Demon's Souls Staying Alive Until (At Least) October

[John Funk]

Demon's Souls Staying Alive Until (At Least) October

The murderously difficult Demon's Souls will continue mercilessly slaughtering players for a little while longer yet.

2009's Demon's Souls was the very definition of "bizarre cult hit," a horrendously hard action game that took great delight in killing players over and over again - but gamers loved it. One of the most interesting things about Demon's Souls was its pseudo-online component: While you couldn't adventure cooperatively with other players, you could leave them messages warning about dangers ahead ("Trap around corner") or even come into their game as phantoms to try and kill them.

Of course, these pseudo-online features require publisher Atlus to keep its servers up and running at its own cost. While Atlus had previously pledged to keep Demon's Souls running online until at least March 2011, the ferocity of the community has persuaded the publisher to keep the servers whirring until October, thanks to the game's popularity.

"We've said it before and we'll say it again," said Atlus big-shot Aram Jabbari, "we will support the online servers for Demon's Souls as long as we possibly can, and we'll be as transparent about the entire process as possible, hence us constantly updating folks as to what to expect."

"That said, we're starting to think ... the servers may have taken on a bit of a ... life of their own," said Jabbari. "Have you played the game? It's not just one of the most brilliant roleplaying games ever made; it's darn challenging, too. It's starting to feel like even if we wanted to, we couldn't shut things down."

"Honestly, we're more worried the servers will shut us down than the other way around."

I'm not quite sure what he means by that, to be honest - but have you considered giving the community the option to host servers themselves, Mr. Jabbari? That way, Demon's Souls players get to play the game the way they love, and you don't have to bear the upkeep costs for an online game with no further income. It's a win/win situation.

(Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-12-17-demons-souls-servers-to-stay-online])

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[wasalp]

hmm I don't believe there has ever been a precedent for player run servers on a console before(by that I mean an actual factual server).

 

[Korten12]

I am so happy!

 

[Mr. GameBrain]

Its such a shame developers, (or publishers in some cases), seem really resistant to gamers hosting their own games.

Which isn't a problem if your game is a massive hit like Call of Duty, or Team Fortress 2 but most online games have a short multiplayer life.

It really does a disservice to the loyal fans that want to stick around, as the game dies when the company wants it to, (and companies can be very fickle).

(I'm personally annoyes that capcom killed the first monster hunter. I can see why they did it, but I don't have a PSP, and I don't play my Wii anymore, so I haven't played a monster hunter title since, (though if there was a new PC version with a global launch, I WOULD buy it, and maybe even pay monthly if the price is not too steep)

And that just leaves a foul taste in the fans mouths, and I don't think many of them are going to be in a hurry to play the next game and spread the word of mouth about it.

EDIT: I will note that Atlus are awesome, and actually dare to take risks with new IPs, and most of the games I get from them are very good games.
This was more of a general rant.

 

[Furioso]

I can't be happier since this is what I'm getting for Christmas!

 

[Evilsanta]

Awesome! Which still means i can help other players. And get help in return.

 

[ace_of_something]

edit: disregard.

 

[SnipErlite]

Good, gives me more time to play the damn game. I should realllyyy get around to buying this....

 

[kibayasu]

Correction: You can play cooperatively with other players, though the players joining the host world do so at half health, a more difficult world, and, if they die, are immediately returned to their own world.

The game requires its own servers because of the dynamic nature of the online play.

 

[mjc0961]

Cool. I need to get back to playing this again, I beat three bosses and then just kind of stopped. I think it's funny though, companies like EA whine and cry about used game sales and make Online Pass (not Project Ten Dollar, there is a difference between the two!) so you have to pay to get online if you buy used, but here's Atlus who doesn't even have DLC to sell to help keep this thing going and they decide to extend it anyway. Maybe they can accept donations, I'm sure people would put money in.

And don't get me wrong, I understand that servers cost money and EA and others need to do what they can (the article makes mention of Atlus worrying that the servers would shut them down first, which could either be a joke or hint that server costs would make them run out of money). I just think it's a fun contrast that EA is the big company that's acting like they're struggling and Atlus is the little guy and they seem to be doing better for now.

You realize you can also enter another person's game when you're dead and assist them so that you can come back to life right?
(Or kill their ass)

It's not JUST the messages.

Considering it already mentions that in the article, I'm going to guess that yeah, they realize that. YOU realize that you can actually just read the article yourself instead of asking questions it already answers, right?

 

[Tony2077]

So does it stay alive as sp only or does it die completely?

 

[Royta]

You can still play it Singleplayer style. But you'll miss out on a lot of the admosphere the multiplayer offers.
A small detail is also that the game becomes near unplatinumable for nearly everyone who doesn't have the patience to farm for the Pure Bladestone. This can take anywhere from 5 tot 5000 hours considering it's below 1% droprate.

It's still my favorite game of this generation, paired with Bayonetta, but I still consider it to be way to overhyped when it comes to difficulty. It's not THAT hard, especially when you compare it to the horrors of our childhood games.

 

[ace_of_something]

You realize you can also enter another person's game when you're dead and assist them so that you can come back to life right?
(Or kill their ass)

It's not JUST the messages.

Considering it already mentions that in the article, I'm going to guess that yeah, they realize that. YOU realize that you can actually just read the article yourself instead of asking questions it already answers, right?

Wow, you're right. I missed that.
Yes, I did read the article, even the best of us sometimes don't retain every word... The helping kill a boss part, isn't technically mentioned though.

 

[Fearzone]

This announcement is interesting, given the overall success of the game I wouldn't have expected otherwise. I mean it's like if Blizzard announced that WoW servers are going to stay open at least until next October, then that makes one think "well why wouldn't they, what's going on?"

Now I'm bummed Eye of Judgment servers got closed. I mean, since it's a turn-based card game I imagine a laptop could have probably handled world traffic. I wasn't playing online but to kill a good game like that is just poor form on Sony's part and this kind of poor support might raise issues around other ps3 exclusives.

 

[Alar]

I would play this... if I had a console.

 

[Korten12]

Oh man I have to beat this game.

Got distracted by other games, cuz ya know.. They're easy and this game is HARD! But it's so rewarding. It needs a follow up asap. I'd love for it to get a Phantasy Star Network sort of treatment. Hell I'd pay a few bucks a month to be able to lobby in and then use it's combat system to hack up a bunch of monsters.

Project Dark coming out next year on PS3 and 360 (except for in japan its a ps3 exclusive), and that is supposvely the spritual successor to Demon's souls, even made by the same team. Well technicaly not the whole team since Demon's souls was parialy also made by Sony Computer Entertainment but I don't know how much they were inovled.