I agree; indies aren't taking over. However, it is worth noting that the AAA guys who laid down ridiculous funding haven't been running away with the market. There's still a large chunk of it that could be taken by smaller companies with less funding!
EDIT- Allow me to clarify my last paragraph by saying the MMO market.
They do. D3 sold 15M boxes. CoD always sell millions. Even Tomb Raider sold 6.5M boxes. Just not in MMO. Hence, you can see the AAA devs leaving MMOs. Titan is scrapped and I doubt if anyone is going to do a big budget MMO after EQN unless it is showing LoL or CoD numbers.
The point is that may be MMO is no longer the AAA market .. and in that sense, you are right .. indie may be the future of that market but it is going to be marginized by AAA games in other genre. Destiny is probably going to be bigger than all indie MMOs added together.
Agreed. The MMO market, compared to the larger industry as a whole, is pretty damn niche, even after the explosion that was WoW brought boatloads of new gamers to the genre.
I have high hopes for Destiny. And that's partially because I have it on pre-order. :P
I have high hopes for Destiny. And that's partially because I have it on pre-order. :P
I have a perfectly good gaming laptop (and probably more powerful than a PS) so I am not buying a PS4 just to play one game. So I am debating if I want to get the ps3 version .. i wonder if the visual is going to be much better on a PS4 (or Xbox1) instead.
Or may be they will come around and do a PC version.
Listen, I used to think two things. One, that people just wanted the games that the big devs gave them and that kickstarters were just for nitch markets.
well last year it became clear to me that the 'indie' market is MUCH more popular then I had thought, so in just the past year I have changed my view
AAAs giving what people want is pure certified bullshit. I know that now
You are unnecessarily limiting your thinking. We're talking about an industry where someone has dumped half a billion dollars into a single product. The video game industry is huge.
AAA developers are giving people what they want, so long as they can sell enough of it to be worth their time. Indie developers are giving people what they want too, so long as it's on a much smaller scale than what a AAA developer produces. The indie guys are not changing what AAA developers are doing. A triple-A developer is not going to produce something like Rust because the scale is too small. Not enough money will be made.
The trend isn't that the indie guys are taking over. The trend is that the AAA guys have expanded the market so much and taken their funding to such heights that there's all this empty space for the indie guys to operate in without getting squashed.
To be fair, that half a billion is not a trend, either. Honestly, neither is Grand Theft Auto V's costs. Additionally, if you consider the top 5 most expensive games to release, 3 of those had their most significant costs come in marketing (to the tune of over $100 million) and not actual development.
The gaming industry has its titans, sure. But the bulk of games (speaking as a simple number of games released) don't cost nearly that much to develop (relatively speaking).
In fact, only 4 MMOs even make it into the top 20 list of most expensive to date: Defiance, Rift, SWTOR, and a cancelled Halo MMO. None have made the kinds of money games from other genres on that list have made (GTA, CoD). None of those MMOs have been mindblowingly successful. All spent substantially more on initial development costs than Blizzard did with WoW (though that difference can be offset somewhat by inflation).
I agree; indies aren't taking over. However, it is worth noting that the AAA guys who laid down ridiculous funding haven't been running away with the market. There's still a large chunk of it that could be taken by smaller companies with less funding!
EDIT- Allow me to clarify my last paragraph by saying the MMO market.
No, too late. You've already typed it out. Though, to be honest, I haven't read it yet. :-)
That half billion is the leading edge of the trend. There are a few other games where the amount spend is in the two hundred million dollar range, and there are more each year. There is a lot of money in the video game industry. I do think it's sad that half or more of a game's budget must be devoted to marketing, but I guess that's the cost of competition. It's not enough to make a game, people have to know about it.
I think the amount of money MMORPGs make is a bit misleading. Most of the time nobody looks at what they make over their entire lifespan, they only consider what they made this year, or last month. UO, which had a pretty low number of steady state subscribers made something like $10M over five years or so, and they were not a star performer. Plus they are still running. This is really good for what they spent on the game. MMORPGs make a lot of money, they just don't make it all at once.
The market is just so big now that there's enough space for Indies, AAA developers and a lot of people in between. One man development teams are getting their games released on Steam's Greenlight. It's a pretty cool time to be a gamer. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I feel that there are a huge number of reasons why we aren't seeing any progress. I'll try to summarize my thoughts here so that it's not a wall of text:
Size + Scope = Money. MMORPGs are stupidly expensive to make, at least in the direction that developers have been driving them. They're much more like Hollywood blockbusters now than the MMORPGs of old. When you're investing that much into developing a product, it simply cannot fail. Hence leading to number 2...
Risk aversion. All of the 'successful' MMORPGs (except for Eve, which is a bit of an anomaly) to date have followed what is essentially the exact same formula: fantasy themeparks with gear treadmills. The few companies that have seen success with MMORPGs have used this model, hence why the market is inundated with them.
Creativity is hard. Building new gameplay paradigms from the ground up is difficult. While it can be done, that's extra time and money that is going to conflict with 1 and 2 above. Eve Online has this in spades, but it's not something that happened overnight - they've been building and adding gameplay to it for ten years, and not all of these efforts have been successful.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see any true progress in the genre until it implodes and the vast majority of the current developers and publishers abandon ship for the next big thing.
I feel that there are a huge number of reasons why we aren't seeing any progress. I'll try to summarize my thoughts here so that it's not a wall of text:
Size + Scope = Money. MMORPGs are stupidly expensive to make, at least in the direction that developers have been driving them. They're much more like Hollywood blockbusters now than the MMORPGs of old. When you're investing that much into developing a product, it simply cannot fail. Hence leading to number 2...
Risk aversion. All of the 'successful' MMORPGs (except for Eve, which is a bit of an anomaly) to date have followed what is essentially the exact same formula: fantasy themeparks with gear treadmills. The few companies that have seen success with MMORPGs have used this model, hence why the market is inundated with them.
Creativity is hard. Building new gameplay paradigms from the ground up is difficult. While it can be done, that's extra time and money that is going to conflict with 1 and 2 above. Eve Online has this in spades, but it's not something that happened overnight - they've been building and adding gameplay to it for ten years, and not all of these efforts have been successful.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see any true progress in the genre until it implodes and the vast majority of the current developers and publishers abandon ship for the next big thing.
nah .. the real reason is that the definition of MMO is too stringent and any innovation is viewed not as a MMO.
MOBA took the gaming world by storm.
WoT is a big success ... it is even called a MMO in many reviews. But if it is not a game like the old WoW, people here don't consider the game a MMO.
That is the problem. There are plenty of progress ... just that the results are no longer considered MMOs.
I feel that there are a huge number of reasons why we aren't seeing any progress. I'll try to summarize my thoughts here so that it's not a wall of text:
Size + Scope = Money. MMORPGs are stupidly expensive to make, at least in the direction that developers have been driving them. They're much more like Hollywood blockbusters now than the MMORPGs of old. When you're investing that much into developing a product, it simply cannot fail. Hence leading to number 2...
Risk aversion. All of the 'successful' MMORPGs (except for Eve, which is a bit of an anomaly) to date have followed what is essentially the exact same formula: fantasy themeparks with gear treadmills. The few companies that have seen success with MMORPGs have used this model, hence why the market is inundated with them.
Creativity is hard. Building new gameplay paradigms from the ground up is difficult. While it can be done, that's extra time and money that is going to conflict with 1 and 2 above. Eve Online has this in spades, but it's not something that happened overnight - they've been building and adding gameplay to it for ten years, and not all of these efforts have been successful.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see any true progress in the genre until it implodes and the vast majority of the current developers and publishers abandon ship for the next big thing.
nah .. the real reason is that the definition of MMO is too stringent and any innovation is viewed not as a MMO.
