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Biggest Growth of MMO Titles Still To Come?
ShannonA writes "Dave Rickey examines the growth of the online RPG industry in his newest Engines of Creation article, 'Age of Discouragement?'. Based on his own analysis, and SirBruce's MMOG subscription chart, he projects that the best growth for MMORPGs is still ahead: 'In truth, we are solidly in the growth phase of our market, and our largest related markets have yet to really open up.'"
by Dave Rickey
2003-09-23
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
In his keynote for the first day of the Austin Game Conference, Mark Jacobs divided the history of online games in three eras, with the current era being the Age of Disappointment. I can't really understand the logic for doing so, however. Mark is certainly well-acquainted with the history of online games, he was a part of much of it. But history did not stop when Mythic emerged from the contract-development wilderness with Dark Age of Camelot. There were failed games before DAoC, there have been two successful games since (TSO may have been an underwhelming success, but it only counts as a failure when measured against the expectations that were set for it, if AC was a success then so was TSO). In truth, we are solidly in the growth phase of our market, and our largest related markets have yet to really open up.
That's a bold statement, I know, but I think I can make a good case for it. First, I would refer readers to the MMOG Subsciptions Chart maintained by Bruce Woodcock. Bruce seems to have made good use of his visit to the Austin conference, he has firmed-up figures for quite a few games compared to his earlier versions. Bruce also makes available the source Excel spreadsheet that he uses to generate his chart. A few minutes work with Excel plotting the growth of the US/European OLRPG market makes it pretty clear that the market is seeing continued growth, although with a possibly significant flat spot extending for 6 months prior to the launch of SWG.
There's a classic progression of the acceptance of innovation/market growth, which is pretty widely accepted these days. It runs "Innovator" (4%), "Early Adopter" (12%), "Early Majority" (34%), "Late Majority" (34%), "Late Adopter" (12%) and "Laggards" (4%). If you plot that curve against that from Sir Bruce's chart, you get the inescapable conclusion that the US/European OLRPG (I'm using that outdated abbreviation deliberately) market is somewhere in the Early Majority phase. Where in that phase is hard to say, but at any rate the market (at around 1.4 million subscriptions) is no more than halfway done with its growth, and correspondingly at least 4 years short of effectively flat market growth ("A growing market forgives a lot of sins." Yes, quoting myself is bad form, but at any rate the market is growing and that growth is fueling a lot of misplaced effort and allowing a lot of mistakes to be washed away with a shot from the newbie hose. For the next few years, good games will succeed and bad games will fail, just as they have been doing for the last 5 years. After that, things gets interesting.
No game has, to my knowledge, ever seen more than a 15% drop in subscribers due solely to the release of a competitor. Even SWG has created barely a blip in the subscriber counts for the already existing games. What is typically seen is a few months of increasing churn and reduced re-subscription leading up to the expected release, followed by a slow decline in churn and increase in re-subscription back to near the starting level. Rather than wholesale exodus, what is seen is a collective "Waiting for Game X" that results in a slight depression of the subscriber base. Nowhere was his more pronounced than with SWG, which cast a near zero-growth shadow over the entire OLRPG market for more than 6 months. But the main thing here is that nothing happens *quickly*, trends develop slowly and can be hard to spot. However, the market shows classic growth profiles that are fairly easy to project into the future.
If I'm tip-toeing around
Of course the growth is still to come.
The growth will come when there are MMO games that do not involve HOURS of doing nothing. Because the devs will finally realize that doing nothing is neither intresting nor excieting.
The growth will come when there are MMO games that have fun things to do that don't get repetative after 2 days, or after 2 months or after 2 years.
The growth will come when there are MMO games that have a strong community of players supporting each other.
The growth will come when there are meaningful interactions between the players. Not "I OWNZ JOO!", not "Lets group up and XP", something deeper.
The growth will come when there are MMO with massive worlds, meaningful means of transportation and player property.
The growth will come when the PVP is meaningful and fun. Not something put in just so that highlevels could do "something".
There is currently no MMO that does this.
Everquest fails on the player property and has plenty of time sinks. Still the the most "perfect" MMORPG out there. I played it for over 2 years.
DAOC fails in the same areas as Everquest plus it lacks anything fun to do after 2 months.
Anarchy Online fails because it's more repetative than tick tack toe and lacks any purpose in high levels.
UO is dead. Lacks any real purpose other than chat once GM level is achieved.
SWG is horrid. There is NO reason what so ever to advance your char in the game. The game lacks purpose. Nothing that you do in SWG is fun for longer than 2 months. Took me 1 month to get bored of stockpiling money and buying the BEST gear out there.
PlanetSide is repetative and in no way persistant. The world needs to be far far larger. The base you capture is lost in an hour and you'll just capture it again, rinse and repeat.
I'm a MMORPG addict, well used to be. Been clean for months. It's all dull. Even Everquest can get repetative after a few years when your character has better gear than you ever thought possible and withstood challanges that seemed impossible. Once the challanges aren't so challanging, it's not fun anymore. It becomes a huge waste of time. If EQ didn't require so much time to be wasted, I'd still play.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
I disagree. I think there will always be games that do not require online play for a number of reasons:
1) Play at your own level. I am not a game whiz. I used to play America's Army online, but I am sick of getting sniped in the first 30 seconds. There will always be enough people out there who are so much better than I am, that it's just no fun to play.
2) Play your own game. If I want to camp, I don't need a pack of 12 year olds with foul mouths cursing at me. It's my game and I'll camp if I want to.
3) AI will get better. I know we keep hearing it, but something's got to shake loose in game AI, right? If it does, that's less reason to play against another human.
4) Cheating will always be difficult to stop.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Wake me when I can code my own badass motorcycle and park it next to The Black Sun after decapitating somebody in a katana duel.
MORTAR COMBAT!
So far, all MMO games that have been released have failed to achieve cross-over between the Western and Eastern markets. This includes MMOGs that started in the U.S and Europe, like Everquest, and MMOGs that started in Asia, like Lineage.
The true global market is probably at about 10-12% saturation with today's games, meaning we are still in the Early Adopter phase, and not yet into the Early Majority. Thus, we have 90% growth potential ahead, for any game(s) that can actually become popular in the global market.
And, of course, China is getting more wired every day. And the only profitable games in China will be online games, because console and single-player games have a 99% piracy rate there.
So, IMHO, the MMO market is still very much in it's infancy, and the best days are still far ahead of us.
One key is in creating games that appeal to both hard-core and more casual gamers (or at least casual gamers that are willing to pay for their games)
Another key is in coming up with new types of pricing models, like mini-subscriptions, group discounts, and shared subscriptions, and charging subscriptions to your phone bill.
And, of course, the games need to get better. It's time to get off the leveling treadmill!
#man woman
segmentation fault - core dumped.
I recall seeing a statistical analysis on /. a month or two ago explaining that the MMORPG market was already oversaturated.
Anything you might ever need to say about anything has already been said better by Penny Arcade.