Gute mmo: 12 best MMO games to play in 2023: Paid, free-to-play MMORPGs & more

This video was created by the Blur studio, which has in its portfolio an extensive set of videos for all kinds of games.

Creating non-fiction videos is not only expensive, but also time consuming: painstaking work, consisting of many iterations, lasts up to 6-9 months. Such a long production cycle can provoke certain problems: since the game has been actively developed all this time, the source data for the video may become outdated. For example, for the sake of more interesting gameplay, the playing abilities of the characters or even the general plot of the game will change. After the fact, remaking something in a video is doubly expensive. As a result, and so not at all a budget video turns out to be somewhat far from what the developers actually did in the game itself.

Another problem with this type of video comes from misguided expectations: although modern computers are already very powerful, games still cannot compete with cinematic picture quality. The user sees absolutely mesmerizing shots in the video and expects something similar, but in the game he gets both a simpler picture and gaming opportunities with a lot of restrictions. Therefore, in recent years, players are increasingly guided by videos that show real gameplay before buying.

But…

Nevertheless, non-fiction videos are always popular with developers: the time and financial costs of their production, although large, are quite predictable. In addition, it is often possible to find inexpensive and successful solutions that allow you to make a video relatively quickly and in acceptable quality. For example, a video for the game League of Legends, which was released in 2010:

A good way to reduce production costs is to make it in the style of comics. In addition to being cheaper to produce, comics can easily add player interaction. For example, clicking on the «Next» button or choosing options for the character’s actions on some screens. A bright representative of games of this kind is the first part of Max Payne, in which, with the help of very stylish, but inexpensive comics to produce, the difficult story of the protagonist was told. This technique is quite successfully used, there is also a tendency to a certain qualitative development. For example, in the third part of Max Payne, comic book stylization has already moved into game cut-scenes, which will be discussed below.

It’s worth mentioning that now non-fiction clips are made not only in special effects programs. The growing quality of graphics in games allows you to make a beautiful, almost cinematic picture. The only problem is that the price of this quality is the frame rendering time, which even on very powerful machines will not allow you to watch video in real time, i.e. at 30 frames per second. Therefore, sometimes developers use the game editor as a program to get the source data for the video. After that, the data is processed in editing programs and videos of excellent quality are obtained. An example of such a solution is a video for the Warface game:

Another important advantage of non-fiction commercials should be mentioned: most often they are a kind of finished piece that is perfect for solving marketing problems. Videos are easily uploaded to social networks and video services, attracting the attention of more and more new users, and also fit perfectly on the main pages of gaming sites.

The cutscene requires sacrifice

Now you can move on to the game cutscenes — the ones that the game renders in real time right on the player’s computer. These videos (they can also be called cut scenes: from the English. cutscene) look the same to the user as the game, are well connected with it in meaning, made in the same style. And this is definitely a plus. As usual, there is a downside: the maximum quality of such videos can only be assessed on the most “top-end” machines. If the player does not have a powerful enough computer, then the video may “slow down”, special effects or some kind of complex shading will not work in it. For example, if depth of field does not work on a “weak” computer, the frame looks much poorer and less collected. After all, initially, depth of field is a way to create a certain point of focus for the audience, corresponding to the director’s intention. It turns out that the developer cannot know in advance how the video will look like for the end user, and is forced to focus on some average configuration, for which not all the features of the game are available. True, such a problem is typical only for computers, on consoles in this regard, everything is quite stable and predictable.

There is another significant disadvantage of real-time videos — to create game cut-scenes, almost more complex technologies are required than to create the game itself. As an illustration, a short video about the technologies used to create the video about Warface from the example above:

Thus, we come to the third, perhaps the most important drawback of game videos: the need to separately modify the toolkit leads to a strong increase in the initial production budget.

There is a contact!

The indisputable advantage of game videos is that, unlike videos, they can be inserted into the game in different ways. For example, completely interrupt the game process, telling the story between game missions, as is done in StarCraft. Or insert videos directly into the gameplay, taking control from the player for a short time. This approach is typical of many games like Gears of War: the player runs out of some closed area into an open area, after which control is taken away and the camera flies to a new enemy that needs to be defeated. The enemy plays his own animation, perhaps some kind of special effect, after which the camera is returned to the player, as if saying: “Come on, act! Now you know who your opponent is and what he looks like up close. This technique is often used for various prompts: “you run here”, “press this thing” or “your enemies appeared here, something needs to be done with them”. Below is an example of a similar video from Gears of War 3 (the desired fragment starts at 13:50, but for some reason the link to a specific time does not work):

In parallel with the transmission of useful information at such moments, it is possible to show close-ups of all the details of monsters and the environment, which the player often simply does not notice during the game, in a relatively unobtrusive and appropriate way.

