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Do MMORPG's Cause People to Buy Fewer Games at Retail?
Grimwell writes NPD reports that the video games industry isn't doing so hot in 2006. Information on a report found at GameSpot indicates that consoles are down, but PC titles are up, led by MMORPG sales. From the article:
"Do MMORPG's benefit the industry by bringing in more actively involved gamers? Or do they bleed money away from other companies in the industry as MMORPG players spend their money on subscriptions and skip out on trying other games that hit the shelf because they already have something to go home to?"
Do MMORPG's Cause People to Buy Fewer Games at Retail?
Yes? How hard is it to realize that paying $15/mo for (similar) entertainment is a better option than shelling out $50 every few weeks?
well , its less distributed... but I mean they spend 10-15 USD a month on these games... it's just voting with dollars. the Industry should respond acordingly
I haven't bought nearly as many games in the time I've been playing World of Warcraft.
The time I have that can be allotted to video games is simply taken up. That doesn't mean I'm not spending just as much money on games now as I used to, just that all my money's going to Blizzard, rather than being spread out.
Shinma
You can't just "beat" an mmo.
they take a long time to play.. they have very comprehensive worlds, thousands of items, quests, plot arcs.
a lot of the newer generation games are open "world" environments. They could potentially be played for a human's entire life because they are fully open ended.
I failed to bookmark the post, but the best case i've seen made on this was a post regarding EVE online.
The thing has 4,000 star systems and hundreds of thousands of players who carry on alliances and trade. There are even huge wars with massive armadas fighting it out for territory.. it's like an interactive version of babylon 5.
Heck.. there are still hardcore people playing the vintage 2001 release of gamecube PSO because they are hard core legits and want to find hard to find items without hacking them.
Meanwhile FPS games are generally very limited. They generally few enough maps to count on your hand, and similarly few weapons. Further an argument can be made that all games from the same generation are fairly the same save causmetics.
Weather youre shooting with a wwII era thompson or a covenant needler.. its pretty much the same experience either way..
this all leads to people getting bored quickly and moving on.
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Yes, very true, fully agree. I recently broke the MMORPG addiction, for the 3rd time, and haven't bought many new games since. I am enjoying talking with people and going out of doors (although the sun did hurt for the first few weeks of trying to go out in it).
If games are so short and unreplayable that people have to buy games that often, then something seriously needs to be rethought.
Huh? From the perspective of the publisher, that sounds like an ideal situation. Maybe a starry-eyed idealist programmer would agree with you, but to the bean counters, expensive frequently purchased trinkets is exactly what should be done.
So how do you make phone calls? What about your internet service? Cable TV? What do you do for haricuts? All of those are services. You pay for it, you get your service, then after some finite amount of time, the service you paid for is gone and you have to pay again to keep it.
MMORPGs are more of a service than a commodity.
But if you would rather think of it like a commodity item, think of it like this: you pay for it once and have it, it only lasts for a month though. Just like a haircut.
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I remember back when companies like SSI were putting out titles that they rated as 50-60 hours of game play. These titles normally lived up to the claims too. But in today's gaming it seems like the game play is shorter. Just look at HalfLife2, HL2 episode one, the Hitman series, etc etc where these games could just be absolutely crushed in under 10 hours.
There are few "long term" games today and most of those are RPGs (NWN and TOE come to mind) and few first/third person "shooters". Personally I was a big fan of the Thief series of games and it would take about 30 hours for each installment if you did it "right". You don't find many games like that today.
But then again there is the somewhat recent increase in game modding too... How many people are still playing the original Counter Strike today? Where would that time have gone if the gamer didn't have CS? Granted, it helped to keep the original Half Life out of the bargin bin but the number of hours spent playing online (and not just MMORPGs) adds value to the original product. Perhaps that's another aspect of this issue that should be reviewed. I know I have about 200+ hours in on CSS at this point. That's more time than I've logged into EQ2 since I got HL2.
Thief also should be noted as having fan missions. There are just tons of them and some are even better than the original maps. It helped add more time to the game. So this too added value and took time away from a new game to devote to an old original.
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At least in my case, yes, MMORPG's suck my dollars away from other games, but that's only part of the problem. Oblivion was the last game that really caught my interest as 'must-have', and Spore is the next one I'll be looking to buy. That's a really long gap between games, and it's not like I'm picky about genre, either. Console RPG like Final Fantasy and racing games like Gran Turismo, PC single player-focused FPS like F.E.A.R., online FPS like Day of Defeat: Source or UT2K4 or Battlefield, PC Strategy like Warcraft III or Civ IV, PC RPG like Oblivion...
