Making An MMOG For The Masses

Thanks to GameSpy for their article exploring whether massively multiplayer games can ever break into the mainstream. The piece starts by contrasting EverQuest's 460,000 subscribers with other media, saying: "What EverQuest is not, however, is a mass-market success. J.K. Rowling sold over nine million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this summer. Michael Jackson sold 25 million copies of 'Thriller.'" It goes on to analyze mass-market MMOG attempts such as the still-profitable, but disappointing The Sims Online, which Sims creator Will Wright says "...was the poster child for massively multiplayer games going wrong with the mass market", and Richard Garriott also comments: "...though the high concept was fabulous, [The Sims Online] suffocated under its own development weight."

Comments

Holy ridiculous comparisons Batman!

[Andy Smith]

What EverQuest is not, however, is a mass-market success. J.K. Rowling sold over nine million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this summer. Michael Jackson sold 25 million copies of 'Thriller.'

By this rationale 99.9% of books and albums are mass-market failures.

Harry Potter and Thriller are extreme examples of successful products. Most books/albums don't sell as many copies.

I'm not going to research this but just for the sake of argument, let's say EverQuest sold half a million copies at $40 per copy. That's $20m. Monthly subscription is $10 approx isn't it? So those 460,000 subscribers are paying $4.6m per month. For one year that's a total of $75.2m.

The majority of movies would be lucky to make that much money from ticket sales, sell-through and TV rights combined. I'd be surprised if any book has ever made that much.

Re:The masses ...

[whorfin]

I think that you're correct that it won't happen.

I'm no head-shrinker, but it appears to me that playing an MMORPG, at least as it has been defined so far, requires somewhat of an obsessive-compulsive personality. Yes, I've played them...UO, EQ, AC, DaoC...It is simply not a casual experience, and although people who play them appear to get some sort of satisfaction, I wouldn't call them 'entertaining' or 'fun'. They demand dedication and endurance to participate even partially.

Take for example Star Trek, another piece of popular media that has attracted the obsessive (go to a convention to verify my assertion). Star Trek can be enjoyed by a casual participant (My mother), but also has provided a fertile ground for an astonishing array of fan community participation (fan porn stories..both gay and straight, conventions, the klingon alphabet, you name it)

With Star Trek, the difference is that the provided experience is the same for everybody, designed for casual consumption, and people do with it what they will. With MMORPG, the provided experience is targeted at the most dedicated fans, and most sane people simply don't have the level of interest required to keep up with what that requires. I cannot imagine my mother (or myself) watching Star Trek if she had to wear some pointy ears or glue something to her forehead to successfully watch it.

comparing apples to oranges.

[millia]

yes, compared to harry potter, MMOG is small. but comparing a one-shot gaming purchase (ala the sims offline) to harry potter sales is a different story.

for MMOG usage, it would be more useful to compare it to cable pay channel subscriptions, or something similar. they even use the same word, churn, to describe the turnover of subscribers.

at least with cable tv, (and i can't speak authoritatively for the current market with dish tv etc.) there used to a certain point at which the growth curve would basically almost flatten for pay services, and then you would just watch *who* was subscribed change- churn.

there is always going to be that psychological barrier to monthly service cost, i think. it somehow seems more of a fact than paying a once yearly fee, ala the xbox live setup.

furthering the difficulty of comparison is the fact that new MMOGs do come out further diluting the percentages. and you're also competing with the market for the largest MMOG setup there is, live chat in myriad guises. (and for some people it's even a RPG. heh)

all in all, especially when you take into account the top level of subscribership that exists in places like Korea, i would think the market is pretty healthy, and even if it doesn't double, it's still pretty substantial for interactive entertainment.

Poor comparison

[(trb001)]

There are more than a few problems with comparing books/CDs/games, but here are a few...

1) People like convenience. Pick it up, put it down, easy access, portable. CDs and books qualify under all of these, games decidedly don't.

2) People have such differing social desires at different times. I may want to play a single player game now, a MUD/Massively Multiplayer game later, then finish off with some PvP Starcraft with my roommate. Music and movies offer this kind of multilateral socialism, a single game usually doesn't.

3) Access...let's face it, computers are still pricey and not widely available. A CD (as outrageously priced as they are) is less than half of a new game, not including the monthly subscription that comes with many commercial MMORPGs. A book is similar. Both have user interfaces that an 8 year old can figure out on his first attempt. Computers aren't like that.

It's an unfair comparison. Though, I will say, I played the Sims Online for about 3 months and thought that with a few tweaks it would be the closest thing we had to a universally accepted game. It drew it guys, girls, kids, adults, seniors. Something for everyone, from decorating to competition to sociallizing. It just got old eventually, and I'm not sure I could suggest what they needed to add.

MMORPGs are more problematic because developers inherently want a theme and a role for the character to play, but in doing so they alienate a good portion of the population.

--trb

Reasons masses don't want MMOG

[Experiment 626]

I can think of lots of reasons EQ-style games don't enjoy wider appeal...

• Barriers to entry - Not only do you have to buy the game like you do with other games, but you have to sign up for an account, provide a credit card or game card, etc. Sure, they may offer the first month free, but it's still much harder to just to check out what the game is about than other games.
• Double dipping - People don't like to have to pay for the game, pay for the expansions, AND pay a monthly fee.
• Monthly fee - These fees really discourage casual players. $13 is nothing to someone with a 200 hour a month EQ habit (they probably pay double this just for a second account) but if you only play a game a couple times a month, each gaming session costs you a lot more.
• Time requirements - To hold your own in the end game of EQ... finish quests, do raids, gain xp takes a huge amount of time. People who play for 8 hours or more every day are not uncommon at this level. The masses certainly aren't going to devote this kind of time to a game, so they are stuck as perma-newbies.
• Time sinks - Everything in MMOGs seems to take so long. Getting from point A to point B can take an hour. A raid might tie up an evening, and then only a few people present even get anything out of it. "Camping" a particularly rare creature or item could take a week or more of diligent effort.
• Overhead - When I play a single player game and something in RL happens, I hit save, quit, and then come back and pick up where I left off later. In EQ, you might spend an hour looking for group, another hour getting there, waiting on other members, finding a good spot, or whatever, and then at the end of the session half an hour or so to deal with finding a replacement, divvying up loot, or whatever. If you have less than four hours to play (which casual players always will) you may not accomplish enough to justify even trying. You can't pause the game, and if you spend too much time going AFK or logging off suddenly when you're the only cleric in the zone, your reputation will suffer, just for having a life.
• Culture - There is a lot to learn to play these games well. Maps, spells, strategies, quests, even a whole language of jargon. "A sk just trained us in KD then ninja'd the bp off of AoW." To a player, such a thing would be scandalous, to the masses, gibberish.
• Dynamic nature - The fact that things are always happening on the game is both its greatest and worst attribute. Greatest because it is always fresh and new. Worst because you miss things when you don't play, and if you don't play much you miss too much to bother. Because you have to do enough to keep pace with the people you enjoy playing with or get left behind. Because you can't just install expansions and play them at whatever pace you want without serious problems... the world moves on and changes, with or without you reaping the benefits.

I could ramble on, but I think I've made my point. For people with a lot of time, few interruptions, a good attention span, and a desire for a strongly immersive game, MMOG are good. But for the masses, I don't see one gaining that much appeal, unless it deviates drastically from the EQ formula for success.