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  • *music*

  • Hey folks welcome back!

  • This week we're going to talk about MMOs.

  • Why?

  • Because every week James is getting emails asking two questions:

  • Why do all modern MMOs fail?

  • and what do you think the future of MMOs is?

  • Well those are good questions and there's no time like the present so let's do this!

  • Those two questions are pretty intimately tied but let's start by tackling the first one:

  • Why do modern MMOs fail?

  • Short answer:

  • Because no one's thinking outside the box.

  • Longer answer:

  • Well it has a lot to do with psychology and business so you know... buckle up.

  • The principal reason that MMOs fail today is money.

  • You know how much it costs to make one of those things?

  • 60-100 million

  • dollars

  • With that kind of money you could buy a video game every 10 minutes

  • for the next 20 years and never run out.

  • If you carried that much money around in 1 dollar bills it would weigh slightly more than a walrus.

  • For most studios, a gamble of that size is a life or death risk.

  • Almost no independently funded studio has the capital on hand to even attempt a venture like that

  • that means everybody that's making MMOs has to answer either to a publisher

  • or a group of investors.

  • Investors want to know they're investing in a company not a project

  • because individual games tend to be very hit or miss

  • and they don't provide the kind of long-term stability most investors are looking for.

  • This leads new MMO studios to try and develop multiple games at once

  • or create a web portal or start publishing games before they've even finished developing their first product.

  • And while that might make sense on paper

  • in reality it's suicide for a starting developer.

  • Investors will eventually become more savvy about the game world but

  • the way things are now, MMO developers are having to split their resources and their focus in order to appease those investors.

  • And the result has been a pile of shoddy projects and cancellations.

  • Alternatively, MMO developers can work with larger publishers to get the funding they need

  • but the large publishers tend to be conservative when it comes to game design.

  • Historically they've preferred to re-skin game types they know will work

  • rather than trying to push the envelope.

  • And, as much as we love to push innovation here I have to admit - it's a good business policy.

  • Heck, it's given us a lot of good games!

  • It just doesn't work for MMOs.

  • Why?

  • Because console games are launched and then done,

  • you beat the single player, you mess around with the multiplayer for a ittle while but

  • then you move on.

  • They're not perpetual games

  • MMORPGs on the other hand

  • thrive on how much of the players time they consume

  • they're designed to be played to the exclusion of everything else.

  • People just can't play two MMORPGs at once.

  • Besides, MMOs are perpetual by nature

  • they're continually being updated and expanded

  • creating an effectively illimitable amount of content for the player to explore.

  • Couple that with the social bonds people form in these games

  • that keep them from leaving and you have a very limited market.

  • You see what I'm saying?

  • Let me put it more simply:

  • World of Warcraft is enormous.

  • It owns everything.

  • Nobody can compete with it because users aren't willing to play two MMORPGs at the same time,

  • and unless users migrate en masse

  • players will end up finding other games less fun because all their friends still play WOW.

  • This means many MMO players spend their entire MMO lifecycle in this one game.

  • And the size of the market for traditional MMORPGs isn't that large

  • it's probably close to its cap at about 20 million users now.

  • But! Because Blizzard is making a billion dollars a year on this thing

  • everybody wants to compete with it.

  • Unfortunately, it's so expensive to make an MMORPG that anyone who can afford to doesn't want to take any risks.

  • So they simply clone World of Warcraft.

  • The problem with this strategy is that no amount of minor mechanical or

  • graphical improvements will make a World of Warcraft clone better than World of Warcraft.

  • World of Warcraft has an enormous player base

  • a robust player-driven economy and well

  • everyone you know is playing it.

  • Add to that: that it has 10 years of development and content behind it

  • and it's simply impossible to build a WOW killer by cloning WOW.

  • And yet, billions of dollars have been spent attempting to do just that.

  • So... is it hopeless?

  • Should we just wait until Activision Blizzard comes out with World of Warcraft 2 or

  • Call of Guitar Craft or

  • you know whatever they've got planned.

  • So we just give up on the idea of making alternate MMOs entirely?

  • No of course not.

  • But it would probably be better for everyone if we stopped trying to make World of Warcraft clones.

  • So what should we do?

  • What will the future of MMOs look like?

  • Well first we have to ditch the idea that the terms MMO

  • and MMORPG are synonymous.

  • Today, all we have are MMORPGs

  • because everyone's trying to fight Blizzard over that little niche.

  • But think how many other genres are out there.

  • We could have MMO first-person-shooters.

  • MMO racing games,

  • MMO real-time-strategy and brawlers and puzzle games I mean, why not?

  • Why don't we see any of these things around?

  • I mean, I guess we kinda do, honestly. We can see the first hints of the future of MMOs

  • by looking to some Korean games like KartRider or Combat Arms.

  • Or smaller western productions like

  • Puzzle Pirates or Shots Online.

  • In the next 10 years I think we're gonna start seeing the MMO brought to every genre.

  • Why?

  • Because they don't compete with World of Warcraft,

  • and they're much less expensive to make.

  • A lot of those sorts of games wouldn't need the enormous 3D worlds that we've come to expect.

  • Because they aren't RPGs, these games could get away with smaller shared hub areas and private rooms for most of the social interaction.

  • Way cheaper that building a big-ass 3-D world,

  • and that lower cost means companies will be able to take some more risks and

  • and experiment in ways they couldn't afford to with MMORPGs,

  • which will, in turn, give us a new set of high quality games.

  • We're also gonna see social games blossom and evolve,

  • you might argue that Farmville isn't an MMO yet and certainly isn't that deep

  • but the next generation of social games will start to blur the line between themselves and web-based MMOs.

  • But, I have a feeling that most of you are still kinda wanting to know what will happen with MMORPGs specifically.

  • Well if I had to venture a guess about their future (which is always good for sticking one's foot in one's mouth)

  • I think the dominance of World of Warcraft will slowly come to an end in a few years.

  • Ofcourse by then Blizzard will probably have released some new MMO to pick up the slack

  • but there will probably be enough players who got their first taste of MMORPG through WOW

  • and are ready to move on to something different.

  • At that point, the landscape may open up enough for a few smaller MMORPGs to get a foothold,

  • so long as they aren't just World of Warcraft 2 clones.

  • I think one trend we'll start to see will involve more uncharted worlds,

  • worlds where all of the players play in the same place.

  • Kind of like EVE Online.

  • I think we'll start to see more emphasis on story too

  • eventually graduating to player-driven story lines.

  • We'll start to see a few ventures into user generated content which will meet with some limited success

  • and a strong trend away from subscription based gaming.

  • At first, these games will likely move to micro transactions

  • via in-game purchases

  • and eventually evolve into more mutually beneficial systems.

  • Such as uhh...

  • like

  • watch this ad, get some credit.

  • Or allow us to use 3% of your CPU to crunch some data and you can play for free.

  • We'll probably also see a lot more and a lot better web-based MMOs,

  • and last but not least:

  • We'll see the first attempts to cross over between MMOs, the web, and reality.

  • Your future games might end up sending you on quests to the local Starbucks or

  • to AlternativeRevenueStreams.com

  • Potentially tacky, yes, but it could be used in some interesting ways.

  • As you can see, there's still a lot of room for the MMO model to evolve and grow,

  • and it's gonna be pretty exciting to watch it happen.

  • But, I think we're out of time for now

  • until next week, feel free to email us your questions, thoughts, comments, violent assertions, misspelled accusations, or undying praise.

  • You can find our email address in the closing credits.

  • Your questions will help to us pick future topics so send us some emails.

  • Later!

*music*

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