On The Over-Saturation Of MMO Games 64
An anonymous reader writes "Stratics has an editorial discussing MMO market saturation, specifically triggered by the recent closure of Microsoft's massively multiplayer PC game, Mythica. The piece argues: 'But there is a dark realization that is now being considered, just when does it end? When does the genre hit the ceiling and all that ends up happening is [that] companies resort to passing around subscriptions with no real growth. This is a question that is haunting corporations who have potential products laid before senior management - just how long can it continue? When does the opportunity cost grow larger than any potential earning?'"
Re:Well (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well (Score:1)
Give me Verant vi any day!
MMO is just starting. (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, the big boys/girls in the field will finally figure out that the real money isn't in creating a specific game or world, but creating and maintaining a META-world in which other developers can create their own games/worlds. Then independent shops can create MMO games that operate in a particular world much as they would create games that operate on a particular gaming platform. So in "Nintendo World" you would be able to race cars, adventure in dungeons, space battles, and buy in to new "games/areas" when they are created...
The MMO model has just started. I can see a future in which ALL games are actually contained (or at least accessed from) within larger meta MMO worlds.
Re:MMO is just starting. (Score:5, Funny)
- Hiro
Re:MMO is just starting. (Score:1)
And yes you can keep your Katana, though it may sometimes turn into a six-shooter, light saber, or a set of retractable claws depending where you're playing.
Re:MMO is just starting. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MMO is just starting. (Score:1)
Re:MMO is just starting. (Score:3, Insightful)
I that
Re:MMO is just starting. (Score:1)
There won't be ONE standard, but several...
The big companies will always write their own stuff, and most people will flock to the big games, but they will als
I doubt it (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Games are diverse. While people want application software all to look and work alike, they want all games to look and work different. A cookie-cutter game won't sell.
2) Game designers know it is a huge mistake to try to put too many different things in a game. You should not burden a racing game wit
Re:I doubt it (Score:1)
>If what you say could be successful, it would have happened already for single-player games. But it hasn't.
It has kind of. Remember that video game platforms used to have just one game on them. Pong, etc. Then multiple developers started writing to one machine. This WILL happen with software too, and the most obvious clue that it will happen is the HUGE mod scene. People are making new games with the technology of the old games. Or at a lower level, many design companies use "game engines" like ID
Re:MMO is just starting. (Score:2)
I'm thinking of games of totally different genres that not only just exist in the same world but have a profound effect on each other. MMO's are all about persistent worlds, and ideally worlds that are largely shaped by the actions of the users, right? Now I've got my picture in my mind of one world, that has maybe three or four types of games to play in it, all of which effect the world of the other games.
Example: Say you
Book Recommendation (Score:5, Interesting)
Going back on topic, there's a fairly good argument that's there's no real growth now-except in the switch from ticks to turn based real time(not a contradiction in terms-rather than each turn approximating 6 seconds, each turn is 6 seconds) the mechanics are extremely similar to the first MUDs. Just as Japanese RPGs are all remaking Dragon Warrior, MMORPGs are still stuck in the levels/classes mold, with repetitive mob killing and a levelling treadmill
Re:Cancelled, why? (Score:3, Funny)
All new industries wonder, and there is no answer (Score:4, Interesting)
why would growth level off? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about, in the intervening 3 years between major commercial releases, the million or so teenage gamers who make that transition into gamers-with-disposable-income-and-creditcards?
What about the games like World of Warcraft that are positioned to bring in non-peristent-world gamers into the market? Even if WoW fails, it will expose the genre to new players, and pull some of them in.
These games self-sustain and remain successful with well less than 100,000 players(ww2o,planetside,meridian59,second life,eve,etc). So every 3 years, when on the order of a million gamers become a new viable market for a persistent world game - publishers need only capture less than 5% of that to break even, or 10% to make mad cash. Add in the players who're naturally leaving older games - and why should we expect the market to ever level off?
