MMORPGs

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Yeah, thats pretty much what I meant but I was trying to be a bit more tactful about it. What I really think is that free mmos are dry shrivelled husks circling the drain that have given up on trying to supply an interesting gaming experience and just try to squeeze the last few bucks out of the few suckers still roamining their empty servers.

 

Guild Wars was a large and commercial MMO that was free (initial purchase price notwithstanding) when released (and still is). Part 2 is due out later this year which would continue with the same model.

 

Afaik WoW is the only MMO that is profitable.

A gaming industry exec told me that the only company in the gaming business currently making a profit is Blizzard. Everyone else, including EA games, is making losses.

He also explained the sales models (full purchase, DLCs, subscription and (nominally) free-to-play) and the pricing calculations. I found it startling that a game that has been developed on average for approx three years for, say 10 million dollars development costs (or more, with voice acting etc) only sells in pre-order and in about six weeks after release. There is serious pressure on profits, and he predicted that in the future cross platform games will become the norm, with PC gaming falling back behind consoles in market shares (which means more fouled up UI's, meh). The prices are calculated to return the investment in these six to ten weeks.

 

On the other hand I am sure Blizzard is making enough profit for all of them. I would be interesting to see their numbers, are they a public company?

 

Yep, they all are. Blizzard and EA are the biggest, iirc with Blizzard having pushed EA out of the first place.

And even when Blizzard is making enough profit for all of them, that still won't give me Mass Effect 3.

 

It is a bit amusing that a company that has released around 10 games in the last 20 years has grown bigger than a publisher that has released several thousands. Quality over quantity. It is basically one game out grossing all other games, that is pretty insane. Let's not forget that any time I go into a gamestore the only games older than five years I see are Blizzard games. SC, Diablo II and WC3 still sell. A tip for blizzard to make more money would be to hold very expensive seminars for their competition cause they are obviously doing everything very right and everyone else doing it very wrong. As I have touched upon before I am quite fascinated by them but I am wondering if it isn't the simple result of an actually implemented long term strategy instead of the short term that is paying off.

Edit: Heh, I did some reseearch and I was a bit surprised. I thought Blizzard was an independent company but they are under the Vivendi umbrella and merged with Activision. Bah, that is not as much fun.

 

Yup, and Activision has their cash cow, MoH.

 

You mean CoD?

 

Probably. Same thing to me. I probably ought to have written '... and that successful shooter that I recall being MoH but I may be wrong'. I don't play shooters

 

True. And that fact isn't giving me much hope that Star Wars: TOR will be free-to-play. If it isn't, I won't get it (despite how much I may want to).

 

I think you should reconsider that attitude. First off when you buy an MMO you get a month of play time which is more than enough time to decide if it is something you deem worthy to spend your money on. It is not like you sign up for a year of bondage upon purchase. I kinda felt like you and then I tried I feel I have gotten value for my money. More so than most singleplayer games I have bought. A good MMO has content wildly surpassing any singleplayer game, why would people continue to pay if there is nothing left to do? I really enjoyed ME2 but the game had like 16-18h of gameplay in it, lets say I play it twice or even thrice then I have paid a € or so per gaming hour. That is decent I guess, if I would do the same for WoW it would come out to fractions of cents for every gaming hour. In my personal experience you get much more bang for your buck with a good MMOs even with the monthly fee.

Incidentially this is why so many MMOs fail, they frontload their games and don't put in enough endgame stuff for subscribers to do. Sure the first 20h are important but to get people to keep paying that monthly fee there must be a few thousand additional hours.

I guess my point is that do not let the monthly fee scare you off trying the SW:ToR MMO if you do not like it enough to continue paying you will be no worse off than buying any other game and if you do like it enough to want to pay you ought to get value for your money.

 

Actually, SW:ToR MMO looks very promising to me. It's the first MMO I am actually looking forward to. I like the setting. I have test played it. I's very WoW-ish, just way cooler. Nice

 

No monthly fee, period.

I liked Guild wars a lot. Played Solo. Never joined a guild.

 

A lot of the problem there comes from competition from the used games market. It's a huge problem for publishers and developers, particularly in the US where GameStop basically has a monopoly in the sector. It's worth bearing in mind that when you buy a game used, not one penny of that goes back to the publisher / developers. It particularly hits smaller firms, as larger ones can spend more on marketing, which maximises pre-orders and early buys. If you buy a lot of games, it's worth looking at how you buy them, especially the more "niche" titles. They're often the ones that it's most worthwhile to pre-order or at least buy new, as you can bet the developer really needs that return.

 

Magpie,
that guy elaborated on the problems with used games, and the approaches used (mainly registering the game and more content from servers - usually you nowadays can't much use used games as a result). And it's not just the used games, it's also the problem with the second peak in game sales, when they lower the price, say from $40 to $15 - but are naturally not nearly as profitable any more. I mean, what shall I say - if a game is ok-ish but not something that I MUST HAVE, NOW then I wait for the price to drop. In doing so I make a reasonable economic decision.

What accounts for the much higher price for console versions of the same game are the licensing fees that console producers charge.

Sadly, he didn't have time to address piracy. But there you are: Piracy is not really a problem with MMOs, once established you needn't worry about sale spikes either - the customers keep paying. It's no wonder why about every game developer tried to release an MMO. However, only WoW is a real success. I didn't like hearing this, but he was sceptic about the market success of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

He touched the entire pre-release marketing thing, aimed on generating 'safe sales' in advance of the release to generate 'reliable return' (got any newsletters recently?). Computer games is a high risk investment, and that's the entire reason why there are so many sequels - companies are risk averse and try to make what they can of an established brand.

That's arguably why EA/Bioware neutered the sex scenes in ME2 after FOX made that stink over ME1 (what a joke, you see more on prime time tv). It could have adversely affected sales in the biggest (and most tightass) market, the US. And as for binding the customer to the brand, there is a reason why there apparently will be another DLC for ME2 this summer or so, to bridge the gap to ME3 that will come out before Christmas 2011; the DLC will keep customers emotionally connected to the brand.

 

On the new/preowned debate, EA have found a cunning way around that in the Online Pass. When you buy a new EA game, you don't initially have access to the online areas of the title. You have to input a code that comes in the box. If you buy the game second hand, you can't use the code, so you have to buy an online pass for about.. £3? Maybe £4?

In some ways I support them in this - Why should ALL the second hand income go to the retailer?

 

Well it contradicts the idea that a game is a thing, like the game CD, that can just be sold as a thing would be. The construct is iirc that it is intellectual property that had merely been copied on the CD and that its use is licensed instead, and that it thus can not just be sold. That's a considerable abstraction.

Legally impeccable, but it defies common understanding of owning property. I mean, when you sell your old, used car, nobody objects to the fact that no money goes back to the producer, and certainly nobody expects the new owner to have to effectively re-license his use with the producer after the purchase.

 

I still play D2, which is a MMORPG, but I play single player version of it now, so I don't know if that counts or not... I guess "used to play" is the most apt choice.

 

A tad off topic, but is Diablo 2 actually considered an MMORPG these days? With less than 10 players in any game (I don't recall the actual limit) I wouldn't think the massively multiplayer definition fits.