Well, I guess years and millions of dollars will have to be wasted before I'm proven right and we start seeing MMO's once again reaching for their potential. Casual gamers want to buy something they will pay at most $50-60 for EVER, play it for a few weeks to months, then take back to the gaming store and trade in for credit for the next "shiney" that comes out. This model works with console gaming. I don't see how it could ever be translated into funding the massive development and operating costs of even the simplest MMO. Even the most basic MMO makes money because of commitment (ie: the subscription fee). Even changing that to RMT amounts to the same thing. You've already shot one foot off and are reloading to shoot the other when from the get go you are going to try to market this to the uncommitted.
To counter that point and once again let me state that I'm looking through "corporate dev eyes", look at things like Webkinz (not sure if it's spelled properly), or Hello Kitty Online, ToonTown, and other such titles. While they may not be MMO's by our standards, they are for kids who are more fickle than the typical adult casual gamer. But yet these things are profitable and becoming more popular. Like I've said, this is the corporate mentality at the moment.
I don't like that direction anymore than you do salvaje. If I had the millions that were wasted on SW:G post NGE alone, I could probably build an MMO that would make most of us vets here happy. Unfotunately, I have to build up my business slowly and develop the resources to do that. If I won the lottery tomorrow then you're damn right I'd begin hiring the people it would take to build an MMO you, me, and many other core gamers would want. It's just too bad life doesn't work that way, nor does the industry.
Yes, but Salvaje's point is that there is room for more than one type of MMO to be profitable in the marketplace - just as there is room for many different types of car into the automotive market. His objection - and mine too - is that at the moment there seems to be pretty much only one type of MMO under development.
Well, I guess years and millions of dollars will have to be wasted before I'm proven right and we start seeing MMO's once again reaching for their potential. Casual gamers want to buy something they will pay at most $50-60 for EVER, play it for a few weeks to months, then take back to the gaming store and trade in for credit for the next "shiney" that comes out. This model works with console gaming. I don't see how it could ever be translated into funding the massive development and operating costs of even the simplest MMO. Even the most basic MMO makes money because of commitment (ie: the subscription fee). Even changing that to RMT amounts to the same thing. You've already shot one foot off and are reloading to shoot the other when from the get go you are going to try to market this to the uncommitted.
To counter that point and once again let me state that I'm looking through "corporate dev eyes", look at things like Webkinz (not sure if it's spelled properly), or Hello Kitty Online, ToonTown, and other such titles. While they may not be MMO's by our standards, they are for kids who are more fickle than the typical adult casual gamer. But yet these things are profitable and becoming more popular. Like I've said, this is the corporate mentality at the moment.
I don't like that direction anymore than you do salvaje. If I had the millions that were wasted on SW:G post NGE alone, I could probably build an MMO that would make most of us vets here happy. Unfotunately, I have to build up my business slowly and develop the resources to do that. If I won the lottery tomorrow then you're damn right I'd begin hiring the people it would take to build an MMO you, me, and many other core gamers would want. It's just too bad life doesn't work that way, nor does the industry.
Yes, but Salvaje's point is that there is room for more than one type of MMO to be profitable in the marketplace - just as there is room for many different types of car into the automotive market. His objection - and mine too - is that at the moment there seems to be pretty much only one type of MMO under development.
I understand that, but unfortunately companies like SOE, EA, and a few others don't see it that way. That's the point I'm trying to make. It's the corporate mentality that is killing the genre at the moment, not casual vs core. As I've said before I know game development is a "For Profit" industry, but that's all they are looking for is profit. Remember MMO companies provide a service and until they decide to think aoubt their customers and their profits, not just profits alone, you won't see a change in the industry.
It's going to take a game like EvE or a game like pre-CU SW:G get over 1 million subscribers to get the industry to take a second look at the "Core gamer" type of MMO. And like salvaje said, it's going to waiste millions of dollars of basically our money for them to find that out.
It's not so much that these games are expected to make profits.
They are expected to make INSANE profits, ala WoW.
Just bringing in enough to pay the bills, the employees, the taxes, with some left over to pay back the investors at an above inflation rate of return is not enough.
You must be swimming in hookers and booze or you're an absolute failure. Unless you're posting numbers like WoW, you're a loser.
