What are the Prerequisites for a Retro Nostalgia Server?

The whole retro nostalgia server thing has gone from something those weirdos at SOE did once in a while to a idea that has helped sustain the profitability of titles as large as World of Warcraft.

Classic is as classic does

The idea has officially been part of the EverQuest business model since 2015 and has spread to other Daybreak titles and beyond.  Old School RuneScape has a life of its own, Aion just launched a classic server last week, and the Lord of the Rings Online team is launching two new legendary servers next week and has started hinting about a real “classic” server.

So I started wondering what it takes to make one of these sorts of servers viable.  I came up with four… I’ll call them “common threads”… that seem to be involved with successful ventures of this sort.  They are, to my mind:

1. Player versus Environment Progression
2. Expansion Based Content
3. Multiple Server Architecture
4. Some Past Era of Fame or Success
5. A Monetization Scheme

Player versus Environment Progression

The first item on my list, PvE, is probably the most controversial.  I mean we only have to look at how many PvP servers Blizzard stood up for WoW Classic to convince just about anybody that PvP is not necessarily a detriment to the nostalgia idea.

But I am going to argue that even on a WoW Classic PvP server that PvE progression, doing quests and killing mobs and getting to the level cap, is the primary.  Getting ganked in Stranglethorn Vale or coming to an uneasy truce with somebody from the other faction when you just want to finish up a quest out in Un’goro Crater, that is some extra spicy topping on the PvE game and not an independent PvP experience.  It is PvP in a PvE framework, and that PvE framework is what you need.

Which isn’t to say that PvP can’t screw things up even with a PvE framework.  The story of PvP in EverQuest II basically consists of a few brief moments where a PvP server was fun… under very specific circumstances, like leveling locking yourself at a specific point in progression and sticking to low level zones… and most of the rest of the fifteen years of the game trying and failing to recreate or recapture the magic of those moments.  They keep breaking PvE progression to make it work, which makes it otherwise unsustainable.

Expansion Based Content

This might not be as critical as the first item.  It is more of a factor as to how long your nostalgia experience can be expected to last.  EverQuest, with 26 expansions, is the poster child for this.  You can unlock an expansion a month and still keep the party going for a couple of years.

But you might not want to drag people through every expansion.  The Fippy Darkpaw time locked progression server for EverQuest ran for nine years.  EverQuest was only seven years old when they rolled out the first such server.  Nine years is long enough to feel nostalgic for the good old days of the launch of the server.

For World of Warcraft it feels like there is an argument to stop after the second expansion, if only for the sake of simplicity.

And, of course, having expansions where the game changed all in one go gives the company and the players nice, clear markers as to where the nostalgia is.  It is handy.

Multiple Server Architecture

The MMO in question ought to support the idea of multiple shards, servers, realms, or whatever you want to call them.  This seems like a bit of a gimme, but it does leave out EVE Online, where not only does everybody play in a single version of the game (except those in China), but the game itself is a success based on the critical mass of players.  Splitting off a nostalgia based New Eden would be a non-started for this reason alone… but it also doesn’t have PvE progression nor expansion based content.  No retro server for EVE Online ever.

Anyway, you should be able to roll up a new, special rules server and not kill your game or over-tax your staff.

Some Past Era of Fame or Success

Can you have nostalgia for a game nobody has heard of?  Sure, why not!  Will anybody else come and play?  No.

A big part of the retro server plan is farming your installed base, appealing to them with visions of the “good old days” when the game was new, they were young, and everything seemed much simpler.  While those who missed out on the original launch might show some interest, the success of your server is largely based on how many people have fond memories of your early game.

EverQuest does very well on this front because, while the game never achieved anything like WoW level subscription numbers, in the five years between its launch and WoW‘s launch a lot of people came and played for at least a little while.  Brad McQuaid said at one point that there were a couple million former EQ players before WoW was a thing.  These are the people who will be tempted to come back.

And then, of course, there is WoW Classic, where Blizz had to roll out about 150 servers to handle the nostalgia overload.

Even Lord of the Rings Online, which never met Turbine’s grandiose visions of popularity, did score a lot of players over the year.

On the flip side there is EverQuest II, which launched just weeks before WoW, and never achieved the kind of success its older sibling had, or Anarchy Online, 20 years old this month, which had such a bad launch it became the first title I knew of to go down the free to play path.  Both games have dedicated followings, but neither has the depth of installed base that makes the idea of a retro server a big deal.  EQII has had a few of those at this point, but they tend to launch quietly and shut down even more quietly.