Sure, theoretically, the rate of persistent world development could outstrip the rate of gamer-defection + the rate of new-gamer-arrival. But we're quite a ways away from that.
Re:why would growth level off? (Score:2)
Yeah and the vast majority will become, former-hardcore-gamers-now-casual-gamers-with-dis p osable-income-and-creitcards-but -but-with-less-time-to-spend-on-games-and-better-t hings-to-spend-money-on.
MMORPG's require a certain taste in games(RPG), a certain time commitment, and thus chances are the number of MMORPG players will remain leveled off.
That's not entirely correct, though (Score:2)
I know of several games (mostly defunct now) whose core user base is almost entirely composed of former Dransik players. Dransik itself got the greatest bulk of its players from Runescape and Hellbreth. Tibia and Dransik have been exchanging players for most of their existence. When Dransik was reworked into Ashem Empires, it was heavily targeted at people who pla
time (Score:5, Insightful)
So far all I've seen is leveling with swords, leveling with light sabers, etc. Who is going to innovate first?
Re:time (Score:1)
Re:time (Score:2)
Powergamers loathe the concept of making a truly casual player friendly game. If you fail at making a casual player's game - you get nothing. If you fail at making an EQ-knockoff stomachable to casual gamers - you still have the powergamer crowd.
Quite simply, publishers don't want to put money
Here's one (Score:2)
Why I don't play any MMOG's anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Now clearly if my son starts crying or something like that I can just pull the plug and attend to my RL responsibilities, these are after all, only games. But what fun is it to return at a later time, stripped naked, missing hard earned XP, and with a corpse to find?
Ironically Mythica might've been a bit better - as I understood it, it revolved around shorter, pocket dungeons, making it easier to pick up and play and leave.
Ah well back to X2
The shakeout begins (Score:2)
The best we can hope for in this is a Golgotha-like releasing of code, textures and models to the rest of the world. That would be fun.
(The determination of n is left as an exercise for the student.)
Great for career gamers but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great for career gamers but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
- It's hard enough keeping latency low in a static world - where only minor changes are occuring (players moving, weapons fire and the occasional explosion). If a thousand people were building/changing/demolishing houses, planting/felling trees, digging up roads, erecting giants statues of themselves, etc
... it would be nearly impossible to maintain a playable speed.
- The game has to offer the same level of challenge to all new players. Whether the join at the Beta stage, or after the game's been running for five years. This is difficult with a static world, but if players can shape the world this could be nearly impossible. Resources would get walled off, shops would get destroyed, etc
... Great fun for the early adopters, less so for new players.
- Dynamic worlds would require much more active maintenance. The company running the game would have to keep a very close eye on the world and play a much more active GM role. If the GM is good then the previous problem could be greatly reduced. However skilled, attentive GMs cost money, especially as, for any sizable game world, you'd require more than one per server.
None of these are insurmountable problems - but it's likely to take a few years, and better home connections before truely dynamic game worlds are available.This however is only a temporary problem. Once we all have 100Mbit fibre connections and are connecting to servers with 4x20Ghz CPUs this won't be a problem.
Re:Great for career gamers but.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Great for career gamers but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
One world (Score:2)
One universe and then when folks want to play a game, they all go somewhere meant just for playing games. Think: Sims + Ultima Online + Warcraft III + Halflife (2). It's the MMO part that is common to all of these and we all need to agree on some basics that can all work togeth
Re:One world (Score:2, Interesting)
As you can see from this example, you haven't solved the problem, you've merely renamed it. The capitalism part comes in because there is a
To talk about point B, you have to reach point A (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies need to pitch something totally different that'll set them apart from the others. Having weekly events. Set up contests. Have the dev team make their presence known in the game and then give the players a chance to kill them (a la Ultima Online). Come up with a totally different cast of races to play as (humans, elves and dwarves are overdone. Get over it.) Let monsters be proactive, instead of being reactive. Maybe even let monsters roam into town and destroy if players don't kill it. TRY SOMETHING NEW.
