Slashdot Mirror
World Of Warcraft Crushing PC Game Industry?
simoniker writes "Age of Empires co-creator and Iron Lore co-founder Brian Sullivan has been discussing his studio's first game, Titan Quest, but along the way has openly wondered whether World Of Warcraft's success is part of the reason for the decline of the PC retail game market. Sullivan commented: 'For retail PC games, I think the biggest problem is World of Warcraft... It is such a compelling MMO game that it sucks up a lot of money and time that would normally be spent on other retail PC games.' Does WoW's growth actually mean that PC games in other non-MMO genres may sell fewer copies?"
As for making a name for themselves in the market, Sullivan feels that some of the biggest competition comes from MMOs, not because they are competitors in the genre, but because people simply enjoy playing them so much.
...Really, that isn't an argument, it's stating the obvious.
His entire argument is that any game that's more popular than his, especially MMOs, takes away from his game.
Gamers are an educated demographic, for the most part, and have fantastically high standards. When something that comes out is so good that it shakes up the entire industry, complaining about it will get you nowhere. It's kinda like he's making an "I'm hardcore and therefore better!" argument, but applying it to the big kid on the block (yes, WoW is a "casual" game in many respects, but he's not addressing that aspect).
And even at all that, aspiring to understand why it's so wildly popular so that he may make better games seems to have escaped him.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Ok, it may be that people are caught up in WoW. But that will fade eventually. Then they'll move on to something else.
And then there's people out there who, like me, look at WoW and go "Geez, I don't have the time to devote my life to this." and never play it. I've looked at it in fascination, but I've also woken up on Sunday after a long binge of Civilization X, and wondered where my weekend went. Those experiences taught me that I need to pick my gaming prudently. So I don't play WoW. I've already seen people's lives disappear when they start playing.
Also, like any other "where are the gamers?" question, you need to make sure the games you're making are fun or you have no room to complain.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure I'd love to play WoW, but I have a job, I take night classes, and I'm trying to find that elusive thing called "girl". Dumping time into the hole of WoW would kill off at least one of those. And I think when I'm 50, I'd rather look back on the fun times I had with (eventual) children than fun times I had with avatars in a world that didn't exist.
Maybe it's just me.
Reeses
Personally, I can't stand WoW - I just don't much go in for that "I put on my robe and wizard hat" crap, but something else did turn out to hook me in rather completely - in my case, it's EVE Online. Since I've started playing that, I haven't spent any time with CS:S, BF2, or any of the other titles I generally spent time on (not even GTA).
I'm not saying the game I like is better than the game in the article, but what I do observe is that a well-crafted MMOG can pull a player in for hours and weeks at a time. I know I don't bother considering buying games right now, because I know that I probably won't play them - hell, I'm not playing the ones I already have. So you have probably four big MMOGs dominating the landscape, which is great for Blizzard, CCP, etc., but the rest of the industry sees a decline.
So what's the problem? If you want to compete with the market leaders, produce something more compelling, exciting, shiny, and innovative than what's out there. Don't whine that better games are eating your lunch. From what I see, the big MMOGs are winning because they are that good. Now, if someone were to put out a spaceship-based MMOG where you could dock into a station, exit your ship, and engage in FPS combat to take over the station, land on the planets to do missions, PVE, PVP, world-building, etc., I'd be in line at midnight to give it a try. I bet if someone did a robe-and-wizard-hat MMOG where there were no shards or instances (a-la EVE's ginormous server cluster with anywhere between 15,000-25,000 players on at any given time), then you'd see guys in tunics camping outside Fry's.
In the games industry, if you can't beat 'em, go work for EA, where you can at least be sure of steady income for producing shit rerun knockoffs. Or you could do better, and actually beat 'em.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
It's not about WoW taking all of the gamer's money. $15 a month is not even a dent in even a casual gamer's entertainment budget.
It's about time. Between work, WoW, and the occasional outing into the real world, there is no time left for these other games.
In fact, WoW has actually SAVED me money. Now I spend $15 a month for my gaming needs, instead of the $200 I previous spent buying a new game every week.
I'm sorry that you have a half-dozen friends that have no self control, but from personal experience, this statement is false.
My roommate, my girlfriend, several other friends, and myself all play WoW. Yet somehow, we manage to maintain education, employment, church attendance and participation, and interpersonal relationships, trips to see family, and even playing other games, watching movies, reading books, and playing sports. Oh, and we still manage to get a good amount of sleep every night too.
