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Garriotts See Shakeup To MMOG Industry Coming
Next Generation is reporting from the annual DICE event, and has the gist of the presentation given by Robert and Richard Garriott about the future of the MMOG industry. From the article: "Richard Garriott, father of the Ultima series said, "After a period of growth, opportunities are closing, budgets are increasing to tens of millions of dollars, and companies need global infrastructure in order to publish. My guess is that over the next 3-5 years, only five companies will operate in this business, and unfortunately, many of the startups will be gone.""
That holds true for most industries. Remember, when cars first came out there were many many car companies. As cars got more and more complex there were less and less companies, until today you have maybe 7 or 8 major car companies in the world.
The same is true about the computer game industry in general. When games were new and a lot less sophisticated, there were thousands of publishing companies. Today we have..what, 4 major ones? EA, Ubisoft, Veventi, MS and...?
There's only a market for about 5 MMOGs worldwide.
Last post!
Are there even five successful MMOG companies in existence now? I can think of Sony, Blizzard, NCSoft, maybe whoever it is that makes FF.
their company NCSoft is one of the five companies they see succeeding? if somebody from a small indie mmo developer had been speaking, i'm sure they would have pointed out that there are more smallscale commercial mmos than ever before, which i'm sure would also be correct. they're just hoping to make a self fulfilling prophesy, i think. i seem to remember a very similar article a few weeks ago in which an EA exec was saying the same thing, which people seemed to think was a bit biased.
We've got Blizzard (World of Warcraft), Square (Final Fantasy), NCSoft (Lineage, City of Heroes/Villians), and EA (Ultima Online, The Sims).
And then there's a giant pile of slightly more niche players, such as EVE Online and Puzzle Pirates.
So, I think this dire prediction is.. already true, as long as you ignore most of the players in the market.
After a period of growth, opportunities are closing, budgets are increasing to tens of millions of dollars, and companies need global infrastructure in order to publish.
I think this is because in order to maximize profit, you must have the best product which requires teams of coders, hordes of graphic designers, and armies of network admins to roll out WoW, EQ, and whatever other blockbuster game comes out.
So this is what is done...
However, larger companies tend to not take risks on unproven ground so there still will be room for startups to nudge their way, but they won't be blockbusters with 100,000 players.
Eventually, after technology and bandwidth costs aren't prohibitive or a factor and the game engines have gotten as realistic as they can so there isn't anything left but to create game content, then perhaps it will be more mom and pop shops again. But this might be a while...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
From my point of view, however, it's likely that the truly great games are probably going to *still* be startups that, while awesome games for those who like them, don't have the wide audience appeal that some of the not-so good games. And thus may well end up failing, going bankrupt, or being bought out by one of the big companies.
A case in point is probably the entire SWG thing. They had a great premise (however flawed the implementation might have been), but it was sacrificed for what is essentially a more focused game that is probably easier to play (and thus accessible to a lot more people), even if it is a massively inferior gameplay experience for those who are willing to take the time to really learn the complexities of a game. Economically, they'd rather have a huge number of part-time gamers than a small number of hard-core ones.
Although that brings up the point that someone, somewhere, may figure out how to make a game with the intricacies, complexities, and depth to keep the hard-core types happy while still being accessible and fun for those who just want to drop in and play. A good example of this might well be done using Dungeons and Dragons. For those who know the game, there are an insane number of variations on all the different character themes. For those who don't want to spend the time to learn all that, there's the default sets for each major class, slap in the ability scores, and you've got a fully functional archtype, ready for the next hack and slash. And in the process of playing said archtypes, you'll still be exposed to the mechanics, and thus you learn. And after a while, you'll know enough to be making your own builds, thus the archtypes served to ease the learning curve to get you into the more complex things, and thus both systems co-exist.
If someone can figure out how to make that perfect game, I look forward to playing it.
Z
Noone really needs WoW-server-scale equipment the day of their launch unless they have a WoW-marketing-scale budget
people are creative, companies are just that, companies.
Most of the problems in the gaming indusrty result from greed and mismanagement.
If Garriott is correct that would be very unfortunate. Fewer companies means less competition and less competition means less inovation.
If the market were more receptive to less graphic-heavy games it could lower a portion of the costs. Seeing Ragnarok Online (mmo with all characters represented as sprites and slight use a 3-D engine) in action seemed like a natural move to a lower budget mmo that was still eye-pleasing. Unfortunately, the trend did not seem to catch on.
