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Does the MMORPG industry understand marketing?
Boxtripper
Member Posts: 26
Basic marketing tells us that you can be successfull by delivering generic products by having some competitive advantage or you can try to carve out a niche for yourself, where you do not have to face so much competition, perhaps none at all.
Why are all these new MMORPGS just generic EQ clones, going for the mass market? sure, the mass market is BIG but that's not a guarantee that your game will capture any part of the market share. Why do small companies think that they can compete with Blizzard, Mythic or FunCom? Don't they understand that they will never be able to outcompete games like WoW, which Blizzard quite frankly can do a better job at making. Small companies simply do not have competitive advantage in making and running these kinds of games.
My point is, there is a LOT of niche gamers out there, like myself, who want to play games like ShadowBane. If every small developer tries to cash in on mainstraim, "carebear" games, they will not succeed vs WoW, EQ2, etc because casual players do not want to play small-time titles!
Developers should make more niche games. Make games that are FULL PvP. Make games that are more complex. Make games that are completely different. Nobody wants another EQ clone.
My point is, it's good business to cater to niche markets. Take higher fees. People will pay if you deliver what they want. Don't try to compete with the big boys.
Comments
I personally agree, and would like to see more involved and "nichey" games. Personally, I've got my eye on Darkfall Online.
If that game delivers as promised, then I will be very pleased. Maybe you will be too, depending on what your looking for. If you haven't scoped it out yet, give it a look. Darkfall Online
I really hope that *insert game name here* will be the first game to ever live up to all of its pre-release promises, maintain a manageable hype level and have a clean release. Just don't expect me to hold my breath.
Their job is to make money.
There is enough MMORPG market that you can have all these "revolutionary" Everquest clones, and people will play them.
Heck, look at Auto Assault. Same basic proven formula.
What's next, an mmorpg about boats? You get your boat from 1-60, group up with 40 other boats to take on the boss boat.
And after that we'll have an mmorpg about Snowmobiles.
They don't have to market it.
They know you will buy it.
Have you ever heard the term "if it ain't broke, dont fix it?"
Anyway, what specific EQ clones might you be talking about? There are plenty of games that have unique characteristics to set them apart. EVE, AA, L2, Guild Wars, Maplestory, just to name a few, that aren't anything like EQ.
As far as marketing goes, the MMORPG industry is flippin' HUGE. There are people playing MMORPG's now that didnt even know what an RPG was a couple years ago. You cant argue that companies like Blizzard with WoW has gone wrong in the marketing department.
"Their job is to make money."
Precisely. Go read about generic competition strategies(hint: Michael Porter) companies that cater to niches are often the most profitable companies in other industries.
Have you ever heard about market segmentation? It's a core principle of making money. Not everyone will buy everything. Example: I have not bought WoW, never will. Why? because I am not the target audience. If 10 companies make WoW clones, I will not buy any of them. If one of those make a Shadowbane-like game, I will buy it. Segmentation.
"They don't have to market it."
Every product is marketed. Marketing is a much wider concept than pormotion, it includes decisions on who is going to be your target audience, what the unique selling point will be, how much it will cost to develop, how much to charge, etc.
I contest your claim that gamers will buy anything. New gamers might, but the EQ vets like myself are mighty fed up with games that have not evolved much since EQ. That's 6-7 years ago.
Basically, it seems like the industry is totally ignorant of STRATEGIES on how to make money. They just spew out crap products thinking people will buy em. You can't make money competing against giants like Blizzard. They can do everything you can do, only 10 times better. If you want success as a small/medium company, you must target niches and other segments than the big boys.
Small companies need to follow their vision and develop the unique games. Look what happened to Horizons. That game had promise, and they made it into a mediocre pile of crap. If they had actually made the game they promised to make, it woulda been a hit. Now it's just... ugh.
Yeah but in order for that to work doesn't the main branch have to be pretty saturated? The niche has to be pretty big if its a full-scale for-profit MMO.
