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[Trapezohedron]

This topic is about The Flock, a multiplayer game that, after a certain time, will be pulled of off steam, and the dead people stay dead.

This topic is also about, and in fact is preferred that we discuss, the point of having such a system.

Barring such an obvious cash-grab function (oh everyone's dead free cash and no more server bills / bug fixing et al.), it seems to be a nice idea, but looking at the game video itself seems misplaced.

Imagine if DayZ used this system, in which a person could only enter a specific server ONCE, and him being dead means him being dead for the entirety of the server run.

Except this game is all about not being able to play after you die. At all. S'posedly once everyone died out evenly they'd release a climactic end. Seems like they really want to shoot themselves in the foot, if you ask me.

[ZebioLizard2]

You get to play more then once, it just takes "lives" from the tally, there's no perma death.

Either way the game looks poor and I'm betting griefers kill themselves repeatedly in order to drop the tally to the end down quick.

[Jopax]

I like the idea of incorporating gameplay and story like this. Especially for a multiplayer game, where actions actually have impact other than driving numbers up or down (even if they are doing just that in essence, the consequences are quite bigger).

What I dislike is if publishers or devs catch up on this idea in a rather wrong way of trying to force planned obsolesence onto games so they can push out more sequels by making you unable to play older games in the series.

[penguinofhonor]

The gameplay looks decently fun, but this system looks way interesting and I love that they're experimenting. This is not a risk most people would take.

All multiplayer games have a lifetime. This system could mean that theirs doesn't end with a whimper as the community gradually shrinks and the remaining people get increasingly frustrated. Instead, ideally, everyone goes "Wow, that was awesome! I'm glad I got to experience that" and maybe they play a few more games before everyone leaves (they only mention stopping purchases with the event, so I'm assuming you'll be able to play for a little while after).

How well this plays out will largely hinge on how accurately they predict their game's lifespan. If the event happens too early, they're shooting themselves in the paycheck and will disappoint a lot of people. If the event happens too late, players will have moved on and it will lose its impact. I hope they don't go with an exact number of deaths that they count down from - it would be really easy for that to get screwed up by the game being unexpectedly popular or something.

Even if they get this to coincide with the end of the player base's lifespan, I don't know what effect this will have on individual players. Will players who bought it early and quit early still be interested enough to come back and see the ending thing? Will players who bought it late be angry they didn't get to play more?

It's cool to see someone embracing multiplayer games' limited lifespan - and it's a stark contrast to the current industry standard of shoving a few crappy progression systems in multiplayer to keep people grinding until the sequel. Definitely easy to fuck up, but I will be paying attention to this and possibly buying it.

[Ozyton]

No time to really look into this, but it seems to me like there'd just be a bunch of people 'speedrunning' this game to their deaths to raise the death toll as quickly as possible.

According to the developer, this extinction event will trigger a "climactic finale" that can only be played by those who already have the game in their Steam library.

It'll be cool to watch the ending... on Youtube, like everyone else will.

[Virtz]

Either way the game looks poor and I'm betting griefers kill themselves repeatedly in order to drop the tally to the end down quick.

More than that, griefers can buy the game, kill themselves repeatedly for just under two hours, then refund it.

In before "capitalism is evil, fuck video games".

[Jopax]

I fail to see how this is a cash grab in any shape or form?

It's just that they're completely shifting what you would expect from an MP only game. This is instead something more akin to a singleplayer story expirience but with other people. Also non-replayable, which might be considered a bummer, but honestly, that kinda makes it unique. It's a one-off story (however shitty it might be, I have no idea) that will happen once, and in a certain way, you can participate or not, it's up to you.

And yes, it will be ripe for griefers and assholes to ruin it, I'm not sure what the devs could do about it personally, since those kinds of shitty people are present pretty much everywhere, and without clamping down on other peoples fun you can't really do much about them.

[ConsUme]

Funny Most people think it is a money making gimmick.

I do...

I also See 4chan ruining it

from the sounds of it, it is permadeath.

EDIT: I wound't say this if it weren't $60!

[Jopax]

Ok, so the price is stupidly high, but overpriced games are nothing new.

Let's put it this way though, they are limiting the number of sales they recieve from day one. This means that this will have a certain maximum amount of money that it can possibly bring in. The higher the intial sale and playerbase the lower that maximum amount will be.

So again, how is limiting the amount of money you can make from a game a cash grab?

Edit:
And where exactly did you find the 60$ price point? I've looked over some of the articles about the game and the price itself isn't mentioned anywhere.

[Shadowlord]

This sounds like the kind of game which they should be selling as a split screen multiplayer Ouya game for $5 or $10, and they're going to make it server-based and shut down the servers after x deaths?

P.S. If a game requires servers to work which will eventually shut down, why would I waste money on it, when I still sometimes play games that were made 25+ years ago? This doesn't seem like the kind of game that I would be playing even 5 years later, though. It doesn't seem like the kind of game I would be playing at all, to be honest.

If it's really $60, that's absurd. It ain't no Arkham Knight.

[miauw62]

I could see an MMO where the story progresses after a certain action happens a given amount of time being interesting, but this seems like a crude implementation.

[Cthulhu]

This is true about every multiplayer game though.  Aside from the die-hard classics like battlefield 1942 and counter strike and shit, they go for maybe a year at most and then they're dead and nobody plays them.

[Krevsin]

Yes, but most at least have the decency to not shove that fact right in your face.

[Cthulhu]

So instead you get the fun of seeing a cool looking multiplayer game, buying it, and finding out the multiplayer's dead and nobody plays it anymore.

[Shadowlord]

So don't buy multiplayer-centric things that your friends aren't also buying or playing?