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US Gamers Spend $3.8 Billion On MMOs Yearly
eldavojohn writes "A new report from Games Industry indicates that MMO gamers in the United States paid $3.8 billion to play last year, with an analysis of five European countries bringing the total close to $4.5 billion USD. In America, the report estimated that payments for boxed content and client downloads amounted to a measly $400 million, while the subscriptions came to $2.38 billion. Hopefully that will fund some developer budgets for bigger and better MMOs yet to come. The study also found that roughly a quarter of the US population plays some form of MMO. Surely MMOs are shaping up to be a juicy industry, and a market that can satisfy people of all walks of life."
Does "Farmville" count as an MMO? Along with Mafia Wars and god knows what else? If so, then that number is probably conservatively low, judging from my Facebook newsfeed.
moox. for a new generation.
rather than what people spend on the games. And I mean at the workplace, not at home.
"a market that can satisfy people of all walks of life", count me out, I really hate MMOs. I might be biased though because I started playing back in the early 90's on various MUDs which were a) free and b) a lot more creative with their game mechanics. Give me a good old tabletop RPG any day of the week.
Why? Because MMOs will be what will eventually remain of games, at least A-Title games, in the forseeable future. Think of it: Recurring revenue, no copying worries, customer loyality even big brand names could only dream of today (aka fanboys that will defend any shit you cram down their throat) and even the "this sucks" lamenters will pay. They might not play (for now, when their favorite class gets nerfed) but they still pay!
Even add-ons are superior to sequels, despite (usually) not going for the same amount of dough. Think about it: A sequel may or may not be to your customer's liking, so he may or may not buy it. He WILL have to buy the add-on just to stay in the loop, like it or not, buy it or the months you "invested" in the game are wasted. And just like the main game, you will sell them not only today but for years to come. And when your next add-on is due, bundle the original and the first add-on and again you can sell them to all those that didn't catch on earlier. Oh, did I forget to mention that you can still sell your same old, dated game five years down the road? Yes, that's right. You can still sell your title five years after its initial release and people will still buy it! Now name a single non-MMO that can boast this (I'm not talking about the 2-bucks-bin here, ok?).
Wait, it gets better. If you craft your game carefully and make it juuuust easy enough that you can play it with half your brain's attention, people will actually go out and buy TWO, read it, TWO copies of your game. Or three! Or four! Watch people buy their own group, their own raid, their own ... well, however large you make your sensible grouping, you just have to dumb it down enough. And people will go and buy not one, but five or ten copies of your game and pay for every single one every month.
And since companies tend to follow exactly that logic, this is what we get: Shallow, repetitive, faceroller MMOs that fulfill only a single letter in MMORPG. And that's only if the servers are not offline.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Multiply that $319M by 12 months and the numbers make a bit more sense.
How can there be more people playing MMOs than there are playing video games at all?
Who funds this shit? (Blizzard) Who reads it? (Naive investors)
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/video-games-in-play/
I like to think of the MMO I play as hanging out with friends on MSN/Vent...with dragons!
The MMO gives my hands something to do while I chat to my peer group.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
140$/1 year = 11.67$ per month which is not that bad. Just try finding decent internet access or cable tv that cheap.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I've never played an MMO, and don't intend to start. I prefer to spend once for my entertainment, especially games, and even then most don't have replayability to justify $50 price tags so I wait a couple years until they hit the bargain bins.
Guess what? They both lead to obesity!
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
MMOs have a problem which is slowly creeping up on them, I guess the EQ crowd are already well familiar with it. As they release more expansions, all of which are required to play with the level capped players it becomes more and more expensive to enter the game. Over here in Aus WoW classic is about $40, Burning Crusade $50, and the latest pile of WoW is $60 - total price to enter the game is current $150 and then on top of that you pay about $24 / month to play. This means over the course of a year you will have paid out $438 and most likely only experienced the top level content. The rest will have been an endless grind of UPS/Kill/Kill+Collect quests - oh sorry, at lvl 60+ bombing quests are added to the grind. Unless you have a friend joining at the same time or one who will level with you you're stuck doing all this shitty content solo.