There's no reason why you couldn't cater to other segments than the mainstream segments. It's like saying you can't sell luxury cars until everyone has a cheap one. There are allways people whos desires differ from the mainstream.
The PvP segment is big. The segment of people who want more complexity in MMORPGS is big. The segment of people who actually want to roleplay is big. The segment of those who want to play with mature people(20+) is big. The segment who actually care about good lore and a good story is big. You can segment the market according to what ever criteria you want.
Why does every game try to be everything to everyone? it doesn't work! It's like trying to market a dirt cheap korean car with a huge engine, lots of extras, leather interior and a cool design that both men and women of all ages will love.
My point is, instead of making a half assed attempt at a mainstream game, instead make the game the customers want to play. That's the kind of game that will become people's favorite game. It's better to have a successful niche game than a failed mainstream game, like Horizons.
I'm not sure how this relates to MMO games, as the market might be slightly different, but as I understand the video game industry is slightly wonky, in that it makes a ton of money and seems to be awash with cash, but if you're not in the top ten selling games in a year or something it ain't that awash with cash.
Sure I read that in a magazine analysis of the industry a few years ago, which would suggest going for the niche isn't that great and idea, and as games cost more as an investment, the more 'wide' your net needs to be cast and the less risk you expose yourself to in terms of your games acceptance the better.
As I say though, the community and long-term revenue model might alter this slightly.
Well there are many factors in not only predicting whether or not a game will be successfull, but in the value juedgement, of whether or not the game is a success ...
first of all keep in mind these factors when pondering as to why so many games are cut from the fantasy cookie cutter,
Not all companies have the same goals ... some companies' and developer's monetary goals are much lower than others..... Their programmers may be younger, expecting less salary, and really just looking for experience and recognition in the hopes that the staff are bought out by a larger entity ( which has happened numerous times in this industry, sony buying out EQ, matrix ect... as a well known example), or that they will be hired by a larger company.... So in this context it would be easier for them to crank out something of decent generic quality more quickly, than to pour their blood sweat and tears into a game, and fuse it with their creative " life-force" only to have it either stunted by a competing giant, or ursurped and assimilated by another giant ( corporation) ....
FEAR... The fear that something New, simply wont work ... many of these smaller companies are working with limited time, limited Market recoginition ( as in being a no-name company or brand, which makes it harder to seduce players into subscription ) and most importantly limited money .... They have one shot to make good on their investment, and to get recognition for their coding skills and management, and if they fail, they become branded with negative recognition and will have to start from scratch to make themselves, or their company, attractive again to the forces that contreol and fuel the market ....for this reason they stick to whats tried and true, and as pittyfull as it is ... The fantasy market ALWAYS seems to draw adequate subscription numbers, perhaps not droves and droves of people .. but enough to make good on the investment and become recognized
Just Flat out Lack of Creativety... Remember, the people making the decisions here arent artists ... they arent writers ... they arent dreamers .. they are CEO's, chairmen, your basic run of the mill SUITS... ..these men didnt go to school for creative story telling ... they went to school for marketing .. and BUSINESS ...
Although i agree this sucks that these type of people are in control of our fantastical content and worlds, Where we will spend our time as our alter egos ... its the way the world works .. they HIRE .. regulate .. and dismiss or promote the creative individual and his work .. and MORE often than NOT .. these men make BAD decisions ...
They dont realize the dream is just as important as the marketing when it comes to MMO's .. And lacking the ability to dream makes for very lackluster, FLAT mmorpg games and market in general ....the most widely seen example was the TEAM at SOE and lucas arts DESTROYING a once VIBRANT, beautifully RICH diverse world in STAR WARS GALAXIES, to turn it into a cookie cutter piece of CRAP, just to attract lower age fans and WOW subscribers ....( they had plans to port it to console for an even bigger market niche ... but scrapped them after trials with console gamers)
these are the kind of corporate decision making which not only ruin MMORPG's ... but the entire world
where as once humanity sat in the embrace of the rennesaince, where art, theory, and dream were emphasized .... we are now in the depths of the AGE of capitolism .. where the bottom LINE and the DOLLAR are the main driving force of evolution and innovation ...