Another option: the player is completely taken control of the character, leaving him to control the camera. Suppose he is put into some kind of cart, wagon, plane, car, etc. The player moves along a fixed trajectory and cannot move independently at the current moment. On the way, NPCs sitting next to each other talk to each other, or some events occur nearby that reveal the plot. Recognizable? This is a very good and very common way to tell the player some kind of introductory story. For example, in Call of Duty 2, it is on such minimalistic scenes that almost the entire plot is served, and the uncomplicated shooting of the Nazis already looks much more meaningful.

There are also milder options — with partial loss of control. For example, the player presses some button — «pick up something» or «open the safe». And then the avatar starts playing some kind of complex animation, interacting with the environment: pulling some kind of lever, then something opens, someone runs out, etc. In principle, it cannot be said that this is a full-fledged cut-scene, but rather a completely scripted piece in which the player took part. In modern games, they try to integrate such pieces into the game as smoothly as possible so that there are no noticeable changes in the state of the game. This is very clearly seen in new shooters, for example in Battlefield:

Specificity of cut scenes in MMO games

There are many important nuances in creating videos for online games. The main problem is a huge number of assets. As a result, what gets into the frame may not look very attractive, because due to the abundance of objects in the world, it is impossible to detail everything either for production or for technical reasons.

For example, we make the whole game under the view «from behind» in order to fully see the character and what is happening in the world around. But in one of the frames we need a close-up of the face, and suddenly it turns out that no emotions are displayed on the face and pixels are visible at all. The player may think that the game is frankly cheap, although this is not at all the case.

Moments like this are the most brutal thing that MMOs have, because they can make some “let’s all characters make huge textures” decisions. Immediately, the cost of all assets skyrockets, and we need this for a five-minute video.

Another important nuance is the appearance of the game character. He can be of any height, gender, in any clothes. The director will build the frame for a long time so that everything looks harmonious, and then a short character will come and the composition will break: the camera should be at a different angle. Accordingly, for a tall character, the camera should be at the third angle. This is the complexity of the work: to parametrize such nuances and competently build a frame. For us, this moment was not a big problem. In Skyforge, for example, there are no gnomes for which you would need to adjust the camera. All the characters we have are about the same size and build, there is only an amendment to the floor. Accordingly, the composition is built for only one option.

In addition, external paraphernalia can destroy the entire epicness of the moment. For example, you are talking to an NPC about saving the world, but you are wearing a pink suit with lace. Or worse, there are characters riding purple ponies in the background. Therefore, when working on cut-scenes in Skyforge, we try to build on the action itself, and not on external paraphernalia. If the player wants to walk around in a fun suit, that’s his choice, and he’s unlikely to feel uncomfortable in it.

To prevent the player from losing their character and seeing the cutscene, some games turn off the display of other players. But here, too, there are nuances. You stand in a square full of people, you start a dialogue and, suddenly, everyone disappears. It gets a little weird. Moreover, players often do not even realize what exactly the problem is, they simply feel the wrongness of what is happening. They say that even a five-year-old child can notice bad animation: he will simply see that something is wrong. But only a cool animator will say what exactly is wrong. In our project, we abandoned cut-scenes in large cities and other crowded places. We moved the main videos to instances, in which only the player and his group are at the same time.

Some projects turn a blind eye to such problems, some focus on solutions from single-player games or find their own. Even at the pre-production stage for Skyfroge, we looked at dozens of cut-scenes from various MMO and single-player games in search of universal ways. As a result, having analyzed a lot of available material, we chose our own path for the development of cut-scenes, but this is already a topic for a separate article.

About the most important thing

But still, we should not forget that for all its diversity and functionality, it is not the rollers that are the main element of the game — it remains the game itself. You can lure a new player with great trailers, but if the gameplay is not interesting, the game will be deleted from the computer and forgotten, like dozens of others before it. And only when the quality of the virtual world is at its maximum, videos and cut-scenes will help you immerse yourself in the game even deeper.

A competent approach to game creation covers many different aspects, which can be listed for a very long time. We try to work out even those things that at first glance seem insignificant. The production of our game in the end takes a lot of time, but the result is worth it. I only talked about cut scenes, but we are planning many more interesting articles about the MMORPG development process using Skyforge as an example.

Lost Ark MBT starts in November

09/17/2018 06:14

Smilegate has officially announced the Lost Ark MBT. The game will release in Korea on November 7, 2018. Pre-registration began today, September 17, and will last until November 5. At the same time, an event was launched that allows 10,000 participants to receive a 10,000 won in-game certificate.

The game site, meanwhile, has been updated. You can find it at the link. At the moment, new tabs are blocked (with the exception of the history of the world in five parts). Looking forward to lots of GM notes in the coming weeks.

Of course, such an important announcement could not do without the coolest trailer that the game developers love so much. A spectacular five-minute cinematic dedicated to the announcement of the release date of Lost Ark is presented to your attention just below.

Lost Ark took over seven years to develop at a cost of $90 million to Smilegate. Details from the conference at the link.

SmilegateAction mmoMmorpgLost arkObt

Lost Ark

OBT (Open beta test)

MMORPG | Action

PC

MMO

Free

PlayGame Page

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