I hardly believe this is absolute.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If a few companies keep spouting out their Cookie Cutter MMO's then all we'll get is the same regurgitated game over and over. There will simply be a demand for other things that companies like SOE and NCSoft will not be willing to risk developing, as well as games which will be funded purely by donations (Knight Online for example http://www.knight-online.com.my/).
It's not impossible to compete with the MMO giants, but it will be difficult.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
I just hope that no one showed up to his presentation with a fire scroll.
Otherwise, things might get ugly.
Right now 3d virtual reality is about where text adventure was in the early '70s. Infocom kept the text adventure alive pretty long, but 2d and then 3d pretty much took it over, and the only place you got text role playing was in themed chat systems... MUDs.
I'm predicting that as free and cheap 3d virtual reality gets more common, the kinds of hack-n-slash stuff you see in MMORPGs now are going to become the kinds of things hobbyists put together inside virtual worlds that exist for other reasons. Right now that stuff is really crude by comparison, but it's just a matter of time before realistic graphics become as generic as verb-noun parsers and scripted objects in MUDs.
So the kinds of things that go on in 3d games now will be like LARPing in VR. SCA-type stuff. What will *companies* be doing instead? Heck if I know... interactive movies with licensed celebrity characters and paid actors?
What, actually making games with actual plot and actual character development that pushes epic storylines along?
Oh, a bigger budget to make the same retread stuff. Neat. O.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Single-player game developers (even superstars) often don't understand online games.
The reality is that a small game can make a modest income. The game I administrate, Meridian 59, makes enough to keep me from starving to death, but it'll never be as big and amazing as, say, Lineage. But, people who enjoy hard-core Player vs. Player (PvP) with consequences enjoy our game immensely. We're happy keeping our classic game alive (it first launched over 9 years ago) and serving a niche.
One problem is with the term "massive". People look at the smaller games and turn their noses up at them. Our game with about 100 players on at peak isn't very "massive", so most people give it a pass. In reality, the community is actually quite a bit stronger. But, no one puts out press releases about having "the best community" or "the most enthusiastic customers". It's all about "the most people playing (and paying!)" in press release land.
The problem with the Garriots' predictions is that online is a medium, not a genre. There's a LOT of untapped potential out there, too. Take a look at the Korean market and you'll see an amazing array of games. Of course, one issue in the U.S. market is that the existing audience expects millions to be poured into the production values of the game. As soon as people realize that gameplay really is more important, you'll start seeing a lot more options out there.
Personally, I think the future is in niche games. Why go visit a game trying to cater to the lowest common denominator when you can go visit a game that caters more specifically to your tastes and the tastes of people like you. Of course, as with most boutique offerings, don't expect the price to remain at the rock-bottom like it is now.
Some thoughts from someone else in the industry.
Have fun,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
Sure, just like hundreds of industries and mediums before it, costs increase as things become more and more lavishly detailed. And just like hundreds of industries and mediums before it, good stuff still beats lavishly detailed every day of the week.
Sure, a good indy movie might be hard to find; your local streetcorner jazz musician might not get a strong following; Animal Planet might not get Super Bowl ratings, but they all exist, and they're all successful to one degree or another despite not having the marketing clout or production values of Big Industry.
Garriott (and/or Garriott) demonstrates a notable lack of vision when it comes to the willingness of indie developers to work in a variety of gamespaces. Not all games require tens of millions of dollars of content to be interesting to at least a small number of people, and the key to a successful game isn't necessarily selling millions of copies worldwide. In truth, all that's needed is to make a game that sells enough copies/subscriptions to make the money back on the development costs (i.e., the developers' families have food on the table).
Take A Tale in the Desert, for instance. It's an independently-developed game, published in online form only. The small development team has been maintaining the game for nearly three years off the $14 per month subscription fee from several hundred (perhaps a thousand or two) players at a time. Is this game a mega-super-ultra blockbuster? No, of course not. The market can only support a few of those at one time (though that'll increase as more people discover the genre). But is it successful? Definitely. It's not only stayed afloat for three years, but the enthusiasm of its subscribers and its developers continues to thrive.
Puzzle Pirates is another good example of an indie MMOG that has achieved success in the market (as well as critical acclaim). And what's more, MUDs are still around, some with dozens or hundreds of players daily experiencing freely-developed content. If Garriott were operating under valid assumptions, these MUDs would have died off long before WoW entered (and increased) the MMOG market.
