Neither has the UK tax payer, but they’ve still forked out over £2.8 million for it since it launched in November 2009. Wait, what? Tax payers funding an MMO? Yep, that’s because it was the brain-child of the UK Department of Transport. The MMO was designed to get kids into thinking about road safety.
Sadly, the MMO is practically dead. When it started it managed to attract around 54Â 000 sign-ups in a month, but it now has a total of about 170Â 000 registered users; that’s registered users not active users don’t forget. The intro video for the game is after the jump.
Sounds bizarre, no? Well, actually, it’s clear that a reasonable amount of thought went into the free-to-play MMO. If you didn’t know the game was meant to promote road safety awareness, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was just another MMO aimed at kids. UK government is not being as gentle on the title however, and they’ve said that the game’s future is being reviewed from March 2011.
Still, £2.8 million is a butt-load of money to shovel onto a title that most of the game-playing world has never heard of at all. Perhaps some of that cash should have gone into marketing?
So, have you ever heard of Code of Everand? I definitely never had until now.
Source: Eurogamer
Last Updated: January 18, 2011