Take-Two: MMOs Don't Work in the U.S.

[Atmos Duality]

Well of course population-centric MMOs are going to be bigger in a country with 1 BILLION MORE PEOPLE than the other! And that's just China. I haven't even got around to fully developed Asian countries like South Korea and Japan.

What every WoW-wannabe and company out there has failed to realize this one major thing:
MMOs monopolize game time. They are grinders by nature and partially by necessity. Your average player can feasibly afford to stick with ONE MMO because it takes so damn long to do anything.

So if your MMO doesn't stand out by HUGE margins above the existing top dog (and with Blizzard's top-grade polish, nobody else had a chance); it's going to become niche after a year or two. This doesn't necessarily mean the MMO "failed". EVE Online is a success, even if they don't command the same numbers as WoW and expecting every single MMO to perform like anything like WoW is insane.

Finally, I'm not sure if he is including most F2P games, since not all F2P games are MMOs.
I'm just assuming he's ignoring those, since most of them cannot hope to match WoW's revenue numbers or population (League of Legends is the only game that springs to mind that has WoW's population beat, but is it an MMO when it's purely match based and only 10 people at most can play per match?)

 

[Gray Firion]

...

Lineage 2, Guild Wars 1 and 2, Runescape, City of Heroes/Villains, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, DCU Online. More esoteric stuff like Habbo and Second Life.

What, no love for FFXI? It wasn't huge, but it was impossible to kill that damn game and it's still kicking over a decade later.

Also this. I just said these from memory. They most certainly weren't all failures since of those, only City of Heroes and Villains were shut down (and those are from Korea, not America). And of those subscription based titles that were in the redzone? All turned to F2P and enjoyed a return to profitability.

So... The company most infamous for their bad decisions worldwide makes an MMO, that didn't do well because of a number of reasons:

Outcry that it was too similar to pre-existing mmo's;
Outrage at the usual disgraceful costumer support from the "always tactful" EA;
Said MMO was story driven and as soon as people finished the stories of their characters they started leaving;
Backlash from the Mass Effect 3 Incident (which came out 2 months later, around the same time their subscription base got slashed);
And finally, they even botched their F2P model by blocking many of the things that made it fun apart from the story and All of the things that made it convenient behind a paywall, so that it becomes a grindfest, every player burns out quicker and leaves that much faster.

But no, I'm sure the failure of the game he tried making is solely due to lack of interest from consumers... despite, of course, said game having boasted over 1.5 Million registered players worldwide straight from launch.

Sigh... The sad part is that this MMO, SW:TOR, could have been great. With decent costumer support, even more tweaking to the battle system, Add-on support, more player character actions (such as simply being able to lie down or sit in whatever chair we see like in WoW) and toning down the limits imposed on Free Players (as a F2P player, the game is unplayable without major grinding due to crippling blocks on Experience gains, no revives in the field without paying, and sprinting and mounts only being available at later levels much more expensively).

I still play, but I'm at Preferred status, for having bought the game before it went free, so I don't have to deal with all of the above (mostly). But of all the players present in the starting planets at all times, they'll be lucky if even a handful of them translate into paying costumers down the road.

Of course it won't work if the company making it does everything in it's power to scrap it as quickly as possible...

 

[Dr.Awkward]

It's not that MMOs don't "work" here, it's that there are already too many of them.

I still think it's that first letter - As it currently refers that the game needs a very large playerbase to achieve this genre's goals, the result is that it creates way too much expectation on any new game of this genre. When companies stop treating "massive" as referring to the number of players, and instead something like how big the world is or how much content is given, maybe they'll realize that MMOs might actually be more profitable by being prepared for a much smaller playerbase, maybe even leverage costs by giving some powers players such as allowing private servers, leading to an elongation the game's existence and a stronger community that's willing to respect you and others.

Of course, we'll never know why MMOs in NA don't stack up so well unless people change their thoughts on how to approach a MMO, or try ideas like mine.

 

[Duckman]

Huh... A CEO bitching about how the market is making the company fail rather than their own inability to compete... Where have I heard that before?

 

[devilmore]

"one of our competitors just recently announced they're restarting an MMO project in the U.S"


What? They restarted the project because they didn't think it was good enough. It has nothing to do with the US market. It's not like they're releasing Titan in Europe.

 

[Baresark]

Meh, that's fine. Most MMO's suck. They just aren't that good. Most of them are variations on WoW at this point. But the truth is, I prefer single player games, so maybe I'm not the best person to ask. I have tried many MMO's and none of them have been worth more than a few months of free time. The longest one I stuck with was Rift, tbh. No one can deny that MMO's flourish in the Asia though, they do ridiculously well.

Edit: I think everyone is misreading the article. MMO's are the mostly costly type of game to produce and maintain. You can't change development costs on worlds with hundreds or even thousands of NPC's, class abilities, mob AI, quest structures, etc. And you cannot deny the cost of good servers. These things can push development into the $100+ Million range with years of development time. They are unique in their costs, and the payoffs simply do not pay in the US, he isn't wrong about that. I'm with him, to be quite honest. That is why I can't wait for Titan, so Blizzard can learn a thing or two. They can't have two MMO's and keep their success. They will simply divide their WoW followers and make the same money, that is best case scenario. OR perhaps this will replace WoW, who knows. But either way, they won't have 10-12 Million people signed up for both.

 

[devotedsniper]

What, no love for FFXI? It wasn't huge, but it was impossible to kill that damn game and it's still kicking over a decade later.