This mentality is not restricted to gaming. Some of the catastrophic stupidity in the current financial liquidity crisis can be laid directly to this "the numbers must show record growth consistently into infinity" mentality. An analyist at one of the major mortgage lenders told his bosses that the market was tapped, that the growth would stop, and was told to go back and make the numbers grow. So he did. By lowering the standards upon which the mortgages were created. More sub prime.
The result: financial collapse and ruin.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
They would still have mine , I can only speak for myself .
cheers
Exactly. This also speaks for me
In any case they would have alot more then they do now. The game would be so much more now if they had focused on content and bugs rather then reinventing itself just breaking the code even more.
There are still bugs in that game from day 1 of release.
I've been predicting and so far have no reason to take it back that 2008-9 is going to see a crash in the MMO industry. There are far too many similar games and concepts chasing the same type of MMO player.
This will cause a lot of bad companies to exit the market. In the end it will be a good thing.
There is plenty of money to be made in MMORPG's, if you don't go "gold fever" mad and think that anything short of WOW like numbers is a failure. So far the only successful MMO launch since WOW is LOTRO, a typical WOW clone, but it's fallen short of 1 million.
In time, even WOW will fade. Will it die? No, of course not, but eventually the WOW kiddies will grow up and want to play a real game.
I've been predicting and so far have no reason to take it back that 2008-9 is going to see a crash in the MMO industry. There are far too many similar games and concepts chasing the same type of MMO player. This will cause a lot of bad companies to exit the market. In the end it will be a good thing. There is plenty of money to be made in MMORPG's, if you don't go "gold fever" mad and think that anything short of WOW like numbers is a failure. So far the only successful MMO launch since WOW is LOTRO, a typical WOW clone, but it's fallen short of 1 million. In time, even WOW will fade. Will it die? No, of course not, but eventually the WOW kiddies will grow up and want to play a real game.
I have to agree about the state of the MMO genre. There are too many companies that are trying to either beat WoW or be WoW. Let's hope your predictions are true and some of these companies will give up on MMO's all together. We're all better off in the long run.
I still don't understand why a game with 250k players is considered a failure. Heck Minions of Mirth, which is by far the most successful indie MMO I know of, has about 30k people playing it and they continue to refine it all the time and make it better. It's not the prettiest game out there, but at least you don't have all the corporate BS to deal with.
I've always personally thought has SW:G stayed the course and not done the CU/NGE that people from WoW would have eventually graduated from to SW:G. I guess I'm saying the original version of SW:G came out before it's time. Let's hope the future of MMO's and the gaming industry will eventually grow up. After all video games aren't just for kids.
I've been predicting and so far have no reason to take it back that 2008-9 is going to see a crash in the MMO industry. There are far too many similar games and concepts chasing the same type of MMO player. This will cause a lot of bad companies to exit the market. In the end it will be a good thing. There is plenty of money to be made in MMORPG's, if you don't go "gold fever" mad and think that anything short of WOW like numbers is a failure. So far the only successful MMO launch since WOW is LOTRO, a typical WOW clone, but it's fallen short of 1 million. In time, even WOW will fade. Will it die? No, of course not, but eventually the WOW kiddies will grow up and want to play a real game.
Again, this is right.
I mean, with all due respect to Lotro, Vanguard, WoW and the forthcoming AoC and Warhammer - how many games does the market need with orcs in them? These are all basically the same game - the different canons that each embody provide only differencres in nuance. They simply cannot all survive in the same marketplace, however large it may be.
My guess is that Blizzard will soon announce that it is working on new Starcraft MMO - whether it is simnply a 'WoW in space' or a new kind of sandbox, if they come out wiht it first, they will dominate for a long time in the currently neglected future/SciFi sector.
Comments
I don't like that direction anymore than you do salvaje. If I had the millions that were wasted on SW:G post NGE alone, I could probably build an MMO that would make most of us vets here happy. Unfotunately, I have to build up my business slowly and develop the resources to do that. If I won the lottery tomorrow then you're damn right I'd begin hiring the people it would take to build an MMO you, me, and many other core gamers would want. It's just too bad life doesn't work that way, nor does the industry.