When the next expansion is out you will need to buy class+3 x expansions. I expect that to cost about $190 total and then subscription fees bringing one years playtime on WoW up to almost $500.
The amount of money you have to pay keeps rising, but the amount of useful content doesn't - it stays at the top level of the game. As soon as the gates are opened everyone floods out of the current top level zone and into the next, leaving only a desert behind.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Oh, did I forget to mention that you can still sell your same old, dated game five years down the road? Yes, that's right. You can still sell your title five years after its initial release and people will still buy it! Now name a single non-MMO that can boast this (I'm not talking about the 2-bucks-bin here, ok?).
StarCraft comes to mind.
For comparison, US consumers spent almost 10 billion in theaters and almost 9 billion on DVDs in 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704789404574636531903626624.html
Mac: Photoshop is not a game!
Win: Windows is not an OS!
Lin: You're STILL playing koules???
While MMOs are attractive, they aren't easy. An MMO requires a substantial investment to start up, far more than a single player game. Also MMOs are the sort of thing that there's more of a limit on how many there can be. Many people will pay for one MMO, far less will pay for two MMOs, and so on. As such to get in to the market you either have to get a new segment of gamers that weren't doing MMOs before, or take gamers away from MMOs already out there. With a single player game, you just have to convince someone they want to play your game, they may well play others.
MMOs will doubtless continue to be very popular, but they are hardly all that is going to be out there. I mean look at Blizzard they are -THE- kings of the MMO world currently, yet they are making Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, both non-MMO games. Reason is they know they'll make money on those too. Heck some of their WoW players will buy them. Just because people play MMOs doesn't mean they don't also play other games. I've played an MMO of one kind or another for about 6 years now or so. However I still buy single player games all the time. Just because I like MMOs doesn't mean that's all I play.
So sorry, I'm not buying this doom and gloom "Only MMOs are the future!" All evidence seems to say there will continue to be games of many different types. After all, MMOs are not new, yet game studios continue to roll out non-MMO titles as well as MMO ones.
As for your analogy, well guess what? Fast food hasn't taken over the world. You are right that I can find McDonalds all over my city. However I can find hundreds of non fast food restaurants too. There are sit down chain restaurants like Olive Garden or P.F. Changs, and there are plenty of little ones that are just someone running their own thing. Fast food has not replaced where you can go to eat, it has supplemented it. Also turns out that you can eat fast food for one meal, and then eat at a nice place the next, they don't get mad at you or anything.
I think it'll be the same for MMOs. Sure, a lot of people are going to play them, but it won't be the only thing they'll play.
Oh, did I forget to mention that you can still sell your same old, dated game five years down the road? Yes, that's right. You can still sell your title five years after its initial release and people will still buy it! Now name a single non-MMO that can boast this (I'm not talking about the 2-bucks-bin here, ok?).
There are quite a few games that are 5+ years old that are still in stores and not in the bargain-bin:
Civilization III
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Diablo II
Half-Life 2
Neverwinter Nights
Starcraft
Warcraft III
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
And these are just what I can think of off the top of my head.
It's rather amusing to me that in 2010 virtual worlds are economically more powerful than about 50 real countries. Population-wise, they beat about 100 real countries. While largely an irrelevant apples-to-oranges comparison, it does portend interesting changes in politics as decentralized global NGO-esk groups become larger and more powerful. Of course, while the current lot has a militia that's globally unprecedented in training and equipment, I think they're content enough within the virtual world to be basically harmless to the real one.
Uh, what? Even on Steam they're all on low priced sale. All of them.
But neither of you or the GP is correct. WoW and its expansions are also sold for really low prices now a days.
And you just described why I don't play MMO's. Why pay to "play" a game that's just designed to keep you playing as long as possible (fun doesn't even enter into the equation)?
Please!
Just because a game isn't selling for $50 anymore after 5+ years doesn't make the game "low priced." "Low priced" is not the same as bargain bin. Bargain bin is more along the lines of $10 or less, of which there are plenty of games there. The games listed are typically still sell for $20-30 in brick-and-mortar stores, which is typical price for a good, solid, PC game being that old. Just the fact that almost every store that sells PC games still sells the games listed, and not even in the bargain bin, says that the games still sell decent enough even to this day.
they also live at their MOMs
I think they did this poll outside a gamestop.