A Monetization Scheme

The company isn’t doing this for nostalgia, it is doing it to farm the installed base for money.  And to get that money, they have to have a plan.  WoW Classic has the simplest of all plans.  Since you still have to subscribe to play WoW, they just included WoW Classic in that plan and they were set.

EverQuest and other Daybreak titles, which still have a subscription plan as an option, just put their special servers in a special “subscribers only” room.  Not too tough, that.  (Though can we get LOTRO and DDO on the Daybeark All Access plan now that we finally know Daybreak owned them before EG7?  or How about an EG7-wide all access plan?)

Aion Classic has… a monetization plan of sorts.  If I am reading things correctly, it consists of a special pay to win cash shop and an optional subscription for benefits, but at least that is a plan.

But I wonder if a game like Guild Wars 2 could ever pull off the nostalgia server idea.  It seems like there might be a market to re-roll the event experience of the game from scratch.  Maybe?  But their business plan is buy the box and cash shop items.  I guess they could have some special cash shops items, but I am not sure they would bring in the money needed to make a classic server worthwhile.

Anyway, those are my somewhat off-the-cuff thoughts this morning.  I am sure I missed something in the mix.

Consolidation and Preparations for World War Bee

The official Imperium line is that the upcoming conflict, should it come to pass, is going to be called “World War Bee” in order to distinguish it/blur it with the “Casino War” of 2016.  A write up of the Imperium’s narrative is over at INN.  There is even a video.

Propaganda is always a big part of these wars, and r/eve is filling up with entries.

Meanwhile, out in null sec, things are in motion.  As I mentioned on Monday, the weekend saw capital ships moving north.

That was in preparation for covering the unanchoring of several Keepstars that north of our Fountain frontier.  Two in Pure Blind had already been taken down, with one destroyed along the way.  This week the pull back has focused on the Keepstars in Cloud Ring.  Those were timed to get the furthest, the one out in 6RCQ-V, first, then work back towards J5A-IX.

Kirkland Protein Star unanchoring

While the Pure Blind removals were attempts to slip in and yank the structures without raising any fuss, the Cloud Ring operations were to be marked with a complete lack of subtlety.  These were to be maximum ship efforts, displays of power, so of course I had to go along for the ride.  I am all about seeing the game at its extremes, and more than 2,000 ships in motion and sitting on a Keepstar certainly qualifies.

Fleets hanging on the Keepstar

I was also interested to see what happens when you take down a structure.  I had never seen that before, so I tried to keep a close eye on things.  However, it turns out that the structure just goes away without much in the way of fanfare.  One moment it is there, the next it is gone.

And then we’re all just hanging in space

The only notice was a notification that popped up announcing that the Keepstar had been moved to asset safety, no doubt the quickest way to whisk it away.

That was all

So most of what I got to watch was the effort it takes to move 2,000 ships safely from J5A-IX to 6RCQ-V and back, which took about three hours to make the journey.  It would probably take five minutes in an interceptor, but an interceptor doesn’t generate 10% tidi simply by taking a gate.  It is an elaborate dance with subcaps going ahead a bit to shepherd the capitals through a gate, then the caps jumping by type, then the subcaps repositioning while the jump timer runs down for the caps so we can do it all again.

Kind of a pain in the butt, and all the more so when you have to count on at least 5% of the operation being distracted by something in real life at any given moment, so ships just sit there when told to jump or take a gate or align.  And it is all the more comical when we are all in the same voice coms channel.  It was a good day to be in the No Chatter sub-channel, where you can only hear FC commands… and swears when people aren’t paying attention at the wrong moment.

That was the longest of the ops.

Pulling the Keepstar from F7C-H0 went much more quickly, it being just a gate and a jump away from our staging, so there was no downtime during the trip, just lots of big ships moving in the same direction.

Colorful titans

That led again to a mass of ships sitting on the Keepstar while we waited for it to disappear and get carted off to safety.

Waiting on another Keepstar

Once it went away… and it belong to The Initiative, so if they used asset safety there was no notification for me… it was time to jump back.  This time there were only 1,700 ships on grid for the final watch, more than a fleet less, which made things a little easier for somebody I am sure.  Still, it was a lot of ships.

Faxes and dreads moving

That op only took about an hour to get through.  Now only one Keepstar remains in Cloud Ring, and that will be going away soon.  We shall see if it is another quiet op or if somebody tries to snatch it.

