Content, Content, Content!
We keep getting told that content is expensive. Sure it is, making content is more expensive than not making it. Is it too expensive? Bullshit.
MMO developers spend gobs of money. An AAA title MMORPG costs somewhere between $20-80 million USD. That should pay for a decent amount of content. Unless you’ve been dicking around, which seems to be common when people have that much money to coast on.
If it’s successful, an MMO can make millions. Hundreds of millions. If it’s hugely successful, we’re talking billions. Tell me content is too expensive again? Bullshit.
What they mean is good content takes an active and interested developer base to keep churning it out. It’s cheaper to stretch it, to give us smaller amounts of content that are more repetitive, to make us climb ladders or distract us with player competition or meta-gaming on changing stats. I say fine, give us those things too, but don’t cheap on the good solid content.
What they also mean is that in today’s corporate culture, profit margins trump customer satisfaction. Their object is to do as little as necessary to keep the customers strung along. This works especially well in an industry where there’s a large barrier to entry for competitors to catch up: Let them spend the money while you carve out your margins.
Developers are jumping up and down pointing at the small ‘casual’ games that are resource-lite / asset-lite. A little bit of coding, a small bite of art and *ding* you could be selling a game. Hey those games can be fun, but if you’re trying to convince me to pay more than the initial (small) price for them, screw you.
I’ve heard the bemoaning that some players will run through the content like it’s a race to the end. Fine, you cannot perpetually please that group, but you can for a while and the rest of us are still here too. Don’t throw your hands up in the air and toss in the towel over it.
The first M in MMO is for Massive. Make a Massive game!
The content issue is the lurking 800 pound gorilla in the room, I think, in a lot of ways. I haven’t put all my thoughts down on this, but I do have sympathy with your position.
The problem is that today’s gaming culture is absolutely obsessed with quantifying the amount of content in a game — I remember the first time I heard a game described as “x hours worth of play.” I still think it’s a bizarre term. Does a game I never finished because the gameplay was so deadly dull still contain “unused” hours of play? Does Tetris have an infinite number of hours attached because you always lose?
Shrug, I’ve got the same ideas banging around in my head too Rog. I just don’t think you can afford to ignore the people who consume content like a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. There has to be some way to keep people having fun outside of scripted content. I dunno where I’m going with this — I think ultimately, a lot of games are going to rely on procedural content and PvP to fill the gap left over when people chew through scripted content. Just wish there were better answers.
I don’t mind procedural content or PvP per se, in fact I’m quite happy with them when done well. Left 4 Dead is a great example of a mix of both that I find really satisfying. Even in L4D tho, what are players calling out for most? More campaigns, more content.
For MMORPGs, it’s been unfortunate that PvP and procedural content have usually been slapped in with very little depth. I’m not actually a big fan of scripted content, but it’s generally the higher quality content in MMOs, which is a shame. If mob AI were better, on at least the level of say, the original Half-Life, then that would make repeatable content go a whole lot further.
Either way, the problem is they’re going on the cheap. IMHO we haven’t been getting what we’ve paid for. All those subscription dollars have been either poorly spent or they’re just lining pockets.
And now? They’re more concerned about milking more dollars out of ‘alternative’ revenue models than they are on actual game development.
It’s about time for MMO developers to step up and do some better work.
It *would* be interesting to follow the money trail. I highly suspect that something like WoW sees the vast majority of sub money go to other projects or shareholders.
I doubt we’ll ever see that data, though.
The first M in MMO is for Massive. Make a Massive game!
Actually the first M is Massively. And it’s attached to the second M. Massively Multiplayer. They are intrinsically connected, and together are the only key point that separates this little sub-genre of gaming from “normal” multiplayer games.
Aside from that, I agree with the old adage “content is king.” More content equals more players. With the modern MMO player (aka MMO Tourists) we play one MMO for a month or three then leave for another one. When MMO A comes out with a content patch we rush back for a month or three until we’ve consumed all the new content, then leave again.
If studios formed from the beginning with a solid business plan to handle all finances and salaries based on their game having 250K subscribers (or the financial equivalent if using an alternative to the monthly subscription model) so that they can work on cranking out content, content, content afterwards they’ll be set. If the game just happens to exceed that 250K mark, great! But don’t place your bets like Mythic and have your studio (and game) setup that it’s going to require twice that number to meet expectations.
You’re correct of course, it’s Massively, but I chose the adjective version (Massive) over the adverb to break the pairing with multiplayer to make my point.
Yes, Massively Multiplayer are intrinsically linked for the genre, but the pair cannot be completed without fulfilling both ends. Multiplayer hardly gets neglected on its own, they’re trying to fill seats. But while they try to squeeze in the large numbers, they really need to apply Massive to the content or have it inherent in the gameplay.
Unless we’re talking about a single-screen game that somehow gets a ton of players playing the same game of Go or something, but then I’d argue that’s not really within the MMO scope. And why not? Because it would miss the Massive game portion of Massively Multiplayer. Linked, but not self-contained. I’d argue against the relationship between those words being the sole difference, it’s the complete equation of them instead.
In other words, a small game, while claiming to be an MMO, isn’t likely to be accepted (or successful) as one.
It’s good to be aware of the semantics, but I’m going to stick with M is for Massive in this case.
Specifically using Mythic as the example, they did not make their game scope large enough (or more appropriately rich enough) to attract the numbers they planned for. That’s an oversimplification of course, but it’s the most accurate summary I can imagine for WAR. That’s just one example, my rant above was aimed at more than one game.