Panamah
02-22-2004, 01:12 AM
A look at (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/02/19/flood_of_games_too_few_players_cause_change_in_onl ine_realm/) companies finding the MMO market not what they hoped.
Could too many MMO's spell disaster for all of them if the playerbase is spread too thinly to support any one game?
Prompted by the recent canning of Mythica and URU: Live, The Boston Globe have whipped up an article which looks at the current MMO market and the problems facing developers as they try to capture gamers' imagination and emulate the success of EQ. This quote from Jeffrey Anderson, CEO of Turbine Entertainment (Asheron's Call) sums the situation pretty well. "It's like we all decided we all wanted to create our own version of MTV."
Flood of games, too few players cause change in online realm
Mythica was a realm like no other, a grim, glorious land in which brave men and women embarked on perilous adventures in a quest to join the company of the gods.
Until the geeks at Microsoft Corp. had second thoughts and pulled the plug on it.
Mythica was to have been Microsoft's major entry into the market for persistent online role-playing games -- the kind where a player joins an extended online community in which life goes on even when the player has logged off. There's certainly a market for games like these. EverQuest and the new Star Wars Galaxies, both run by Japan's Sony, each boast hundreds of thousands of avid players.
But other companies are finding it surprisingly hard to duplicate Sony's success. Microsoft abandoned Mythica last week, even before the game was officially launched. "We were looking at the . . . market and really determined that we couldn't be competitive," said Microsoft spokeswoman Genevieve Waldman. The company says it's not giving up on role-playing games; it's working on a title for its XBox console gaming platform. Still, the abandonment of Mythica just months before its release showed that Microsoft is doing a serious re-
think about the viability of online role-playing games. Perhaps more remarkable was last week's decision by the French game company Ubisoft to shut down Uru Live, the online component of the successful single-player game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst.
The game was the latest installment in the Myst series, one of the most popular in the history of computer gaming. The single-player version has sold more than 350,000 copies worldwide, making it a solid success. It might have seemed that the millions who've played Myst games over the past decade would be eager to sample an online version. Not so. Only a handful of people signed up, forcing Ubisoft to shut it down. "We did not have the right indications we needed that it would be successful," said Jason Rubinstein, general manager of Ubisoft's online gaming business.
Then there's the online version of the Sims from Electronic Arts Inc. Although the game's stand-alone version has sold millions of copies, only 80,000 people play the Sims Online. Though EA officials have no plans to shut down their online world, they freely admit the population remains far below their hopes.
What's gone wrong? Nothing that fewer and better games can't cure, industry watchers say.
Spurred by the success of EverQuest, lots of companies began launching persistent online role-playing games, without thinking through the demands of the market. "Too many products got created, to be used by too few customers," said Jeffrey Anderson, CEO of Westwood-based Turbine Entertainment Software, developer of another successful online game, Asheron's Call. "It's like we all decided we all wanted to create our own version of MTV."
Actually, it's worse. Nearly anybody who likes pop music might check out the various MTV imitators for a minute or two. But there are millions of gamers who'll never try an online role-playing game.
First, there's the price. Millions of people happily pay up to $50 for the latest game software. Role-playing games require that kind of investment and more -- as much as $15 a month to retain membership in the fantasy world. That's $180 a year per player. This steady stream of revenue is one of the things that attracts game companies to the online role-playing market, but it also scares away customers.
Then there's the complexity. Each player must create a character, then spend hours building up an inventory of skills or gold or weapons, before he can actually get down to killing monsters or building empires. "There is a time commitment to these games," sad Haden Blackman, producer for Star Wars Galaxies at LucasArts in San Rafael, Calif.
Not a bad thing for those who like this kind of gaming. But they're a tiny minority compared to the millions who merely want to pass a quiet hour solving puzzles or slaughtering monsters.
Besides, some of this skill building is downright dull. Even avid players of the Sims walked away in disgust from the online version, where skills are often acquired by having one's character sit in a room reading for an hour or two.
That's why game designers are rethinking their approach to role-playing games. The idea now is to offer a two-tiered game, in which casual players can pop in for a brief bout of excitement while more diligent fans can play out their more complex fantasies. Over time, a percentage of the casual players will become more dedicated, swelling the ranks of hard-core players who might spend a dozen hours a week inside the game.
LucasArts' Blackman said Star Wars Galaxies has already adopted this style of play. There are mini-adventures built into the game that allow the occasional player to have a satisfying one-hour visit. "I think we have to design with that kind of time limitation in mind," Blackman said.
"We call it short play cycles," Turbine's Anderson said. "We need to be designing games that satisfy people who want to play four hours a week as well as people who want to play 40 hours a week." Turbine hopes to add such features to its forthcoming online games -- one based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," another on the classic board game Dungeons & Dragons.
Given the popularity of these two franchises, Turbine's online versions will attract plenty of digital rubberneckers when they debut. But to keep them, the games will have to offer enough simple thrills to amuse casual players and enough sophistication to turn them into role-playing addicts. That's no small challenge -- it even scared off Microsoft.