Meanwhile, back inside the perimeter, a different set of ops has been going on.  In order to prepare for invasion the coalition has been working to raise the ADMs for systems up to level 4, which will prevent hostiles from dropping anything smaller than a Fortizar.  The usual plan is to drop a bunch of small structures, Raitarus usually, to give your fleets a safe spot in the midst of enemy territory.

You do that by ratting and mining, so PvE fleets have been a thing.  A gaggle of ratting and mining ships with some cover will blitz through a constellation taking down the anomalies in order to try and boost the ADMs.  I’ve been out trying to do my part on that front.

Fighting the Blood Raider menace in my Myrmidon

It has been over a year since I last went out and ratted, but the fundamentals haven’t changed all that much.  A fit Myrmidon with platinum insurance ran me just shy of 95 million ISK and I have collected 250 million ISK in bounties so far, so it will be a profitable venture for me at least when I eventually get caught and blown up.  I haven’t joined in on the ADM fleets, even though they count as strategic ops for PAP credit.  I have been just tooling around on my own in pipe systems that are often ignored, watching people come and go.

The war itself is not supposed to start until July 5th, the date that the non-invasion pact between Legacy Coalition and the Imperium is set to expire.  With more than a week left to prepare, it seems to me that there is a distinct possibility that no war will come to us.  We shall see if it comes to pass and what we will end up doing should it not.

Drifters Hitting Null Sec Upwell Structures

Reports began popping up on Twitter during the afternoon of June 26th about Drifter NPCs attacking and reinforcing Upwell structures in null sec space.  This was picked up by Imperium News, who reported that the Drifters were moving around Delve and reinforcing structures around the region.

When I got home from work I jumped into game on an alt and fly over to the one of the systems they were reported to be working in and, sure enough there were Drifters firing away at an Azbel while other structures in the system had already had their armor timers set.

Drifters in the compound!

Dismissed at first as a boot.ini level bug by CCP, the Imperium has decided that CCP is not going to “fix” what is happening and has sent out pings for a recall to Delve from our staging in the KQK1-2 Keepstar, which itself was hit by Drifters earlier.

Drifter Cruisers hitting the Azbel

Coincidentally, back on June 5th I saw a small Drifter force hitting the KQK Keepstar, though it was only three ships and they were sent packing right away.

Drifter webbing and shooting the Keepstar

I thought at the time this was anomalous behavior, Drifters doing silly things, especially after the mention at EVE North about the great NPC battle nobody saw. But now, after they have started hitting structures in force, it seems like we have a new event in null sec to keep up busy.  The EVE North mention might have been an alert or might have been a ruse in hindsight.

Drifters on grid

There has been word that the Drifters have hit structures in TEST and Pandemic Horde space as well and have set up gate camps at times to shoot players as they travel through the various null sec regions.  There is also word that damage caps do not apply to Drifter attacks and they are reinforcing structures more quickly that players are able.

Imperium move ops are coming soon and I guess I have the answer as to what we are going to do now that the last Keepstar in Tribute is gone.  PAP links for PvE coming up I guess.  We’ll be fine, throwing our forces against the Drifters.  We’ll see how other groups fare.

We will also have to see what CCP has in mind with this.

• INN – Drifters Attacking Player Structures
• INN – Imperium Returning to Delve
• Reddit – Thread about where Drifters are hitting

Summer Movie League – Toy Story 4 Merely Dominates the Week

Were done with week three and there already seems to be a pattern for this summer’s Fantasy Movie League and the box office in general.

And that pattern is “under performance.”

For the third week in a row the top new releases of the week have failed to hit their expected numbers.

This past week saw Toy Story 4 dominate the weekend as expected, and even set a Pixar record for Friday numbers… which included the Thursday night previews… and yet fall short of expectations.  The film was being projected to bring in between $145 and $160 million.

Instead it barely broke the $120 million barrier.

That is still literally dumpsters full of cash being hauled in for a movie that is well reviewed.  Everybody I know who saw it recommends it.  Even Jason Scott called it “… the best and most well made unnecessary sequel I’ve seen.”

It just didn’t get to where the industry thought it would.  Is this just not a summer for movies?  Because the other two new films, Child’s Play and Anna, both missed their estimates as well.

Anyway, I went all in on Toy Story 4.  Taking advantage of the lack of penalty for empty screens, I went with the Friday + Saturday pick I mentioned in last week’s post, leaving blanks.  That wasn’t an awful pick in hindsight, but it wasn’t as good as the full lineup I went with for other leagues.

