I warned people on the H1Z1 site the day SOE was sold off to a venture capital firm, to expect the worst. Those companies aren't in business for the love of a video gaming genre.
I'd say the SOE/Daybreak issue is an objective view on the MMO genre. A company with no real interest in video games won't keep a department/company/branch/title operational for some sort of sentimental value. From a purely capitalistic standpoint, it shows how profitable the MMO business is in the "real world" of business.
I warned people on the H1Z1 site the day SOE was sold off to a venture capital firm, to expect the worst. Those companies aren't in business for the love of a video gaming genre.
I'd say the SOE/Daybreak issue is an objective view on the MMO genre. A company with no real interest in video games won't keep a department/company/branch/title operational for some sort of sentimental value. From a purely capitalistic standpoint, it shows how profitable the MMO business is in the "real world" of business.
Like anyone will keep a game running for sentimental value lol...
I said it before all the job cuts were announced, but I'm sticking to my guns that DBG is going to focus on Planetside 2 and H1Z1. The way those games are set up they can be monetized to be profitable.
Who knows what the hell is going to happen to EQ:N with all the top level people gutted out.
Originally posted by itchmon The end of mmorpg has been prophesied more times than the rapture, and both have proven equally untrue.
Keep calm and game on in other words
Yeah, it is true. I don't think the genre ever been in a tight spot like this before though and I do think things will get a lot worse before they become any better.
There are far too few larger western publishers/companies working on a MMO right now, besides small companies the only larger I know is Microsoft (they fund "Undead labs".
I do think that SOE did need a lot of changes, but being sold to a venture capitalist was not exactly what I was hoping for (more like either Smed hiring in a few great programmers or that someone else would take over the studio). SOe have botched up plenty of good games because they released them way too early and with bugs that never really seems to get fixed. EQ2 is over 10 years old and still run worse than GW2 or ESO.
Lets hope that Daybreak finally will wait with releasing their games until they are polished up products, they do have made a lot of good ideas during the years after all.
I think SOE has basically been an MMO research and development company for the last few years with Landmark/Next. They have been working on some big things that might or might not work out in the end. Shifting to action combat. no leveling, skill aquisition based progression, voxel world, storybricks AI and a lot more. I am sure this had been costing a lot of money and that is why Sony sold them off.
My hope is that CN saw potential in what SOE had been working on and would like to capitalize on it. Now I have no doubt that they will want to see results soon, very soon. And cutting Dave who appeared to be much of the impetus behind these things doesn't bode well. While they could take the company apart and sell it in pieces I doubt that is the plan. It doesn't look like they have done that with their other games in the past. My guess is that they wanted to break into the MMO market and SOE was being unloaded at the right price for them. SOE, now Daybreak gives them the means to hit the ground running with a few MMOs already in place and things heading in a direction they can work with. The layoffs hopefully were nothing more than simply stopping the cash hemorrhaging in for the short term.
My guess is that they keep Daybreak. They already cut underperforming titles so I don't expect more to disappear but possibly. I think some teams will merge. The place will be much more lean. I can see landmark changing so that it will be more of a full on game. I see EQNext being changed so that it can be pushed out the door sooner but I doubt they cancel it. Many of the unique goals that were outlined will probably be toned down or disappear. Some things, like combat might be made more traditional. I think some of their other games in development may be scrapped or put on hold with the staff reductions.
This won't be bad for Daybreak but I also don't think it will be as great a thing for the MMO genre as it could have been.
Seriously, with the amount of information we have on these, there is no way we can assess things. I know it is tough to find stuff to write on mmos these days but its been all about daybreak lay offs these days. Such an empty and boring subject that we cant do anything about.
We cant guess how the games will turn out based on the layoffs they've been doing. Events like this are complex, if it was assesseble by bunch of articles like this, then you'd all be getting paid to be their next marketing staff. There are massive amount of decisions going on in cases like this but all we know are a few things, where this site keeps repeating and repeating asking what we think about it.
Been so long I havent read a good article from this site...
