Wall Street Journal Article on MMO's-Long

This was printed in the WSJ recently. It's a decent read and a good perspective on how the mainstream media is presenting MMO's to the general public.

*I didn't post a link because the WSJ is subscription based.*

By RACHEL NIELSEN
Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
March 10, 2004 12:08 a.m.

MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, aren't your typical PC-gaming fare.

A gamer enters a simulated world -- such as "Britannia" in Electronic Arts Inc.'s "Ultima Online" -- where tens, hundreds, or thousands of other gamers also are playing in real-time. While MMORPGs have offered a range of characters and settings to choose from, soldiers, sorcerers, and beasts are mainstays of the games, many in "Dungeons and Dragons"-style worlds. Most players are males aged 18 to 34, according to Boston-based research firm Yankee Group.

Now, brand-name franchises, including "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings," are entering the market, hoping to broaden the appeal of the games.

"Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided," was launched by Lucasfilm Ltd. unit LucasArts last summer. (A "Lord of the Rings" game is due to be released by Vivendi Universal Games late this year.) Haden Blackman, the producer who has spent four years directing "Galaxies," hopes to set it apart from other MMORPGs by offering more individual ways to role-play. He also says the game is looking to entice more first-time gamers, women and young teens. "Galaxies" has hands-on roles for players who prefer socializing to fighting, as well as millions of possible character designs.

Gamers in "Star Wars Galaxies" can customize features such as body size, skin tone, and hairstyle, creating one of many possible characters.

 
There are plenty of established MMORPGs to rival "Galaxies." "Ultima Online," for example, has roughly 250,000 subscribers, according to Yankee Group.

Overall, Yankee estimates that last year these games had over two million U.S. subscribers and U.S. subscription revenue of more than $270 million.

In June 2003, when "Galaxies" was released, more than 100,000 people bought a copy of the game. That figure is now over 430,000. After buying "Galaxies," which sells for $49.95, players get a free month of gaming. In order to keep playing and get game updates, they have to pay a monthly subscription fee of $14.99 or purchase a multimonth package. (Users also need an Internet connection.) LucasArts isn't disclosing the number of paid subscribers, but Yankee analyst Mike Goodman estimates that on average, about 80% of trial gamers become subscribers.

Will branded games like "Galaxies" widen the multiplayer games' appeal while introducing new dimensions to the game world? We spoke with Mr. Blackman during his recent visit to New York.

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WSJ.com: Some analysts have said that branded games such as "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings" are attracting people who haven't played MMORPGs before or who have never played any online games. What are some of the trends and statistics you're seeing coming out of your game?

Haden Blackman: We launched a Web site two years before the release of the game. We did polling on that Web site and … one-third said that they were strictly "Star Wars" fans and had never played an MMO. So we definitely know that "Star Wars" attracted players that would have never otherwise played an MMO.

Every major MMO that's come out has grown the market. Hopefully that trend will continue. And with something like "Star Wars Galaxies" -- where we have an edge, maybe, over [something] like "Lord of the Rings" is that there's a lot of other fantasy games out there -- "sword and sorcery" fantasy games already on the market. And "Star Wars" offers something aside from elves in tights.

Q: What about other games, such as "Dark Age of Camelot," which are combat-oriented? How do you find your way between these niches -- the "elves in tights" and the action?

A: I think that MMOs in general need to expand beyond just focus on combat. We can't let that go and just completely ignore it, I don't think, because that conflict is exciting. You need to have something to fight, and the fighting had better be engaging. So we've definitely tried to do that.

But I think that in order to keep these worlds alive … you need to have other things. Community mechanisms, much greater social interaction. You need to encourage social interaction beyond just [interaction] in combat. And if you can find ways to do that, I think that the games are going to be much more successful.

Q: What would you say is the more popular feature of the game: the chat-room capabilities or the fighting capabilities?

A: It's hard to tell, because people bounce back and forth a lot. We're finding, at least, that a lot of players [who] originally shunned the idea of being an entertainer and hanging out in cantinas are actually really digging it.

I think that … the fact that we let you dabble in a bunch of different areas has really opened it up for different types of play styles that [players] wouldn't have experienced before.

Q: How did LucasArts come to the decision to do an MMORPG?