With Toy Story 4 pulling up the way it did, the scores for the week ended up looking like this:

1. Goat Water Picture Palace – $95,542,794
2. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $89,080,065
3. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $88,349,964
4. grannanj’s Cineplex – $87,148,187
5. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – $86,931,732
6. Conical Effort – $86,931,732
7. Joanie’s Joint – $86,648,508
8. Too Orangey For Crows – $85,698,734
9. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $83,672,691
10. Ben’s X-Wing Exp(r)ess – $43,148,969

The perfect pick for the week was 1x TS4 Friday, 1x Child’s Play, 1x Aladdin, and 5x John Wick 3, the last being the best performer, which was good for $109 million.  But nobody in the league got that.

Goat got first going with Friday TS4, Sunday TS4, 2x John Wick 3, 1x Avengers: End Game, and three empty screens. and getting in

Hamster rang in second with 1x TS4 Friday, 2x Child’s Play, 1x Dark Phoenix, and 1x Avengers: End Game, earning an extra $2 million because Dark Phoenix was the worst performer of the week.

Conical and I both went the 1x Friday TS4, 1x Saturday TS4, and six empty screens route.  I only came in ahead because I had the better estimate on the tie breaker.

Of note is SynCaine, the only person on the list without Toy Story 4 in their lineup.

Unfortunately, the most common pick was forgetting to pick this week.  Ben’s pick was a roll over of his pick from last week and several people past 10th place were in the same boat.

All of which left the overall scores as:

1. Goat Water Picture Palace – $256,899,574
2. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – $246,793,598
3. Too Orangey For Crows – $237,172,334
4. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $233,860,872
5. Joanie’s Joint – $224,306,550
6. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $220,641,904
7. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $219,431,873
8. grannanj’s Cineplex – $183,864,990
9. Ben’s X-Wing Exp(r)ess – $176,726,850
10. Conical Effort – $171,160,273

There is still not an insurmountable gap between 1st and say 7th place yet.  That could be made up over the next ten weeks of the season with small wins.  Anybody below that is probably going to need a big win or for the front runners to pick badly or miss a week.  It has been known to happen, especially over the summer.

Then there is the alternate season score:

1. Goat Water Picture Palace – 26
2. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – 23
3. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – 19
4. Too Orangey For Crows – 15
5. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 15
6. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – 14
7. Joanie’s Joint – 13
8. Ben’s X-Wing Exp(r)ess – 10
9. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – 9
10. grannanj’s Cineplex – 9

That is, of course, much tighter.  Win a few weeks and you’ll be on top or vying with those who are.

All of which brings us to week four of the season.  The choices for the week are:

1. Toy Story 4 – $752
2. Annabelle Comes Home – $319
3. Yesterday – $136
4. Aladdin – $126
5. The Secret Life of Pets 2 – $74
6. Child’s Play – $73
7. Men in Black International – $69
8. Avengers: Endgame – $59
9. Rocketman – $41
10. John Wick 3 – $38
11. Godzilla – $23
12. Shaft – $22
13. Anna – $18
14. Late Night – $17
15. Dark Phoenix – $16

We have an off week for blockbusters, so Toy Story 4 is fully expected to hold on to first place by a large margin this week.  Given a standard 50% drop it ought to be worth $60 million at the box office.

There are two new films on the list this week.

The first is Annabelle Comes Home, the latest entry in the Conjuring universe, which includes The Conjuring series, the Annabelle films, and The Nun.  Horror, especially during the summer, is always a wildcard for me.  The Annabelle movies have done well in the past, often better than expected.  But what happens when Annabelle is sharing theaters with Child’s Play?  Does a supernaturally evil doll care about one that is evil via a software issue?  And does the fact that some drive-ins are doing the pair as a double feature have any impact?

The long range forecast is for $31 million.  However, the long range forecasts have also been too optimistic pretty much every week so far, so how much stock do you put in them now?

Given the $60 million estimate for TS4, the FML pricing seems to indicate that they think $25 million is more on par.  Do you take two Annabelles as an anchor or one TS4?  Maybe?

The other new film is Yesterday, which features Himesh Patel as the only person who remembers the Beatles.  Something happened and they are no longer part of our timeline, only for whatever reason one musician remembers them and their songs… and, of course, can play them and remembers all of the lyrics to the key hits.

