Farewell from Paradise Bay
paradisebaygame.com
paradisebaygame.com
Some of the comments are funny, in a heartbreaking way. People really invested a lot in this game, emotionally and financially. They are wondering who is going to feed the pets they bought to live on their digital island.
The funniest/saddest thing about it is that, as a last hurrah, the maintainers of the game gave everyone 10 million gems to spend as they see fit in the remaining 2 months that the game is online. On the one hand, the players are kind of pissed off at the belated awareness that the gems they were hoarding were always fundamentally worthless, but on the other hand they want to buy the final superpet or whatever for their island before the volcano blows up.
There's no game quite like it that I'm aware of, and I suspect that many of their players are players that won't switch to another game.
I've been playing since 2106 and my wife and 70-year-old mother also play.
There's really an opportunity here for some other studio to pick up the pieces of this and make some money.
Hello future! Nice to know the singularity hasn't wiped us all out by then.
Mind you King is the chief scumbag of the late-stage-capitalism AAA game industry scumbags, so I expect nothing less. Either a game makes all the money conceivable and some inconceivable, in which case it "meets expectations" or it gets chucked in the bin along with usually at least a few hundred people's livelihoods for good measure, while the decision makers sail away on golden parachutes to fuck up another good company with their nonsense.
But I digress, in answer to your questions:
> Did they expect the game to last forever?
Most casual gamers don't think about this stuff in this way. Hell, many of the regular kind don't either. It's the new shiny thing and everyone loves it because it's new and shiny, let's all play it for awhile until the next new shiny comes out, then we'll all go play that and forget however much money we sunk into the old one.
> As a game designer/community manager, what would one do to make the shutdown of a beloved game be perceived in a somewhat positive (if bittersweet) light to the players?
I wouldn't. I'd make a game with longevity in mind instead of just making as much money as I possibly could as quickly as possible, and avoid setting unrealistic goals so I didn't need to shut down a game hauling in what was apparently a sizeable portion of 200 million bucks a year, which should be more than enough to sustain a reasonably sized business, because I hadn't managed to corner the entire mobile game market to make some investor cudhole happy.
Sorry if the bitterness is strong here. I'm passionate about work like this and I don't care how casual a game might be, it clearly had a lot of fans, was making a lot of money, but now is shut down and 78 people are out of work because some arsehole high in a company somewhere wasn't making enough gold to put under his wings.
The whole thing is sad and stupid and unnecessary.
This is precisely how I "cured" my old girlfriend of Diablo 2 addiction. She would spend 12-15h a day farming items, no job no social life rarely eating anything. I got this _brilliant_ idea of helping her get the rarer items faster by downloading item generator - didnt go as planned, afair cost me something like couple of weeks of silent treatment.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/12/king-shuts-down-former-z2...
> Activision Blizzard said it is laying off hundreds of employees today, and part of the fallout is that King’s mobile game studio in Seattle will be shut, resulting in the loss of 78 jobs, according to an unnamed source...
> ...One of the studio’s games, Paradise Bay, was successful. The studio generated an estimated $200 million over the last few years, but it was still shut.
I’m hoping this means I don’t keep getting that pop up as they should be closing out their z2live Apple account... anyone have any idea if that’s how it’ll work?
At least with a monthly pay-as-you-go model, you don't feel like you're investing in an asset. When a free game gets you to spend hundreds of dollars on cosmetic trinkets, you feel like you're buying something permanent.
So in a way, thank God it's going to be over soon - just watch out not to fall for the next “shiny new thing“, like you said already!!! ;)
Why can't people fondly remember and cherish the memories with something or someone they enjoyed spending time with? When a loved one passes away do you decide all the time you spent with them was a waste?
It's understandable to be upset or sad or angry, but to think of your past enjoyment and engagement as a waste?
This probably speaks as much to the addictive chemical nature of these kind of perpetual slot machine games as much as the thoughtlessness in the expression of the community members who are upset by it shutting down.
I think it offers a glimpse at the critical direction in which our society is heading... and that's what is truly miserable and sad.
Nowadays people tend more and more to give up thinking/using their brain, instead they choose to follow brainless “influencers“ (what an expression!?) and anything their phone spits out. :(
NB. Your comparison with the passing away of a loved one does not fit really, since with loved ones our memories are real. ;)
Again, I could have some of that wrong as that was awhile ago... but that's the gist. I'm sure both games still would have had a reasonable player base to make it feasible.
I am so sad the game is being shut down. It is such a waste to see the enormous creativity the designers put into it just disappearing! I've played for years. Have elaborately and beautifully decorated my island with flowers, walkways, fences, arches, fountains, etc. It's truly a beautiful game. And I feel proud to have designed such a magical place.
There were multiple challenges and fabulous pets which exhibited such nice behaviors. It truly was a magical place.