Massively went under because the gaming media is mostly useless and websites like these no longer provide real value, its just a place to hear about new upcoming games and waist time posting on the forums. Because of the near complete lack of journalism and becoming just an opinion giving mouthpiece for gaming studios, people visit the sites less often and click on articles less often.
So, the underlying reasoning behind this article is wrong undermining the entire thing.
The SOE sale part of the article also is flat out wrong as its sale has been rumored as coming for over 5 YEARS already since they really haven't pushed out any titles that were hits. This rumor has actually been around longer than the MSFT is going to sell the Xbox division rumor and has nothing to do with the state of the genre at all.
Now for the "other notable western studios" section. Everyone you named have been making average to bad games and that is why they are failing. Look outside the west, see the studios making massive profits and there you have your proof the genre isn't dying or near dead.
I HOPE EA and the rest of the big companies get out of the genre, let them make their MOBAs and other cheap thrill action games, there is a market there for crap gameplay and they can make their money off it...they never belonged in the MMORPG genre in the first place. Let the MMO genre reset with the indie/medium sized companies looking to make a great game for a portion of the market instead of trying to be the next WoW as that is what ruined the genre in the first place. MMORPGs should not be built around formula's and charts listing so called proven popular gameplay aspects in order to try to maximize a games income potential.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
I blame Massively and MMORPG.com for the demise of the MMORPG genre....just like you titled this article....MMOG. Generic mish-mash of completely different games that you journalists lumped together and labeled as one and in this purely profit driven model, the least profitable, but most enjoyable...suffers the most as well as the whole.
*shugs* I am now to the point I am just hoping for a well made toolset to allow people to create their own content for others to play through online ala NWN(the good one, not the recent one)
MOBAs and forcing the acceptance of F2P models as good for the customer is having its effects. Of course, I am just jaded and cynical enough to say F OFF, I was here for the good days of mmorpg gaming, but ya'll wanted slop, so eat up.
I'd like to address Richard's deduction that if Massively was profitable, they would be sold rather than closed down.
In 1999 I worked for a software company that was owned by a much, much larger entity. At a time when our company was totally in the black, profitable, with no sign that we'd be posting losses in the future, they decided to sell us off. Offers were made for the company, including from the person who founded and sold the company to them in the first place.
They decided that the offers were inadequate, or at least not as useful as the tax breaks they would get by closing us down and reporting us as a loss. So that's exactly what they did.
I mention this to make the point that there's alot more to business decisions from on-high than whether or a company is revenue positive. Obviously, if Massively revenue was pouring in, then I doubt they would close its doors, but still...
The bad news is that the scenario I recalled above is the very heart and soul of vul...venture capitalism. If at any time during ownership it is determined that closing Daybreak's doors will bring in the most money for CN, you can count on it happening, whether they are profitable or not.
The only reason I read Richard's articles anymore is to get a my laugh for the day.
Really Richard, if Massively was not making any money, how come the entire staff just started up a new gaming site? Did you even think that the main reason they were terminated was that the bumpkins at AOL had no clue what the magazine was doing? I don't think there has been a more inept company in the internet age.
As to SOE aka Daybreak, they have not had a hit in ages. As to H1Z1, how long can you fight zombies before you become extremely bored and the pvp is not that good to start with. Talk about shallow games.....
SOE had become a f2p mess. I will bet the people at Sony are laughing all the way to the bank.
I remember just a few years ago when it seemed like the sky was the limit. 38 Studios had not yet been nuked from orbit, GW2 was on its way, SWTOR was on its way, and there were a lot of titles in development. Now, even Richard is saying that we can't see (right now anyway) anything that is a AAA MMORPG (or maybe just MMOG) being developed. There just isn't anyone left to produce such a project.
Yes there are plenty of indie devs and publishers out there and SOE was not really a major player anymore. But this feels like some kind of purge to me, with nothing left on the other side.
I'm sure there are plenty who disagree with me, and everything is sunshine and roses. Maybe. You can still play a very large number of MMORPGs or MMOs right now, and that won't change for a few years yet.
Maybe it's a good thing, out of the ashes rises the Phoenix and all that. :-) For the next few years I think it's a good idea to finally tackle that 500 game Steam library if you have it...
