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General: Interesting Market Research
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In his latest Free Zone column, MMORPG.com's Richard Aihoshi examines the recent statistics revealed in a study of Western MMOG habits as conducted by research group Newzoo. Richard takes a look at the revealed data and interprets what it could possibly mean for MMOs in the future. Check it out, then leave us a comment below.
The company said it looked at the US, UK, German, French, Dutch and Belgian MMOG markets by gathering data from independent national representative panels of more than 10,000 respondents. This seems like a decent sample size, but without knowing a fair bit more, it's hard to assess the soundness of the methodology, and thus how much faith we can put in the accuracy of the findings. That said, there's also no reason to think the information isn't at least directionally accurate within a reasonable level of confidence.
Read more Free Zone: Interesting Market Research.
Comments
TLDR - lots of people play F2P games. Same info as every other article written by Richard. Thanks, but we know already.
Steam: Neph
GRAFFS! UR FERGETTING GRAFFS! ! THEY MAKE IT TRUU!!
hehe
It is interesting...but I bet what the research company is banking on is people buying the same research again next year to see trends.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The inclusion of browser based games skews the results quite a bit, imo there needs to be some distinction between browser games like farmville which get lumped into the f2p browser based MMOG category. Perhaps the full report breaks it down further but i dont have 1300 bucks sitting around to waste on curiosity. It would be interesting to see some more details and a breakdown of what games they used. It concerns me that they only used a sample size of 10,000 out of the total population of 47.5 million which is quite a bit less than 1% of the total market even though if you do the math they have a relatively low margin of error it just doesnt seem to be a large enough sample IMO.
I'd be curious to see the list of videogames accounted in this study.
To me, browser games cannot be compared to client games. It's like comparing TV and radio in the same study. I can listen to the radio at work, in my car, or even while shopping at the convenient store. But I cannot watch TV at work or while driving. Are browser games even discussed in this website?
What about B2P? Are they considered in this study? Even non-rpg B2P? Are MW2, CoD:BO, CS or TF considered MMOG? Should B2P be considered P2P or F2P, since they omit this category?
Browser games alone probably skew their study. Are there any considerable P2P browser games out there? They shouldn't mix both browser and standalone games in the F2P vs P2P headcount.
The results are definitely skewed, think of all those Facebook games it will include. But, regardless of 99% of what Richard wrote, I think its important to remember that he does also state that none of this means that subscription MMOs are on the decline.
Subscription MMOs are here to stay, the market as a whole is just branching out into new areas. I think with SWTOR, Rift and TERA next year we'll see a massive boost to subscription revenue across the market.
Though I do find it sad how many people refuse to accept that F2P games are a serious part of the business now.
According to those graphs, USA has about 12.5 million people playing P2P MMOs. Assuming that WoW has 2.5 million subcribers in USA, what P2P MMOs are those 10 million playing?
EDIT: Corrected numbers. USA has 47 500 000 MMO players. According to the graph 26% (17% + 9%) of them pay for P2P MMOs, so USA has 12.4million people who pay for P2P MMOs /EDIT
Well, personally, I don't believe the information these FtP companies are putting out. They have a huge incentive to want to "look attractive" to game players. And do we ever see real information? Nope. We see information that can easily be scewed and misleading.
Examples:
Membership, which can include lots of old sign-ups that didn't last long
Sales, which can include from points earned in-game rather than bought for real money
But I don't doubt that it's still pretty big. Farmville, for example. The other side of the coin also is, will it last? New markets based on impulse often do much better at first, before they start to die down to something much less. Impulse sales often end up being "that little bit of extra you don't want to not get".
It will be interesting to watch all this. But I don't believe it's as big, nor that it's a lasting trend.
Once upon a time....
The marketing research you site is obvious highly biased to the f2p market, so why even bother to discuss it? Active accounts is the important number here and f2p games just never give that out. Not saying they are not profitable, many are, but they do not make up that much of the market. Blizzard alone probably out grosses them all here in the west.
Richard your "reasonable level of confidence" is everyone else's "you have got to be kidding me"..
It's like explaining evolution and the big bang theory to a religious zealot - even when faced with overwhelming evidence, they'll always find a reason to doubt the science in order to not have to change their bias.
I may be blind, but I don't recall seeing anywhere that said they are current players.
What a salad of an article.
All fluff. Really, read the report availabe yourself and you can come up with your own conclusions.
With what the teaser info provides, it can be skewed in many ways.
And 10,000 sample size is fairly good.
Consider that political polls in the US are generally about 1000 people and the US pop is over 300 million and they tend to be fairly accurate.
However, I'd like to see large sample sizes myself if the 10,000 is global rather than per region/country.
I am certain the full $1,400 report contains considerable detail and breakdown and is well worth the investment to businesses in the market.
We can't deny F2P games are a serious part of the business. But here is what Richard wrote:
He's basing his conclusion on a study that includes browser games in their comparison. In other word, this study not only compares browser games against a small segment of our standard computer games, it also compares games from completely different styles (building a farm vs fighting the Lich King).
