Why Disney obliterated the "old islands?"

[Shamus The Brute]

Is there any substantiated data/information out there as to why Disney decided to obliterate the "old islands" of POTCO in exchange for the new ones?

I am not interested in assumptions, word-of-mouth, and/or hunches. Thank you.

 

[internetpirate]

Framerates. But the old islands isn't the only thing they obliterated for the sake of framerates; they also changed most caves and the skybox and other visual effects.

 

[Shamus The Brute]

Framerates. But the old islands isn't the only thing they obliterated for the sake of framerates; they also changed most caves and the skybox and other visual effects.

Thank you. I guess too I could have looked. This source from POTCO's Wiki explains things sufficiently:
https://piratesonline.fandom.com/wiki/Island_Destructions

Question: If, over time, technology and operating systems do advance WHY would Disney destroy the "old" islands in exchange for the line of reasoning given? What I mean is, with the passing of time players would eventually have better systems @ hand to play the game (as is) despite the bogging down of frame rates and polygon.

Am I correct in saying this? If so, is the logic and reasoning given as to why the old was destroyed/the new brought in actual truth behind Disney's motivation?

 

[Kris]

I am not interested in assumptions, word-of-mouth, and/or hunches. Thank you.

Not sure why you would say this. Unless someone who worked on potco from Disney came and said why, then anything ANYONE has to say would be based on opinion.

 

[Shamus The Brute]

Not sure why you would say this. Unless someone who worked on potco from Disney came and said why, then anything ANYONE has to say would be based on opinion.

Was just interested to gain the most "official" (unofficial) recollection as to what drove Disney to change the game, in the way that they did.

I recall the actual storyline posts/hype they pushed, as just a player. However behind most every CONTENT decision I assume too there is equally a technical decision as well.

I find it interesting that the reason most given for Disney to do away with the old islands was on account of the technology present during the time regardless of the fact that technology usually ADVANCES (resolving certain tech 'challenges'). *It all seems backwards to me and I am wondering if there is more to this than what everyone seems to think.

 

[ElizaCreststeel]

The old island layouts were also not conducive for Invasions. Whether the concept of invasions was part of the reasons I don't think its stated but their primary reason was lag. Despite the fact Disney was using an already out-moded engine, since they were aiming at a younger audience, the logic was that their target customers were not hard-core gamers with better rigs. So, they were dumbing down everything for kids with more modest computers.

Ironically, I think creating massive, mostly empty caves made the least sense. NO ONE goes in them except for quests now. Back in the day, pirates were in The Royal Caverns, Cursed Caverns and Beckett's Quarry all the time. They were much smaller but definitely more intense areas with more concentrated enemies.

 

[Bananaguy]

I find it interesting that the reason most given for Disney to do away with the old islands was on account of the technology present during the time regardless of the fact that technology usually ADVANCES (resolving certain tech 'challenges'). *It all seems backwards to me and I am wondering if there is more to this than what everyone seems to think.

While technology would advance, not everyone would be getting new technology, at least not all at the same rate. So deciding to change things to improve performance would allow more people (specifically people with lower end computers) to play.
So what Eliza said

their target customers were not hard-core gamers with better rigs. So, they were dumbing down everything for kids with more modest computers.

 

[squintz]

The old island layouts were also not conducive for Invasions. Whether the concept of invasions was part of the reasons I don't think its stated but their primary reason was lag. Despite the fact Disney was using an already out-moded engine, since they were aiming at a younger audience, the logic was that their target customers were not hard-core gamers with better rigs. So, they were dumbing down everything for kids with more modest computers.

Ironically, I think creating massive, mostly empty caves made the least sense. NO ONE goes in them except for quests now. Back in the day, pirates were in The Royal Caverns, Cursed Caverns and Beckett's Quarry all the time. They were much smaller but definitely more intense areas with more concentrated enemies.

"since they were aiming at a younger audience, the logic was that their target customers were not hard-core gamers with better rigs."

I agree. I've been saying something similar that this game was not meant as a stand alone high tech game for gamers but the 'prize in the cereal box crowd'. To me, it was a commercial for the franchise, to be distributed maybe as a freebie single cd at the parks and endcaps of the disney stores. I also feel the pay sub was a later, maybe weeks later after the opening as an idea to make money to cover the cost of the game progress. My final thought is we see thousands of users and think that is a lot and enough to support it, disney sees millions of potential users that didn't show up, so disney pulled the plug and went elsewhere and also into toon town at the time because that had more paying subs. It's all about marketing and money return for disney since the 50's.

So, even if the pay sub system was part of the original plan, maybe disney didn't come close to their expected return and costs was one of the main decision makers. It's just biz after all.

 

[Shamus The Brute]

While I can't dismiss the whole dumbing-down point made about how Disney tried to align POTCO according to the systems of that particular era, I do disagree that children and kids were their only targeted audience. I feel this to be so from links I have found and read from original POTCO developer - Mike Goslin. (I can share said links here if anyone is interested).

Goslin's words are important in that he claims back in 2008 that a lesson learned from POTCO (thus far, then) was that the game was attempted to be geared towards all fans/audience type members of the POTC films, not just children/kids alone. *Important to note is that he said this at a tech. conference in Austin, Texas one (1) year prior to POTCO's "old islands" being obliterated and destroyed.

So, if POTCO's developers felt this way and were careful as to how they should target ALL ages and fans of the POTC films, I wonder too why they chose likely to make the mistake of dumbing-down everyone's playability knowing full well that technology itself always advances on both kid, teen, and adult computer systems. Sure, not everyone will choose for themselves to make the choice to upgrade (once technology does create 'that opportunity') but, as game developers, why choose to look backwards instead of foward in lieu of catering the livelihood of the fate of the game towards everyone's technology - if technology_alone was the sole reason why POTCO's "old islands" were destroyed as everyone assumes?

Was Disney's decision then (towards replacing the old islands with the new) something other than technology woes experienced by players at the time? I suspect there was and @ElizaCreststeel point made about invasions being one of them does make better sense. But, is there any other conclusions we can come up with? Thoughts?

 

[squintz]

While I can't dismiss the whole dumbing-down point made about how Disney tried to align POTCO according to the systems of that particular era, I do disagree that children and kids were their only targeted audience. I feel this to be so from links I have found and read from original POTCO developer - Mike Goslin. (I can share said links here if anyone is interested).

Goslin's words are important in that he claims back in 2008 that a lesson learned from POTCO (thus far, then) was that the game was attempted to be geared towards all fans/audience type members of the POTC films, not just children/kids alone. *Important to note is that he said this at a tech. conference in Austin, Texas one (1) year prior to POTCO's "old islands" being obliterated and destroyed.

So, if POTCO's developers felt this way and were careful as to how they should target ALL ages and fans of the POTC films, I wonder too why they chose likely to make the mistake of dumbing-down everyone's playability knowing full well that technology itself always advances on both kid, teen, and adult computer systems. Sure, not everyone will choose for themselves to make the choice to upgrade (once technology does create 'that opportunity') but, as game developers, why choose to look backwards instead of foward in lieu of catering the livelihood of the fate of the game towards everyone's technology - if technology_alone was the sole reason why POTCO's "old islands" were destroyed as everyone assumes?

Was Disney's decision then (towards replacing the old islands with the new) something other than technology woes experienced by players at the time? I suspect there was and @ElizaCreststeel point made about invasions being one of them does make better sense. But, is there any other conclusions we can come up with? Thoughts?

I just came up with the best one I could think of, and that's money. Or lack there of.
Disney is corporate and corporate life blood is budgets. Perhaps the pencil necks whose sole job is to balance and justify budgets ran it up the line to the boss that the potco department group is negative months in a row. I've been in corps where the pencil necks have never seen the department they will shut down based completely and only on numbers. People don't matter to them. Just numbers.
Could be as simple as that and the concept about video games means nothing to them. You can work 30 years in a corp like disney and never meet 70% of the workers.
People in animation will never ever meet people in purchasing or planning. Never seeing beyond their own department and human resources. It's just the nature of corporations.

Why do you think a lot of the indie groups exist? A lot of it is because of publishers are run by accountants and bosses. The game people with the passion are a smaller group within the system. Anyone outside your developers sphere and first line supervisors don't give a darn and only look at numbers if they're a publisher. It is a well known fact for decades that game publishers push out inferior products in the name of profit.

Disney is no different.

 

[squintz]

del

 

[Shamus The Brute]

I just came up with the best one I could think of, and that's money. Or lack there of.
Disney is corporate and corporate life blood is budgets. Perhaps the pencil necks whose sole job is to balance and justify budgets ran it up the line to the boss that the potco department group is negative months in a row. I've been in corps where the pencil necks have never seen the department they will shut down based completely and only on numbers. People don't matter to them. Just numbers.
Could be as simple as that and the concept about video games means nothing to them. You can work 30 years in a corp like disney and never meet 70% of the workers.
People in animation will never ever meet people in purchasing or planning. Never seeing beyond their own department and human resources. It's just the nature of corporations.

Why do you think a lot of the indie groups exist? A lot of it is because of publishers are run by accountants and bosses. The game people with the passion are a smaller group within the system. Anyone outside your developers sphere and first line supervisors don't give a darn and only look at numbers if they're a publisher. It is a well known fact for decades that game publishers push out inferior products in the name of profit.

Disney is no different.

I was waiting for this reason to be said.

While possibly true, I can think of a few reasons to debunk the DISNEY $profit$ reason why the "old islands" were obliterated for the new islands. (You'll have to excuse me. I am in a debunking kind of mood today even though I am accepting of all ideas and opinions to this thread contrary to what I wrote within the OP).