Really, you actually believe 72% of people over 50 play MMO games.
Geez, you think that maybe someone at gameindustry.com may have an incentive to exaggerate the numbers, just maybe
So then buy it where its cheaper.
I just looked Civilization III on Steam and its 4,99e with all the expansions. That's not low priced enough for you?
Why would you pay for any game you don't think isn't fun? However, many gamers find MMO's fun.
I have played WoW and while I still think its too much grinding and too less PVP, I still think it would be quite fun if I just had the time now. But I like crafting and building the world (I coded a similar project as a teen, even spend my school hours thinking how the AI would interact :), so I currently play Haven & Hearth beta, even if it's a little bit buggy but I like the concept.
MMOs replace Your father's love for mother She gets a webcam Burma Shave
But, then I listened to what most of my coworkers were doing on their time off. They were watching American Idol and Lost. So, what's the bigger waste of time? I quit playing MMOs when I saw how much time it was taking away from my regular "life management" chores.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Perhaps you thought you were posting to some sort of mainstream site and not slashdot? Condoms won't help me find a life in my mother's basement. The secret to finding a life down here is a microscope and agar-infused petri dish kept warm and with the cover left off of it long enough for me to watch Wierd Science. Just to make sure...maybe use the Q-tip to scrape the keyboard then scrape the same Q-tip across the agar solution...
Oh wow, one of the games on the list is offered for less than $20 through some random online vendor! That must mean every game on the list is like that, right? Right? No.
I posted a relatively small list of games that are typically priced between $20-30 that are 5+ years old. Obviously, those games still sell decently, otherwise they'd either be in the bargain bin everywhere for $10 or less, or not even sold at all. This was to show the OP that his assumption that games don't sell when they're that old is silly.
As for you, what are you even trying to get at?
You only need 6 condoms a month ? Sounds like you need *more* of a life !
As I look at the numbers, I want to know: Who is really seeing the 2.38 billion dollars in subscriptions? Blizzard of course comes to mind, but how many other thousands of little MMO games are there that have a subscription base of less than enough to protect Greece? 300 jokes aside, I don't see many companies sharing this great wealth.
Now, if the pool is being spread around some, anyone wanna help me make a game?
"it does portend interesting changes in politics as decentralized global NGO-esk groups become larger and more powerful"
Yes, they'll wield huge power in the form of e-petitions!
I hate condoms...
Whenever I watch people playing MMOs and have tried them myself, I've noticed that the graphical and story quality is far inferior to a game with a fixed beginning and ending.
It's the difference between episodic television and a film. A feature film has very high quality standard packed into every minute, because the entire story arc is contained within that time frame, and they can afford the best actors, director, vfx etc. for that hour and a half which will play to large captive audiences paying a one time fee to see it. Episodic television spans a much larger time frame, and the average episode is budgeted accordingly, with many sets and situations being re-used.
The top end of standalone games are extremely high quality and offer an excellence in storytelling that is unmatched in the MMO universe. They also keep your interest until the logical conclusion. With an MMO, you eventually lose interest and it just sort of fades away. A few MMOs have gone bankrupt and crafted actual 'endings' to their worlds, but that's as far as it goes. The whole point is to get people to keep paying that monthly fee, ad infinitum.
Playing MMOs is the equivalent to watching television. It's just scratching an itch of compulsive behavior.
My most recent game experience was BioShock II. What a great game in general, especially towards the end when it gets weird. Machinarium is a $5 puzzle RPG game on Steam that is very engaging and well crafted. I've played all the Half Life games as well, and most of the big FPS games going back to the original Doom. The industry has come a long way. Great interactive stories. I think the turning point was the original Unreal single player game, which dropped this huge and colorful world in your lap after the Voodoo cards made it technically possible. Since then we've experienced progressively more detailed and sophisticated storytelling as technology and budgets allow.