Garriott is probably right that there's only room enough for a few World of Warcrafts or EverQuests or Lineages at a time. The expectation has grown that these games will require thousands of person-hours in development, and as customer expectations inflate, the costs for these games will eventually become prohibitive to all but larger media companies who can afford to bankroll such projects. But it demonstrates blindness to what's going on in the trenches to say that the market will suddenly close off to small developers with big visions.
Richard Garriott works for NCSoft now, and has credits on City of Heroes/Villains, Lineage I/II and the unfinished Tabula Rasa. That's 5 out of the company's 7 announced titles - all MMORPGs, and all modern (except for Lineage I). He knows what he's talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott
Of course, the indie scene will be spewing out dozens of MMORPGs of various quality levels every year from now until the end of time, but the number of companies that can compete with NCSoft may indeed grow small and stabilize that way.
Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, don't touch it, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
Read the subject, all that needs to be said about this guy.
Almost all the heavy lifting is done client side in an MMOG, the server is just a state engine. People already reverse engineer the protocols and DB schema's to run "mod" servers, and it is likely that this will continue unabated. It could be that having only 5 companies will be a boon for this alternative content. If you can aggregate the modding talent into fewer pools, the potential for interesting releases increases.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Frink: Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, don't touch
it, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will
be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive
that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
Yes, and American McGee has his name plastered on the ad copy for Scrapland, but that doesn't mean that he has jack or squat to do with the software at all. Lineage I and II? I wouldn't want my name associated with those obsessive-compulsive grindfests. CO*? Between the two, those games have about as much depth as the average petri dish. "Defeat 30 foozles in random zone." "Defeat all foozles and click on all shiny things in generic warehouse dungeon." Repeat until level 50. Tabula Rasa has mutated from a Lineage knockoff that he essentially claimed would make money at $20/mo. in subscriptions, into a Guild Wars knockoff with lasers.
Until someone allows me to pay 39.99 a month (or so) to play "any" MMORPG it's not going to become a nitch market. 9.99 here, 9.99 there 13.99 here 19.99 there... no thanks, I work to pay enough bills. One company, one plan, all games. Don't care if there is a "timer" say if you drop eq for wow you can't pick up eq again for a month, while keeping planetside and "insert game here" active. Whatever it takes, just one bill please.
Sit... Speak.... Shake.... Good Dog!
All I know is after Romero's MMO hits the market, there will only be room for one in the market!
The point about Garriott was that he is involved in the industry, which he is, not that he is writing code specifically, or even that the games he produces are any good. By your logic, Sam Walton must not know anything about the retail industry because he hasn't worked in a store recently, or because his stores are full of cheap crap.
I started to write a lengthy defense of NCSoft's games, but who gives a fuck what you or I think of them. They have millions of subscribers. In a discussion about the future of the MMORPG industry, that should be enough.
This is exactly what I was going to say including the car manufacturer refute.
There may well end up being 5 or so MAJOR players in the MMORPG industry but there will always be room for other games. The companies operating the smaller games just need to keep costs down to be profitable. It's the same with most industries. 90% of mind/market share may be controlled by only a few companies who have the huge turnover and huge profits (and huge costs) but that still leaves 10% for all the smaller companies to provide a more specific product for those who want it.
Once a game is written the majority of MMORPG cost is proportional to the number of subscribers (for bandwidth, server maintenance and customer service). I admit that content creation cost doesn't generally scale with subscribers though, which may work against the smaller players a bit. But that's The same with films, which don't cost more if you have more people see it. And theres precedent for cheaper creation cost when you are expecting a smaller audience (smaller artsy films don't generally spend big $ on special effects or huge actor salaries).
There's still room for open source, or free to play games. Have you seen Planeshift http://www.planeshift.it/ or Eternal-Lands http://www.eternal-lands.com/. The first one is fully open source, the second has only OS client. Of course none of them have hundreds of thousands players, but... check them yourself. Regards
I think where he was going is that there is little room for than a few major mmogs to exist at any one time.
While it can be argued what a successful mmog is it all comes down to what class of developer you are. To the indie, who arguably at the lower end of the spectrum a game with 1 to 2k subscribers is very successful; at the level they compete at. Where as you get to the level of where games like UO, EQ, and WOW are at and the whole meaning of successful changes.