MOBA took the gaming world by storm.
WoT is a big success ... it is even called a MMO in many reviews. But if it is not a game like the old WoW, people here don't consider the game a MMO.
That is the problem. There are plenty of progress ... just that the results are no longer considered MMOs.
Any player worth his salt knows the difference between multiplayer and mmos.
I feel that there are a huge number of reasons why we aren't seeing any progress. I'll try to summarize my thoughts here so that it's not a wall of text:
Size + Scope = Money. MMORPGs are stupidly expensive to make, at least in the direction that developers have been driving them. They're much more like Hollywood blockbusters now than the MMORPGs of old. When you're investing that much into developing a product, it simply cannot fail. Hence leading to number 2...
Risk aversion. All of the 'successful' MMORPGs (except for Eve, which is a bit of an anomaly) to date have followed what is essentially the exact same formula: fantasy themeparks with gear treadmills. The few companies that have seen success with MMORPGs have used this model, hence why the market is inundated with them.
Creativity is hard. Building new gameplay paradigms from the ground up is difficult. While it can be done, that's extra time and money that is going to conflict with 1 and 2 above. Eve Online has this in spades, but it's not something that happened overnight - they've been building and adding gameplay to it for ten years, and not all of these efforts have been successful.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see any true progress in the genre until it implodes and the vast majority of the current developers and publishers abandon ship for the next big thing.
nah .. the real reason is that the definition of MMO is too stringent and any innovation is viewed not as a MMO.
MOBA took the gaming world by storm.
WoT is a big success ... it is even called a MMO in many reviews. But if it is not a game like the old WoW, people here don't consider the game a MMO.
That is the problem. There are plenty of progress ... just that the results are no longer considered MMOs.
Any player worth his salt knows the difference between multiplayer and mmos.
Comments
Agreed. The MMO market, compared to the larger industry as a whole, is pretty damn niche, even after the explosion that was WoW brought boatloads of new gamers to the genre.
I have high hopes for Destiny. And that's partially because I have it on pre-order. :P
I have a perfectly good gaming laptop (and probably more powerful than a PS) so I am not buying a PS4 just to play one game. So I am debating if I want to get the ps3 version .. i wonder if the visual is going to be much better on a PS4 (or Xbox1) instead.
Or may be they will come around and do a PC version.
No, too late. You've already typed it out. Though, to be honest, I haven't read it yet. :-)
That half billion is the leading edge of the trend. There are a few other games where the amount spend is in the two hundred million dollar range, and there are more each year. There is a lot of money in the video game industry. I do think it's sad that half or more of a game's budget must be devoted to marketing, but I guess that's the cost of competition. It's not enough to make a game, people have to know about it.
I think the amount of money MMORPGs make is a bit misleading. Most of the time nobody looks at what they make over their entire lifespan, they only consider what they made this year, or last month. UO, which had a pretty low number of steady state subscribers made something like $10M over five years or so, and they were not a star performer. Plus they are still running. This is really good for what they spent on the game. MMORPGs make a lot of money, they just don't make it all at once.
The market is just so big now that there's enough space for Indies, AAA developers and a lot of people in between. One man development teams are getting their games released on Steam's Greenlight. It's a pretty cool time to be a gamer. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I feel that there are a huge number of reasons why we aren't seeing any progress. I'll try to summarize my thoughts here so that it's not a wall of text:
nah .. the real reason is that the definition of MMO is too stringent and any innovation is viewed not as a MMO.
MOBA took the gaming world by storm.
WoT is a big success ... it is even called a MMO in many reviews. But if it is not a game like the old WoW, people here don't consider the game a MMO.
That is the problem. There are plenty of progress ... just that the results are no longer considered MMOs.
Any player worth his salt knows the difference between multiplayer and mmos.
"knows the difference" != "he cares".