While MMOs have a higher dollar figure overall, I hope that highly produced downloaded content will always have a place. The multiplayer games I enjoy the most are the Starcraft type, where you can play a short campaign and be done. (no, that's not the same as going for a 'raid' in an MMO...)
I realize that there are two very distinct camps, and that the MMO players tend to be the younger ones with a lot of spare time on their hands. In any given Blizzard Q&A thread on Slashdot, the MMO related questions always far outnumber the Starcraft II / Diablo III questions, so the disparity in numbers is even evident there.
This report contains comparative data om MMO players across six surveyed countries. It comprises approximately 60 pages and 70 graphs. The product also includes a full table set comparing MMO players in all six countries across all questions of the survey allowing Zynga Poker Bot unlimited cross-analysis and detail. If required we will assist in interpreting the data making sure you get the most out of it for your sales, marketing, product development and strategy.
You should feel what some of those Amsterdam hookers can do with their mouths, even with a condom separating your johnson from her mouth. OMG, I had no idea safer oral sex could feel like that.
Or Super Mario Brothers.
Guess what? Comments from six figure boys really ARE that lame!
Go away.
I used to think like you did. I pooh-pooh'ed "Rent to PWN"
Then I actually TRIED one. And did a little math in regards to my entertainment expenses.
Two tickets is $15 (or more nowadays). And you sit for 90-180 minutes. Passive. Then you're done. If you want to do it again, you spend another $15.
With an MMO, $15 buys you roughly 43,000 minutes of entertainment (granted, you won't be able to USE all of that).
Realistically, if you play an hour or two a night, and take one day off to go do something else, you'll up to 720 minutes of entertainment a week (3,340 minutes a month) (more if you decide to play for longer stretches).
And while it's not *physically* interactive, it IS interactive, and can be quite engaging.
Yeah, everyone's heard about those who absolutely lose themselves in the game. Some even ignoring a bootie call when it's lying unclad on the bed not two feet from them.
And yes, there ARE games out there that feel more like jobs than games. This is what trial periods are for.
Find one you like and one that suits your entertainment needs enough to make you feel like shelling out a regular fee.
Also, there are FTP (Free To Play) MMOs out there, where just playing the game is free, though some advanced zones and character perks are cordoned off for paying players. Like D&D Online. You can play as much or as little as you want. And it won't cost you a penny if you don't want it to.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You can still sell your title five years after its initial release and people will still buy it! Now name a single non-MMO that can boast this (I'm not talking about the 2-bucks-bin here, ok?).
Let's see:
Notice something in common? They're all great games -- most games are pretty forgettable when compared to ones of this calibre.
I'd say that the current popularity of MMOs is mainly because of WoW, which brought MMOs to the masses while still being a great game. Before that, MMO gaming was a tiny niche and it will return to that unless another great MMO replaces WoW after its death.
Whenever I watch people playing MMOs and have tried them myself, I've noticed that the graphical and story quality is far inferior to a game with a fixed beginning and ending.
Try looking at something like AION before you get too firmly entrenched in that.
Also, try to remember that these games are played online and only so much data can be passed before the overhead becomes ridiculous. Yes, if you're playing a nice, self-contained game, they can try harder to max out the limits of the system you're on.
Also, exactly how in-depth is the story quality of most of the shared/PVP/online portions of said games? Most are simply elaborate boxes that players are dropped into and expected to beat each other's brains out in.
It's the difference between episodic television and a film. A feature film has very high quality standard packed into every minute, because the entire story arc is contained within that time frame, and they can afford the best actors, director, vfx etc. for that hour and a half which will play to large captive audiences paying a one time fee to see it. Episodic television spans a much larger time frame, and the average episode is budgeted accordingly, with many sets and situations being re-used.
There's also MORE than one arc in many MMOs. So you don't always have to take the same exact path every time you play.
The top end of standalone games are extremely high quality and offer an excellence in storytelling that is unmatched in the MMO universe. They also keep your interest until the logical conclusion. With an MMO, you eventually lose interest and it just sort of fades away. A few MMOs have gone bankrupt and crafted actual 'endings' to their worlds, but that's as far as it goes. The whole point is to get people to keep paying that monthly fee, ad infinitum.