1. POTCO's Wiki has documented down that the old islands of POTCO were (Disney) obliterated/destroyed in 2009. This is only a couple of years after POTCO's release.
2. The 2 year mark of POTCO, for such an abrupt change to the game, could be seen as unusual given the momentum of the game was really only just beginning.
3. While the conversion of subscription rates (from free to play-to-play) due to changes made to the islands is sufficient reason for Disney to gain profits within the short-term, the change itself does nothing really for their profits in the long-term (in so far as the gain of future subscriptions to the game) given POTCO's youth and short existence
4. Disney CEO, Bob Iger, was caught on a TMZ interview claiming the POTC theme-park ride was his favorite of all time. His support of the POTC franchise alone can also be understood below:
5. If the "old islands" of POTCO were traded for the new islands just so Disney could retain player subscriptions/future $money$, why would they choose to do so as early as two (2) years after the game's release rather than wait longer to have further boosted their own profits from the game?
6. The above ^ question I ask assumes interest grows for POTCO as time goes along, beyond the two (2) year mark and anniversary of the game

 

[Shamus The Brute]

If technology is, but is not really, a reason why the new islands came into existence (on account of 'dumbing down' everyone's playability due to low-end computer systems used @ the time) does this mean:

• POTCO was not meant to last long nor become as popular as it particularly did, for Disney?
• Disney made a choice early on to choose interesting content over POTCO playability?
• Other reasons (please comment)?

 

[Bananaguy]

Going back to the technical side of things for a moment, I know that potco was coded in python which is not ideal for videogames, and used panda3d, which was not that great either. From my personal experience with my (rather good) computer at the time, I could run potco medium graphics, at about 30fps with plenty of dips and some rises (and this was after the update). Comparing that to another game that came out around the same time (Cod4), my computer could run that game at max settings (same resolution for both games) 60fps (and it was even a much better looking game).
I really think potco had a lot of optimization issues, and while the island changes didn't fix that, it helped the game to run better on all systems.

1. If the "old islands" of POTCO were traded for the new islands just so Disney could retain player subscriptions/future $money$, why would they choose to do so only two (2) years after the game's release rather than wait longer to have further boosted their own profits from the game?
2. The above ^ question I ask assumes interest grows for POTCO as time goes along, beyond the two (2) year mark and anniversary of the game

Thinking if Disney wanted to make as much money as possible, assuming interest grows is probably not a good idea. Interest generally declines in video games after a while, so rather that wait to potentially boost their profits more, they played it safe and boosted their profits earlier, to prevent a lack of interest in the future from lessening a potential profit in the future.
(did that ^ make sense, I hope I didn't word it in a confusing manner)

 

[Shamus The Brute]

@Bananaguy - I appreciate yourself sharing your experience and, it's not confusing at all. I thought about this too simply because of "the way" Disney ditched all of it's virtual reality/MMO games for the sake and trend of mobile games. Looking back on things now, we all can see how well that turned out for them - shakes head.

For the longest time, I avoided the whole mobile trend on account of my own (personal) hatred for what mobile games did to games like POTCO, Toontown Online, and Pixie Hollow. Having played POTCO only, I did understand though of how many (online) friendships were "obliterated" and destroyed all because big corporations like Disney were interested only in gaining a fast/quick $buck$ through how the timeline and lifespan of any particular mobile game last (which isn't very long). Only until last year, I had pride myself in going without a smart phone due on account of this hatred towards mobile gaming, lol.

I will have to do more research but thus far what I am understanding (through links provided online), POTCO's many developers que'd the game itself dependent upon the various POTC films and as such, a couple of those films were released after the 2009 decision for new islands to take place of the old ones - within POTCO.

 

[squintz]

Going back to the technical side of things for a moment, I know that potco was coded in python which is not ideal for videogames, and used panda3d, which was not that great either. From my personal experience with my (rather good) computer at the time, I could run potco medium graphics, at about 30fps with plenty of dips and some rises (and this was after the update). Comparing that to another game that came out around the same time (Cod4), my computer could run that game at max settings (same resolution for both games) 60fps (and it was even a much better looking game).
I really think potco had a lot of optimization issues, and while the island changes didn't fix that, it helped the game to run better on all systems.


Thinking if Disney wanted to make as much money as possible, assuming interest grows is probably not a good idea. Interest generally declines in video games after a while, so rather that wait to potentially boost their profits more, they played it safe and boosted their profits earlier, to prevent a lack of interest in the future from lessening a potential profit in the future.
(did that ^ make sense, I hope I didn't word it in a confusing manner)

It makes a lot of sense. What question that may never have answers is disneys dicision to go with essentially non game engines at the time. cod4 was built from the begging on video game exclusive type engines. python and early panda were more designed toward cad cam rendering and such and not as full animation rendering for video gaming. Did disney just use what they had in house and modified it to incorportate video gaming? And was early panda and python really written to work with a users home standalone graphic cards of that era?