None of that means that crowdfunding is a good replacement or fit for MMORPGs.
Why does that matter? Are you suggesting crowdfunding dissuade large publisher from investing in MMORPG?
Market saturation dissuades large publishers from investing in MMORPGs. There's definitely such thing as too many releases, specifically in a niche such as traditional MMORPGs.
This idea that crowdfunding is a savior of MMORPG development funding is wishful thinking at best at this point. There's no evidence to suggest it's capable of producing any more quality titles than publishers are able to produce.
Over saturation is not the issue with the genre.
The issue is diversity. The linear fantasy themepark MMO market may be over saturated, but there are so many other options out there for building an MMO but nobody is trying. The big publishers won't touch it because it's a step into the unknown so the risk is too high.
Where crowdfunding steps in is allowing developers to take risks and take that step into the unknown. You are essentially funding an idea, rather than a game, so it is an immediate proof of concept.
Like you, I don't think crowdfunding is the saviour of MMORPG development, I think the overwhelming majority of them will be shit. What I do think, however, is that these indie MMOs will start to inspire AAA developers and act as evidence to investors. For example, in a couple of years time a developer will be able to go to a publisher and say "Hey, look at CU, see the CUBE system? Thats what we want, but with more options and better graphics. Give us $20m for that feature". The investor can then get hands on with the system, speak to CU players about it and will be able to make a better informed decision, rather than reading a document and trying to imagine it all in their head.
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Market saturation dissuades large publishers from investing in MMORPGs. There's definitely such thing as too many releases, specifically in a niche such as traditional MMORPGs.
This idea that crowdfunding is a savior of MMORPG development funding is wishful thinking at best at this point. There's no evidence to suggest it's capable of producing any more quality titles than publishers are able to produce.
There was indeed market saturation around 2010 but how many AAA MMOs have released since ESO 5 years ago? I can't think of a single one made in the west.
I think the problem is more that the general gamer have tired of the standard western MMO model and AAA publishers aren't much for trying out new ideas, it is risky. A new AAA MMO similar to Wow and the rest older MMOs would do rather poorly for the huge investment it would take to make it.
So until anyone figures out new mechanics that works and attracts enough gamers we wont see much in the way of new AAA MMOs. What is left are a few indie companies, the crowfunded games and devs in countries like south Korea, china and Japan where the current MMO model still is very popular.
If a company like EA or Activision invest $100M they want at least 10 times the money back from it. With a current mechanics MMO that is far from a certain thing, in fact it is rather unlikely. The oversaturation of MMOs 2008-2012 was probably at least partly why the general gamers tired of the genre but I don't think it is the problem today.
Quests is one of those things that what a great idea but was so overused (with often really boring quests) that it made the average gamer tire of the genre. That made the devs throw in as much of the fun as possible early in the game so they would hook as many people as they can (ultra fdast leveling is part of this) but that instead meant that they killed of the long term fun giving most players a couple of weeks of fun before they get stuck in a rather small and very repetetive endgame.
The older MMOs didn't have a huge playerbase but people played them for years which added up. Now most people play 3-6 weeks which mean current MMOs try to sell as many microtransactions as fast as possible to get income while the players still stay but that also hurt the longtime fun of the game making people play even shorter.
It is a downward spiral of doom that only can be solved by a MMO with very different mechanics and a new kind of gameplay that can attract enough new players for a rather long time. Wow did this but then the MMO mechanics were not really generally known by the average gamer.
If you want players for 3-6 weeks then spending a huge sum to make a MMO seems rather wasteful to me. A MMO needs at least 3-6 months of average playtime to work unless you can make them far cheaper.
Western releases, in large part, are irrelevant, because eastern development has continued full steam ahead. MMORPGs aren't singleplayer campaign games. They're not designed to be as disposable as those games. It doesn't take as many to saturate the market.
Blizzard isn't developing for the genre because they still have the revenue they need from their current offering. Had WoW just been a new RTS, that longevity would have never been possible.