Yes, but Salvaje's point is that there is room for more than one type of MMO to be profitable in the marketplace - just as there is room for many different types of car into the automotive market. His objection - and mine too - is that at the moment there seems to be pretty much only one type of MMO under development.
I don't like that direction anymore than you do salvaje. If I had the millions that were wasted on SW:G post NGE alone, I could probably build an MMO that would make most of us vets here happy. Unfotunately, I have to build up my business slowly and develop the resources to do that. If I won the lottery tomorrow then you're damn right I'd begin hiring the people it would take to build an MMO you, me, and many other core gamers would want. It's just too bad life doesn't work that way, nor does the industry.
Yes, but Salvaje's point is that there is room for more than one type of MMO to be profitable in the marketplace - just as there is room for many different types of car into the automotive market. His objection - and mine too - is that at the moment there seems to be pretty much only one type of MMO under development.
I understand that, but unfortunately companies like SOE, EA, and a few others don't see it that way. That's the point I'm trying to make. It's the corporate mentality that is killing the genre at the moment, not casual vs core. As I've said before I know game development is a "For Profit" industry, but that's all they are looking for is profit. Remember MMO companies provide a service and until they decide to think aoubt their customers and their profits, not just profits alone, you won't see a change in the industry.
It's going to take a game like EvE or a game like pre-CU SW:G get over 1 million subscribers to get the industry to take a second look at the "Core gamer" type of MMO. And like salvaje said, it's going to waiste millions of dollars of basically our money for them to find that out.
It's not so much that these games are expected to make profits.
They are expected to make INSANE profits, ala WoW.
Just bringing in enough to pay the bills, the employees, the taxes, with some left over to pay back the investors at an above inflation rate of return is not enough.
You must be swimming in hookers and booze or you're an absolute failure. Unless you're posting numbers like WoW, you're a loser.
This mentality is not restricted to gaming. Some of the catastrophic stupidity in the current financial liquidity crisis can be laid directly to this "the numbers must show record growth consistently into infinity" mentality. An analyist at one of the major mortgage lenders told his bosses that the market was tapped, that the growth would stop, and was told to go back and make the numbers grow. So he did. By lowering the standards upon which the mortgages were created. More sub prime.
The result: financial collapse and ruin.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
In any case they would have alot more then they do now. The game would be so much more now if they had focused on content and bugs rather then reinventing itself just breaking the code even more.
There are still bugs in that game from day 1 of release.
SHOHADAKU
I've been predicting and so far have no reason to take it back that 2008-9 is going to see a crash in the MMO industry. There are far too many similar games and concepts chasing the same type of MMO player.
This will cause a lot of bad companies to exit the market. In the end it will be a good thing.
There is plenty of money to be made in MMORPG's, if you don't go "gold fever" mad and think that anything short of WOW like numbers is a failure. So far the only successful MMO launch since WOW is LOTRO, a typical WOW clone, but it's fallen short of 1 million.
In time, even WOW will fade. Will it die? No, of course not, but eventually the WOW kiddies will grow up and want to play a real game.
I still don't understand why a game with 250k players is considered a failure. Heck Minions of Mirth, which is by far the most successful indie MMO I know of, has about 30k people playing it and they continue to refine it all the time and make it better. It's not the prettiest game out there, but at least you don't have all the corporate BS to deal with.
I've always personally thought has SW:G stayed the course and not done the CU/NGE that people from WoW would have eventually graduated from to SW:G. I guess I'm saying the original version of SW:G came out before it's time. Let's hope the future of MMO's and the gaming industry will eventually grow up. After all video games aren't just for kids.
I mean, with all due respect to Lotro, Vanguard, WoW and the forthcoming AoC and Warhammer - how many games does the market need with orcs in them? These are all basically the same game - the different canons that each embody provide only differencres in nuance. They simply cannot all survive in the same marketplace, however large it may be.
My guess is that Blizzard will soon announce that it is working on new Starcraft MMO - whether it is simnply a 'WoW in space' or a new kind of sandbox, if they come out wiht it first, they will dominate for a long time in the currently neglected future/SciFi sector.
All the hints out of Blizzard is their new MMO will be hardcore....
Which makes sense for them since they have a lock on the carebear simpleton market X10.
If it is, and it doesn't have elves and orcs, I may play it.