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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.
I was going to RTFA, but I have a wow raid in a few minutes, so like, whatever.
You're standing in EB Games checking out the PC games. There are millions of options. Flight simulators, first person shooters, strategy games, and now MMORPGs. First, you consider the newest first person shooter, but then a thought comes to mind. "Hey wait, don't I own twenty copies of this same game? Aren't these all just the same thing? I'm an attractive guy that the ladies love and I shoot things. Yeah, I'll pass." Then you put down that box and study the strategy games in front of you. You're not quite sure how entertaining roller coaster tycoon 3 will be in a few weeks though. $50 is a lot of money after all. And then you step toward the MMORPGs. Now here's something a bit different! Something that you could play with your friends. Something that won't ever end! Why not buy this instead?
Let's face it. The video game market is flooded with terrible games that are the same thing over and over again. I mean, seriously, besides really little kids, who bought the Finding Nemo game? RPGs have always been better sellers than other titles because there is a strong market for them. It only makes sense that a game that also allows for social interaction AND is an RPG will sell out other video games.
Though, I personally dislike WoW. I'm all about Guild Wars.
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 was swept up into the WoW phenomenon for about a year, but once I hit 60 I learned that the end game wasn't really my thing.
I'm impressed you were playing video games at 59. It gives me one more thing to look forward to when I get old.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
Problem with TQ is that you basically play the same game through each time. Mobs are the exact same place with each character, maps are the same, etc. In D2 it was kind of like this but the randomization of the maps added a lot of replay ability.
:p
There is also WAY too much loot that drops in that game. There is no real money sinks so you just keep getting more and more money with nothing to spend on it. I've started not picking up items that aren't green or blue because there is simply no point. Speaking of items, there is no "chest" or something equivalent to it to store your items. This means if you are trying to collect a set of something you have to keep it on your person all times. Not a real big deal but it just annoys me, especially early on in the game when space is still a commodity.
Lastly, you can bring your single player characters into multiplayer so there is going to be rampant hacking.
Other then that, yeah, it's a great game.
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
You say that as if people only have time to smoke crack. I personally have never smoked it so I'm not sure what it is like, but I've certainly tried multiple drugs during a week before. Smoking hash one day and mary jane another or even crystal meth another. Why does crack have to be described like it is some massive life-sucking force that drains all your resources, time, and energy? I think people are overreacting just a bit.. it's just a drug.
For me the biggest problem was the monthly fee. It was like a clock ticking in the background. Why spend 8 hours playing a massive game of Civ4 when I'm paying WoW money per month, I should spend that time playing it. That for me was the biggest turnoff. It felt like I needed to spend all my time playing it or I was wasting my money. I've never been able to get into one game that hardcore, so I quit, bought a bunch of new games, and had more fun than I ever had playing WoW.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
Let's just play devil's advocate for a minute:
If one game stifles a whole industry resulting in lowered sales of other games and this consequently results in:
1. A bunch of copycat games trying to steal market share from the leader
2. Game development being cancelled on games that don't fit the business leader's model
3. Less diversity of choice for gamers - a flood of me too MMOs and lack of games in other genres
Well that would be a bad thing.
I don't really feel this is the case. I think MMOs will have a permanent impact on PC gaming, just as online FPS games did. Although Doom may have ushered in the LAN party, games like Quake and Unreal Tournament pretty much made online multiplayer a required feature of any PC FPS (yes there are exceptions such as Max Payne). It didn't kill the market, it just changed it.
MMOs are taking players away from single player gaming experiences. Since I started playing MMOs I have played (and purchased) a lot fewer single player games BUT I still play some.
WoW isn't going to be the #1 game for all of eternity. The market will change again and who knows what the next big thing will be.
The Titan Quest developer's biggest problem may be simply that people aren't interested in another Diablo style clicky action RPG. I was kind of surprised that Dungeon Siege 2 did as well as it did. I literally fell asleep playing the first one. And I'm a gamer who spent hundreds of hours playing the Diablo series - I guess I just burnt out on that play style. At least until someone does something really innovative with it.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
1/ Rip off Diablo 2
2/ ?
3/ No profit
4/ Blame MMO by same company
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
Many people complain that WoW either sucks up your whole time, or you don't get anywhere. That's not true, you can easily play the game two evenings / week and still see the whole end game content.
The solution? Find a group that's *organized* (i.e. has a webpage and a forum). Their raids have fixed schedules. You show up at 7:50 p.m., buff up, raid starts at 8:00 and at +/- 23:30 you can go to sleep. Since the big raid instances only reset once a week, you don't have to do more than two evenings (and if your group is getting really good, you can even clear MC in 4 hours), which you would have wasted with reading slashdot or watching TV anyways.
- Rhonac (60 Shaman on Thunderhorn EU).
You really believe EVE could be as popular as WoW and have no shards? I played EVE for over a year and a half (I was in the Jericho Fraction and Aegis Militia for most of it) and for most of that time it was unplayable at peak hours or in hub systems. Even CCP were smart enough to create a separate shard for the Chinese market, and that will probably be broken into more shards if it gets really popular over there. EVE has around a hundred thousand active players, WoW has millions, you couldn't buy a pipe fat enough to allow hundreds of thousands of people to play on the same shard (and even if you could the game wouldn't work with thousands of people at the same system let alone the same planet).
And the main difference between EVE and WoW is that WoW is casual. I was a high end player in EVE and there was far to much work involved in keeping an effective PVP corporation going (logistics is what wins wars in real life and EVE). It was a second job to the people that did it. People whine about having to put in eight hours a week to do end game in WoW, the logistics people I knew put in eight hours a day, and high end PVP corps expected you to be on call whenever you where online (Band of Brothers). I got sick of a game being like a job (it took me three days to move my gear from one base to another) and now I play WoW. And the PVP is just as good, with none of the problems of having to go to extremes to find targets, or a 5:1 ratio of grinding to PVP, or every second PVPer being rigged to run away rather then fight.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
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