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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Making An MMOG For The Masses 45

Posted by simoniker from the weighty-problem dept.
Thanks to GameSpy for their article exploring whether massively multiplayer games can ever break into the mainstream. The piece starts by contrasting EverQuest's 460,000 subscribers with other media, saying: "What EverQuest is not, however, is a mass-market success. J.K. Rowling sold over nine million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this summer. Michael Jackson sold 25 million copies of 'Thriller.'" It goes on to analyze mass-market MMOG attempts such as the still-profitable, but disappointing The Sims Online, which Sims creator Will Wright says "...was the poster child for massively multiplayer games going wrong with the mass market", and Richard Garriott also comments: "...though the high concept was fabulous, [The Sims Online] suffocated under its own development weight."
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Making An MMOG For The Masses More

Making An MMOG For The Masses

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  • The masses are not going to sit around and play MMORPG's all day, and shut out the rest of the world.

    But then again, nobody would have thought in 1910 that the nation would be a land of overweight couch potatos either.
    • They will, once the MMORPG's are Better Than Life [amazon.com].

      Daniel

    • Re:The masses ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by whorfin ( 686885 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @11:59AM (#7183626)
      I think that you're correct that it won't happen.

      I'm no head-shrinker, but it appears to me that playing an MMORPG, at least as it has been defined so far, requires somewhat of an obsessive-compulsive personality. Yes, I've played them...UO, EQ, AC, DaoC...It is simply not a casual experience, and although people who play them appear to get some sort of satisfaction, I wouldn't call them 'entertaining' or 'fun'. They demand dedication and endurance to participate even partially.

      Take for example Star Trek, another piece of popular media that has attracted the obsessive (go to a convention to verify my assertion). Star Trek can be enjoyed by a casual participant (My mother), but also has provided a fertile ground for an astonishing array of fan community participation (fan porn stories..both gay and straight, conventions, the klingon alphabet, you name it)

      With Star Trek, the difference is that the provided experience is the same for everybody, designed for casual consumption, and people do with it what they will. With MMORPG, the provided experience is targeted at the most dedicated fans, and most sane people simply don't have the level of interest required to keep up with what that requires. I cannot imagine my mother (or myself) watching Star Trek if she had to wear some pointy ears or glue something to her forehead to successfully watch it.
      • Star Trek...fan porn stories

        I'm now officially scared.
      • I don't think that you quite have it. It is all about the value.

        For a fixed amount (say, $10/month), you get all-you-can-eat online gaming. If you are on 100 hours/month (possible for some people), then that is $0.10/hour. This is a decidedly good deal for entertainment.

        Somebody like me, who would like to play something like EverCrack, cannot spend much time on something like this due to obligations (wife, 2 children, work, church, household repairs, etc.). I might be able to play around 5 hours/month
        • But I would argue that the price is not the problem.

          Think sports. To go see a game, people pay $30+ for a couple hours of entertainment. These couple of hours are typically just as enjoyable by the people who go once or twice a year as they are for the people who go all the time. In fact, they are probably more enjoyable for the occasional participant, because it's a special occasion.

          I could not imagine playing an MMRPG for a couple hours a week. with that, you just get the drudge, since it takes so long

    • Make a MMORPG that's better than anything you can possibly get on TV (lots and lots and lots of sex and violence), add ubiquitous broadband, and you'll probably get a good-sized chunk of "the masses".

      Remember Barnum: there's a sucker born every minute.

  • BattleMaster (Score:2, Interesting)

    by arunarunarun ( 196635 )
    I ran across this game, BatleMaster [battlemaster.org], a while back. It's a light-weight online RPG - you just log in once or twice a day, and play for 15 minutes, max. Fun, and quite addictive.

    Takes a little getting used to, so stick it out for at least a few days, and you'll be hooked.

    • Re:BattleMaster (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, that looks like a lot of fun. Except for the fact that the realms are all saying things like "we are closed and eagerly kicking out newcomers" and "there's no important positions available".

      Sounds like a friendly bunch.

  • Holy ridiculous comparisons Batman! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @11:53AM (#7183550)
    What EverQuest is not, however, is a mass-market success. J.K. Rowling sold over nine million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this summer. Michael Jackson sold 25 million copies of 'Thriller.'
    By this rationale 99.9% of books and albums are mass-market failures.

    Harry Potter and Thriller are extreme examples of successful products. Most books/albums don't sell as many copies.

    I'm not going to research this but just for the sake of argument, let's say EverQuest sold half a million copies at $40 per copy. That's $20m. Monthly subscription is $10 approx isn't it? So those 460,000 subscribers are paying $4.6m per month. For one year that's a total of $75.2m.

    The majority of movies would be lucky to make that much money from ticket sales, sell-through and TV rights combined. I'd be surprised if any book has ever made that much.
    • Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix sold nine million copies. Multiply by $15 per copy (it's hardback only so far) and you are at $135 million dollars. Well, I guess at least one book has made at least that much.
    • The vast majority of books and albums ARE mass market failures. They're both hit-driven businesses. In the book business in particular, the majority of books lose money for the publisher, but the few best-sellers make enough money to make up for it and make the publisher a net profit (hopefully). I don't know if the many poor-selling albums also lose money or if they cover their costs - wouldn't surprise me if they lose money on those too, though.
  • Aren't all MMOG's "for the massess" by definition? ;)
    • No. "Massively Multiplayer Online Game" refers to its capabilities (or at least its aspirations) not its target audience. It essentially means that there is no set limit for how many people can play the "same" game at the same time. (blah blah there actually are limits blah blah)

      "For the masses" means that average Joes and Janes should find the product appealing. The masses want to see the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movies. The masses do not want to spend several hours each week pretending to be i
      • My point was, when you design a game to support thousands of players, you usually do it in a way that will attract thousands of players. MMOGs usually do not take the kind of design risks that make things like "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings" fantastic for some, okay for others.

        So basically, MMOGs are made to be lowest common denominator (from many aspects) to attract subscribers. Otherwise they'd boutique design it so that 4 people in the world that think it's brilliant play it until the end of time.
        • Even a boutique design easily has the potential to attract thousands of regular players. They want millions of people to try it and hundreds of thousands to stick with it. Mass appeal would be tens of millions trying and millions playing regularly.

          In a certain sense, i'm sure you're right that these games are made for the lowest comon denominator. It's just that it's the LCD for their target audience, and right now that target audience is relatively narrow. When they really do go for mass market appeal

  • comparing apples to oranges. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by millia ( 35740 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @12:20PM (#7183890) Homepage
    yes, compared to harry potter, MMOG is small. but comparing a one-shot gaming purchase (ala the sims offline) to harry potter sales is a different story.

    for MMOG usage, it would be more useful to compare it to cable pay channel subscriptions, or something similar. they even use the same word, churn, to describe the turnover of subscribers.

    at least with cable tv, (and i can't speak authoritatively for the current market with dish tv etc.) there used to a certain point at which the growth curve would basically almost flatten for pay services, and then you would just watch *who* was subscribed change- churn.

    there is always going to be that psychological barrier to monthly service cost, i think. it somehow seems more of a fact than paying a once yearly fee, ala the xbox live setup.

    furthering the difficulty of comparison is the fact that new MMOGs do come out further diluting the percentages. and you're also competing with the market for the largest MMOG setup there is, live chat in myriad guises. (and for some people it's even a RPG. heh)

    all in all, especially when you take into account the top level of subscribership that exists in places like Korea, i would think the market is pretty healthy, and even if it doesn't double, it's still pretty substantial for interactive entertainment.

  • Poor comparison (Score:3, Insightful)

    by (trb001) ( 224998 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @12:20PM (#7183902) Homepage
    There are more than a few problems with comparing books/CDs/games, but here are a few...

    1) People like convenience. Pick it up, put it down, easy access, portable. CDs and books qualify under all of these, games decidedly don't.

    2) People have such differing social desires at different times. I may want to play a single player game now, a MUD/Massively Multiplayer game later, then finish off with some PvP Starcraft with my roommate. Music and movies offer this kind of multilateral socialism, a single game usually doesn't.

    3) Access...let's face it, computers are still pricey and not widely available. A CD (as outrageously priced as they are) is less than half of a new game, not including the monthly subscription that comes with many commercial MMORPGs. A book is similar. Both have user interfaces that an 8 year old can figure out on his first attempt. Computers aren't like that.

    It's an unfair comparison. Though, I will say, I played the Sims Online for about 3 months and thought that with a few tweaks it would be the closest thing we had to a universally accepted game. It drew it guys, girls, kids, adults, seniors. Something for everyone, from decorating to competition to sociallizing. It just got old eventually, and I'm not sure I could suggest what they needed to add.

    MMORPGs are more problematic because developers inherently want a theme and a role for the character to play, but in doing so they alienate a good portion of the population.

    --trb
  • I think one of the key reasons that most MMOGs do not appeal to larger audiences is that, as someone else has said, they require too much time to be enjoyed. When I played EverQuest, if I only spent a few hours a month, my character did not develop enough to where I could explore new areas, see new creatures etc. Consequently, it was not worth the monthly subscription.

    However, if one were designed such that the time spent was not as critical for the enjoyment of the game, I would expect it to appeal t
  • I'm not sure what it will take. I get the feeling that for the casual gamer, upgrading and buying new games isn't a big attraction. My dad still happily plays Civ2 every night. He knows Civ3 is out but simply has no interest in buying the new one. So to buy into something like a MMOG it has to be instantly obvious why it is better than what they already have.

    I'm a pretty hardcore gamer and I still haven't even tried one of these MMOG's. WHile I'm sure that the experience is rewarding, there just isn't
  • I highly doubt MMORPGs as a genre will ever appeal to the mass market (unless the definition of an MMORPG changes radically) --

    The idea of a game which requires you to spend countless hours with only moderate rewards in order to progress your avatar slowly along a path with no real end whilst building useful skills and friends along the way, that reminds me of another "MM-RPG" the mass markets already engage in droves: Real Life!
  • At one point in time, I'd have been known as a hardcore gamer. Know I'm barely a casual gamer. Its mainly for 2 reasons time & money. I spent a little bit of money picking up most of the FF series for PS. I have Starcraft, Diablo, Warcraft II, Civ III, MOO II, & MOO 3. I've played demo's of newer games such as Wolfestien and C&C Generals. I have to face it. I suck at FPS. The graphics have improved greatly over Q2 & Q3, but I still suck. I'm sorry there is little ID can do other than make th
    • I do not know anyone who owns a computer capable of playing these games, that cannot afford $10-15/month.

      Time-wise, however, is a completely different story, and I'd agree. I don't have the time or the energy to devote to a MMORPG like I used to (I had a character on Everquest with over 90 *days* playtime. I know that's not "hardcore", but that is still a lot of time). More importantly, after seeing how many bugs the game had (mostly in quests), and seeing that none of them were fixed after repeated /bug r
  • And right now, most MMORPGS aren't very fun if you play them casually. Casual players don't play very much and want games they can pop into and out of. MMORPGS as they are now are not at all friendly to that kind of player.

    For one thing, it takes a significant investment of time to move up from stabbing rabbits or whatever to doing anything remotely interesting. What's up with that? Why should I have invest ten hours in a game before I can start having fun? I want to have fun right now. Even if it's cosmet

  • what is the mainstream? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @02:41PM (#7184999)
    It's odd that an article, discussing how MMORPGs haven't penetrated the mainstream, fails to mention the single most popular MMORPG ever, Lineage. Granted, it's not western mainstream, but a game with over 4 million active subscribers [lineage.com] is no longer a fringe game. That's a subscriber base that clearly qualifies as a success. As mentioned in the previous link, in Korea the game commands 47% of the market share. I doubt (m)any books, movies, or TV shows can claim that.

    What's really odd is that they even mention NC Soft and their billing methods for an upcoming game. But no mention of the game that has a subscriber base an order of magnitude larger than Everquest... guess that would go against the hypothesis and require an actual analysis of how and why the Korean market is different than the western/American market.

  • Reasons masses don't want MMOG (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Experiment 626 ( 698257 ) on Friday October 10, 2003 @03:30PM (#7185330)

    I can think of lots of reasons EQ-style games don't enjoy wider appeal...