MMO games are changing IMO. The problem is by the time they become good enough to earn my money, chances are I'll be playing CS2 and Quake 4.
I agree on content. (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Built-in console gaming. Many more people play on consoles than PCs. Sure, there are console MMORPGs and the Xbox has built-in ethernet, but the PS2 and GameCube require adapters and the Xbox charges a yearly fee for access. You won't see true growth until a huge penetration in this market takes place. I'm thinking the next gen stuff will begin to do this.
2) Undeveloped/unde
Re:To talk about point B, you have to reach point (Score:2)
Re:To talk about point B, you have to reach point (Score:2)
The following is a list of number of non-standard type races in the top 3 MMO games in the U.S., the game their in, what type of creature they are, compared to the number of standard type races and their ratio. Since FFXI's characters/races is purposely reworded and tweaked, I won't use them as an example in this.
Everquest : Number of non-standard races, 3. The Froglok, th
Re:To talk about point B, you have to reach point (Score:2)
All the existing MMOG games use the same basic client server model. This is fantastically expensive to set up and maintain (acting as an effective barrier to entry stopping smaller developers entering the market), and horribly inadequate at meeting the demands of a modern game.
When UO came out it basically allowed the player to do everything they could in single player RPGs of the tim
Costs of entry getting higher (Score:5, Insightful)
My cousin used to be a pretty fanatical Everquest player. As new expansion packs would come out, he'd have to spend hundreds of hours leveling his character up just so he'd be strong enough to try out the Planes of Power, or whatever the new hotness was. All his friends played, and played a lot too, so if he wants to quest with them he has to be fairly close in levels or he'll be pasted in any combat.
So with any new MMO people have to start over. They have a new character, no skills, and lose all their previous investment of time. If their friends don't switch, then it's another reason not to embrace a new MMO. Why go play if all your friends are still playing EQ?
The only MMO coming out that says they plan to address this is World of Warcraft. According to early interviews and alpha impressions at Gamespy, it seems that Blizzard wants you to be able to jump right in and have fun, regardless of what level you are. No more spending a few hundred hours killing giant rats and spiders so you can be tough enough to actually try doing something FUN.
So I don't know if MMO's will be inherently limited if they have proper design. The current crop of MMO's is getting very saturated however. Lowering the cost of entry (level treadmills, money, in-game loot) will certainly allow newer MMO's to compete however.
--
"Hands and feet are rarely discovered from these periods because they are usually the first thing carnivores eat. They make a tasty snack and are easy to eat."
- Dr. Graham Baker, South African Journal of Science
Re:Costs of entry getting higher (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Costs of entry getting higher (Score:1)
Do you have a url or something for how they plan to do this? Honestly I know it is Blizzard and all, but I'll believe it w
Good... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe then, the genre could actually have some quality control. Anyone remember the last MMO release that didn't require excessive patching?
It's not just a event-play issue. These games just aren't DONE. I cannot think of a single release that came out feature-complete, let alone balanced and finished.
MMO developers and marketers need to learn to finish their projects and deliver what they pr
Not until ... (Score:5, Interesting)
a) is not too expensive to preclude play by people who are cash poor (over $10 is too much to pay for alot of folks).
b) has enough programmed intelligence to allow suspension of disbelief during gameplay (that includes graphics, UI, "AI", lack of serious bugs, etc)
c) does not require one to play for dozens of hours per week or even a couple of hours every day just to "keep up" to have a level of enjoyment
d) converse of c) does not easily allow the game to become boring if you -do- play a large number of hours
e) runs on more than just Windows
So far, each of the above (with the possible exception of "B") has been reached, but no more than 2 in any one game that I've played. I have been trying MMOGs since the early days and have played 5 of them commercially (ie, I was paying for it).
So far I have a couple of old MUDs that I still play on occasion, but no MMOGs are currently installed anywhere in our house. Not because I wouldn't like to have one to play, but because so far there isn't one.