There are just too many games, and too many approaches have been tried. So therefore the customer base is jaded. Theyre all supposedly MMO players yet they all define MMO differently.
Thats the major problem MMO developers have to overcome. Thats why you see all the copy cat at the same time. Who ever heard of zombie survival games? I surely hadnt' Yet we have one or two already playable and 4 or 5 more coming down the pike. Complete overkill for that genre. 2 maybe 3 at the most, let people pick the one they like best and then the other two should close up and do something else.
Same as all the free to play games out there. from what is being bandied about League of legends is some ATM machine. I have never played it nor do I know anyone who does play it. But of the times I have read about it and the people who do play it they claim it is a ghost town and the procs for fights or BGS or whatever the thing has takes for ever. So how can a game that is seemingly devoid of players make so much money?
So that is another issue, the complete denial and made up numbers companies use (or dont use) to hide or show what they are or are not making. If there was complete transparency it would go a long way. is it the player bases business? Maybe not but the continual denial of white knights and fanbois on games that really shouldnt be kept alive hurts the future of the gnere. Especially if these companies are barely staying afloat.
If anything Sony did what most companies should do. Although they sold it rather than simply closing it up and letting it just disappear.
While some people might think choice is a good thing not when the choises all suck and are all basically the same thing. Weed out a majority of the companies let a few good companies rise to the top and have the incentive to develop a game and spend some real money on it to make it worthy f an MMORPG definition. It isnt as easy as 'make a great game and the peopel will play it'. because people have unreal expectations and the fact they can go play something 'close enough' for free only hurts a game that might be better than close enough if it had some revenue. Because no matter what people expect no game will ever be released with the same content as game with a few years of development and a couple or three expansions and a half dozen other content updates. Most companies dont want to spend what it takes for a bare bones release anymore.
It would take a billion dollars to release a game in a state most people would expect to find in a 'perfect' MMO. Which obviously isnt possible. They spend 150-200 million now and people dont even last 3 months.
I also think some of that is just MMO burn out by most people but that is another discussion.
I'd like to address Richard's deduction that if Massively was profitable, they would be sold rather than closed down.
In 1999 I worked for a software company that was owned by a much, much larger entity. At a time when our company was totally in the black, profitable, with no sign that we'd be posting losses in the future, they decided to sell us off. Offers were made for the company, including from the person who founded and sold the company to them in the first place.
They decided that the offers were inadequate, or at least not as useful as the tax breaks they would get by closing us down and reporting us as a loss. So that's exactly what they did.
I mention this to make the point that there's alot more to business decisions from on-high than whether or a company is revenue positive. Obviously, if Massively revenue was pouring in, then I doubt they would close its doors, but still...
The bad news is that the scenario I recalled above is the very heart and soul of vul...venture capitalism. If at any time during ownership it is determined that closing Daybreak's doors will bring in the most money for CN, you can count on it happening, whether they are profitable or not.
Robsolf is right on. Richard's first point's that Massively and SOE were not making money are supported by...what exactly?
There are many potential reasons why these moves were made. Before you start the discussion we ought to at least have the facts. Well that's just MHO, and my expectations for a journalist.
Robsolf is right on. Richard's first point's that Massively and SOE were not making money are supported by...what exactly?
There are many potential reasons why these moves were made. Before you start the discussion we ought to at least have the facts. Well that's just MHO, and my expectations for a journalist.
I think Richard's assumption about SOE not being "business profitable" is supported by the $60M write off that Sony made. Business profitable as in generating a return on investment.
Now a write off is not the same as "a loss". Various possible reasons for a write off but Sony stated that this was against game development.
Now consider what SOE has been doing:
running a portfolio of online games;
developing new games.
The portfolio of games could have been profitable but with the cost of developing new games SOE as a whole may not have been "business profitable". With the write off however tht changes and SOE becomes profitable.
Of course if it were to continue as before - running a portfolio + developing new games - it would need another write off in the future. With 200 less staff however things change.
You would have a business that, on paper, had been making money for 2 or 3 years. All depends what the average cost of employing the staff is when you factor in wages, taxes, pension, medical, software licences, desk, chair etc. etc.
Very crudely though you can think of 200 people @ $100k a year for 3 years; or @150k a year for 2 years. And I use 200 of course because that is what has been reported.
So I actually think that both you and Richard are right. That SOE as a whole as it was was not "business profitable" but that SOE + the write off + the lay-offs is "profitable".
Which just leaves a couple of issues of course.
Is SOE still in the business of developing games? Answer: just about - every development person has basically been kept at the expense of someone working on the portfolio of games.
What about the IP? If they couldn't agree a price however - probably very hard to value - this could have been by-passed by Sony granting a licence to CN to be renewed in 5 years or whatever.
Pretty much an accurate article except one idea.There is still the spike in money earned,H1Z1 being the proof,they made a ton of money already and will not be making much in the future no matter how much content they add.So only two things can happen,either they do almost nothing here going forward or they start manipulating some massive cash shop sales,however that would mean they need to risk investing more into content to keep players interested to buy into cash shop.
We are going to see a trend that has already started,tons of devs asking for free handouts,therefor taking on NO risk.These will all be far less than Triple A,barely B imo as witnessed by MOBA's,can't get any cheaper game design than that aside from perhaps the card games.
What i cannot fathom are those real cheap browser games and that one in particular,how on earth did they afford 40 million to spend on a high profile actress to promote their game.That to me is insane to think they actually had that kind of revenue from such a cheap browser game,it really shows a ton of foolish spending out there.
Then i look over at that Chris Robert's guy,he has made over 60 million selling pictures of space ships,NOT a game.
Square Enix is imo the LAST of the big boys willing to go that extra mile to deliver a solid game,Blizzard won't do it and never has imo.However after losing far too much money trying to get a solid new game engine out and get FFXIV to the point of acceptance,i doubt even they will go that extra mile ever again,so that leaves us with nobody.Look at Blizzard's last two games, a card game that had 3 guys started on that project NOT a team,a low budget game design,then HOTS another cheap game design,they are NOT going for TRIPLE A quality games,just aiming for a market and using their name to make the millions.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
There is always a risk, even if you don't spend one red cent of your own money, you do put your name on it. Reputation once tarnished can have quite the negative affect on you. And who's to say this sort of failure on a grand scale doesn't affect one's credit rating. You assume a great deal just because you are willing to toss a few bucks into the development that you are the one taking the biggest risk of all.
Originally posted by Viper482 If so many people were not embracing this absurd free to play cash shop model....
I'm actually seeing the opposite. There are loads of players out there that keep supporting that model! I call it a Pay to Progress model.
I don't know what happened to change the pc gaming audience but all but two AAA games are suddenly on board with the latest in the mobile microtransactions system even those that are cleverly disguised behind a currency conversion system. Until people wake up and stop supporting those transactions, we're going to see alot more of these style changes to the market until people have had enough finally.
How and to what degree do you think SOE becoming Daybreak will impact EQN, Landmark and H1Z1?
Personaly I feel landmark is a mistake, I am even sure it was never meant to be a game on itself. Thats aside I think all 3 mentioned games will eventually get released. I think for now it's more about there will be some time between reading news about the games development as the focus is now mostly on redirecting everything going from SOE to Daybreak. Which is not just as simple as switching names.
I even am considering it wasn't Sony who was behind the sale proposel but that John Smedley has gone shopping to look for healthy investors. So I am not suprised he has not been fired. He most likely has even set up the deal between the 2 company's. And might even have saved it's games. If what many speculate about numbers being in the red for some time now Sony could eventually decide to pull the plug and then what.....
How about the company's portfolio of titles that are currently in service?
I don't think anything will change with their current list of games.
How likely is it that Daybreak will retain the level of prominence that SOE had in the MMOG space?
Regardless the "hardcore MMORPG fans of the old" did SOE have much prominence after the years since EQ2?
How (un)realistic is it to think the sale will turn out to be a good thing?
I hope it can turn out to be a good thing. News like this often caught us by suprise as it looks sudden. But plenty people on top must have been planning this well before it even leaked news. A investment company never invests in things they believe will not be worthwhile. sure mistakes can be made....