    • Barriers to entry - Not only do you have to buy the game like you do with other games, but you have to sign up for an account, provide a credit card or game card, etc. Sure, they may offer the first month free, but it's still much harder to just to check out what the game is about than other games.
    • Double dipping - People don't like to have to pay for the game, pay for the expansions, AND pay a monthly fee.
    • Monthly fee - These fees really discourage casual players. $13 is nothing to someone with a 200 hour a month EQ habit (they probably pay double this just for a second account) but if you only play a game a couple times a month, each gaming session costs you a lot more.
    • Time requirements - To hold your own in the end game of EQ... finish quests, do raids, gain xp takes a huge amount of time. People who play for 8 hours or more every day are not uncommon at this level. The masses certainly aren't going to devote this kind of time to a game, so they are stuck as perma-newbies.
    • Time sinks - Everything in MMOGs seems to take so long. Getting from point A to point B can take an hour. A raid might tie up an evening, and then only a few people present even get anything out of it. "Camping" a particularly rare creature or item could take a week or more of diligent effort.
    • Overhead - When I play a single player game and something in RL happens, I hit save, quit, and then come back and pick up where I left off later. In EQ, you might spend an hour looking for group, another hour getting there, waiting on other members, finding a good spot, or whatever, and then at the end of the session half an hour or so to deal with finding a replacement, divvying up loot, or whatever. If you have less than four hours to play (which casual players always will) you may not accomplish enough to justify even trying. You can't pause the game, and if you spend too much time going AFK or logging off suddenly when you're the only cleric in the zone, your reputation will suffer, just for having a life.
    • Culture - There is a lot to learn to play these games well. Maps, spells, strategies, quests, even a whole language of jargon. "A sk just trained us in KD then ninja'd the bp off of AoW." To a player, such a thing would be scandalous, to the masses, gibberish.
    • Dynamic nature - The fact that things are always happening on the game is both its greatest and worst attribute. Greatest because it is always fresh and new. Worst because you miss things when you don't play, and if you don't play much you miss too much to bother. Because you have to do enough to keep pace with the people you enjoy playing with or get left behind. Because you can't just install expansions and play them at whatever pace you want without serious problems... the world moves on and changes, with or without you reaping the benefits.

    I could ramble on, but I think I've made my point. For people with a lot of time, few interruptions, a good attention span, and a desire for a strongly immersive game, MMOG are good. But for the masses, I don't see one gaining that much appeal, unless it deviates drastically from the EQ formula for success.

    • For casual Gaming, I've found that there is an older MMOG that allows decent play for little time. The Realm Online [realmserver.com] has combinations for it. With a huge expansion of levels, a level doesn't take too long to get, so a casual gamer can grab one or two and log for the day. Secondly, powerful weapons aren't extremely rare, but there are some rare ones. Logging when needed requires little effort, as does other aspects of the game. While a hardcore gamer may consider some of these flaws to a system, it helps ba
  • I think perhaps the biggest part of the difference between the hardcore gamer and "the masses" is the role that goals play in their entertainment. The gamers tend to be very goal oriented, eager to find out the best ways to improve their chances of "winning" or of getting more gold, etc. Casual gamers might like a little bit of "keeping score" but nothing too serious - when they're playing Spades or Hearts (still two of the very most-played online games to this day, if you check the numbers), many of them
  • Planetarion [planetarion.com] was my favourite game some three years back, I loved it. Then at about round 5 they decided charging was obligatory and users tapered off. The model they used to use, where paying was optional and gave loads of cushty features, worked famously.

    Oh well... Nostalgia. I for one love MMOGs, especially MMORPGs--but don't devote my life to them...
  • Take the most important part of the (non-multiplayer) game and remove it. Gee, our product isn't selling, I wonder why? People play The Sims because you get to tell little people with their own thoughts and feelings what to do. The Sims Online version embodies the player in the sim removing the mental distinction between telling a little person what to do vs telling an avatar, that represents you what to do. It's pretty hard to imagine how much stress and infighting went on a Maxis to make them forget a

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