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Online Games to Quadruple by 2011
ches_grin writes "A new report from DFC Intelligence predicts that the online game market will quadruple over the next five years, growing from $3.4 billion to more than $13 billion. Although previous studies have pointed to Asia as the leader in online gaming, this report suggests that North America may take the lead. MMO are expected to be the genre that drives growth, although casual games are also predicted to grow. Despite the predicted growth, the gaming market is not entirely rosy: 'On the downside, even with market growth many companies are likely to struggle to become profitable. A big problem is that the market is becoming more fragmented among different companies, types of products and markets.'"
World of Starcraft.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
and another report says that the market will dissapear by 2012, at the end of the fourth world, according to the mayas
WOW! (no pun inteded) . . . So this means we can look forward to a quadrupling of gaming-related deaths . . . awesome! And a quadrupling in the sizes of EverCrack Support Groups.
"'On the downside, even with market growth many companies are likely to struggle to become profitable. A big problem is that the market is becoming more fragmented among different companies, types of products and markets.'"
The problem with fragmenting is a symptom. A symptom of a bloated market, flowing with a variety of games but little true innovation. When you can't differentiate your product through innovative gameplay, your going to struggle. The bright side of this, for us gamers, is that is bloat will equalize itself, kill off the weak product offerings and help facilitate real innovation. That is where the real growth will occure, not more fish in the sea but bigger fish.
Demented But Determined.
I love how they seperate MMO's From Non-MMO's. They used the Term "MMO's and Casual Games" This would lead you to believe that all MMO's are not casual but rather lives that people live. There needs to be more Casual MMO's such as EVE Online, which doesnt credit you on Playing for 6 hours in one day. Rather is credits you on how long you have had your account online or off.
Skills are raised but training in that spacific skill. The skill will complete in a set ammount of time. Certin attributes affect it but only with minor numbers. You can then log off and still have the skill training. This is great for the casual gamer and is why EVE is ranked one of the top played MMO's.
Other MMO's need to learn from this and start creating more casual style MMO's
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
4 times the same old boring quests and killing rats for only $15 a month. Yipee!!
"But this one goes to 11!"
I'm getting tired of RPGs and FPSs.
It's called Infantry. Unfortunately, Sony bought to the rights to it and litterally nerfed the population.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
The whole "level advancement" thing can't be fixed by a one size fits all solution. Different players just want different things out of game. As Second Life seems to prove you don't even have to have levels, therefore no level grind at all.
You claim EVE as the great saviour but basically what you are saying that no matter how good I am or how much time I spend playing I will advance just as much as that guy that just logs in once an hour?
Oh wait, but that ain't the whole truth is it? I will have gained far more wealth and that buys me the best tools and that is EVE's version of levelling up isn't it? So it is still the player who puts in the most time/effort who has the biggest ship/avatar/epenis.
Any game in wich effort is not rewarded will be very shortlived. Eve just does it in a slightly different way. It works for Eve players, other players want something different. I would hope that any new MMO games try their own unique blend of gameplay rather then just copycat. Why yes, I do believe in Santa Claus, why do you ask?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"The problem with fragmenting is a symptom. A symptom of a bloated market, flowing with a variety of games but little true innovation."
You know what? You're right. So when is open source going to come up with some innovative games? Oh that's right. it's easier to be a critic than it is to be a creator. Apparently talk is cheap, and you paid full price.
as a mmo vet, i'm getting kind of tired of the same old stuff. unless the industry can produce a fundamentally different, engaging, content-driven game (with grinding to a minimum), i think that the industry will hit a ceiling.
it might bubble up occasionally, but people will see that its the same idea dolled up and inside a different box and it will sink back down. with the advent of wow, i couldn't imagine the mmo market doing much better than doubling, at best.
Has it ever occurred to these researchers and analysts that there is only so much money people are willing to put on games and entertainment. All gaming areas seem to get similar market growths, which makes the overall spending on games to increase too much to be realistic. I think they might be right about quadrubling the consumption but I doubt that market will be that much. These numbers mean that 100 million people need to subscribe to 10/month service. Compare that to WOW, which has "only" 6 million subscribers.
Besides my own experiences with WOW makes me think twice before subscribing and getting involved with an online game. I'm sure there are others who are not willing to spend 100+ a year for one single game.
Is Second Life really even a game?
SL appears to me to be the second-coming of those old text-based MUDs where all the content was put together by users. Now, I wouldn't really consider those "games" so much as "social environments." I mean, games are supposed to have a set of goals to reach through some given framework. As I understand, SL is pretty much an open-ended creation environment.