I guess this just proves my point that the people that call the shots in this industry have no freaking clue what they are doing. They need to retake basic marketing...
I guess, like you say, the problem is fear...probably mostly from investor's side, not the devs. The investors probably just think "hey, WoW is a great success let's make a game like that", and thus the devs are forced to make the kind of games the investors want, otherwise they will not be funded. There is nothing weird about that: it's how markets work. Investors want to go where Return on capital is high. But what they are not realizing is that when so many companies are making clone games, profitability will drop because of competition. This is just invisible hand stuff. So, again, they would be better off avoiding competing directly with WoW and going for the niches.
The irony of it is of course that the games could have been profitable sucesses if they were allowed to be niche games that had soul and a unique selling point that people wanted.
When Henry Ford started opening plants and selling Model-T's, was there that much of a market for Luxury cars? That was the analogy I was drawing. Also, thats something of a different situation. A car can cost as much as a house but I don't think you'll find too many people willing to pay $50/month even if you make the best PVP game ever.
There actually isn't a heck of a lot of information that I've seen that suggests what the sizes of the different portions of the market are. Also, PVP is too broad a word. Some people just want faction based PVP. Some people just want consensual PVP. Some people want free-for-all PVP. Roleplayers may or may not want to be able to murder/revenage/hunt.
EVE is a good example of an MMORPG that understands marketing. The game has lots of weaknesses (for exmple, graphics and pretty much everything PVE) and looks pretty laughable going up against EQ or WOW on their strengths (for example, compare the variety of raids availible or the ability to make a hot elf). But the strong points of the game (PVP, player-created empires, player-driven market) are areas where WOW and EQ are weak (WOW PVP) or choose not to go (EQ PVP), and it uses a sci-fi setting instead of fantasy to further differentiate it.
EVE stands no chance of rivaling the kind of numbers WOW has, but it has a solid playerbase and clearly makes large profits for CCP. The dollar (Euro?) amounts of income may not be anywhere close, but their expenses are nothing like Blizzard's or SOE's since the company is so much smaller.
I wonder what's the cost to produce a game from scratch. I assume the costs would be from highest to lowest.
Salary, marketing, hardware, testing, maintenance.
So let's say there was a game out there that was a niche game and had 100,000 subscribers and it had a $10 a month subscription. We'll use NCsoft as an example.
100,000 people = 100,000 boxes = 50 x 100,000 = 5 million but you have to multiply this by whatever their margin is, we'll say that they sell each box to stores for $25, so they'll have 2.5 million from the box alone.
Also, 100,000 x $10 per month = 1 million per month so about 12 million per year. So we'll say about 14.5 million a year in revenue.
That should seem to be profitable right? I guess it all matters how much the games cost per year.
I just checked NCsoft's company. Wow, they say they have 10 billion in capital and I didn't know that they produced such a myriad of games. Holy crap. They have 1260 employees and like 8 online games. So perhaps, if my math is semi-reasonable if I divide NCsoft's employees by 8 and see if a 100,000 subscribers would be profitable.
So 1260 divided by 8 = 155 employees to produce one game per se.
So 155 x $70,000 for the average salary, benefits, and whatever else and you have $10.85 million in s just salary alone, probably another million or 2 in marketing and another million in the remaining and you have about 14 million cost. Of course if the game took 2 or 3 years to develop then you'll just have to triple that number and say that it would take sustained 100,000 a year to break even.
Of course my numbers are conjecture, but it appears that niche games can be profitable if you can hit that 100,000 mark.
To play devil's advocate if you copy EQ and/or WoW the game may take less to develop and if they can even make a few million in profit for releasing crap then perhaps it works.
Anyway, I was just looking at Blizzard's website, I wonder how many applicants they get for some of those positions they offer. I also wonder if they're euphemisms for "game tester".
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I went to look at the vacant positions at Blizzard....I'll fill that position as managing director Eruope any day!