We are going to see a trend that has already started,tons of devs asking for free handouts,therefor taking on NO risk.These will all be far less than Triple A,barely B imo as witnessed by MOBA's,can't get any cheaper game design than that aside from perhaps the card games.
What i cannot fathom are those real cheap browser games and that one in particular,how on earth did they afford 40 million to spend on a high profile actress to promote their game.That to me is insane to think they actually had that kind of revenue from such a cheap browser game,it really shows a ton of foolish spending out there.
Square Enix is imo the LAST of the big boys willing to go that extra mile to deliver a solid game,Blizzard won't do it and never has imo.However after losing far too much money trying to get a solid new game engine out and get FFXIV to the point of acceptance,i doubt even they will go that extra mile ever again,so that leaves us with nobody.Look at Blizzard's last two games, a card game that had 3 guys started on that project NOT a team,a low budget game design,then HOTS another cheap game design,they are NOT going for TRIPLE A quality games,just aiming for a market and using their name to make the millions.
You make some very good points here, which I agree with completely. The days of big budget AAA MMO's seem to be over. Too much risk involved. With that said, we only have smaller publishers to rely on. That also means we will need to go out of our way to support them as well. Games like "The Repopulation" and "Pantheon" (lol) are our only hope sadly.
I think Sony made a good decision since the DEVs and Smed are constantly making wrong decisions with their games. It is time that those guys wake up and start to make decent games again.
Daybreak is already making SoE better simple because it's wiliing to trim the fat in a company that's been happily swimming in a sea of mediocrity for I don't even know how long.
For he venture capital firm to make money, they need to turn the company around so they can sell it at a profit. The question is: how will this firm make SOE profitable - long-term? Sure, cutting staff will help in the short-term, but they can't stop all current development. They need to transform SOE into a profitable game production house. So, I don't expect to see all current projects scrapped. It will be interesting to see how it all works out.
Comments
I warned people on the H1Z1 site the day SOE was sold off to a venture capital firm, to expect the worst. Those companies aren't in business for the love of a video gaming genre.
I'd say the SOE/Daybreak issue is an objective view on the MMO genre. A company with no real interest in video games won't keep a department/company/branch/title operational for some sort of sentimental value. From a purely capitalistic standpoint, it shows how profitable the MMO business is in the "real world" of business.
Like anyone will keep a game running for sentimental value lol...
I said it before all the job cuts were announced, but I'm sticking to my guns that DBG is going to focus on Planetside 2 and H1Z1. The way those games are set up they can be monetized to be profitable.
Who knows what the hell is going to happen to EQ:N with all the top level people gutted out.
Yeah, it is true. I don't think the genre ever been in a tight spot like this before though and I do think things will get a lot worse before they become any better.
There are far too few larger western publishers/companies working on a MMO right now, besides small companies the only larger I know is Microsoft (they fund "Undead labs".
I do think that SOE did need a lot of changes, but being sold to a venture capitalist was not exactly what I was hoping for (more like either Smed hiring in a few great programmers or that someone else would take over the studio). SOe have botched up plenty of good games because they released them way too early and with bugs that never really seems to get fixed. EQ2 is over 10 years old and still run worse than GW2 or ESO.
Lets hope that Daybreak finally will wait with releasing their games until they are polished up products, they do have made a lot of good ideas during the years after all.
I think SOE has basically been an MMO research and development company for the last few years with Landmark/Next. They have been working on some big things that might or might not work out in the end. Shifting to action combat. no leveling, skill aquisition based progression, voxel world, storybricks AI and a lot more. I am sure this had been costing a lot of money and that is why Sony sold them off.
My hope is that CN saw potential in what SOE had been working on and would like to capitalize on it. Now I have no doubt that they will want to see results soon, very soon. And cutting Dave who appeared to be much of the impetus behind these things doesn't bode well. While they could take the company apart and sell it in pieces I doubt that is the plan. It doesn't look like they have done that with their other games in the past. My guess is that they wanted to break into the MMO market and SOE was being unloaded at the right price for them. SOE, now Daybreak gives them the means to hit the ground running with a few MMOs already in place and things heading in a direction they can work with. The layoffs hopefully were nothing more than simply stopping the cash hemorrhaging in for the short term.
My guess is that they keep Daybreak. They already cut underperforming titles so I don't expect more to disappear but possibly. I think some teams will merge. The place will be much more lean. I can see landmark changing so that it will be more of a full on game. I see EQNext being changed so that it can be pushed out the door sooner but I doubt they cancel it. Many of the unique goals that were outlined will probably be toned down or disappear. Some things, like combat might be made more traditional. I think some of their other games in development may be scrapped or put on hold with the staff reductions.
This won't be bad for Daybreak but I also don't think it will be as great a thing for the MMO genre as it could have been.
All die, so die well.
Seriously, with the amount of information we have on these, there is no way we can assess things. I know it is tough to find stuff to write on mmos these days but its been all about daybreak lay offs these days. Such an empty and boring subject that we cant do anything about.
We cant guess how the games will turn out based on the layoffs they've been doing. Events like this are complex, if it was assesseble by bunch of articles like this, then you'd all be getting paid to be their next marketing staff. There are massive amount of decisions going on in cases like this but all we know are a few things, where this site keeps repeating and repeating asking what we think about it.
Been so long I havent read a good article from this site...
More silliness.
Massively went under because the gaming media is mostly useless and websites like these no longer provide real value, its just a place to hear about new upcoming games and waist time posting on the forums. Because of the near complete lack of journalism and becoming just an opinion giving mouthpiece for gaming studios, people visit the sites less often and click on articles less often.
So, the underlying reasoning behind this article is wrong undermining the entire thing.
The SOE sale part of the article also is flat out wrong as its sale has been rumored as coming for over 5 YEARS already since they really haven't pushed out any titles that were hits. This rumor has actually been around longer than the MSFT is going to sell the Xbox division rumor and has nothing to do with the state of the genre at all.
Now for the "other notable western studios" section. Everyone you named have been making average to bad games and that is why they are failing. Look outside the west, see the studios making massive profits and there you have your proof the genre isn't dying or near dead.
I HOPE EA and the rest of the big companies get out of the genre, let them make their MOBAs and other cheap thrill action games, there is a market there for crap gameplay and they can make their money off it...they never belonged in the MMORPG genre in the first place. Let the MMO genre reset with the indie/medium sized companies looking to make a great game for a portion of the market instead of trying to be the next WoW as that is what ruined the genre in the first place. MMORPGs should not be built around formula's and charts listing so called proven popular gameplay aspects in order to try to maximize a games income potential.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
I blame Massively and MMORPG.com for the demise of the MMORPG genre....just like you titled this article....MMOG. Generic mish-mash of completely different games that you journalists lumped together and labeled as one and in this purely profit driven model, the least profitable, but most enjoyable...suffers the most as well as the whole.
*shugs* I am now to the point I am just hoping for a well made toolset to allow people to create their own content for others to play through online ala NWN(the good one, not the recent one)
MOBAs and forcing the acceptance of F2P models as good for the customer is having its effects. Of course, I am just jaded and cynical enough to say F OFF, I was here for the good days of mmorpg gaming, but ya'll wanted slop, so eat up.
I'd like to address Richard's deduction that if Massively was profitable, they would be sold rather than closed down.
In 1999 I worked for a software company that was owned by a much, much larger entity. At a time when our company was totally in the black, profitable, with no sign that we'd be posting losses in the future, they decided to sell us off. Offers were made for the company, including from the person who founded and sold the company to them in the first place.
They decided that the offers were inadequate, or at least not as useful as the tax breaks they would get by closing us down and reporting us as a loss. So that's exactly what they did.
I mention this to make the point that there's alot more to business decisions from on-high than whether or a company is revenue positive. Obviously, if Massively revenue was pouring in, then I doubt they would close its doors, but still...
The bad news is that the scenario I recalled above is the very heart and soul of vul...venture capitalism. If at any time during ownership it is determined that closing Daybreak's doors will bring in the most money for CN, you can count on it happening, whether they are profitable or not.