... ...see? Games companies are in the same boat as Hollywood last summer. Sure, there are some factors relating to changes in customer behavior that are hurting sales a bit, but when you get down to it, the industry simply is not releasing much, and what little they are releasing is, by and large, crap.
There are lots of games types that I love and will happily pay for, but the fact of the matter is, there aren't very many quality games, regardless of platform or genre, being released lately. Oh, I'm sure I'll get a few replies to this pointing out people's personal favorites, but how many games have come out in '06 that really jump to the forefront of your mind as something that you heard about, planned to buy, -did- buy, and were very happy with -and- was widely popular? Let's see, TES IV: Oblivion, and...uhhhhm...
Unpleasantries.
I agree. It's purely a matter of free-time. MMORPG reward you for spending LOTS of time.
You buy Quake 17, you spend 40 hours of play time beating it, and then you go back to your MMORPG.
a) you are "wasting" your subscription payment by not spending time on your MMORPG
b) all your friends have now advanced by 40 hours, but you haven't moved. depending on the game, this can make it hard to group with your friends, until you can catch up.
Because the MMORPG lasts for years, any other game is viewed as "temporary". Why spend a month playing Quake 17, when you could play your MMORPG and grind out another level?
The game industry should HATE MMORPGs, since they suck up all available free time, leaving the gamer with no time to play 5 new games each month (or even 1). Only the MMORPGs benefit.
You are absolutely correct. I bought my wife WoW the day it came out. It included a 10 day free trial for me. We both started at the same time. I couldn't find another copy to buy for 3 months. Her first character was already level 28 or something by the time I got the game. (i was level 9)
:)
She started a new character with me. Since my first love is FPS games, it always ends up with her 20 or more levels ahead of me by the time I play Wow again. I only spend 5-10 hours a month playing WoW and 20-30 playing Enemy Territory. I can never keep up with her and I often need to play WoW to talk to her.
Another problem with the industry is that most people don't play games very long. Most of my friends don't stick with a game long enough to get more than one or two plays in with them online. Its costly keeping up. One minute battlefield 2 is hot and the next they are playing guildwars. I can't keep up anymore. I miss playing Doom or AOE2 for 5 hours with friends, etc. I've got literally hundreds of games collecting dust because no one else has them or wants to play them anymore.
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"but to the bean counters, expensive frequently purchased trinkets is exactly what should be done.
The bean counters need to worry solely about the quality of the game, and not the overall frequency of purchase for gamers in general. The games industry, like the movie industry has a long tail of shitty, not-worth-the-money games, and a gamer only sees about one or two games a month that is good enough to splash out €60 on and fits their taste in games.. The long tail of poo is not where the games industry makes it's money.
If this number of good games was zero as in your scenario, and the only thing that people were able to purchase were short, shit games that cost €60 and were immediately disposable then people wouldn't bother remaining gamers, they'd switch to movies or music, (and Jack Thomspson would have to get that which he needs so much, a real job).
The bottom line in the games industry is that quality sells and keeps the industry alive- other hangers-on are just there to make up the numbers, through accident or design. It's not like you can even release the games industry equivalent of the Adam Sandler movie (I see he has another steamer out this month) and expect to make a profit- games makers don't have much of the type of unaware-how-shit-this-thing-is audience that movie makers have.
In the TV world, the real sellers are 24, Lost, Sex in the City, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, CSI. No TV beancounter would dare say 'hey lets fund another 10 series of family fortune' instead of any of these shows no more than a games industry bencounter would say 'you know what, I think it's time we made another Sonic sequel' because he could be funding another Battlefield 2, World of Warcraft, Oblivion, Ghost Recon:Advanced Warfighter- projects that keep the games industry alive and make it worth it to be a gamer in the way that Lost and 24 makes it worth it to buy a TV and put up with advertising.
If you build it (and it's good) they will come.
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The bean counters need to worry solely about the quality of the game, and not the overall frequency of purchase for gamers in general.... If you build it (and it's good) they will come.
This is a lovely picture of how the world ought to be, but it is not an accurate one. As in pretty much every other area in the world, a high quality product is neither necessary nor sufficient to generate profit.
Quality costs money, and people are willing to sacrifice quality to save money. This is true in the game industry, just as it is true in all other aspects of life.