We'll see what happens in 2011-2012. There are at least 4 great AAA P2P MMORPGs coming up; something never seen before, in a market segment that has not seen any great releases for few years. Meanwhile we'll keep seeing studies like that pulling numbers from browser games to make any conclusion they want.
No actual revenue data. Long term player numbers no matter how spurious or accurate aren't going to be as valuable as money in the bank.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
I beleive that is probrably accurate.
Talking bout the issues..and keepin it funky.
People do not play F2P games because they are good. They play them because they are free. The dreadful quality they encoutner does more harm than good, I'm afraid.
I thought there would be way more F2P players since it also included browser games, it seems I was wrong.
And this minority of F2P players that pay must be spending way more than $15 a month to make the business model look appealing, because in my book active players does not equal to revenue outside of subscription games.
did we not already have an article last week with this same info?
I am by no means a supporter of F2P is greater than P2P. But, if you do general checks of folks on Non-MMOG sites on thier views of P2P, the majority will find it offensive to pay double on a product. Yes, they are not true gamers by the definition of most here. They, however, are what get the games you want produced. The majority are cheap is what it comes to. I see F2P as a "rope a dope" or "bait and switch" tatic to get the money but its a good way to get folks to try a game.
Keep in mind that if someone agrees with you here, you two are still in a select minority to the whole.
"One is that F2P isn't, as some would still like to believe, a small although growing part of the total market. It's large - actually, very large - and growing. It accounts for far more players, and in much of Europe, also pulls in more money"
I would very much want to know how you reach this conclusion as the charts does not say how much the different people paying actually are paying.
All it says is the number of people playing and paying in relation to each other. One could assume that since the charts has the total revenues in big bold font at the top it would also divide by revenue. But if you look more carefully actually it says nowhere the people playing P2P/F2P actually are paying. Just the proportion of people paying.
So I would say this chart could very much be misleading depending on what the bottom numbers actually mean.
My gaming blog
I was surprised to see the numbers given. I play anything that is worth my time, free or pay. Just no consoles...haven't gone there yet and may never. There are toooo many pc games I'd like to try that I will never have time for already..
The argument that some make that X type of game shouldn't be included is silly...they are all games!!!! The fact that people prefer different types of games is no different than a preference for different types and makes of transportation or food.
Lotsa folks in denial here :P
That said, I have always though that P2P was a preferred model for the simple fact of guaranteed revenue stream and the stability offered by the same.
The above seems not to be the case in some like GW and the new influx of F2P games on the market now.
Confession: I have to admit I don't take a second look at what some call a 'true' F2P where there is no box sale or monthly fee. To often these games are overly dependant on cash shops. I have to work on that!! There are some game using this model that many love...its probably worth a look.
Thanks for another interesting read Richard.
I am a bit familiar with some of this data, and can say that it appears to be pretty accurate.
If you get the full report, it will show the CHANGES in the market year over year, so it is possible to see how the demographics have shifted.
What is NOT shown in this study, is the changes in the ASIAN market... there are demographic changes there as well... as the different markets actually start shifting TOWARDS each other, and the larger differences start to vanish.
What Richard stated, and many of you did not fully understand, is that THIS is the information that developers (and publishers) are using to make their decisions. Based on this, they will be bringing games to market, to meet the demands as shown... because that is how they will best make money. This creates a sort of self profilling prophecy... They see the market shift, they shift their development... and in doing so support (push) the market shift. This results in a bit of a pendulm effect in the market, that takes a few swings to reach equilibrium.
deja vu........
Regards Tri.
browser games? Seriously? They mixed together games like farmville and fishville with wow, lotro, Aoc? How are these games same category?
Question,
How are the f2p gamers counted. How much time did they have to spend in the game to be a player? 1 minute,,,, 1 month? Are most of the f2p players like me??
I say hey it's free what the heck may as well try it. then If the game is any fun at all (most i tried weren't even worth free ... course thats my opinion) I start to play and get to the first breaking point. Woops to go to the next area (from the tiny one I just ehausted in 2 hrs.) It is time to pay up like 7.95 or 8.95 without having s clue if it will las more than 3 or four hours ,,, then more money. I have alredy been directed to the "cash shop" 10 times to buy something that will make the game more fun!. I just shake my head and uninstall the game. Then I get to thinking about where most of these games come from .... asia .. where most of the hackers in the Big Games lurk. I get to thinking .. (I was a programmer in my last life). What is gonna stop these free game builders from using your data (at the least) or stealing your wow account or .... well using your computer for mass compute utilization to get gazillions of spams out.
In the mean time I am registered as a user on all these games I have tried ... so am I counted once for each game??? Cause I hope to heck they don't know who I am and I dont use the same data for any ftp registration. In fact .. I totall y gave up on FTP .. the only surprises you get is how much it costs to play a free game, not some surprising and neat scene or quest or dungeon.
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
And this applies to you as well ...... right ...
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin