Beta Report 6/06/03 The future of MMOG's

Posted by Christian June 05, 2003

Massive Multiplayer Online Games have been around for years now and the market is about to be totally flooded with a lot more. We are looking at over 40 games being released within the next few years. They will encompass every taste, from the online socializer all the way up to the die hard Role Player. You will see everything being released from ancient times, to the outer space futuristic style games. From Wild West shootouts, to Future Shoot outs. For a gamer, this is a wonderful time, but with all things, there could be problems.

First off, lets get a little background here. Everquest came first and still remains the strongest selling game with the most people involved. Shortly afterwards Ultima Online made its presence known and received a steady following. Now, with these styles proven, every software developer in the world is trying to get your monthly payment with some new and interesting style of game. One of the main reasons behind the development of these games ( from a personal observation ) is that they are a solid revenue generator, they draw good crowds, and most off all, they cannot be copied, stolen and passed around the internet, so no losses due to Pirating.

This is where the problems begin.

Over the years the market has been fairly steady with the same group of people playing the same game, paying their monthly fee along the way. There has been very little change in the number of people playing. So for arguments sake we are just going to use simple numbers here. We are going to say that there are 100 people playing online. Now I know this number seems way to low, but think of it as a breakdown of 1 Million people in a number that's easier to work with.

Of these 100 people that play MMO's we are going to take 40 people right off the top and put them in Everquest and Ultima Online. These are the two oldest games with the most people playing them. That leaves us 60 people left for other games. Now, we have other premium titles that are already out there like Shadowbane, World War 2 Online, The Sims, Planetside, Earth and Beyond.....etc. We will remove a further 15 people for these games.

Over the remainder of this year there will be about 20 more games being released, so we will remove 2 people for each game. This is a fairly general estimate, but with some of the games coming out such as Star Wars Galaxies, Horizons, Dragon Empires, City of Heroes and Final Fantasy 7, there will be a strong presence in these games.

We will take a further 10 people off that are involved with Beta Tests in these style games and are going to stay to play them afterwards. For arguments sake though, at the end of the Beta's, we will take half of them back leaving us with 15 people at the end of the year that are going to still want to play MMO's

Next year there will be another 20 to 30 games being released into the market.

So, you can see the problem already beginning to crop up. There will be more games than the market can handle coming out within the next few years. So what does this mean to the gamer at large ? It means that you better choose wisely or you will be out at the end of the year.

Market analysts have already predicted that some games are going to be failing within the next year or so with the first victim being Motor City Online. While this game was an interesting idea, it had targeted a specific audience. Problem is, this audience didn't feel that it should have to pay a monthly fee to play a game when you can only race 20 to 30 people at a time. If you are trying to get thousands of people to play this game.....well, you can see the problem, you would spend more time waiting to actually get in the game than playing it. Cap that off with the fact that you can go out and play games like NASCAR in online races, suddenly people just did not feel like paying anymore.

One of the strongest target audiences is not the North American audience. While they have the most money and the most people to throw at a game, realistically it is our Asian neighbours ( Korea, Japan and China to some extent ) that will be determining the way the market will work in these style of games. These markets are proven with high customer base and with a large following for specific games ( Ultima Online, Lineage and Everquest have dedicated servers for these markets ).

Now, don't get me wrong, North American people are some of the nicest people in the world, but if you look in game, there are always problems forming communities, groups and friends with the same interests. This is not the case with Asia. Look at Lineage, this game has done very well in Asia because it forces people into large scale combat in huge arena maps. This doesn't happen in North America. Lineage was released here over a year ago and still has never found a decent audience. The Asian market has carried it.

Other games coming along will try to appeal to all audiences, but once again, it will not have enough of ONE specific area. Therefore, while it will probably do decent, it will never do great because it does not have enough of any one thing to keep people interested in the game.

Then you get into game companies trying to make success of a franchise. Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, The Matrix Online, and to a lesser extent, Warhammer Online. These games automatically have hype around them because of the popularity of the franchise. These games will be an instant success and will draw allot of people away from other games.

But what if these games can't live up to the hype around them ? The people that left other games will head right back to them as fast as they came......and you will be left with half empty servers and a zero profit sheet for the developers. When games get to the point, they just turn the off switch one day and say " Thanks for giving us your money. We can't continue to operate with no profit so we will be shutting down the servers and we will talk to you later. We do have some other really nice games that you could play though......." . Electronic Arts did this with Motor City Online ( offered free entrance to Ultima Online.... even though these people didn't want to play it ), and they lost allot of customers in the process.

I left my Crystal Ball at work so I really cannot predict what is going to happen. Some simple advice to you though is that you don't believe the hype. Stick to your opinions and make sure about EVERY purchase you make. Simply because if you want the best out of a game, make sure about it, god only knows if you are going to get your money out of it. Most of all, make sure that you buy software that will suit what you want to do.

I guess the plain and simple truth behind it is that if it is too good to be true, it probably is.

Christian

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