Could too many MMO's spell disaster for all of them if the playerbase is spread too thinly to support any one game?
Prompted by the recent canning of Mythica and URU: Live, The Boston Globe have whipped up an article which looks at the current MMO market and the problems facing developers as they try to capture gamers' imagination and emulate the success of EQ. This quote from Jeffrey Anderson, CEO of Turbine Entertainment (Asheron's Call) sums the situation pretty well. "It's like we all decided we all wanted to create our own version of MTV."
Flood of games, too few players cause change in online realm
Mythica was a realm like no other, a grim, glorious land in which brave men and women embarked on perilous adventures in a quest to join the company of the gods.
Until the geeks at Microsoft Corp. had second thoughts and pulled the plug on it.
Mythica was to have been Microsoft's major entry into the market for persistent online role-playing games -- the kind where a player joins an extended online community in which life goes on even when the player has logged off. There's certainly a market for games like these. EverQuest and the new Star Wars Galaxies, both run by Japan's Sony, each boast hundreds of thousands of avid players.
But other companies are finding it surprisingly hard to duplicate Sony's success. Microsoft abandoned Mythica last week, even before the game was officially launched. "We were looking at the . . . market and really determined that we couldn't be competitive," said Microsoft spokeswoman Genevieve Waldman. The company says it's not giving up on role-playing games; it's working on a title for its XBox console gaming platform. Still, the abandonment of Mythica just months before its release showed that Microsoft is doing a serious re-
think about the viability of online role-playing games. Perhaps more remarkable was last week's decision by the French game company Ubisoft to shut down Uru Live, the online component of the successful single-player game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst.
The game was the latest installment in the Myst series, one of the most popular in the history of computer gaming. The single-player version has sold more than 350,000 copies worldwide, making it a solid success. It might have seemed that the millions who've played Myst games over the past decade would be eager to sample an online version. Not so. Only a handful of people signed up, forcing Ubisoft to shut it down. "We did not have the right indications we needed that it would be successful," said Jason Rubinstein, general manager of Ubisoft's online gaming business.
Then there's the online version of the Sims from Electronic Arts Inc. Although the game's stand-alone version has sold millions of copies, only 80,000 people play the Sims Online. Though EA officials have no plans to shut down their online world, they freely admit the population remains far below their hopes.
What's gone wrong? Nothing that fewer and better games can't cure, industry watchers say.
Spurred by the success of EverQuest, lots of companies began launching persistent online role-playing games, without thinking through the demands of the market. "Too many products got created, to be used by too few customers," said Jeffrey Anderson, CEO of Westwood-based Turbine Entertainment Software, developer of another successful online game, Asheron's Call. "It's like we all decided we all wanted to create our own version of MTV."
Actually, it's worse. Nearly anybody who likes pop music might check out the various MTV imitators for a minute or two. But there are millions of gamers who'll never try an online role-playing game.
First, there's the price. Millions of people happily pay up to $50 for the latest game software. Role-playing games require that kind of investment and more -- as much as $15 a month to retain membership in the fantasy world. That's $180 a year per player. This steady stream of revenue is one of the things that attracts game companies to the online role-playing market, but it also scares away customers.
Then there's the complexity. Each player must create a character, then spend hours building up an inventory of skills or gold or weapons, before he can actually get down to killing monsters or building empires. "There is a time commitment to these games," sad Haden Blackman, producer for Star Wars Galaxies at LucasArts in San Rafael, Calif.
Not a bad thing for those who like this kind of gaming. But they're a tiny minority compared to the millions who merely want to pass a quiet hour solving puzzles or slaughtering monsters.
Besides, some of this skill building is downright dull. Even avid players of the Sims walked away in disgust from the online version, where skills are often acquired by having one's character sit in a room reading for an hour or two.
That's why game designers are rethinking their approach to role-playing games. The idea now is to offer a two-tiered game, in which casual players can pop in for a brief bout of excitement while more diligent fans can play out their more complex fantasies. Over time, a percentage of the casual players will become more dedicated, swelling the ranks of hard-core players who might spend a dozen hours a week inside the game.
LucasArts' Blackman said Star Wars Galaxies has already adopted this style of play. There are mini-adventures built into the game that allow the occasional player to have a satisfying one-hour visit. "I think we have to design with that kind of time limitation in mind," Blackman said.
"We call it short play cycles," Turbine's Anderson said. "We need to be designing games that satisfy people who want to play four hours a week as well as people who want to play 40 hours a week." Turbine hopes to add such features to its forthcoming online games -- one based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," another on the classic board game Dungeons & Dragons.
Given the popularity of these two franchises, Turbine's online versions will attract plenty of digital rubberneckers when they debut. But to keep them, the games will have to offer enough simple thrills to amuse casual players and enough sophistication to turn them into role-playing addicts. That's no small challenge -- it even scared off Microsoft.