On the flip side. Standalone games, you play once and that's it. You've done everything. There's some limited replay value in there with unlockables and increased difficulty settings, but you've essentially played the whole game. MMOs tend to have enough content that you can't simply sit down for 6-12 hours straight and play it all through.
What's more, MMO's while they would like you to keep paying (your entertainment dollars would go SOMEWHERE, so why not them?), are constantly improving and adding content.
As I noted elsewhere, Everquest is on it's 16th expansion since it opened up in 1999.
City of Heroes is also on it's 16th regular expansion since 2004 and number 17 is only a few months out. All for free no less. What's more, it's second major paid expansion is due out around the same time with a major revision of the graphical engine.
What exactly is "new" about your 5-10 year-old stand-alone games? How much replay value is there in them now?
The top end of standalone games are extremely high quality and offer an excellence in storytelling that is unmatched in the MMO universe.
I disagree. More, I think you're confusing flashy graphical work with storytelling. With stand-alone games, you usually have supporting material and a lot more cut scenes to do exposition. In MMOs, you have to do more exposition in mission setups.
And yes, there are just some story lines that are dogs. But there are others that are by turns scary, funny, sad, glorious, and just about any other descriptor you could care to use.
Playing MMOs is the equivalent to watching television. It's just scratching an itch of compulsive behavior.
I disagree even more strenuously. TV is a passive behavior. Decent MMOs are ANYTHING but passive.
While MMOs have a higher dollar figure overall, I hope that highly produced downloaded content will always have a place.
There's enough room for everybody.
I realize that there are two very distinct camps, and that the MMO players tend to be the younger ones with a lot of spare time on their hands. In any given Blizzard Q&A threa
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The point of Multiplayer games isn't to tell stories, it's to test your skillz against other players. I played starcraft and warcraft for years, but I only ever got an adrenaline rush when I was playing against non-AI opponents. I also play WoW, but mostly just to kill people in battlegrounds and arenas. Raids are fun the first couple times, but after you figure out the strats, it's the same as killing your robotic opponents in Bioshock. WoW to me is just CS with swords and magic instead of only guns.
When I want stories, I watch movies or read books. When I want a test of skill, I play games.
Well that is a fact
against music majors stupidity
who wants people to buy
disks and games and DVD...
Unfortunately,
unless my boss gives me more money
I cannot spend money on MMO plus other media.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Do you have a "pay once" internet connection. No you don't. Pay once cable? No you don't. Pay once newspaper? No you don't.
But somehow a game that you can play for years running on expensive servers with 24/7 support, must be paid once.
Gosh, for services, you pay per month. What a novel concept.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Hi guys, good to read your comments. I am Peter Warman, MD of gamesindustry.com, company behind the survey. Just to clarify: indeed, not 72% of 50+ play MMOs. Only 4% of female and 5% of male 50+ people play MMOs. You can see it by scrolling down the graphs here: http://www.gamesindustry.com/about-newzoo/todaysgamers_graphs_USA. The 72% accounts for all platforms. Elderly play mainly on online game portals. The money spent does NOT include Farmville or Facebook games in general. It DOES include kids MMOs/Virtual worlds such as HabboHotel and ClubPenguin. The respondents were selected from a huge panel that represents the complete nations surveyed. A lot of effort has been put in to get respondents representing the country. So we did not just ask gamers but all kinds of peopel evenly distributed across demographics. Please keep the questions coming.
I agree that the gameplay of the best standalone games is far superior to that of MMOs, as the latter tends to be relatively simple and immensely repetitive.
The complexity and most interesting dynamics of MMOs are in the social interaction and organization. How do you organize a group of people to perform some task? How do you deal with angry/obnoxious jerks? How do you resolve a conflict between two of your ingame friends who aren't getting along?
You can learn a lot about humanity and the skills needed to deal with it from MMOs. God knows I won't learn them otherwise while living in my mom's basement... :)
Don't be so fucking stupid, it means "free at the point of use". Everyone who isn't a pedantic asperger understands that.
