So another one bites the dust. Wish being cancelled has spurred a fair amount of discussion here and there.

One of the things that the Wish experience brings home is the importance of having a solid vision of what your game is about, a vision that you can communicate in a single sentence (this is something that Raph has harped on in his GDC talks). Consider the MMOs that have actually shipped:

  • Ultima Online. Live in a virtual world.
  • Everquest. The combat and adventure RPG.
  • Shadowbane. Play to Crush – the PvP game.
  • City of Heroes. Like an MMO, but with a different sort of men in tights.

Outside of the gaming industry, this phenomenon is common – it’s called branding, and it’s how you earn mindshare in a crowded marketplace. Consider cars, for example: Cadillac means Big Luxury Car, Volkswagen means Small Practical Car and Volvo means Safe Car. Having a powerful brand can sell a lot of product – if you stay in between the lines. Cadillac’s tried to make small cars, Volkswagen has tried to make big cars, and Volvo’s tried to make sports cars. All have failed.

But the important thing, according to Al and Laura Reis in the excellent 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, is that new companies cannot compete directly with the big boys – they need to create their own category, so they can own it. Everquest is the market leader in “Massively Multiplayer” games, so other games have to come up with differentiators, thus City of Heroes is the “Superhero MMO”, Shadowbane is the “PvP MMO” and Dark Age of Camelot is the “Realm vs Realm MMO”. Rather than try to go head-to-head with the big boys, you have to create a category you think you can dominate. There was, as Reis points out, no market for safe cars until Volvo created it.

Now take a look at Wish. Games without licenses have to try harder to push their brand identity – they just can’t say “We’re Ultima, only online!” or “Live in the Star Wars Galaxies!” They have to have a big, compelling idea to play. Some designers may even see this as a godsend (”I’m not fettered by the Marvel or DC license, I can really go nuts designing this superhero MMO!”) But when I asked a Wish programmer at E3 last year what his game was all about, he started showing me combat, and he started showing me character inventory, and while showing me all of this, he couldn’t communicate the Big Idea that would make Wish gain mindshare in a market dominated by World of Warcraft and Everquest.

Similarly, when I went to Wish’s website, this was the first thing they present you with when trying to share the vision.

Defining Ultra Massive Online Gaming™

Wish is the first Ultra Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (UMMORPG™). “Ultra” means that Wish supports more than 10,000 simultaneous players in a single, seamless world, without any zones or “shards”.

Other than the fact that their boast is wrong (EVE Online hit this goal first), it’s just not a very compelling space to own. Are there really a whole bunch of people sitting around thinking, “This game is fun, but if only there were 10 times the number of people harassing me!” Ironically, the reverse is true – many MMO players found themselves wishing for smaller groups – and Neverwinter Nights rode that horse to great success.

At any rate, if I were doing a small company, I would bet on a great design idea for my vision, as Puzzle Pirates did, and not on a technological idea. It’s just less risky, and easier to demonstrate the benefits to the players.

The tragic thing about Wish’s demise is that, judging from their interviews and FAQ, they had some really neat ideas. If those ideas had been the ones that had been pressed to the forefront of their communication, we might be having a different conversation today.

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