So he spends a while trying to figure out why nobody has heard of the Fab Four, then proceeds to make bank by introducing the songs of the Beatles to the world, claiming them as his own.  Along the way, hilarity no doubt ensues.

Now this brings up a decent late night dorm room discussion, which is whether or not the Beatles catalog is timeless and would become hits no matter when they appeared in history, or if they are part of their time and might not get noticed today.  Does I Want to Hold Your Hand go anywhere in a world with 50 Cent?  Can Elenor Rigby make a dent against the last know pop song ever, Uptown Funk?  Would Hey Jude have to be Hey Dude as the trailer suggests?

Feel free to argue about that in the comments.

The film was written by Richard Curtis, whose works are well known, and directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame, but I am having a hard time getting behind it, if only because I know in my gut the ending has to restore the Beatles to the timeline and it will be all for naught or end up with Paul McCartney suing or something like that.  Amusing premise, likely has no satisfying ending.

And the long range forecast seems to agree, pegging this at around $10 million.  Decent, but no summer blockbuster.  The FML pricing likewise puts it around that point.  On the other hand, this is the Beatles we’re talking about here, which probably means my 70 year old aunt and all her UC Berkley friends will want to go see it.  I don’t know.

And the rest of the field is just leftovers from past weeks.

So what do you pick?  Do you go with the likely stability of Toy Story 4 and back fill with some titles that might break out or be under priced based on their previous week performance?  That might get you 1x Toy Story 4, 1x Yesterday, and 6x Anna.

Or do you bet on a pair of Annabelles, with something like 2x Annabelle Comes Home, 2x Yesterday, 1x Rocketman, and 3x Dark Phoenix, the latter being the worst performer in week three, which might make it subject to over-conservative pricing?

I am leaning towards Annabelle, but the filler is still wide open for me.

Whichever way you go, get your picks in soon.

The Vulture Venture

This actually started up before I left on vacation and, honestly, I thought it would lose steam and fade away in a day or so.

But this involved Star Citizen, so drama blew up everywhere and proved once again that if you complain aggressively about some perceived slight you can get everybody to focus on it for a week or more.

I am, of course, referring to the Venture/Vulture design thing.

More than a week back Star Citizen announced a new ship called the Vulture from Drake Industries.

From Star Citizen, the Vulture

As images spread out on the web, those familiar with EVE Online noticed a decided similarity between that ship and the ORE industrial frigate in the game call the Venture.

From ORE the Venture

This led to some immediate poking of fun at Star Citizen, kicking off a couple dozen threads on /r/eve about the similarities of the ship (starting with this one I believe) as well as a tweak from CCP on Twitter.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

It's okay, @RobertsSpaceInd – we love you too! #tweetfleet pic.twitter.com/1rI4NUwm0S

— EVE Online (@EveOnline) June 14, 2018

This led to some rage from some parts of the Star Citizen community who protested that it was CCP that copied from some past Chris Roberts game, producing screen shots from the 1990s of something of a vaguely similar configuration while also tossing out any ship model they could find that featured twin booms out front to prove that the concept hasn’t been original for ages.

However, that barely had any impact as the EVE Online community made more memes and bad puns and pointed out more strange coincidences.

But wait, there's more! If you buy the Vulture now, you get to fly a loaner ship until the Vulture is ready. The name of the loaner ship? The Prospector.

You can't make this stuff up. #tweetfleet

— Noizy (@noizygamer) June 15, 2018

The Prospect is also the name of an ORE industrial ship in EVE Online, based off of the Venture, so Prospector is hitting close to home as well.

Meanwhile, on Reddit the two communities were… well… like this:

Smug versus Rage

The Star Citizen moderators on Reddit began banning people who brought up anything about the two ships, which only encouraged the EVE Online players.  The Star Citizen mods complained to the EVE Online mods and were said to have reported the /r/eve subreddit for vote brigading in an attempt to get it banned outright.  More fuel for the fire, more attention drawn to the issue, more memes.

Meanwhile CCP, never shy about poking some fun at other games, had another arrow in its quiver, putting up the Venture Capitalist SKIN Bundle in the New Eden Store.  The copy made pointed reference to the Venture which, in its cheapest form, will run you $120.

Head on over to the New Eden Store and pick up the “Venture Capitalist” SKIN bundle, which contains three Venture SKINs that are ideal for mining below the belt. Just beware of sneaky vultures attempting to swoop in and loot your assets!