Didn't SoE develop a game engine? Aren't they developing other engines?
Why in the world would a technologies investment firm want to buy a company that is developing online game engines?
It's mind boggling, right?
The only reason I read Richard's articles anymore is to get a my laugh for the day.
Really Richard, if Massively was not making any money, how come the entire staff just started up a new gaming site? Did you even think that the main reason they were terminated was that the bumpkins at AOL had no clue what the magazine was doing? I don't think there has been a more inept company in the internet age.
As to SOE aka Daybreak, they have not had a hit in ages. As to H1Z1, how long can you fight zombies before you become extremely bored and the pvp is not that good to start with. Talk about shallow games.....
SOE had become a f2p mess. I will bet the people at Sony are laughing all the way to the bank.
I remember just a few years ago when it seemed like the sky was the limit. 38 Studios had not yet been nuked from orbit, GW2 was on its way, SWTOR was on its way, and there were a lot of titles in development. Now, even Richard is saying that we can't see (right now anyway) anything that is a AAA MMORPG (or maybe just MMOG) being developed. There just isn't anyone left to produce such a project.
Yes there are plenty of indie devs and publishers out there and SOE was not really a major player anymore. But this feels like some kind of purge to me, with nothing left on the other side.
I'm sure there are plenty who disagree with me, and everything is sunshine and roses. Maybe. You can still play a very large number of MMORPGs or MMOs right now, and that won't change for a few years yet.
Maybe it's a good thing, out of the ashes rises the Phoenix and all that. :-) For the next few years I think it's a good idea to finally tackle that 500 game Steam library if you have it...
There are just too many games, and too many approaches have been tried. So therefore the customer base is jaded. Theyre all supposedly MMO players yet they all define MMO differently.
Thats the major problem MMO developers have to overcome. Thats why you see all the copy cat at the same time. Who ever heard of zombie survival games? I surely hadnt' Yet we have one or two already playable and 4 or 5 more coming down the pike. Complete overkill for that genre. 2 maybe 3 at the most, let people pick the one they like best and then the other two should close up and do something else.
Same as all the free to play games out there. from what is being bandied about League of legends is some ATM machine. I have never played it nor do I know anyone who does play it. But of the times I have read about it and the people who do play it they claim it is a ghost town and the procs for fights or BGS or whatever the thing has takes for ever. So how can a game that is seemingly devoid of players make so much money?
So that is another issue, the complete denial and made up numbers companies use (or dont use) to hide or show what they are or are not making. If there was complete transparency it would go a long way. is it the player bases business? Maybe not but the continual denial of white knights and fanbois on games that really shouldnt be kept alive hurts the future of the gnere. Especially if these companies are barely staying afloat.
If anything Sony did what most companies should do. Although they sold it rather than simply closing it up and letting it just disappear.
While some people might think choice is a good thing not when the choises all suck and are all basically the same thing. Weed out a majority of the companies let a few good companies rise to the top and have the incentive to develop a game and spend some real money on it to make it worthy f an MMORPG definition. It isnt as easy as 'make a great game and the peopel will play it'. because people have unreal expectations and the fact they can go play something 'close enough' for free only hurts a game that might be better than close enough if it had some revenue. Because no matter what people expect no game will ever be released with the same content as game with a few years of development and a couple or three expansions and a half dozen other content updates. Most companies dont want to spend what it takes for a bare bones release anymore.
It would take a billion dollars to release a game in a state most people would expect to find in a 'perfect' MMO. Which obviously isnt possible. They spend 150-200 million now and people dont even last 3 months.
I also think some of that is just MMO burn out by most people but that is another discussion.
Robsolf is right on. Richard's first point's that Massively and SOE were not making money are supported by...what exactly?
There are many potential reasons why these moves were made. Before you start the discussion we ought to at least have the facts. Well that's just MHO, and my expectations for a journalist.
I said that SWTOR will have HUGE impact on MMO scene 5+ years ago.
And it did. Im sorry for all people who only now discover the damage.
But i guess "dark times of WoW clones" is behind us.