A: I think that we saw the success of "Ultima Online" and then "EverQuest" [from Sony Corp.]. And even before "EverQuest," it became very apparent that MMOs were going to be very popular and exciting and had the potential to take PC gaming to a whole new level.

One of the things that we identified right away was that these games are successful because they have such immersive environments with such deep backgrounds. It was just a natural leap to say, "Okay, we already have this license. It has this rich background, this huge fan following."

Q: Do you think that someone attracted to the socializing that they could do in this MMORPG might be turned off by the idea of having to memorize the details of a fantasy culture?

A: You know, we really worried about that early on. So, we made conscious effort not to design anything that relies on outside knowledge [of "Star Wars"].

Q: You had said that you've seen more female players and also more young teenagers playing the game. What's attracting each of those groups?

A: In terms of the younger players, "Star Wars" has enjoyed a resurgence because of the prequels. There's just a lot more "Star Wars" material out there.

There are other things that have helped, too. "The Sims" [a game franchise from Electronic Arts] has brought a wider group of people to PC gaming in general.

There's a game like "Toontown." It's a Disney game that is massive multiplayer online designed for kids. It's an amazing first introduction to the world of online gaming.

And I also think it has to do with the parents being more aware. I think that they're becoming more open to the idea of their kids playing online.

Q: Would you say then that the popularity of "Galaxies" has more to do with these outside trends than with just "Star Wars?"

A: I think it has to do with everything. If I had to pick what was the most important out of all those things, it would probably be the fact that we're using the "Star Wars" license.

As far as female gamers go, I'd like to think that it's the "Star Wars" license, too, that helps drive that. From a game-designer perspective, we were very conscious of the fact that we wanted to attract more female gamers.

I think having not just more female gamers, but having a very diverse community, makes the game healthier and makes the community healthier. We wanted to attract all kinds of gamers and all kinds of people. But we did make a conscious effort to design with women gamers in mind.

[In games in general] your selection of avatars [as a female gamer] is limited. They fall into two categories. They're either the big, ugly female troll, literally, or they're highly sexualized elves. What happens when female gamers go online, or male gamers go online with the female avatar -- they literally get harassed. There is that level of "Hey, baby."

What we tried to do in "Galaxies" is give you the tools to create a character that looks however you want. So, it gives you an alternative to these highly sexualized, stereotypical female characters.

I also think our emphasis on the social interaction has helped bring not just female gamers, but all different types of gamers.

In the game -- the characters you encounter -- it's about 50-50 male and female. Obviously that means there's a lot of men playing female characters.

Q: Do you have an idea of what the breakdown is between male players and female players?

A: It's hard for us to tell, because you don't have to put your gender down [when you register]. We think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 13% [female registered gamers]. We were shooting for anywhere between 10% and 15%.

Q: What kind of registered user numbers are you projecting for the rest of the year?

A: At the pace that we're going, certainly by the end of the year, I think we will be [at] over 500,000 registered users.

Q: As far as competition goes, are you going head-to-head with Lord of the Rings?

A: That's an interesting question. We're definitely aware of the other MMOs that are in development. "Lord of the Rings," we think, is a little ways out [in the future]. Right now, we feel pretty good, because we have a lot of time to build up the community and add more content to the game and more features.

Certainly there are fans of both "Lord of the Rings" and "Star Wars," people that are fans of both franchises. There may be people that leave one for the other. But in general, "Galaxies" continues to offer something those other games don't: If you are interested in playing an online game, but you have no interest in dwarves and elves, you can come here. That's really one of the big things we offer.

Q: Just looking at the other MMORPGs out there -- the longer-running ones like "The Sims Online," "Ultima Online," "Dark Age of Camelot" -- do you think that this game will change the MMORPG market in a way that those haven't?

A: I think so. What "Galaxies" does is it proves you can be successful with building an MMO around a license which, I think, some people thought was going to be a challenge, because they view the license as so restrictive. We don't. We view it as a great backdrop to hopefully a very deep and engaging game.

Also, social engineering -- that's where we've really pushed the boundaries and proved that social interaction outside of combat is important.

I really think that in order for other online games to be successful, they're going to have to do the same thing. They're going to have to find ways that they can take risks and do something different from other online games.

Write to Rachel Nielsen at rachel.nielsen@dowjones.com