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How did MMOs lose their Mojo?
Scot
Member LegendaryPosts: 24,464
How did MMO’s lose their Mojo? ((Yes I know it is a long post, yawn 
))
“But Then They Changed What It Was” was a recent article by Jon Wood which suggests that we complain so much about MMO’s because we are all getting older and losing ‘it’. Here I put forward the argument that MMO’s and gaming in general have seen a replacement of creative and programming personnel in the driving seat with corporates. While gaming companies themselves acquire independents, cherry pick a couple of titles and cancel everything else. This is why we think MMO’s are becoming worse…because they are. As it is difficult to track every member of a MMO company I have used CEO’s as the test for this, who make the final decisions and are not so hard to track.
Below I look at various examples of this happening in MMO and gaming companies we all know:
The founder of Electronic Arts was Trip Hawkins who did his degree in Strategy and Game Theory, but he was replaced by Larry Probyst. Probyst started his business career at Johnson and Johnson then moving on to Clorox, just so you realise his corparate credentials.
Origin Systems created Ultima Online one of the first real MMO’s. Richard Garriott who was a game designer and programmer founded the company with his brother. It was acquired by Electronic Arts, the CEO of EA then being Larry Probyst. Within a year EA had cancelled all of Origin's new development projects, including Ultima Online 2, Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online. Good business thinking? I don’t know, but bad for MMO’s certainly.
Lets take a look at Mythic Entertainment’s two founders; Mark Jacobs was a designer and programmer, Rob Denton was a communications engineer who became a lead programmer. They created DAOC a MMO still held up by many to be the best RvR game they have seen. Mythic was taken over by EA and lost Jacobs. So the CEO was Probst, then Riccitiello both businessman. Mythic now under EA start and then cancel projects to make MMO’s like Imperator finally going on to make the much less well received Warhammer. Hopefully you will see the pattern that is emerging.
This is a trend in it’s self, smaller companies taken over by larger ones who do not have a designer or programmer leading the company. But even some businessmen are more in touch with gaming than others. The medical students who began the small gaming company that was Bioware wanted to form a gaming company which shows where their interests lay. Bioware, now owned by EA ends up being run by a businessman like Riccitiello who has a background in Pepsi Cola and Haggan-Dazzs. But enough about EA.
Cryptic Studios were conceived by Michael Lewis and Rick Dakan who describe themselves as roleplayers who wanted to continue what they had done in their youth online. I could not find anyone to be named as the first CEO, but essentially it was founded by roleplayers. In the summer of 2008 John Needham became the CEO, an executive from SOE. The company was now being run by a corporate, in the winter of the same year Cryptic was sold to Atari. I do not know if Needham was brought in to pave the way for that move, or as a corporate the new CEO could only see a benefit in joining a larger company, but I really doubt that it is a coincidence. David Gardner is the CEO of Atari, he started in sales and marketing and moved on to management. Cryptic now go on to produce Champions Online which got a panning. Need I say more?
Eidos was founded by Stephen Strater a mathematician. I am not trying to say he was a creative, I am using Eidos as another example of how larger companies chew up small ones, dismantle the creative team and only continue with a few cherry picked titles. It became a solo games company which itself acquired other gaming companies and then only continued with the best sellers from those acquisitions. They were acquired themselves by Square Enix in 2004. They released games like Tomb raider Deus Ex, Thief and Hitman. Their numbers of new titles dwindled and it seems 2010 will be the last year they publish. The big name games will no doubt get another outing in the series, everything else has been shelved. Only the strongest titles should survive you say? I agree to a certain extent, but so many don’t make it out the door to see if they will survive or not.
I have backed up my statements about the gaming industry by doing a little digging on the internet. While I would hardly call that journalism it would be nice if the staff writers occasionly did a bit of digging themselves instead of just telling us we complain because we are all old crusties. I welcome any corrections or additions, I am sure there are people who know more about gaming history than I do.
I am not saying you must have a creative person as the CEO to get a good game, but it sure helps and now we are entering an era where the only only people at the helm of MMO’s will be suits. What do you think is more likely to happen? An explosion of creativity and gameplay styles, or the remarketing of the same old products redesigned to milk as much cash out of players as they can?