I think Richard's assumption about SOE not being "business profitable" is supported by the $60M write off that Sony made. Business profitable as in generating a return on investment.
Now a write off is not the same as "a loss". Various possible reasons for a write off but Sony stated that this was against game development.
Now consider what SOE has been doing:
Pretty much an accurate article except one idea.There is still the spike in money earned,H1Z1 being the proof,they made a ton of money already and will not be making much in the future no matter how much content they add.So only two things can happen,either they do almost nothing here going forward or they start manipulating some massive cash shop sales,however that would mean they need to risk investing more into content to keep players interested to buy into cash shop.
We are going to see a trend that has already started,tons of devs asking for free handouts,therefor taking on NO risk.These will all be far less than Triple A,barely B imo as witnessed by MOBA's,can't get any cheaper game design than that aside from perhaps the card games.
What i cannot fathom are those real cheap browser games and that one in particular,how on earth did they afford 40 million to spend on a high profile actress to promote their game.That to me is insane to think they actually had that kind of revenue from such a cheap browser game,it really shows a ton of foolish spending out there.
Then i look over at that Chris Robert's guy,he has made over 60 million selling pictures of space ships,NOT a game.
Square Enix is imo the LAST of the big boys willing to go that extra mile to deliver a solid game,Blizzard won't do it and never has imo.However after losing far too much money trying to get a solid new game engine out and get FFXIV to the point of acceptance,i doubt even they will go that extra mile ever again,so that leaves us with nobody.Look at Blizzard's last two games, a card game that had 3 guys started on that project NOT a team,a low budget game design,then HOTS another cheap game design,they are NOT going for TRIPLE A quality games,just aiming for a market and using their name to make the millions.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
There is always a risk, even if you don't spend one red cent of your own money, you do put your name on it. Reputation once tarnished can have quite the negative affect on you. And who's to say this sort of failure on a grand scale doesn't affect one's credit rating. You assume a great deal just because you are willing to toss a few bucks into the development that you are the one taking the biggest risk of all.
I'm actually seeing the opposite. There are loads of players out there that keep supporting that model! I call it a Pay to Progress model.
I don't know what happened to change the pc gaming audience but all but two AAA games are suddenly on board with the latest in the mobile microtransactions system even those that are cleverly disguised behind a currency conversion system. Until people wake up and stop supporting those transactions, we're going to see alot more of these style changes to the market until people have had enough finally.
How and to what degree do you think SOE becoming Daybreak will impact EQN, Landmark and H1Z1?
Personaly I feel landmark is a mistake, I am even sure it was never meant to be a game on itself. Thats aside I think all 3 mentioned games will eventually get released. I think for now it's more about there will be some time between reading news about the games development as the focus is now mostly on redirecting everything going from SOE to Daybreak. Which is not just as simple as switching names.
I even am considering it wasn't Sony who was behind the sale proposel but that John Smedley has gone shopping to look for healthy investors. So I am not suprised he has not been fired. He most likely has even set up the deal between the 2 company's. And might even have saved it's games. If what many speculate about numbers being in the red for some time now Sony could eventually decide to pull the plug and then what.....
How about the company's portfolio of titles that are currently in service?
I don't think anything will change with their current list of games.
How likely is it that Daybreak will retain the level of prominence that SOE had in the MMOG space?
Regardless the "hardcore MMORPG fans of the old" did SOE have much prominence after the years since EQ2?
How (un)realistic is it to think the sale will turn out to be a good thing?
I hope it can turn out to be a good thing. News like this often caught us by suprise as it looks sudden. But plenty people on top must have been planning this well before it even leaked news. A investment company never invests in things they believe will not be worthwhile. sure mistakes can be made....
You make some very good points here, which I agree with completely. The days of big budget AAA MMO's seem to be over. Too much risk involved. With that said, we only have smaller publishers to rely on. That also means we will need to go out of our way to support them as well. Games like "The Repopulation" and "Pantheon" (lol) are our only hope sadly.
I think Sony made a good decision since the DEVs and Smed are constantly making wrong decisions with their games. It is time that those guys wake up and start to make decent games again.
-Skip Landmark ASAP
-Make EQN a solid EQ3