Another view is that the situation of what was occuring in the late 90s really hasn't changed much to this day. There were many small players back then, in fact that was the market. It wasn't until M59 that gamers and developers began to understand that larger audiences were really possible. Then comes UO and suddenly you have the breakthrough. Where before everyone was competeing at the same level you now suddenly have two. Before EQ it was UO in its own class; and no I don't consider M59 to be in that class; and everyone else.
Then comes EQ which furthers the difference between the tiers. Throw in DAOC, AC, and others and the tiering of the market is complete. So while you can have "successful" indies and such they aren't really any different than the muds/mushes of the 90s. They aren't competeing at the same level as the big fish. The pool can support lots of little fish as they go unnoticed by many, its the big fish that have to compete more vigorously.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
For number two its already happening.
NCSoft didn't develop City of Heros/City of villians but it does publish and host them for Cryptic.
Sony also took over hosting and publishing of Matrix (although I think Warner Bros mighta scammed them)
> By your logic, Sam Walton must not know anything about the retail
> industry because he hasn't worked in a store recently, or because
> his stores are full of cheap crap.
Actually, I think Sam Walton doesn't know anything about the retail industry because he's been dead for about 14 years now.
Chris Mattern
I think the point he should have made, is Richard Garriot didnt have anything to do with COH/COV Lineage I or II or any other NCSoft game except for Tabula Rosa (the only thing he has been working on for almost 4 years now).
The only game worth anything to NCAustin is COH and that was completely handled by Cryptic Studios not NCAustin. (ncsoft brance in austin tx).
Garriot hasnt dont anything of recent, he wasnt even responsible for UO even though he likes to take credit for it. He was long gone before UO was successful.
Is he a creative designer with lots of cool ideas? he sure is, does he know crap about MMOS?
only time will tell with Tabula Rosa, but im thinking that an MMO game is beyond what he and his brother know how to manage. They are good with small teams and small budgets, and a big MMO game with millions of dollars and a hundred + people working on it is beyond what they are capable of running in a competent way.
if they knew what they were doing why did they work on TR for 3 years and then scrap everything and hit the reset button on the entire game design, art, sound, everything out the window. when TR ships they would have manybe been working on that version 1 to 2 years tops.
well good luck with that.
Yes, OK, but the people who are playing MMOGs have already gotten past that issue, so whether they're swinging a virtual sword in Everquest or in a VLARP in VR it's all the same to them.
Why do so many developers try to bite off so much more than they can chew? Why not implement a game like this isometrically (or straight 2d) so that the art resources requirements are more manageable? You can't just say, "I'm going to use one human model, and then texture-shift the hell out of it for every character in the game. Oh, and stretch out the ears sometimes." Let me guess, some enemies have horns, or big hats. Or tails? Hmm.. what else is easy to add onto a stock model...
I understand that "gameplay is king" and whatever - I've developed a fair bit myself - but if you don't have any art resources then you need to pick a different graphical presentation. I won't lie, the games I've developed aren't going to win any art awards - but I pick a graphical look that I can implement reasonably.
If you can't make a few different humanoid models:
1. Don't make a 3d RPG with a whole bunch of playable races (and assumedly a lot of humanoid enemies)
2. Find someone who can help with art - or find some free models somewhere
3. Try anyways! Even if the art is lower quality, at least there will be some variety.
People will forgive a game with bad graphics - if the graphics are of a certain nature, or demonstrate a coherent vision, or are interesting or unique. But when a game's interface just screams "I AM A LAZY DEVELOPER WITH NO RESOURCES" - people tend to assume other elements of the game will be similarly shoddy.
RPG's are not a horrible genre for a "commando" developer - but you need to pick a simple graphical interface so that you can spend your time with the parts your good at (which, likely, is a rich gameplay system with a lot of "code content").
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
The MMO genre has a lot of potential when it comes to entertainment. As it gets easier to roll out MMO's (there are lots of up and coming third-party tools for creating MMO worlds and content) you'll see many new niche worlds. A dedicated handful of designers will be able to roll out an interesting virtual space for some niche market you've never heard of (like Alien Abduction Roleplayers or something) that has 100k customers world wide. Also, the worlds will become more free-form (like Eve Online) to allow the players themselves to provide a great deal of the content themselves.
While EA and Sony go after 'established' online genres (sports, killing orcs) you'll see plenty of smaller teams successfully building for everybody else.
I don't see consolidation in the next five years, rather expansion.
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