Comments
just a quick add: Jacobs didnt leave Mythic when EA purchased it, he was fired after WAR crashed and burned in the most apocalyptical yet tremendously hilarious of ways, and jacobs was the man in charge of the train wreck. Hell, he bragged about being the master mind behind WAR's crafting, reason enough to never hire him again, not even as waterboy.
with the biggest budget in MMORPGs' history and pretty much TEH IP, he still managed to pull out a turd SO flawed, that makes one wonder if he spent 99 cents of each dollar he was given in hookers and coke...
Simple.
It went from "Hey, let's make a fun game that we would like to play. As a bonus, we'll make money doing it!" to "Let's make money.".
FYI Square and Enix merged in 2003. Eidos was bought by a company called SCi in 2004. In 2009 SquareEnix bought Eidos.
I think you have to dig a bit deeper than just company take overs. The MMOs we have enjoyed these past couple years, really got their start well over ten years ago. The gaming industry was a different place. Today it's such a risk to not make a killer game that some companies sink or swim on the fortunes of one title.
Large companies like EA, Activision/Blizzard, SquareEnix, see potential in smaller companies, or corporations that once made very successful games but have landed on tough times. So the grab them up. This allows for the Studio to remain open and continue on their projects or create new ones.
Thats when things seem to get a bit ugly to us gamers. We remember playing an awesome game by SoandSo developer. But a year ago they were taken over by EA. And now SoandSo puts out crap games. It's easy to blame EA for the tides turning. But the truth is it probably started much further back than you think. Games take years to complete, and tens of millions of dollars to create. SoandSo was being lead by a CEO who was passionate about gaming, or creating this one IP. They are over budget, delayed for another year. They are about to close. EA steps in funds the SoandSo studio with money and assets, In the mean time EA looks at what problems this studio is having and try to streamline the process. That might mean cutting out content, replacing CEO, or closing down the production. Why? because they have past a line of balanced profit.
It's not good business sense to continue with a project if it's costs more to make then what your expected returns are.
All companies do this.
Blizzard Shelved a game called World of Warcraft back in the late 90's. It was supposed to be a cartoon animated game, with similar mechanics to a SCUMM game (monkey island, Full Throttle,Sam and Max) The name returned a few years later as the MMO people love to play. Blizzard also shelved a game for the gamecube back in the early 2000's called Starcraft: Ghost. Maybe this will resurface as the new FPSMMO they are rumored to be working on.
Also I'm not sure if many people are aware but several studios develop games under one company name. Franchises get handed off to these other studios. Tomb Raider for instance may have been developed by a certain studio then handed off to an unexperienced development team who really botched the game.
So while from our perspective it's easy to blame these mega companies coming in and taking over these smaller beloved studios and ruining our games. But they are the ones saving these companies to fight another day, so they may show us what they got.
P.s. The internet doesn't help either. Everyone in cyber space must feel some sort of entitlement when they trash on a company. It's like they have been betrayed, cheated and kicked in the mud. Instead of simply moving on to another game when they feel the game waited for turns out not to be for them. They put up such a stink and get other people on board, it creates an online hysteria. I've seen it happen to SWG, AOC and WAR. While i agree that those games are prime examples of games not delivering upon release or being mismanaged. People should just move on instead of dragging those companies though the mud.
just my 2 cents.
MMOs went from: "Let's make a virtual world" to "Let's make a game without an end".
The latter seems to be more popular.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
the thing is the script is too tight to static,if they added random selection they wouldnt have to decide everything
they would just have to make sure that say there are 100 question on anyone persone
that have to have content if my natural selection end up with pink eyes and im the enemy of everydoy that hate pink eyes
they have to have other random selection for decision
company go for scripted because it can be controlled,and player are fed up from the mmo too big with zero randomness anywhere
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/269637/Dynamic-World-How-do-you.html
this show it can be done and if you add ai to the mix you get an insanelly addicticve mo or mmo
they dont even need to build a new game there are ton of them sleeping in the shelf
in fact dynamic mo or mmo is one if not the only piece of techno that require an existing game so it can be implemented
why!the endeavor for a non existing game would be too great
polish can be done yes but redoing a game from 0 take way more time then the average dev are allowed !
just doing these dynamic system and quest would take 3 or 4 year with an existing title if they use a new one it would take
6 or 7 years total!