Do you really think everyone else thinks stuff falls out of the sky, and you're soooooo much smarter because you know otherwise? Do us all a favor and kill yourself.
Ta-ta tatata ta taaaa ta ta.
One thing I've never really understood is why there is such a strong belief among many people that MMOs are a huge waste of time and suck the life out of people. I play WoW an average of two hours a day, judging from my /played time. Most of my co-workers seem to think I have no life because of this. (I have no life, but it's not because of WoW.) Most information I've seen shows the average American watching five or so hours of TV a day. I really fail to see why MMOs are considered so terrible by many people, but watching that much TV isn't...
On that note, WHAT THE HELL DO PEOPLE WATCH FOR FIVE HOURS A DAY, EVERY DAY? Do they just get home from work, turn on the TV, and watch it until they go to sleep? I'd be hard pressed to find five hour long shows to watch every day. Even with DVDs of my favorite shows, I can recall very, very few times where I've watch five hours of television in a single day, let alone every day for life...
=/
The US and European figures seem out of line. For example the MMO spend in the USA is 14x the total UK spend even though the population of the USA is only 5x that of the UK. Similar ratios apply for France and Germany. As a Euro gamer who often gets stuck paying €1 for $1 I am surprised the total US revenues are so much bigger.
Also the expenditure on virtual currency is very high (around 20% of revenues on average). Does this include "black market" gold bought from gold farmers? Given the fact that most big name games don't support legal gold selling it would seem likely.
Perhaps these questions are answered in the full report but the €4,950 price tag is beyond my budget.
I'm just wondering what % of these figures is just WoW, and what's the rest?
Guaranteed WoW is probably half of that figure....damn game, can't quit even if I wanted to....I gotta have the next tier gear.
Wait till cataclysm comes out, it will get even worse...more people will sign up pushing the overall subscriptions passed 14 million.
You are so right that Activision is planning to do exactly this with Call of Duty.
It's a shame we still don't have any modern console MMO's (and no, an ancient Final Fantasy XI port doesn't count as modern). Seems like someone could make a lot of money if they were a pioneer on this (Evercrack/WoW money I bet), so it's strange that no one seems to even be trying.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
While you will (and currently do) have a number of titles moving to the MMO model specifically to milk a rising niche in the games market, you are also seeing many MMOs starting to fail (Horizons, Matrix Online, London: Hellgate, etc ...).
You will always have some graff in any market but considering the production costs of an MMO (much greater then your average console game) I think the less substansive MMOs will start to weed themselves out (Champions Online is a good example of this).
... elves, dwarves AND trolls.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
This is why you slashdotters are so stupid when it comes to politics..
good luck finding jobs and don't forget to study your spanish
to pass the bilingual test on the job app you morons!!!.. HAHAHAHA
There's a tension intrinsic to the concept of a role-playing game, between "role-playing" and "game." I've found that it is nearly always resolved by abandoning one or the other aspect entirely, usually the "role-playing".
I've seen it pointed out that most combat soldiers never kill anyone -- that such is the case is pretty obvious, actually. But, in computer games, your avatar will kill hundreds or thousands of enemies in a short period of time. In an online roleplaying game, doing that isn't enough to be considered a competent fighter. This, in itself, profoundly undermines roleplaying. One usual consequence is that if you design a character so that the character makes sense in roleplaying terms, it's an ineffective character in game terms.
A lot of people get the idea that roleplaying means your character has stats and levels. That roleplaying is about collaborative storytelling, or even that there are tabletop roleplaying games without levels, seems to escape most. For those that have some inkling what roleplaying is, it's something that gets in the way of playing the game.
Occasionally, I've run into people who blow off the game aspect entirely, and just roleplay. I'm not crazy about that, either. Without the grounding of the game rules, it just drifts off into tedious wish fulfillment and soap opera.
I've come to think that true role-playing games are intrinsically unstable, and can only be continued with enormous effort. I don't see such efforts made by MMORPG developers. Consequently, I think MMORPGs are a waste of time.