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MMOGs Branch Out
Via Kotaku, a Wall Street Journal article looking at ways the Massively Multiplayer genre are opening up to new players. Besides new game genres, the article discusses changes in revenue collection schemes. From the article: "The industry's traditional business model is to charge about $50 for the game software and a monthly subscription fee of about $15 for online play. That model has proved risky: When a game is highly popular, the monthly fees yield steady revenue streams for many years. Some of the industry's earliest hits, such as EverQuest, released in 1999, still have many users. But monthly fees have been "a significant barrier" to growing the market, said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, based in San Diego."
This article brought up an interesting revelation in my mind. It stated at the end how the number of retiree's playing MMO's is increasing. Now my mom and dad were born in the 50's, they'll be retiring in 10 years, and they introduced ME into gaming. My first memory is at 4 years old playing an educational game called Mixed Up Mother goose. As I got older I actually played Diablo II online (on the realms) with my mom when she was out of work. My dad played games like CnC Generals and the likes. My mom has recently even given games like EQ and WoW a shot. It makes perfect sense if they were to retire tomorrow (unlikely) that they would pick up MMO's. Even my grandma has confessed to me she's played her slot machine game until 4am on some nights ("wow grandma I didn't know we had that much in common") Now my conclusion is that if games become more user friendly to begin with, easier to pick up and get interested in and allow for a larger interest and larger market it is very possible and logical to me that retirees, in 15+ years (and even more so come the time gen X retires), may very well replace your typical retiree activities of today (think Bingo, knitting, romance novels, etc.) Compare the demographic similarities of your average mmo player (16-20 something) and a retiree: Lots of free time Moderate levels of expendable income (or access to it like parents/kids) The desire to do something that involves commitment and shows progress (think knitting, quilting, crafts) Now future retirees will have more tech savy and important factors like being able to understand a sort of virtual world, but other than both my parents slow repsonse time (another thing I think will slowly change) it seems perfectly viable for a retiree to be the next MMO demographic. Or maybe my family has a genetic addictive personality and for some reason all of it gets channeled into video games and vodka (in grandma's case)