Path to Prestige
Path to Prestige was Norwinter’s very ambitious online RPG/manager game.
Enter a world of power, money and class. Do you have the wits and determination to defeat the other players and become the most respected and successful member of this world? The people at the bottom are nothing but gravel and stepping stones for the people at the top. Don’t be a loser. Join today and stake your claim; take the Path to Prestige.
A Path to Prestige businessman.
For a six month period of time, the game was developed from just concept to a full blown online game with more than 10,000 lines of code and 32 different in-game pages. It was one of Norwinter’s biggest projects ever and it had a steady following of game testers before even reaching beta stage.
In Path to Prestige you play the ruthless businessman or woman. You see morals as a problem, not a solution. Your goal is simple: make as much money as possible, and do it faster than everybody else.
In early revisions the game play of the path revolved mostly around working mundane day jobs and trying to find the ones most suitable. While doing so, the player would have a chance to build up his or her economy. The player could also strenghten their two most important stats, ruthlessness and stamina. The money helped the user pay for one of the most important investments for a modern business person: their law firm.
In later revisions the focus of the game began shifting to economic manipulation.
Analyzing the market.
One of the most powerful features of Path to Prestige was its built in virtual market. There was basic stats building grind like in any other RPG, but it was the online market which made Path to Prestige unique. Players had to ‘read’ the market in order to create the right product at the right time. Beating the competition to market could mean bringing home vast untapped income streams from virtual consumers itching to spend their money. Every virtual dollar the player spent in the economy fed the virtual market. Then the virtual market turned around and handed the money right back to the players. And the players who were ready with products were the ones who stood to make some good earnings in those cases.
All the market reading in the world wouldn’t be enough without a product to sell though. Therefore, Path to Prestige contained a resource system, and a product design component. Gathered resources could be used to build products. Creating a new product line required the player to hire designers and eventually manufacturing people, but was worth the effort. If the market had a million of unspent money and you were the only one making a product for their segment, the game would be yours.
Some players would just go ahead and sell the resources they found on the game market.
Reaching refinement.
Path to Prestige was filled with choices like that. Vertical integration – do I find the resources, gather the resources, refine the resources, design the product, build and market the product – or not? Perhaps just focusing on one part might be better.
Of course all these resources had to come from somewhere so Path to Prestige came complete with a six continent world map covering over 42,000 grid locations; all which could potentially hold resources if they could just be explored. Logistics came into play and placing your headquarters wrong could be a costly mistake. But placing them right could mean you were the only person with cheap oil in a plastic world and it would just be a matter of time before market forces started pouring money over you…
Path to Prestige was discontinued in 2006.
Meet the World.
