency option - minimal traffic consumption, relatively comfortable can be chopped both at home and at work, in many cases - on mobile devices, they do not require much time, at any moment the same browser window you can collapse, and when the boss leaves, continue. One solid benefits, is not it? In addition, almost all of them are free-to-play or free.

It was this whole “epic set” that ensured the sharply increased popularity of bbmmog and their practically conveyor production. Needless to say, such a conveyor had a negative impact on the quality of the final product? Now we have dozens of soulless clones, which, like a virus, spread with breakneck speed. The problem is not even that there are extremely many such games, the problem is that such a stream does not stop - we copy the concept (in some cases, the engine), finish a little, add some “unique opportunity”, ???, profit! !! Ultimately, such games are reduced under a common denominator and follow certain established principles. The lack of innovation and genre stuckness hinder the development and introduction of new ideas, which simply creates a closed cycle. Therefore, we have a situation where supposedly different games have a lot of similar problems.
To some extent, the popularity of the founders of some genres of bbmmog was to blame, when subsequent projects tried to use successfully proven systems of previous games, as a result, simply stamping the next clones in different variations and settings.

In my opinion, there are several critical flaws inherent in many bbmmog games, regardless of genre, concept, setting, or gameplay.

One and, I think, the most serious is the policy of multiple servers. Those. upon reaching a certain number of accounts or after some time, a new, in most cases, identical server opens. It is dictated by the fact that in the older worlds, beginners find it difficult to realize their capabilities, and catching up with the top players is almost impossible in terms of development. It is assumed that in the new worlds it will be much easier to do this, but it is often quite the opposite - a very large percentage of players come from previous servers and, having much more impressive experience, only aggravate the situation.
In addition, after some time, the pitfalls are found - the servers begin to fade, there is an outflow of players, and, as a rule, it is those that make up the basic array. The results of such a cataclysm can be very significant - up to the almost complete extinction of the game world, when only a few hundred accounts remain in the “living”, and there can be even less “fully active” ones.


In the previous paragraph, I mentioned a significant differentiation of the capabilities of top and new players in the older world. It really is. The player who started at the dawn of opening the server has a huge advantage over the newcomer. In order for the latter to at least partially compare with it according to its capabilities, sometimes it takes entire months or years. And the greater the gap between the top players, the more such a situation can scare off a potential newcomer. Few people want to devote months of playing to a stubborn race, instead of a relatively comfortable game under equal conditions. And, unfortunately, such a problem is not “cured” by opening new servers, as mentioned above, but requires a serious study of the balance regarding the development of players and the mechanism for limiting their differentiation.

Monotonous generation of game worlds. Universes are generated automatically, one location is similar to another, literally, like two drops of water, there are practically no differences between them. Locations of some bbmmog sometimes even resemble tables from Excel. Yes, in terms of the time needed to generate peace and the effectiveness of the result, such an approach is more than justified and successful. But how do these cloned islands, planets, systems and other territorial units become boring! In my opinion, with this approach, a lot of interesting features are lost, which could be realized for the benefit of the gameplay if there is an adequate system of unique game space.


Another important element of the gameplay, especially in the framework of mmog, is the social component, which is implemented very mediocre in most games. Naturally, I do not take into account bbmmog, which are focused on social relationships between players (erepublic). Yes, in most cases, the players themselves are directly the initiators of all social processes that occur in their world. But these processes could be much more exciting if you have the appropriate functionality that would be available to them throughout the gameplay. In other words, now all the diplomatic and political systems in many browsers are reduced to the beaten concepts of alliances / clans and thematic branches on the forums titled “Diplomacy” and “War”. Nothing, of course, prevents players from going beyond the system, and, through third-party communications (which, in fact, they successfully do) to correct this state of affairs, but this does not speak in favor of the gaming system. I may now lead to the invention of the bicycle, but following the Byron theorem:

“Hate is good. Because conflict leads to the creation of social relationships and communities. It is a force that brings players together. ”

Roughly speaking, an active and dynamically changing social environment is more interesting for players, since in essence it is an inexhaustible generator of events, wars, and other SRs . In the absence of tools to create just such an environment, the game world will either plunge into a half asleep state, or, over time, will become an arena for more hardcore players (their people are called less pleasant words) and their communities that will shift the entire spectrum of events to their plane. It is natural that online, the main “engines” and event makers are always more top players or players who devote much more time to the process. But such imbalances, when half of the rest of the game world is an outsider and has almost no mechanisms to influence the situation, can be an extremely dangerous phenomenon and, as a result, the cause of server extinction.
This result suggests that the social model of the community is not worked out, there are no mechanisms that would allow players to be able to participate in social processes according to their capabilities and the efforts made. Those. such a model, where any player, regardless of his development, could be realized within the community and “be useful”, even being a two-week noob.

In general, returning to the previous paragraph, I would like to note once again that the level of development should be a fundamental point of the game, but not critically superior to all other aspects of the gameplay, especially including SR.

At the very beginning of the article, I said that browser games are supposedly undemanding in terms of time. In theory, this seems to be the case, especially when compared with their older counterparts in mmog. But if you set yourself the task of achieving certain goals in the game and methodically working on their implementation, the costs of time increase simply exponentially. I attribute this to the fact that the system is imperfect due to the lack of the aforementioned balancing of differences in development between the players. More hardcore players set the overall pace of the game and, if you don’t want to be an outsider, you have to adjust to this pace one way or another. The only exceptions are bbmmog, imitating step-by-step mode or somehow limiting player activity. For example, D & C or Europe1400, although they also contain elements that are tightly chained to the game. In the same D & C pastime increased in proportion to the growth of your empire, the number of planets and units. This approach causes a strong attachment to the game, which often carries negative feelings rather than positive ones (chord, again I get up on an alarm clock, meet the fleet) and is the reason for the emergence of uber players who have the opportunity to spend a huge amount of time online. I think you guessed what the others call them.
Such a system is tiring, with time a person simply gets tired and may stop playing. Especially after some loss or loss.


There are a lot of opinions about the graphic part, but since we are talking about strategic bbog and, being a TBS fan, I am of the opinion that “gameplay usually takes priority over polished graphics.” With one very important “But”. Game design should be neat and enjoyable. Well, then you can add a lot of things, remembering even Artemia, but this is not the point.
Now I observe, in places, a terrible picture. After the Internet became more accessible, nimble, and less expensive traffic - many developers chased games to be saturated with an abundance of graphic elements, often without thought, which led to a negative result, especially among established audiences. For example, I consider the introduction of a redesign to ogame.ru, which initially caused a significant outflow of players, to be one of these unsuccessful upgrades. However, there are well-implemented projects, with a reasonable limit of "visualization", with a convenient and neat interface. Oh, the interface. You can talk about him for a long time, there is a mass of literature on this topic. In general, I can only say one thing - in many games he is simply wretched and scary. Senseless and merciless.

Elaboration of the setting, or rather, its absence. Of course, bbmmog conveyor production methods are not in favor of a distinct plot and elaboration of the game world. Despite the fact that such bbmmogs are played, as a rule, not for the sake of reading the chronicles of the chosen world or its history, the absolute grayness of more than half of the games is simply depressing. In addition, the eternal themes of orcs, elves, goblins or gallant marines in space simply become boring. Again, with the right approach, it is possible to realize an interesting world with a fascinating background, and its binding to the pve system can yield positive results.

And finally, add here games with a terrible balance, a skewed Donat system, just plain faceless clones, projects built on the basis of once locked sorts ...

It may seem from the outside that I paint an unnecessarily gloomy picture, that the end is near and we all die, yes ... In fact, there are a considerable number of exciting and interesting projects in which I enjoyed playing and received a fair share of fun. But for some of them time has already passed, and progress does not stand still. And the point here, by the way, is not at all in new technologies and the progress itself, but simply in a completely different approach to creating browser games.
Unfortunately, this environment is one of the most conservative and ossified among mmog. Again, I repeat - not graphically and not technologically, but in terms of concept and philosophy.
Although, recently there has been a crackling of patterns and creaking conventions, so in the future, I think we will see a lot of interesting and exciting projects. Just need to wait a bit.