The focus from journey became a focus to destination. Then, because people rush to a destination, there needed to be a way to cull boredom. Hence, 'endgame'.
MMORPGs lost their mojo the day the developpers became more interested in audience counts than the product the audience was originally attracted to. This statement has as application both macro/micro-cosm natures.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
futur of mo or mmo will be some version of entropia universe but in browser, in 64 bit ,every mmo will be able to had to it
it will be 1 dynamic random selection thing,thats how it will be .once they figure out how the payment will work the rest is relativelly easy!NOT LOL!
dynamic random selection as a system for mo or mmo is one of the hardest endeavour some company can undertake
true !this is one big issue!every mo or mmo maker dream to be the next big game to hit the billion in revenue!
It's better to lurk in forums and be thought a fool...than to endlessly "Quote" and remove all doubts.
MMO's have not lost their "mojo". They are not inferior, as a genre, to a golden age. Once you have become familiar with the concept it no longer inspires like it used to. Simple.
You can search high and low for all sorts of arbitrary reasoning to explain your own lack of enthralment, but it really is nothing more than familiarization.
As popularity rises, so do the people jumping on the bandwagon hoping for a slice of the action, some of these titles will inevitably be of poor standard, not every car is made the same high standards of others.
I can explain it in less technical terms.
In the beginning, there was light... OK, too far back.....
When the first MMORPG's hit the scene (UO, AC, EQ etc) designers targeted an audience that consisted of hardcore gamers, most who had cut their teeth on either MUDs, pnp games like D&D or the many single player RPG's from the 80's and early 90's.
And they saw that it was good.
There was a decent number of people willing to play these early games, anywhere's from 100K to 500K which paid for the expenses and turned a decent profit.
But if you'll recall, when a more casual gamer would dip their toes into these early games, frequent complaints were, "this is too complicated, I don't have time to live in a virtual world, I live in the real one, I don't care for the difficultly, I don't want to lose my progress from a death etc etc.
So developers started to think, perhaps the people who didn't like MMORPG's might actually out number those who do. But they needed a game with a different design to get their interest.
Well, to do so, this required removing the deep features that the early adopters favored, the time sinks, the forced grouping, the downtime, the long travel times, yes, they all had a purpose, though few players today realize it. For all the frustration they caused some folks, they contributed to what made the early games great for players of that time, but were a total turn off to the larger more casual market, so they had to be simplified or removed completely.
And Darkness fell across the gaming land.
Along came Blizzard, and they created WOW. They weren't the first to go after the casual player, but they were the most successful, and the pay back was in spades, they created a financial juggernaut that was the envy of the gaming world.
Enter the suits. They saw the enormous profit potential of MMORPG's, I mean who wouldn't want 11M people tossing cash at you on a regular basis? So the developers made deal with the devil so to speak, they would be provided cash at recently unheard of levels, if only they would design their games after the same demographic that WOW did and bring in the big sub numbers.
So since then games were designed from the ground up (or retooled like SWG) to be "more like WOW", but the results haven't been as predicted.
Apparently, you can't out-WOW Blizzard, the world only needs one such game, and all the copies have failed to pull the casual player away from it. Meantime, the old school demographic is sitting on the outside wondering what the hell happened to their genre and gnash their teeth over the fact that outside of a few underfunded indy developers, no one is making games in the old school way.
While many think we've reached the end of days for MMORPG's in the old school, I think as the more casual player tires of the 'starter games' they'll one day want to take off the training wheels and demand more in depth games.
No, we'll probably never see a return to the early days, but I think that in the future MMORPG's will substantial improve in terms of what the old school gamers are looking for.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
IMO MMORPG's have not succeeded EVER in creating a true MMO game.The idea is suppose to create a universe with longevity,create the possibility of each player to have his/her own unique reason to participating in the world,but none of this has happened yet.