Neverwinter Nights as an MMORPG (the way it started out) would have been possible
When a -good- MMO game does come, it won't matter if the market for -bad- MMO games is saturated, it will grow. It may be parasitic growth from the base of other MMO games, but that doesn't mean it won't be a good investment for the right company. Capitalist theory rules this beast.
Re:Not until ... (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to play Ultima Online, and I found that I could logon to for half-an-hour, interact with others for a while and logout again, and still feel as though I had a rewarding game experience.
The problem was that other roleplayers are initially quite difficult to find, and it wasn't an activity that was rewarded or encouraged by Origin etc. I can't speak
exaggerated (Score:2)
What is definitely missing are some good free 3D MMORPG's. The only one I know that's good and fun is Runescape, the rest seem to be abandoned projects or stuff that doesn't go anywhere.
Neverwinter nights is just about the
Free MMO's (Score:2)
The current version is a working test client with limited interactivity, but the next release (due in about 1 - 2 months) has implemented combat, experience, etc.
The game is graphically on par with most RPGs today, not quite as polished as Everquest 2, but in the same ballpark as online games from about a year ago.
The people work
Re:Free MMO's (Score:2)
The current version is a working test client with limited interactivity, but the next release (due in about 1 - 2 months) has implemented combat, experience, etc.
Due in one to two months? That means it may be out by summer. The next milestone the Planeshift developers reach on time will be the first.
Time passes .... (Score:2)
The Everquest2 is launched and we'll see what this so called saturation is about.
Over-saturation is right (Score:1, Funny)
The market is Over-Saturated (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the MMO's now cater to the care bears, have too many rules, are overly complex, have poor combat systems,and are a time sink. Once this stuff goes, MMO's will really go mainstream.
MMO makers need to get off their high horse of "Creating Virtual Worlds" and focus on the fact that they are creating games. The thing to remember when making games is "Easy to play/learn, difficult to master". The current MMO's are "Difficult to learn, easy to master" (as long as you are willing to spend the time)
Re:The market is Over-Saturated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The market is Over-Saturated (Score:1)
Re:The market is Over-Saturated (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The market is Over-Saturated (Score:1)
Re:The market is Over-Saturated (Score:2)
I completely agree. Except for the thresh part. While he may be better than your average gamer in the game, the level difference should rightly prevent him from being able t
Interlocking MMO's (Score:1)
So, to answer, no. MMO's are
Mythica cancellation (Score:1)
Innovation (Score:4, Interesting)
UO, EQ, AC1, AO, DAoC, EnB, EVE, AC2, SWG, FFXI, even Project Entropia and Endless Ages.. and some other misc ones nobody ever heard of.
Problem is, 9 out of every 10 MMOs are pretty much version 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, etc of EQ. It's like AOL here, they all try to emulate EQ because from a business standpoint it was a successful model.
That's where the investors go wrong in their thinking. In most other industries you can emulate something and make a good profit off of it because it is proven. The only time you can do that in THIS industry is if you are selling a NAME (SWG, FFXI folks?), or if you have a hell of a marketing director.
If you really want to hook people into this, you have to go about it in a way that makes them feel like they're transitioning from playing their normal sp/mp games to something where they still feel that magic that the sp/mp games give, but have that epic touch with hundreds if not thousands of people playing at the same time.
Once broadband completely replaces 56k, we'll hopefully start seeing MMO "twitch" games that play like your standard Counterstrike-esque game, low pings, high twitch. Planetside type stuff, only really feeling like the 16 person mp games of old, with thousands of people.
Turn them into the new "club", where people decide to login instead of wasting 50 dollars a friday night getting trashed. Centralize the genre into 'hubs' where you login to a central service and navigate to which game(world) you want to play that day, be it medieval/shooter/racer/sports/strategy/hybrid, whatever. Have a central avatar that you navigate to these portals that can also be used just to socialize instead of playing those games as well. Games within games.
laxative (Score:1)
Also... (Score:1)