The problem isn't that WoW allows you to play for more than 3 hours ( from time to time, my friends and I have been known to play the game all day long ). The problem is that your friends have decided that they like the game enough to play for long periods of time every day ( or most days ). They made a choice as to what was most important to them - in this case, it was the enjoyment they get out of playing WoW.
Personally, I'd be pissed if this ever were to happen - when I want to play WoW for a long time, I like having the choice to do so.
Please ignore any obvious problems in this post.
I was a heavy player of WoW for almost a year. From the initial release in 2004 until about early spring of this year. I just got tired of the grind after getting to 60 in June of 2005. My brother continues to play to this day but I just don't see the fun. I might check it out when Burning Lands or whatever it's called shows up but I've since discovered some decent games to play for fun like BF2 and others.
I'm sure there are a lot of others like me who didn't feel like raiding another dungeon yet again for that one piece of armor
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I've stopped buying PC games, but not because of WoW - I stopped playing WoW almost a year ago. PC games just don't appeal to me anymore because most of them aren't any good. PC games have devolved into just a bunch of "sequels," however, many of them are not so much sequels as they are blatant knockoffs of games that were hits in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I still own most of the originals, and I can just go play those again - no need to pay extra just to see some more polygons.
It doesn't help that the cost of a high-end video card has become absurd - I used to get a nice midrange card for $250-$300, with prices in the $400-$500 range, I'd be better off to buy an Xbox and not go through the hassle of upgrading my mainboard, video card, RAM, and CPU just to be able to play games that are just going to give me deja vu.
If PC game developers want to woo back gamers, they need to start making games that are worth the costs. Right now I just don't think they're doing that.
WoW is to PC Games what Magic was to pen & paper RPGs. Sort of. I remember back in the early nineties when Wizards of the Coast was a > 10 employee shop that published this little Card Game called Magic. All hell broke lose and 4 years later the RPG market was crushed beyond recognition. The only ones that survived and still are around and not bought by Hasbro or crushed are Steve Jackson Games and Palladium Books.
I have the feeling WoW is doing the same. It's the only game that's still selling well that runs well on my box. Guild Wars only means of success is being not like WoW and cheaper (free) to play.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
15 years ago you could find text adventures on the shelves at Babbages. I could actually find a decent turn based war-game by SSG. Now if you want ANY of these (or other types of games) you have to go online and order/download.
What is popular is determined by what is available and what is available is determined by what is popular. It's a vicious cycle which ends up homogenizing the prime shelves of the stores. An addicting fun game can still sell, but unfortunately game companies (and more importantly investors) see a direct correlation between funds re-cooped in development cost and cost of development. It's the "Hollywood" effect happening to games. Big special effects, star power, etc are banked on to get BIG sales. Software retailers have become like grocery stores where they only make decent money if BIG volume sells.
As a result, the store has BIG name games, with BIG development costs, BIG advertising and what investors hope will be BIG returns.
I've often thought about how Richard Garriot sold Akalabeth at a Game store. That just couldn't happen today. Not because games arent good, but because there is no way for games like his to get the exposure they need.
Somebody needs to come up with a way to get the independent game market back into the minds of consumers. Get the best games (independant) packaged with Dell, or Apple. I don't know..but there needs to be some creativity in thinking about how to get the word out.
Nonsense, it's an artificial comparison to compare the expense on a per game basis. Instead, look at the cost per hour of gameplay and do the math.
Let's say that I play games 25 hours a month, a fairly casual gamer. Each traditional PC or console game (Civs aside) take about that long per game, plus or minus 10 hours. So let's say I'll buy 8 games a year - at $40-$60 per new game, that's $400/year. That's compared to $50 startup plus $15/month the first year of WoW, or $230/year. So even if you buy a couple of other games (the only other game I've bought in the last year was Civ IV, which has a shorter-but-similar "long playtime" effect), you're still ahead of the game.
If you game more than that per month, MMOs are even more economical. Clearly, less money is being spent in total on games in that scenario, which I contend is a lighter-than-usual gamer.
The issue isn't the money that's being taken in by WoW, it's the player time. People aren't not buying other games because they can't afford them, they're not buying them because they don't have the time to play them.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny