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General: 94% of MMO Subscriptions are Fantasy Games
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
A breakdown of online gaming statistics over at OnlineMBA reveals, among other non-MMO related things, that 94% of MMO subscriptions are to fantasy games, leaving only a teensy tiny (3.7%) portion to other genres such as sci-fi/superhero.
It's no secret to most of us that the MMO genre is largely dominated by fantasy games, but it is always interesting to be able to put a number to such things. Fortunately, many of the most highly anticipated games coming over the next few years are decidedly non-Fantasy, possibly marking a change for the genre as a whole.
Via OnlineMBA.
[Thanks Inktomi for the tip!]
Comments
Not surprising at all. WOW makes that number happen to a large degree but in my opinion there have been fewer sci-fi games than fantasy games in the mmo genre, thus resulting in less quality titles. The last mmo that was not a fantasy game that i enjoyed was city of heroes, and that came out a long time ago. Might just be me though. Its not hard to believe that 94% of mmo subs are fantasy games when a good 70% or more mmos are fantasy based.
Considering Asia churns out a new fantasy MMO every week, or at least it seems like it, then no it's not surprising. Hopefully SW:TOR (even if crap) will kick of the larger scale Sci Fi competitions because up until now they are few and far between.
Is... this supposed to be some kind of shock or something? Given that WoW, a leading P2P MMO that happens to be a fantasy game, literary dominates all other MMOs out there subscription-wise this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone out there.
Though many folks say they hate them, most secretly want to be an immortal elf.
I'm surprised the figure is quite that high, but the results make sense.
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Does this look like a face that would be suprised by that number.
I suppose if they are doing it by subs then WoW throws the monkey wrench into the eqation. But having said that, I suppose I feed into the fantasy demographic because I usually lose intereset in non-fantasy mmo's.
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Be interesting to see the breakdown of the number of MMOs classified in each of the categories too. If more fantasy games are made than sci-fi games (and there are, many,many more both P2P and F2P), there would have to be a sci-fi game with the player-base of WoW to pull the genre up in those rankings.
Someone looking at data like that would have an easy time convincing investors to follow the "WoW clone fantasy MMO" route, but has already been pointed out WoW itself skews the numbers horribly.
So I'd love to see a dataset that excludes WoW, lists the number of games qualifying in each genre and therefore gives a clearer picture of the size of the genre itself (in terms of games offered) relative to the size of its playerbase. For example, if there are only three puzzle MMOs and hundreds of fantasy MMOs, should we be surprised that puzzle MMOs have such a relatively poor showing? Hardly.
I may be overthinking things, but that chart doesn't really tell us anything other than there are a lot of fantasy games, most of which have people playing them.
Isn't that already evident?
Considering 90% of mmorpg is fantasy it does not surprise me at all.
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I play Fantasy MMORPG's but that graph is bollocks, just look at the source:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart8.html
MMORGchart? Really? From 2008? Pfft...
Problem is that most of the SciFi games that have come out, have almost all been either shut down or are now on life support. Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, Hellgate London (if you want to call it an MMO) all went bye bye. SWG is quietly dying off in a corner while games like Fallen Earth remain successful in their small little niche. EvE has been one of the only SciFi mmo's that has managed to remain in the top.
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A long with SWG being on life support a fair number of those subs are likely part of the Station Access system. So while two sci-fi subs are added there are also seven non sci-fi subs added.
There are maybe 5 or 6 proper Sci Fi MMORPG's out there and several hundred fantasy if you count all the F2P.
In addition, WoW pretty much drowns out all other MMO's by millions of subs.
So yeah, 94% of MMO gamers are WoW players or F2P players.
Why would you say FE is "successful in its own little niche" and SWG dying? I would be shocked if FE had more subs then SWG today.
The devs designed FE to have around 50k subs. its all about retention.
SWG has what 50-75k after having 500k+?
That's pretty bad
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Well...thatis in the eye of the beholder.
FE is brand new.
SWG is 7 years old, always was buggy and broken, endured several revamps, is the victim of the worse smear campaign ever and it peaked at 300k not 500k.
DAoC, a far superior game to many modern MMOs, launched in 2001 peaked at 275k and right now retains about 40-50k subs, it would be blasphemy to call DAoC a failure.
An aged subscription based game is lucky to have 50k.
edit
On top of that, that has nothing to do with the topic.
94% of MMOers play fantasy games because 94% of MMOs are fantasy games. Your opinion of SWG and FE doesn't change the fact that there are 5 or so SciFi games vs hundreds of fantasy.
we need more Sci-fi games
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'Fortunately, many of the most highly anticipated games coming over the next few years are decidedly non-Fantasy, possibly marking a change for the genre as a whole.'
Unless they all fail (Hi STO) like past games like that.
truth be told everyone like to toss a fireball or cross swords with someone :P
some games are also a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, I PLayed RFonline when the game was a sub, after they put the game in F2P it start to go down hill.
but only the main reason we have a lot of fantasy games is, because we like, its something they can't go wrong(at last most of time), in case swg I'm still surprise people play there after the NGE(my opnion), for FE I would play there if I don't think the combat as too slow, and the ability to snipe people with a rifle then change to pistol to make the dude walk slow so he can't flee or charge on you don't help(but that was in Closed Beta and that is not really a pvp game).
but let's see what they will make for now.
Interesting, but a bad game is still a bad game. Meaning there are sci-fi games out there, but most of them are very poor.
I'm more interesting in the gameplay rather than its chronological setting.
This has always been true of MMORPGs. Even before WoW, and before Free to Play games. North Americans may be surprised, because they too often assume they represent the market world-wide...but they don't. Asia has always out-weighed the NA and EU markets in sheer numbers of subscriptions, and even before WoW and free to play games, the world's largest subscribed MMORPG was Lineage by a huge number. Asia likes fantasy MMOs, and taken world-wide, the figures will always reflect Asian values and tendencies, not North American ones. Remove WoW from the figures, and the ratio would likely not vary by more than 10% either way I expect.
It's a really strange phenomena. Maybe because most fantasy-based lore takes us back to a more primitive time. One of honor and steel. That's one thing that attracts me to fantasy stories.
I know one MMO in development that will be a combination of sci-fi and fantasy: Warhammer 40k online. Who knows when it will be finished, I just know it should be really interesting and fresh.
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Fixed :P
In all seriousness, though, cosy is correct in my opinion. If a studio would make a good fantasy game, I'd play it happily. The problem is that few studios are willing to even try to make a good fantasy game that is more than just "pew pew layzurz" that can hold players' attention for longer than a month or so.
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Unfortunately, that survey really says is that 94% of the set of (Kotaku readers who are willing to fill out a long survey without bailing who hit Kotaku's site or twitter from March 15-22) play fantasy MMOGs if they play MMOGs at all (Kotaku being largely platformers). The survey ran for one week in March, and was presented as "which response is 'winning'" -- not very scientific.
http://kotaku.com/5493111/take-part-in-kotakus-census-2010
http://kotaku.com/5498569/kotaku-census-2010-closes-tonight
You should check the method behind a poll before you quote it.
Unbiased questions included things like "Do you still play music games?"
The full results are here:
http://kotaku.com/5500495/kotaku-census-2010-the-results-in-full
The sample was 20-30K responses per question, but the respondents were by no means randomized.
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Anytime Mike, I knew mmorpg would find it interesting. It also makes me wonder on why there isn't more sci-fi mmorpg's. It is just as popular fiction-wise as fantasy is.
"Fortunately, many of the most highly anticipated games coming over the next few years are decidedly non-Fantasy, possibly marking a change for the genre as a whole."
Heh, the eternal optimist. For a "realist" like me, it could signal an early death for those games. ;-)
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