Instead the RPG genre advanced ever so slightly beyond the single player linear game it is.The devs have done nothing but create the exact same game but with the ability for many to login and adding PVP.The ONLY true teamwork game is FFXI,many of the other games only utilize team work because of the instance BOSS,a zone that is divides the player base from each other and divides the players from the real game world,so it basically negates the purpose of a MMORPG.
These games all have superficial quests and goals that pretty much drive EVERY single player to play the game for the same reason and same goals,so it is miles from being a true RPG.What these games actually are is nothing more than a MMO single player game,MMOSPG.
So thee games need to be designed a lot more like the type of game many hate,the ENTROPIA universe type of game,sort of utilizing a SIM city design,or a Age of Empires design.The game world should forever change,allowing for players to build bridges across ravines and control who crosses them to perhaps much needed resources ect ect.
The games SHOULD have advancement tools,so yo uare not stuck in the dark ages,as the game ages so should technology,so you move from swords to guns ect ect.NPC's should play large realistic roles within the games,they should not be static icons standing in front of useless static buildings.
There is just so much that needs to be done to make a great MMORPG,and nobody has come close,so instead of crying you are tired of elves or orcs whatever,you should be crying that the devs are not utilizing their skills to make a great game.How about breeding?why do the elves and orcs always remain the same year after year,how about children and new generations of players?Like i have been saying these are just games designed to be nothing more than single player games,meant to be finished in several months,no realism no realistic advancement,just level numbers and loot chasing.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This. To all those who lament the alleged "good old days" of MMO's, read this and then re-read it.
This. To all those who lament the alleged "good old days" of MMO's, read this and then re-read it.
I would disagree.
The only statement in niko's post that has any validity is the one about quality. Most games in recent years have been released in a very poor state, and the developers have not made enough effort to improve their quality up to a marginal standard.
Good explanation and conclusion. The only thing I would add is that the only way old-schoolers will see an old school game is if a company sets out with a vision to make one eyeing a demographic roughly the size of what EQ had back in it's heyday (between 100-200k subscribers) and be content with that. Kind of like the ambitions that were behind the making of Vanguard and, it seems, Darkfall. It's up to the players to go play it then, rather than declaring it EPIC FAIL during alpha or because it hasn't captured WoW numbers in their eyes.
they never lost their mojo just a dumb company called blizzard that makes crappy games made a extremely simple mmo that a 5 year old can play that got lots of subs and now all the mmo companys think making mmos for 5 year olds is the way to go.
Whats funny about the companies you listed is that pretty much all of them were failures before they went "corporate".
Origin ruined UO, not EA
Mythic ruined DAoC and WAR, not EA
Cryptic ruined CoH, not NCSoft; Cryptic ruined CO and STO, not Atari
Eidos ruined everything they touched, not SE
These corporations didnt make unbalanced classes, bad crafting systems, half finished content, missing features, bad graphics engines and laggy servers. All fault lies with the developers.
But, the corporations makes for easy scape goats as to why our favorite developer or game is not as good as we remember all those years ago. Its easy to place the blame on the big, soulless corporation.
Well, gamers want a "game" and I don't think that's too much asked.
Virtual worlds do not make that good of a games sadly.
EQ. The E stands for "Ever". Even more its based on DIKU MUD. It was never a world sim like UO. EQ was a game without an end.
The most popular 1st gen MMO was what people complain about now. Not surprisingly the most popular MUDs were DIKU MUDS.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
I agree with that. WoW is like playing pacman with 1980 graphics, very simple and can run easily on just about anyone's computer. If other mmos companies stopped adopting the theory that mmos need to be simple so the masses can play they woud have much greater success.
Well, gamers want a "game" and I don't think that's too much asked.
Virtual worlds do not make that good of a games sadly.
Well, how about having them both at the same package? I believe many gamers - myself included - are waiting just that kind of a game.
Businesses, more often then not, are run by business people. That's not a bad thing, really. You would probably not want business people designing games, if the tables were turned. Also, I can think of lots of games I wanted to play that I will never get to play because they didn't make it to market; in some of those cases, the game design was solid but the business skills just weren't there.