ESO, by all accounts, is a solid MMORPG. Yet, this year's Call of Duty release absolutely dwarfed ESO's numbers. There's just not the crowd there for MMORPGs that there is for shooters and other genres.
Compared 2010 to today. Note how many MMORPGs are currently available for players today. Then, add in the "hybrids" that draw players from this genre (until many gamers don't even know what the MMORPG genre really is anymore). There's a significantly higher amount of titles on offer to cater to this playerbase than in 2010 or before.
Published, AAA MMORPG development projects are in decline because, quite simply, the playerbase is being served by current offerings. Keep adding in eastern grinders, and I don't see that changing.
Crowdfunding won't remedy the saturation. It hasn't even shown it can remedy the issue of ushering a fully-featured MMORPG to release.
The main problem for mmorpg is that publishers had to abandon the golden cow model of P2P while multiple AAA games in development were cancelled.
When big publishers like EA and bethesda drop P2P within a year for titles like Swtor and ESO it has a huge impact on the willingness of publishers to invest in new MMORPG, let's not forget ncsoft and Wildstar. You also had CCP abandon World of Darkness in favor of making Dust 514 and Eve Valkyrie, Blizzard dropped Project Titan to make Overwatch, SOE/daybreak games dropped everquest next in favor of H1Z1.
We had pathfinder online, Shroud of the Avatar, Camelot Unchained, Pantheon and Crowfall that was going to be the remedy with developers that had mmorpg development experience.
Pathfinder online failed due to lack of money, Shroud of the avatar got what should have been enough funds but developers were absolute shit at making the game, it took team behind Camelot Unchained five years to even get enough funds so that they can go into full production. Pantheon did a crowdfunding campaign that ran out of money and what saved the game were people working for free a long time to get more funds and finally you have Crowfall that got what should be enough money after three years of development.
Games like legends of aria and project gorgon aren't big enough to have much of an impact. An early access game like albion online did manage to hit release but they couldn't even get an mmorpg site like this one care enough to even mention it in their summary of 2017.
Maybe we will have a good title in the end but that's thanks to investors continuously putting in large sums of money into a project and not because of fans pitching in small amount of money.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
Most of those kickstarter game designer worked for publisher before but didn't work out. Richard Gariott worked for NCsoft and Mark Jacob for EA. So either way, having a publisher don't necessary mean it going to success.
There are only 2 mmorpg that presumably have large budget star citizen and new world. So if those kick starter mmo don't work out. There isn't much to be expect in the near future.
Western releases, in large part, are irrelevant, because eastern development has continued full steam ahead. MMORPGs aren't singleplayer campaign games. They're not designed to be as disposable as those games. It doesn't take as many to saturate the market.
Blizzard isn't developing for the genre because they still have the revenue they need from their current offering. Had WoW just been a new RTS, that longevity would have never been possible.
ESO, by all accounts, is a solid MMORPG. Yet, this year's Call of Duty release absolutely dwarfed ESO's numbers. There's just not the crowd there for MMORPGs that there is for shooters and other genres.
Compared 2010 to today. Note how many MMORPGs are currently available for players today. Then, add in the "hybrids" that draw players from this genre (until many gamers don't even know what the MMORPG genre really is anymore). There's a significantly higher amount of titles on offer to cater to this playerbase than in 2010 or before.
Published, AAA MMORPG development projects are in decline because, quite simply, the playerbase is being served by current offerings. Keep adding in eastern grinders, and I don't see that changing.
Crowdfunding won't remedy the saturation. It hasn't even shown it can remedy the issue of ushering a fully-featured MMORPG to release.
All western AAA MMOs are aging rather fast. Even Wow have lost a large portion of it's players, you are certainly right that many western MMO players have moved over to eastern games like BDO but I have that have more to do with the lack of new western AAA games then anything else.
I don't agree that the playerbase is being served by current offerings, many players are moving from the genre to other types of games instead, like Lol and Overwatch.
Crowdfunding certainly can't make something like the next Wow, what it could do would be making the next EQ, a different game that invents new ideas and mechanics (yeah, it took a lot from M59) and that someone like Blizzard could base a game on it's gameplay.
The number of western MMO players is going down and many of the ones still playing jump from game to game. How old do you think the western MMOs need to be to open up the market?
Wow is 14 years old, Eso and GW2 5. Tor is 7 years old. Even if they have some more years in them and a good expansion certainly can bring back some players there certainly is room for a western AAA MMO or 2. The problem is that you need a game that can bring back the players who left the genre or bring in new ones if you want a hit MMO.
And if you think there are as many western MMO fans today as 2010, think again. Just Wow had 15 million players back then and even the most optimitic Wow fans know it have lost at least half of them now. I don't think the top 5 together (western) MMOs have 15M players today.
Some of those people have certainly moved over to eastern games but it isn't just Wow that have lost players, almost all of them have. There isn't nearly as many people that have moved to games like BDO, Tera and B&S. Of course there is the mobile MMOs, can't say I have any clue on how well they are doing but what I am saying is that there would be room for more MMOs if they could attract players that left to other genres, consoles and mobile gaming.
@Loke666 I don't think most of those folks have any desire to come back to the genre, though. Games like Destiny are doing a much better job serving them. I think we need to see a major culling of titles before there's room for the consumer base and industry to get behind a big new release. Amazon may draw enough attention, but I doubt it with WoW still being actively developed.
Traditional MMORPG is a pretty narrow niche. It's befitting a more dedicated kind of gamer (and I'm not attempting to imply a positive or negative connotation either way), though there are many features that are widely appealing.
I think the best thing for the genre is for the industry to realize what that niche exactly is, why a small group of gamers are so passionate about it, and attempt to serve them. That won't create headline-worthy first week sales, but it could gather a strong following among a passionate base who have proven for over a decade they're willing to spend the extra dime for a unique experience.
@Loke666 I don't think most of those folks have any desire to come back to the genre, though. Games like Destiny are doing a much better job serving them. I think we need to see a major culling of titles before there's room for the consumer base and industry to get behind a big new release. Amazon may draw enough attention, but I doubt it with WoW still being actively developed.
Traditional MMORPG is a pretty narrow niche. It's befitting a more dedicated kind of gamer (and I'm not attempting to imply a positive or negative connotation either way), though there are many features that are widely appealing.
I think the best thing for the genre is for the industry to realize what that niche exactly is, why a small group of gamers are so passionate about it, and attempt to serve them. That won't create headline-worthy first week sales, but it could gather a strong following among a passionate base who have proven for over a decade they're willing to spend the extra dime for a unique experience.
No-one really expected them to start when Wow came out either, the right game would do it.
You are of course right that we need games focused for a smaller group of passionate players but that doesn't mean there can't be a couple of larger more mainstream games as well.
A lot of the problem we have now is because the games are so similar and if one of them do a change (like fgaster leveling speed, mega servers or whatever) the rest seems to add that ASAP as well. We need more variation in things like difficulty, gameplay and base mechanics.
When Wow came out it seems like all MMO devs (besides CCP) just stopped whatever they were doing and tried to make their games just like Wow or to create a new ggame just like it. It totally destroyed the rather diverse market we had before that and we need that diversity back.
There is the small problem that we have gotten a bit spoiled with good graphics and relatively bug free gamesso we tend to ignore the niche games because they are ugly and buggy. Heck, people complained a lot when games like ESO and GW2 launched but if anything launched in that good shape in the old days people would have been amazed. Games like AO was a pain for months.
MMORPG's are very complex, heavy in resources games. Well the ones that are actually MMOs are anyway. So Kickstarter is going to have real issues, I am not sure that a truly successful MMO has yet been made using this route?
