Slashdot Mirror
WoW Helping or Hurting the Industry?
alstor writes "The New York Times has an interesting story about the success of World of Warcraft, and whether it is hurting or helping the gaming industry; this goes along with an earlier post on an article from CNN. From the Times article: 'WoW is now the 800-pound gorilla in the room. I think it also applies to the single-player games. If some kid is paying $15 a month on top of the initial $50 investment and is devoting so many hours a week to it, are they really going to go out and buy the next Need for Speed or whatever? There is a real fear that this game, with its incredible time investment, will really cut into game-buying across the industry.' What is the Slashdot opinion on World of Warcraft's impact on the gaming industry?"
The graphics in WOW are pretty intense and I know many people including myself who bought a new computer just to improve their WOW experience. Also, Blizzard is releasing new content every month or so that requires even more graphics power. So the trend will mostly likely be for subscribers to buy new hardware quite often.
:).
The interesting thing is that WOW supports MAC very well. Granted the graphics I heard are not as good as on a PC (I don't see a difference). I saw people buy MACs because their main game now was on MAC and they didn't see a need anymore to stay on PC.
Playing WOW on a 30 inch Apple wide screen LCD is pretty nice
Elnino - Destromath.
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. - Rene Descartes (1637)
I'm not going to feel sorry for EA games, anytime soon. Innovate or get out of the way.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
The social aspect is also a big draw, in that I have quite a few friends who are likewise addicted to WoW, so I can log in and chat with them as well. Single-players or XBox Live games just aren't as good at that aspect.
From my experience in video game retail, I would say it isn't going to be a direct impact from games like World of Warcraft that adjust the buying habits of consumers. The biggest impact will be stores like GameStop, GameCrazy, EBGames, and some of the older stores from the past that have merged with GameStop over the years. Their Trade-In programs, while convenient, are slowly sapping the libraries from players and into retailers warehouses. For example, I recently shipped nearly sixty copies of GTA: III to a warehouse because of an abundant overstock. Considering the store I work in has only been open less than a year, I was quite surprised to see I had 60 copies of overstock for any game.
Now I know that I'm getting kind of off topic and trade-ins are a completely different tangent, but the trends in buying vs trade-ins are very relevent. Consumers are becoming less and less likely to purchase a NEW game over a Used Game, they are also becoming more and more prone to spending less money out of pocket to pay for something. So I believe we'll see a small impact from subscription games. I mean $15 a month, if someone buys 12 games a year, is only about 3 games per year. Though, as compared, the biggest impact will be from consumers running out of trade in values. It may sound a little far fetched, but I have been seeing a lot more people who are unwilling to pay more than thirty dollars out of their pocket when they have rising gas prices and costs of living to deal with as well. So when someone can trade in three games they already own to pay less than $10 for that spiffy new game they want, they'll do it. The question I pose, though, is what happens when they realize the trade ratio is about 3 to 1, and eventually they either wont have games to trade, or will be stuck paying 30+ dollars per game again.
Canceled my EVE Online accounts this weekend. Both accounts represent hundreds of hours of... something. Not sure if its work or play, but its a hell of a lot of time. Past MMOG engagements include DAOC and PlanetSide. Both equally large time sinks, PlanetSide being the most fun until they ruined it.
I'm done with MMOG. I appear to have the ability to quit these things cold-turkey after sufficient suffering. I know others can't.
Downloaded Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory. The bugs apparent in the 1.x releases are gone. There are plenty of very active servers. No exp bar to watch; you're uber the instant you start playing. Log off and you're done. Only way it becomes a time sink is when you attempt to develop content.
There you go; living proof MMOGs won't ruin the non-MMOG market.
No, you can't have my stuff.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
The gaming industry will continue to exist. What won't exist are the current software houses, not because of WoW but because it's the nature of the beast. Ten years ago Sierra, Dynamix, Interplay, and others were the kings of the gaming hill. Now, they're just fond memories.
In the online community Everquest is fading, DAoC is fading, even City of Heroes is fading. All the supposed "hot! hot!" games enjoy popularity for a while then fade away. WoW will do this too.
As for the original question, WoW has little or nothing to do with the revenue streams flowing into other game developers. The purported "fear" of WoW cutting into game-buying is the sound of marketers quaking (pun not intended) because they promised management and shareholders 15-20% revenue increases based on publication of such scintillating games as "50 Cent: Bulletproof", and the revenue flow is just not happening. WoW is a convenient scapegoat.
As others have said, good games, not good marketing, draws the dollars. The recording industry is learning a similar lesson, as is Hollywood. It just happens to be gaming's turn.
The amazing thing that I have seen in WoW is the difference between the graphics on a low end machine (my gf has an old dell P3 800MHz) and the high end machines (I have a brand new machine I put together for BF2, complete with 2 gigs of ram and that nice 500 dollar graphics card I've always wanted). It looks good on her machine, and even runs well. On my machine it is one of the prettiest games I've ever seen. They don't go for realism, they go for effect. And they do it very successfully. The fact that it runs on both machines is great as well. And it even runs on my Mac (something which Blizzard has been smart enough to do for every release they've done).
A couple of thoughts ....
