Slashdot Mirror
Russian-Targeted MMORPG Faces Unique Obstacles
Thanks to the Moscow Times for their article discussing the rise of the Russian-based PC MMO title Sphere, which "is the first MMORPG developed in Russia and catering specifically to Russian players." According to a spokesperson, there are markedly different limitations to Western titles: "From the beginning, we faced a big technical problem -- how to make a game that would work well over our absolutely abominable phone lines." In addition, some of the economic problems are also intriguing: "Since few Russians have credit cards, 1C developed another scheme for online payment... [using] Yandex-Dengi, a ruble-based payment service similar to the dollar-based service PayPal. Players interested in a low-tech alternative can also re-subscribe by buying a fresh Sphere CD for about $6 every month." Overall, the MMO's subscription "costs about half as much as EverQuest's, opening the door to cash-strapped Russian gamers", and it's attracted over 15,000 players in the first 3 months.
I beta tested a few Korean made MMORPGs and often wondered why they bother to try to compete with giant conglomerate-made games like EverQuest and Asheron's Call. Setting up a stable server infrastructure is a (pardon) massive undertaking. Not to discourage independant developers, but this really looks like a pretty generic game.
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I'm surprised we haven't seen cheaper MMO games popping up. I'd say the easiest way to do it would simply be to tone down everything except story and such a notch. Notch down the graphics and the engine just a little bit, and you'll save HUGE amounts of money. From development, to distribution, to server bandwidth, you could save money. I think players who were on a tight budget, with a slow computer would flock to a game like this as long as it still had good gaming content, just minus the eye candy.
Their English website is here.
The link to the English site on their Russian web page (as linked in the Slashdot article) - is broken.
There are other reasons as well. As a dutch person I am used to free debet cards. Why should I pay a bank to hold my money? So no CC for me and for plently of others. How many kids can use their parents credit card outside the US?
Selling the game instead through stores would solve all that. Mobile phones really took off with prepaid cards. There is now even a very simple infrastructure in place for that. You go the cash register and say the phone brand you want and how many minutes. The receit has a special code printed on it that you can use to upgrade your phone. Flawless.
So why not the same for games? It would also solve that pesky problem of charge backs.
Oh well I wish them good luck.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
NexonAsia (which is closed, I'm not sure whether Nexon uses it as well) games also used such cards, with codes on scratch-off thingies which you imput into a website. Of cause, then main problem then is to supply all these cards to distributors, which is just about as hard as normal game distribution, and it's even worse if you're trying to market it globally.. I think many other Asian-based MMOGs also uses such formulas..
As a side note, Gunbound has a different formula for cash-earning: allowing people to buy certain equipments using real money. (It doesn't apply to all equipments though [the high end ones can only be gotten via actual playing]) There are other MMOs which does this, but I'm not going to search for them right now..
One advantage of Russian being a "new" market (for MMORPGs, at least) is that 15,000 subscribers in 3 months can seem like a success. In the US, MMs are closing down because they only have 150k in a year.
Even a straight PC game that sells under 100k is seen as a 'failure'. In some ways this is perception; by being the first, they can survive with subscriber numbers that a bigger corporation would see as tiny.
Go small startups!
A.
screenshots here, for six bucks a month not too bad
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