Probably the closest we have seen is PoE, which is not really an MMO. I am not sure if it was kickstarted, but it was crowdfunded.
I've always seen kickstarters for large scale things (like MMOs) as more of a proof-of-concept. Nothing more. I see "donating" as a very early pre-order, which is why I never bought in until things progressed to a point that I thought it wouldn't shutter before the project launches. Pantheon was the one exception to that as I guessed (correctly) that, given the big name on the game, that he'd get the money from somewhere.
I think Kickstarter certainly has a place for gaming, but I don't think that the complexity of developing MMOs is a very good fit, and that is to say nothing of the fickleness of us MMO gamers. We can't even agree on whether or not the next WoW expansion is worth $50, and you want us to go all-in on a game that won't be out for another 3-5 years? I still don't get how SC has raised so much money.
At any rate, I'm done buying into games that can't offer me actual gameplay for my money, and judging by the success of recent Kickstarter campaigns, so are a lot of others. I really hope that Star Citizen and Pantheon turn into something great. I fear for MMOs altogether if they don't.
MMORPG's are very complex, heavy in resources games. Well the ones that are actually MMOs are anyway. So Kickstarter is going to have real issues, I am not sure that a truly successful MMO has yet been made using this route?
Probably the closest we have seen is PoE, which is not really an MMO. I am not sure if it was kickstarted, but it was crowdfunded.
You probably think of Grim Dawn that had a kickstarter, path of exile had a very lengthy development before they started selling beta pack.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I've always seen kickstarters for large scale things (like MMOs) as more of a proof-of-concept. Nothing more. I see "donating" as a very early pre-order, which is why I never bought in until things progressed to a point that I thought it wouldn't shutter before the project launches. Pantheon was the one exception to that as I guessed (correctly) that, given the big name on the game, that he'd get the money from somewhere.
I think Kickstarter certainly has a place for gaming, but I don't think that the complexity of developing MMOs is a very good fit, and that is to say nothing of the fickleness of us MMO gamers. We can't even agree on whether or not the next WoW expansion is worth $50, and you want us to go all-in on a game that won't be out for another 3-5 years? I still don't get how SC has raised so much money.
At any rate, I'm done buying into games that can't offer me actual gameplay for my money, and judging by the success of recent Kickstarter campaigns, so are a lot of others. I really hope that Star Citizen and Pantheon turn into something great. I fear for MMOs altogether if they don't.
In my case I put $100 into Pantheon just because I think it is worth having someone working on a game like it. I already considered that money lost as soon as I sent it and if I get a fun game out of it, fine but if I just loose them I can live with it.
It is as close to gambling I get at least. I certainly can understand why people wont fund any kickstarter game, chances are rather high that the game wont even release and if it does it is far too likely it wont be your cup of tea.
Then again, the hope might be worth $100, it is to me. Buying ships for an insane amount in SC is a rather different matter I wont do myself but I wont judge anyone who can afford it and think it is worth it either. People who really can't afford but still buys it have themselves to blame just like with anything else.
@Loke666 I don't think most of those folks have any desire to come back to the genre, though. Games like Destiny are doing a much better job serving them.
Pretty much. At this point, i will just write-off MMO as nothing big will come out of it. If it does .. may be it is a nice surprise. If not, I will just do the other 10000 things that will keep me entertained.
Comments
The issue is diversity. The linear fantasy themepark MMO market may be over saturated, but there are so many other options out there for building an MMO but nobody is trying. The big publishers won't touch it because it's a step into the unknown so the risk is too high.
Where crowdfunding steps in is allowing developers to take risks and take that step into the unknown. You are essentially funding an idea, rather than a game, so it is an immediate proof of concept.
Like you, I don't think crowdfunding is the saviour of MMORPG development, I think the overwhelming majority of them will be shit. What I do think, however, is that these indie MMOs will start to inspire AAA developers and act as evidence to investors. For example, in a couple of years time a developer will be able to go to a publisher and say "Hey, look at CU, see the CUBE system? Thats what we want, but with more options and better graphics. Give us $20m for that feature". The investor can then get hands on with the system, speak to CU players about it and will be able to make a better informed decision, rather than reading a document and trying to imagine it all in their head.