Still, some games do turn out to be dissappointments when business considerations override good judgment about what makes a game fun, or thwart the designers' efforts to polish and complete the product. The problem there isn't having business people running the company. It's having business people who don't listen to their designers or budget time and resources.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
You say the developers were concentrating on making RPG's for people who dont like RPG's? Thats daft! Why wouldnt they just make a FPS, or a strategy game? I dont think the main motivation behind making more accsesible MMORPG's was becouse of poeple who didnt like them.
Although I argue a bunch, and I cant come up with a better explanation myself...
You also bring up the "Old School" guys. Let me tell you about old school! I used to skip class to play D&D, or GURPS (I didnt even have a CPU back then). For me, the allure of RPG's was built by guys holding flashlights up to thier faces and telling me I was being attacked by a Beholder. Ahh the good old days!
The first time I ever picked up on a MMORPG (Evercrack), I was drawn in by the same things that piqued my intrest in the pen and paper (minus the wierd guy with the flashlight). There was magic, mythical beasts, dungeons. All of this, and I didnt even have to bust out a pen, or a DM guide! And whats more, these games built upon my intrest by adding in THOUSANDS of other people! It wasnt just me, and the two dwarves that lived in my cul-de-sac. The computer dumbed down the RPG for me, and I liked it!
Back to my original rant. Maybe the reason developers change things is because the kids change (so Mr. Wood could be right after all!). Look at the youth today, do you think any RPG gamer today would bother with old school D&D? Not only would they have to write things, but imagine things as well! No way, Jose! I wont role-play unless I need a GeForce to do so! And thats wat the devs are paying attention to. As DM guide sales plummet, and NVIDIA's stock rises, the people who make the games follow the buck.
The Mojo is, and always has been the youth, and I'm getting old. Se la vi!
You say the developers were concentrating on making RPG's for people who dont like RPG's? Thats daft! Why wouldnt they just make a FPS, or a strategy game? I dont think the main motivation behind making more accsesible MMORPG's was becouse of poeple who didnt like them.
Although I argue a bunch, and I cant come up with a better explanation myself...
You also bring up the "Old School" guys. Let me tell you about old school! I used to skip class to play D&D, or GURPS (I didnt even have a CPU back then). For me, the allure of RPG's was built by guys holding flashlights up to thier faces and telling me I was being attacked by a Beholder. Ahh the good old days!
The first time I ever picked up on a MMORPG (Evercrack), I was drawn in by the same things that piqued my intrest in the pen and paper (minus the wierd guy with the flashlight). There was magic, mythical beasts, dungeons. All of this, and I didnt even have to bust out a pen, or a DM guide! And whats more, these games built upon my intrest by adding in THOUSANDS of other people! It wasnt just me, and the two dwarves that lived in my cul-de-sac. The computer dumbed down the RPG for me, and I liked it!
Back to my original rant. Maybe the reason developers change things is because the kids change (so Mr. Wood could be right after all!). Look at the youth today, do you think any RPG gamer today would bother with old school D&D? Not only would they have to write things, but imagine things as well! No way, Jose! I wont role-play unless I need a GeForce to do so! And thats wat the devs are paying attention to. As DM guide sales plummet, and NVIDIA's stock rises, the people who make the games follow the buck.
The Mojo is, and always has been the youth, and I'm getting old. Se la vi!
Couldn't have said it better myself. Spot on.
Also...to the OP...it is about a combination of talent to make a company successful; the business side, the creative side, the programmatic side, etc.... There are many more examples of startups running out of money because they are run by 'designers' who set their sights too high, as opposed to 'suits' changing the game content. There is a massive amount of business planning in the development cycle. A lot of these smaller companies are partnering with larger bases like EA for publishing help. Games like EQ and WoW are/were successful because of exposure and physical availability, and a lot of indie companies try to achieve that by partnership.
Wow! It looks like you really did your homework here. The thing is, I don't think that it is necessarily true. I mean, this is evidenced by the endurance of some high-end MMOs that retain higher subscription rates. It is also incredibly obvious in the continuous creation of newer games. Players may be disillusioned, but not enough have given up no their MMOs to consider the mojo totally lost.
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