The best part about this SKIN bundle is that it won’t cost you $120 – You can get all three of these SKINs for just 120 PLEX – that’s more than 50% off their total value when they’re sold separately!

Score a direct hit with that.  There is more in the post, but that is probably the bit most requiring AN application of burn cream.

However, CCP Falcon also posted a statement over in the Star Citizen subreddit to try and bring a little peace to the situation.  That seemed to be appreciated by the crew there and the whole things seemed to finally be receding from the forefront in both forums.  Of course, this spread everywhere, including the forums of other games in the genre like Elite: Dangerous.

Yes, this is all last week’s news, but I was away last week so I am catching up.  And no, I do not think RSI deliberately or directly copied a ship from EVE Online.  It would be dumb to lift a design from a game in the same space, so to speak, and it is too much to ask that every design be completely new and unique.  And, in any case, we know where this design really originated from:

Space Forklift Simulator 2009

More recently there has even been a LEGO version of the Venture… Vulture… one of them over on Reddit.

Other sites that dug in on this while I was away:

• Kotaku
• EuroGamer
• Massively OP (and again)
• Screen Rant
• INN
• EN24

Mini Metro

Mini Metro had been on my Steam wish list for a while.

That isn’t saying much.  I put lots of things on my wish list to consider buying later, to look into, or just to remind myself that they exist.  Titles can linger there for ages, waiting for a something to push me either to buy them or drop them from the list.

Fortunately for me… or the game… or both… Zubon did a write-up about the game which tipped the balance in favor of my grabbing it as soon as the Steam Summer Sale hit.  And it is all he said it was, light and simple and elegant in design.

I was a little bit surprised when I first launched the game as it drops you straight into playing.  There is no mucking about in any menus or settings, you’re just on what is essentially the playing field playing the game.  It is a strategy that works with a game of such a spare interface.

At its heart it is the same game as Train Valley, of which I wrote previously.  The player sets up a transit network based on a set of stations which gradually increase over time, servicing a population that has destinations in mind.

Mini Metro sheds all of the non-essentials, paring away money and rewards and switches and collisions, leaving just the necessities.  Your passengers are simple shapes who want to travel to a station that matches them in stylized versions of major cities.

Four Lines running through London

You  passengers are not picky.  If they are circles, they just want to get to one of the likely many circle stations on your map.  Other shapes are more rare, some of them being one per map.  You draw out and change your transit lines by just dragging them.  Your rolling stock are little rectangles that move up and down the line, stopping at stations to pick up or drop off passengers.

There are, of course, constraints.  That is what makes it a game really.

There is a limit on the number of transit lines you can have and tunnels for crossing water and trains and carriages to which you have access.  When a new week starts up every Sunday you are given a new train and the option to add something else in a binary choice.  You might have the option add another line (which will require your train) or a couple of tunnels or a carriage that allows a a train to carry additional passengers, or a special station that loads and unloads passengers more quickly.  But the you only get two options each week and you only get to choose one.

And then there are the passengers, who get upset if your transit system leaves them piling up in stations for too long, with grumpy sounds and angry black timer circles forming if they are backed up.

Some unhappy Londoners south of the Thames

Passengers are the ultimate constraint, the one that will end your game.  If the timer circle sweeps through the full 360 degrees, your transit system fails and you are done.

Game over man!

Score is measured in how many passengers you have delivered and how long your transit system lasted.

There is a list of maps representing different international metropolitan environments from London to Paris to New York to Shanghai.  Each map has a simplified representation of the water obstacles the city presents, tunnels being a key constraint as your system expands.  There are also some variations on some of the maps.  In Cairo the trains only hold four passengers rather than the six on other maps, while in Osaka you get fast moving bullet trains to help move your population about.

Osaka on the list…

There is a hierarchy of maps and map difficulty, and to unlock the next map you have to deliver a certain number of passengers on your current map.  There is also a list of achievements for doing specific things on various maps, if you are looking for additional constraint.

The game reminds me of a software package I used back in college.  I took a class, the name of which I have long since forgotten, which was essentially holistic systems analysis.  The software, which I wish I still had, let you model processes as water flow, so you could lay out something like the DMV and see where the bottlenecks and the idle locations were.  By abstraction, you could see the flow of a system.  Mini Metro is like that, even to a real transit planner.

Anyway, the game, which is an inexpensive indy title to start with, is even cheaper with the coming of the Steam Summer Sale.  If you like this sort of system management I recommend picking it up.  There are even iOS and Android versions of the title in the respective app stores.