WoW Helping or Hurting the Industry? 692
alstor writes "The New York Times has an interesting story about the success of World of Warcraft, and whether it is hurting or helping the gaming industry; this goes along with an earlier post on an article from CNN. From the Times article: 'WoW is now the 800-pound gorilla in the room. I think it also applies to the single-player games. If some kid is paying $15 a month on top of the initial $50 investment and is devoting so many hours a week to it, are they really going to go out and buy the next Need for Speed or whatever? There is a real fear that this game, with its incredible time investment, will really cut into game-buying across the industry.' What is the Slashdot opinion on World of Warcraft's impact on the gaming industry?"
Re:If Anything it Helps the Hardware Industry (Score:4, Informative)
And as for the story, aside from Snood this is the only game I play, as it offers a continuing experiance and since I pay for it, and most other games are not nearly as fun/addictive why would I spend more money and time on another game. And just for reference I've only been playing for 4 month so it may get old eventually.
Re:Dunno about WoW... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Huge market (Score:3, Informative)
The question is what do you really want? Lump sum payments tend to be more "take it or leave it" in terms of content, resources will be driven to the next project once the current one is delivered, and network resources (the real $$$ behind monthly subscriptions) will be minimized as much as possible.
Monthly payments will encourage companies to make really long, drawn out level treadmills to keep victims coming back for more. They'll tend to force socialization to draw people in to other (cheap) aspects of the game, and try to do as little new development as they can to maintain the infrastructure.
In the end I think it's still more about the product than the business. People will pay a lot of money for something enjoyable, just look at the MMOG aftermarket. If someone makes a game that will cause the masses to kill their WoW subscription and move to the new game, how could they justify not charging any way they can?
The suit world will invariably ask the question, "Why give away something we could otherwise charge money for?" The only good answer is "to steal player base from the other game." Like many others, I discovered WoW in open beta, put down my EQ uberguilding nonsense and moved on. The free month hooked me for the box fee and the following subscription. I doubt anyone would change that model unless they knew their product was inferior and could not otherwise get some return on the development investment.
Re:Huge market (Score:4, Informative)
Although it might not be the best option at first sight, last I checked, WoW had over 4 million subscribers... The difference between the free-download-then-$15-monthly and pay-$50-then-$15-monthly is $20 millions...
I don't think any publishers would pass on $20 millions.
They have a pretty good way to hook people though... every retail-box has a "friend pass" that you can give to a friend so he can get 10 days for free... that's how I got hooked... and they call that a "friend"... ...
Re:Well...maybe (Score:2, Informative)
Sadly, nobody makes adventure games like Sam and Max any more. However, that's not to say that nobody makes adventure games anymore, or nobody makes games like Sam and Max. For the latter, you should certainly pick up Psychonauts for your favorite platform. It's not an adventure game, but it has some adventure elements to go along with its action.
For adventure games, there are still plenty (though sadly none in the style of LucasArts like S&M, MI, GF, MM, etc):
- Still Life [gamerankings.com]
- Syberia [gamerankings.com] and Syberia II [gamerankings.com]
- The Longest Journey [gamerankings.com], which is supposed to have a sequel [gamerankings.com] soon.
- Indigo Prophecy [gamerankings.com] hasn't shipped yet, but it looks promising (played the demo on the latest Official Xbox Magazine)
- All of the CSI and Law and Order games, if you're into those.
- All of the Myst games
As you can tell, none of those are anywhere near the level of humor you'll find in an old LucasArts adventure. Luckily, LucasArts still sells their old games, and at least the more recent ones still run just fine (I've been playing through Escape from Monkey Island recently, and have Grim Fandango on order). And if any of the older games don't work, you may be able to use them with SCUMMVM [scummvm.org] instead (Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island no longer use SCUMM, but are scripted with Lua instead).Re:If Anything it Helps the Hardware Industry (Score:3, Informative)
MAC == Media Access Control acronym
Mac = short name for Apple Computer's Macintosh
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/MAC_address.html [webopedia.com]
Mod me down, looser (sp.)!
Re:Huge market (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Huge market (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Huge market (Score:4, Informative)
And how much money do you spend going to a movie theater every month? That is something you don't get to hold on to, are limited by what is immediately available (in the box office) and are required to enjoy on a set schedule.
If you are anything like many of the people I have discussed this with, you likely spend close to $10-$30 a month (single person) on tickets, a drink and a snack, depending on what is available (some months have multiple "must see" movies, while others are lacking).
So why is it such a bad thing to pay ~$15 a month on a subscription which you are able to enjoy on your own schedule, as often as you like. In the case of MMOs you get the added benifit of enjoying the company of new and old friends. In the case of music subscriptions (for $15) you get the benifit of taking your music with you to listen anywhere.
Honestly, in the case of music subscriptions, I own the music I feel are "must haves" and "rent" the music I happen to be in the mood for that month/day/hour/minute. As for playing MMOs, they're just fun. More fun than paying $50 for the latest game to hit the shelves every one or two months.
Any moderately serious gamer easily spends $100 a year (or in your quoted example, $200 every two years) on games they will likely play for at least that year, if not longer. Take Half-Life 2, and Battlefield 2--there's your $100 for the year. Tack on the miscellaneous other games that will get played for a month or two and you are well over $100 a year. Frankly, I think $100 a year is a reasonable price to pay for something that is always available (well, mostly) and has virtually infinite playability. Look at the original EQ players or DAoC, some of these people have found incredible amounts of leasure enjoyment for their $100 a year (and initial $50 investment with the occasional $20-30 add-on).[for the record, I am not a WoW player]
Ask any long time player of any MMO if they feel the value of their favorite MMO is worth the amount they pay monthly or yearly. I can guarantee every one will say "yes". Why? Because, otherwise they wouldn't have paid it for multiple years.
Percieved value will be different from person to person. The bottom line is, there are enough people, like myself, that find their own percieved value of these services are worth at least as much as the monetary requirements of each service, that these businesses not only exist, but do quite well.
Re:Huge market (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The low end vs. the high end (Score:3, Informative)
Actually I have a friend who comes over to play it on the Mini because it's much better than the "high end" intel integrated craphics adapter on her PC. I really hope that Apple doesn't start putting those things in their systems.
Re:Huge market (Score:2, Informative)
It's not the price that puts me off, but what the monthly subscription model implies - no end to the game, and no way to play once it becomes unpopular and they turn off the servers.
I like games with a story arc. I like to buy them, play through the story, and have them be over. But that isn't really possible with a subscription model. People might play through 2 or 3 times if there are multiple paths, but they won't keep playing for 2-3 years.
I also like to replay the games I really like years down the road. When I was at university in 1999, I dug up my old copy of Wasteland and replayed it. That was awesome. Would I be able to do that in 2020 with World of Warcraft? I doubt it, even disregarding that it wouldn't have the same "story."
I was reading a gaming magazine today, and it had coverage of a bunch of XBox 360 games. Nearly all of them require Live to get the full experience, even for things that shouldn't - like collecting the high-end items in Oblivion. I guess I won't be playing that one, as much as I liked Morrowind.
All of this stuff looks shiny and neat, until it becomes unpopular and the back-end infrastructure gets turned off. The Steel Battalion fans just found that out for themselves - Capcom is shutting down the servers, which is going to break a good chunk of the OFFLINE single-player game.
Re:Huge market (Score:3, Informative)
You cannot pirate WoW - well, you can, but the CDs are worthless without an account. At best you can use your 'pirate copy' to run an account you bought off ebay...