I think the problem is more that the general gamer have tired of the standard western MMO model and AAA publishers aren't much for trying out new ideas, it is risky. A new AAA MMO similar to Wow and the rest older MMOs would do rather poorly for the huge investment it would take to make it.
So until anyone figures out new mechanics that works and attracts enough gamers we wont see much in the way of new AAA MMOs. What is left are a few indie companies, the crowfunded games and devs in countries like south Korea, china and Japan where the current MMO model still is very popular.
If a company like EA or Activision invest $100M they want at least 10 times the money back from it. With a current mechanics MMO that is far from a certain thing, in fact it is rather unlikely. The oversaturation of MMOs 2008-2012 was probably at least partly why the general gamers tired of the genre but I don't think it is the problem today.
Quests is one of those things that what a great idea but was so overused (with often really boring quests) that it made the average gamer tire of the genre. That made the devs throw in as much of the fun as possible early in the game so they would hook as many people as they can (ultra fdast leveling is part of this) but that instead meant that they killed of the long term fun giving most players a couple of weeks of fun before they get stuck in a rather small and very repetetive endgame.
The older MMOs didn't have a huge playerbase but people played them for years which added up. Now most people play 3-6 weeks which mean current MMOs try to sell as many microtransactions as fast as possible to get income while the players still stay but that also hurt the longtime fun of the game making people play even shorter.
It is a downward spiral of doom that only can be solved by a MMO with very different mechanics and a new kind of gameplay that can attract enough new players for a rather long time. Wow did this but then the MMO mechanics were not really generally known by the average gamer.
If you want players for 3-6 weeks then spending a huge sum to make a MMO seems rather wasteful to me. A MMO needs at least 3-6 months of average playtime to work unless you can make them far cheaper.
Blizzard isn't developing for the genre because they still have the revenue they need from their current offering. Had WoW just been a new RTS, that longevity would have never been possible.
ESO, by all accounts, is a solid MMORPG. Yet, this year's Call of Duty release absolutely dwarfed ESO's numbers. There's just not the crowd there for MMORPGs that there is for shooters and other genres.
Compared 2010 to today. Note how many MMORPGs are currently available for players today. Then, add in the "hybrids" that draw players from this genre (until many gamers don't even know what the MMORPG genre really is anymore). There's a significantly higher amount of titles on offer to cater to this playerbase than in 2010 or before.
Published, AAA MMORPG development projects are in decline because, quite simply, the playerbase is being served by current offerings. Keep adding in eastern grinders, and I don't see that changing.
Crowdfunding won't remedy the saturation. It hasn't even shown it can remedy the issue of ushering a fully-featured MMORPG to release.
When big publishers like EA and bethesda drop P2P within a year for titles like Swtor and ESO it has a huge impact on the willingness of publishers to invest in new MMORPG, let's not forget ncsoft and Wildstar. You also had CCP abandon World of Darkness in favor of making Dust 514 and Eve Valkyrie, Blizzard dropped Project Titan to make Overwatch, SOE/daybreak games dropped everquest next in favor of H1Z1.
We had pathfinder online, Shroud of the Avatar, Camelot Unchained, Pantheon and Crowfall that was going to be the remedy with developers that had mmorpg development experience.
Pathfinder online failed due to lack of money, Shroud of the avatar got what should have been enough funds but developers were absolute shit at making the game, it took team behind Camelot Unchained five years to even get enough funds so that they can go into full production. Pantheon did a crowdfunding campaign that ran out of money and what saved the game were people working for free a long time to get more funds and finally you have Crowfall that got what should be enough money after three years of development.
Games like legends of aria and project gorgon aren't big enough to have much of an impact. An early access game like albion online did manage to hit release but they couldn't even get an mmorpg site like this one care enough to even mention it in their summary of 2017.