I think I'm most sad because there really isn't a game to switch to. Playing Paradise Bay wasn't just about completing challenges and winning prizes. It was about beautifully decorating a magical land you created. And enjoying the visually prettiness of the island. Butterflies abound, the characters were all sweet, and the island was uber friendly.
Other games totally lack the estetics. I wish the owners of this gem would reconsider shutting it doen. There is no game for us to move to. Very sad.
You could stack your mills for one. Each mill would hold 999 items in the order you put them in. I had several mills stacked to max capacity, this helped with the all too frequent tradefests or retofests. I had 3 island 2 of which 'fed' my main island. I had a huge notebook to keep a record of every item in order in each mill. (Sad I know)
They had frequent builder events and then there were pet stickers, doubloons and map pieces etc... I could go on and on.
You also collected pets, follwed by their stickers to lvl the pets up.
The ability to decorate your island was only limited by your imagination. You could actually turn it into 'your paradise'
I'm not angry, I'm very sad. I didn't invest much money into the game as I played strategically learnt from long term play. I was always conscious it could also be gone any day! I don't think ppl playing these games think about that much. Hence the shock and anger at losing their game and money.
This game took over my love for playing mmorpgs. I have played SWG, EQ2, Wow from vanilla. I would of happily payed a monthly sub to keep Playing PB. No timed raids or ppl evaluating your performance on your dps. You could pick up PB for 5 mins or 5 hours. It truly will be a sad day on may 17th! I don't think AB actually realised what a gem of a game they had.
There was also an awesome wikia that was maintained by awesome players because they wanted to :)
bay.fandom.com/wiki/Paradise_Bay_Wikia
There certainly isn't a game out there to fill the void in my spare time. So I just hope someone has the foresight to fill that very big hole in a lot of ppls spare time.
The graphics are stunning. All the thought that had gone into the little details was brilliant.
Even your pets look up at you through your screen and each one has at least 3 animations. They would interact with different items just for them.
The characters in the game all had storylines and you built up reputation with them unlocking new recipes for the mills. I also think the story lines made it more time consuming to add new levels as there was so much thought behind it.
Island space was a big issue with players. There was so much you could do to decorate and never enough room with the pets constantly been added to the game. In all it’s time there was only 1 land expansion. Maybe this was due to high level of graphics?
I for one bought a new iPad in 2017 just to play PB so it ran smoother. I know as the game progressed some couldn’t run it on their tablets. But as with all games, as they improve we have to upgrade. PCs, consoles, tablets.
I maybe naive but I hope someone can take this game and keep it running. That would be a bonus! If they don’t then I’m slowly coming to terms with another gaming love been over.
I am certainly NOT going to look for another distraction, as I have cursed the game at times for being all so sweet - and it is/was....! ;)
From the forum comments you can see the conflict between the Users the game has cultivated who are really emotionally invested in the game and its corporate owners who are detached from it.
I've worked on a number of medium-to-large systems. They're literally always held together with duct tape and prayers. The entire thing would probably collapse in a few days if someone weren't there babysitting the storage infrastructure alone.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190212005925/en/Act...
They believe whatever they’re expending on this game can generate higher profits if used for something else.
1. This was basically a scenario of 'leave that computer turned on, and people will keep sending us money.' (I know it's never quite as simple as that, but it was as close to it as it ever gets.) What's the return on capital of that, expressed as an APR? I would expect it to be far higher than anything else ever gets in the real world.
2. What, exactly, might the something else be? If this was four decades ago when there were so many opportunities that interest rates were in double digits, maybe I could buy it, but now? What else could they possibly be spending the capital on, that would generate a higher return?
3. Speaking of interest rates, they are currently practically zero, and the world is awash in capital looking for good investment opportunities. If they really had a better opportunity than leaving an already developed and proven successful game running, they should have no difficulty laying hands on capital with which to exploit that opportunity.
So I still don't see any way it makes sense. What am I still missing?
Combine the surprise of transience with the use of real money to buy fake goods and it can be a true shock. This is especially true for casual gamers who have yet to experience their first game shutdown.
I was realistic and didn't spend that much, but I can't imagine I'm the only one to feel that way. I've now got an even stronger stance against online only games/communities.
It makes me really sad to think about; WoW (and video gaming in general) has been a huge part of my life and tinkering with video games under the hood was the kickstarter for my career. I don't know if I will ever find a replacement for it when it's gone.
> So basically all the money we've spent on this game is gone lmao wow
Not sure what they expected, tbh. That money was always gone.
It would be nice if they open sourced it, so that someone could take on the mantle and run private servers. I wonder how difficult reverse-engineering and patching it would be.
King was notorious for running popup ads and app-store redirects for years. I don't think this is in their DNA.
the linked story is higher in the thread -- don't worry, there is still time for that Farmville clone project you've yet to release ;)