This assumes that people will still be interested in online gaming 5 years from now.
5 years ago:
I bet Hollywood would have thought box office receipts would have trippled by now
I bet the RIAA would have thought the fad of online music would be over by now
I bet Hummer drivers would have thought it would be cheap to drive a big ass cars now
I bet nobody figured George Bush would still be in office today.
I bet the makers of Duke Nukem Forever would have thought they would have released a game by now
The bottom line is, never get your hopes up.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The real reason online games are growing is freedom: No restrictions based on the size of the company. No ESRB. No Wal-Mart decency standards. No industry self-censorship. No distributors and publishers colluding with the bluenoses. No laws banning violence or sexual content. And, if such laws were to appear, the games would move to jurisdictions where they could not be shut down.
Freedom of expression isn't just a nice ideological point, it's profitable.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I do believe the MMO genre is a new way for a company to create a sustained flow of money. I see that a lot of companies are going this route probably due to the fact that the cost to start production on a new game is so high, and will continue to rise with Hi-Def around the corner. I believe this is why so many companies have jumped on the MMO band wagon. All a company needs to do is create a decent MMO, get a fairly decent customer base and working subscription cost, and they have a constant flow of money for awhile.
The down side however, is the MMO market is going to get oversaturated, if it isn't already. Every other game I hear about these days seems to be an MMO, and I can't help but wonder "where are the customers, the subscribers, coming from?" While I can see some people footing the bill for multiple MMO's, the nature of many MMOs is the "time-sink" which makes it so you have to put most of your time into one game if you want to get far, making it unlikely that many people will be playing multiple MMOs at once. This is what sets MMOs apart from Single player games (regardless of whether it has a multiplayer option or not). Single player games are one shot titles that are played, beaten, and then put down. Where as the MMO is a game that typically isn't one-shot, even at the "end-game" there is still more to do, though comparabily less from the beginning. And with added content every few months to an MMO, its a constant game, not so much a "one-shot" title.
As it stands, I believe the number of MMOs released will continue to rise but the numbers will dwindle back to something reasonable when companies realize there can only be so many active MMOs out. And unless a company is dam sure they'll have a game that turns heads and pulls people in, it'll be unlikely that they will release another MMO that requires a subscription cost, unless they want to come out at a loss. The solution here is to pull more gamers from the general population into the MMO craze, this should allow for more games to be realeased and maintained.
The only way I see the market for MMO games surviving is if they change the system. Honestly, I believe the current style MMO (with large servers and people) isn't really what people want, it might be what they think they want, but what I think people are really interested in is just a single-player game with a social aspect added in every now and then; and a stream of occasional new content. I think the best answer to MMOs might be smaller worlds/servers. Something like Neverwinter Nights but with a medium number of players(~500-1000 players) also playing along in a campaign. While I don't think its required, games might turn out better if developers know what they want in an MMO, do they want story/PvE play or more PvP action, right now developers/publishers seem to want both, and the mix seems to kill a game because no one can pull off a balanced mix very well.
Another way I can see large-scale MMOs surviving is if they just remove the bloody subscription cost on games altogether. See Guild Wars (ArenaNet/NCSoft). They have the right idea and have proven that it is possible to create an MMO that doesn't require a monthly fee to keep up the servers. And it makes sense that they pulled it off too, especially since the founders of ArenaNet were people that developed Starcraft. They knew you could create servers that run area-instances in a game. And they pull this off without a monthly fee. Blizz pulled it off with B.net, you didn't have to pay a fee to constantly play on the servers. Also, the fact that UO is still running, even with the small number of people still subscribed to OSI is proof that you don't need a lot of money to keep a server running. Ok this is turning into a rant, but my point has been given.
I suspect the "multi-game subscription package" approach is going to take off. How many people will pay for more than one monthly subscription? Darn few, I'll bet. But many would pay a bit more a month for a "universal" subscription to a bunch of games, even if they don't end up playing any more hourse a month. The advantage to the publisher is that players are more likely to stay with them, if they have multiple games - if one game gets old, they may still be hooked on another.
Within a couple of years, there'll likely be 2-3 top tier online game publishers, offering exclusive access to hot new games, and some number of second tier publishers that handle older games and new games from developers who don't quite have what it takes to produce a top-flight online game.
Before long, episodic online games will become the new rage - weekly updates with new quests, new story-line plot developments. The name of the game is "keeping subscribers".