Maybe we will have a good title in the end but that's thanks to investors continuously putting in large sums of money into a project and not because of fans pitching in small amount of money.
There are only 2 mmorpg that presumably have large budget star citizen and new world. So if those kick starter mmo don't work out. There isn't much to be expect in the near future.
I don't agree that the playerbase is being served by current offerings, many players are moving from the genre to other types of games instead, like Lol and Overwatch.
Crowdfunding certainly can't make something like the next Wow, what it could do would be making the next EQ, a different game that invents new ideas and mechanics (yeah, it took a lot from M59) and that someone like Blizzard could base a game on it's gameplay.
The number of western MMO players is going down and many of the ones still playing jump from game to game. How old do you think the western MMOs need to be to open up the market?
Wow is 14 years old, Eso and GW2 5. Tor is 7 years old. Even if they have some more years in them and a good expansion certainly can bring back some players there certainly is room for a western AAA MMO or 2. The problem is that you need a game that can bring back the players who left the genre or bring in new ones if you want a hit MMO.
And if you think there are as many western MMO fans today as 2010, think again. Just Wow had 15 million players back then and even the most optimitic Wow fans know it have lost at least half of them now. I don't think the top 5 together (western) MMOs have 15M players today.
Some of those people have certainly moved over to eastern games but it isn't just Wow that have lost players, almost all of them have. There isn't nearly as many people that have moved to games like BDO, Tera and B&S. Of course there is the mobile MMOs, can't say I have any clue on how well they are doing but what I am saying is that there would be room for more MMOs if they could attract players that left to other genres, consoles and mobile gaming.
Amazon maybe (we don't know) but otherwise?
Traditional MMORPG is a pretty narrow niche. It's befitting a more dedicated kind of gamer (and I'm not attempting to imply a positive or negative connotation either way), though there are many features that are widely appealing.
I think the best thing for the genre is for the industry to realize what that niche exactly is, why a small group of gamers are so passionate about it, and attempt to serve them. That won't create headline-worthy first week sales, but it could gather a strong following among a passionate base who have proven for over a decade they're willing to spend the extra dime for a unique experience.
You are of course right that we need games focused for a smaller group of passionate players but that doesn't mean there can't be a couple of larger more mainstream games as well.
A lot of the problem we have now is because the games are so similar and if one of them do a change (like fgaster leveling speed, mega servers or whatever) the rest seems to add that ASAP as well. We need more variation in things like difficulty, gameplay and base mechanics.
When Wow came out it seems like all MMO devs (besides CCP) just stopped whatever they were doing and tried to make their games just like Wow or to create a new ggame just like it. It totally destroyed the rather diverse market we had before that and we need that diversity back.
There is the small problem that we have gotten a bit spoiled with good graphics and relatively bug free gamesso we tend to ignore the niche games because they are ugly and buggy. Heck, people complained a lot when games like ESO and GW2 launched but if anything launched in that good shape in the old days people would have been amazed. Games like AO was a pain for months.
I think Kickstarter certainly has a place for gaming, but I don't think that the complexity of developing MMOs is a very good fit, and that is to say nothing of the fickleness of us MMO gamers. We can't even agree on whether or not the next WoW expansion is worth $50, and you want us to go all-in on a game that won't be out for another 3-5 years? I still don't get how SC has raised so much money.
At any rate, I'm done buying into games that can't offer me actual gameplay for my money, and judging by the success of recent Kickstarter campaigns, so are a lot of others. I really hope that Star Citizen and Pantheon turn into something great. I fear for MMOs altogether if they don't.
It is as close to gambling I get at least.
Then again, the hope might be worth $100, it is to me. Buying ships for an insane amount in SC is a rather different matter I wont do myself but I wont judge anyone who can afford it and think it is worth it either. People who really can't afford but still buys it have themselves to blame just like with anything else.