.. solid PvP should have been there at day 1 ..., (hey it is Warcraft right?), ... but EQ2 was chucked out the door similar to Star Wars Galaxies. Sony is more worried about keeping the subscription teat lactating than producing something revolutionary and polished. (Of course, one need merely look to other genres like the movie and music biz to know that very few of the big names are doing more than churning out crap these days.)
The folks at Sony (Raph, etc.) are responsible for their own problems with EQ2. They rushed to get that game out the door as close as they could to WoW, even though WoW was much farther along in testing. If they hadn't made hasty decisions in order to try to contain the "virtually" certain EQ exodus to WoW, and instead had invested that time on producing a truly innovative game, they could have won back mindshare from WoW when it hit its inevitable "fallout" with players: the (similarly rushed) launch of "battlegrounds".
Now I'm not saying WoW wasn't rushed too,
Now, on the topic of WoW, I played it to the "uber" end of the game, as I did with EQ for many years, so I know what I'm saying when I say that WoW was a rather big disappointment for me. I've been playing MUDs since 1990, and writing them since 1992, so I feel I have a good idea with what has been done and what remains to be done in this repackaged world of distributed MUDs with 3d graphics and perty textures. In short, WoW was disappointing in its inability to deliver a good mechanism for player-created content.
So basically WoW delivers an experience of "EQ like it should have been" (gosh I thought that a lot playing the game), but it was hardly revolutionary. Once you've explored the content in these games, it is up to you to make the content, or simply to get used to doing the same thing again and again. Its not so easy to build games "on the game", and the games that are there just become a treadmill for the powerlevelers. (E.g. battlegrounds "flag cap" trading.)
Now, I realize that many people will never hit the top levels of these games, and they may enjoy the journey, never "see it all" or even come close, and certainly try the game from the shoes of multiple classes. More power to them. Personally, I think I'd find that boring after awhile too. After all, there is only so much variety the game can deliver with their quest and combat engines.
Now back to what remains to be done... I think that's clear to me. Way back in the days of Diku and LPMUD, when players got to a certain point in the game they became "gods" or "wizards" and contributed content. With LPMUD (or MudOS) and some other dynamic engines, players could actually contribute code! (And yes as a Java developer for the last 10 years I know damn well about the inherent security risks and how to mitigate them.)
I want a fantasy (or scifi, or spy, or whatever) MMORPG that lets me contribute content and code to a dynamic world. I guarantee you a game like that will be innovative because the players will make it that way. And there are ways to keep balance, manage exploits, etc.; if you don't think so, go and look at the text MUDs that have been dealing with this for 15+ years. This is not just another "oh gosh he wants dynamic content, its too hard to do!" post -- like I said, go look at the numerous text MUDs that have been working on these issues for a decade or more. (And yes, I am personally working on my own solutions to these problems, "for the good of open source" (tm). Links to sourceforge project in my profile when I put it there).
Now before anyone links "Second Life" and such, let me remind you that those "games" are hollow in not having the cool backstory and "out of the box" content that something like WoW delivers. You need both, really, and I think running around buying jet packs and clothes in second life sounds as exciting as playing Sims Online, and we've seen how that is going.
People will get hooked if it's "free".
I think I'd change this to read...
People will get hooked if it's "good"
But maybe that's the reason game companies wont make the switch. With a subscription system, the game has to actually be GOOD to get people to keep paying past the initial month. While with the traditional payment method, as long as it's marketed well, people will buy it. Once they've coughed up the cash, it doesn't make a difference whether they like it or not. The company has already made its money.
So for that reason, I'd love to see more games go with subscription payments. It would push the companies to make games actually BE more fun instead of making them LOOK more fun.
"I want a game where I can play a few hours a week, and still get something out of it. Things just take too long in the high level game in WoW!"
Try Counter Strike. It also can be a time sink but it is easier for it not to be. With each round resetting every 3-5 min it's easy to hop in for half hour or so and have a lot of fun.
Not like WoW where you can spend that much time just trying to get to where the action is. Run run run. Get to the port. No boat. Dang, just missed it. Wait 5 min. Fish. Dang, fishing without beer is boring. Ride the boat, run run run. Hop on griffon. fly fly fly. run some more. Now the fun can start 20 min later. Boring.
I got WoW last November.
/played than I'd care to admit. It's saved me a lot of money. I've been cooking more and therefore eating better (eating out takes more time than cooking a good meal typically does) and spending less. All in all, WoW is saving me a lot of money.
I haven't purchased another game since. I reinstalled and played HalfLife 2 for awhile, but that's about it. I've only played WoW. I have two characters (level 50 druid, level 60 warlock) with more time
Will I switch games? Probably not. I've got a time investement in WoW. I've got a social investment in my guild. Heck, I found out a guildie was local to me and appropriate for a job and got him hired for our helpdesk because I knew he was a straightforward easy to work with person based on my WoW experiences with him.
Will I play a single player game again? I've got a PSP for when I'm on the road. So, not bloody likely. I'm looking forward to an expansion, the next patch, and getting my hunter leveled up on a PvP server.
I'm playing WoW right now on my PC while I read this on my Mac Mini.
Am I typical? Dunno, hit the reply button and tell me.