Also what the other guy said. There's just a huge glut of them on the market which ends up splintering the potential market base. Plus a lot of them are terrible.

I had the exact same thought, I used to play with plenty of Americans 4-5 years ago and there still seemed plenty on there when i went back last month so they aren't doing too bad considering they released another expansion pack for it last month (even though we were told back when the last expansion was released that there wouldn't be another one).

But Yeah MMO's really don't work in the US... I can think of quite a few other MMO's that have worked well over there.

 

[Parakeettheprawn]

It's not that MMOs don't "work" here, it's that there are already too many of them.

Exactly. When you've already got niche MMOs that found certain audiences (like DDO, Warframe, Vindictus, etc.), even smaller target audiences are unlikely.

Wait Warframe counts as MMO? It is a shooter with an addition chat option but I woudnt call it MMO in the same way I dont call Battleforge MMO

Overarching progression, F2P transactions, raids, grinding... it's like Borderlands -- it's an MMO that thinks it's a singleplayer game. Except in this case, outside of that awful new mod system they added, it's more interesting for me than doing accounting (can't say the same for Borderlands).

 

[Gatx]

It's not that MMOs don't "work" here, it's that there are already too many of them.

Exactly. When you've already got niche MMOs that found certain audiences (like DDO, Warframe, Vindictus, etc.), even smaller target audiences are unlikely.

Wait Warframe counts as MMO? It is a shooter with an addition chat option but I woudnt call it MMO in the same way I dont call Battleforge MMO

Overarching progression, F2P transactions, raids, grinding... it's like Borderlands -- it's an MMO that thinks it's a singleplayer game. Except in this case, outside of that awful new mod system they added, it's more interesting for me than doing accounting (can't say the same for Borderlands).

It's not an MMO unless there's a massive amount of people playing at the same time. Warframe, Borderlands, and Vindictus are all room based (though Vindictus is like the first Guild Wars in that there's a hub to hang out in inbetween missions) - you play with a small handful of people (I forget that actual numbers) at any one time. If you consider them as MMOs, then Diablo, LoL, even modern day CoD and Halo Reach and 4 would be MMOs.

 

[Grape_Bullion]

He's not wrong, but he's definitely not right. Developers and players see "success" in very different ways. And with MMO's tanking in the eyes of developers lately (not all, but some big titles), I don't blame them for trying to move their market elsewhere.

 

[SSJBlastoise]

Do the Chinese and South Koreans give a damn about the NBA? I honestly don't know, but I have never heard of basketball being that big over there.

I'm not sure about the South Koreans but yes, the Chinese do care. I'm not sure how much now but when Yao Ming was playing there was a pretty big push towards the NBA entering the Asian areas and it seems to have worked pretty well.

OT: I can sort of understand what he means though, otherwise I'd have a feeling I'd already be playing Dragon Ball Online :/

 

[Catrixa]

This whole all-or-nothing attitude is getting really, really tiresome. There are a lot of great MMO's out there that have been around since forever that aren't WoW or EverQuest. No, they didn't beat WoW/EverQuest, but they still make money and are fun (or are EVE, which transcends fun). Why do they have to beat WoW? Why does every shooter have to make more money than Call of Duty? I get that MMO's are expensive and need to be somewhat successful, but does it have to topple the absolute top of the market Every. Single. Time? Can't there be moderately successful MMO's with modest budgets that have a niche playerbase? Seriously, it's OK to do OK sometimes...

 

[Grape_Bullion]

This whole all-or-nothing attitude is getting really, really tiresome. There are a lot of great MMO's out there that have been around since forever that aren't WoW or EverQuest. No, they didn't beat WoW/EverQuest, but they still make money and are fun (or are EVE, which transcends fun). Why do they have to beat WoW? Why does every shooter have to make more money than Call of Duty? I get that MMO's are expensive and need to be somewhat successful, but does it have to topple the absolute top of the market Every. Single. Time? Can't there be moderately successful MMO's with modest budgets that have a niche playerbase? Seriously, it's OK to do OK sometimes...

That's the thing though, it's not okay to do okay sometimes (in the eyes of big publishers). You have to be on top, at all times. Or at the very least, on par with the competition. And its that mentality that is going to sink gaming.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I wonder if he's heard of World of Warcraft? Or Planetside? Or Guild Wars? Obviously MMO's don't work in the western world.

 

[Childe]

He missed one. Eve is also a pretty big mmo the last time i checked. It just has a specialized niche. And ya i agree that there are too many of them but i think the other problem is that 3/4 are wow copies and that just makes things boring. If 3/4 mmo's are poor copies of a much better game of course they arn't going to do well. If developers worked on making the game that they wanted to and focused not on copying what others did but making the best stand to the side game that they can the market would probably be better. This also applies to consoles. And yes games might be a lot more hit and miss but i would refer developers and game makers to the manga AIKI. Learn to effectly manage your resources and use the smallest amount needed and you will be able to do far more and those things better then just blindly using your resources

 

[Matt Dellar]

I dunno, Runescape was sitting at a pretty comfortable 200-300k players on at any given time before the combat update made it more like World of Warcraft (and now it's lucky if it scratches 90k simultaneous players).

I'd say games that don't try to be World of Warcraft generally do pretty well.

 

[Caiphus]

He's not entirely wrong. The Asian market does seem to have a higher tolerance for bullshit when it comes to MMOs.

 

[dumbseizure]

No, I'm sorry.

The only reason "mmos don't work in the U.S" is because generally they are the same churned out crap every single time.

An MMO would do will in America if it was actually innovative, if it was different.

But they all seem damn near the same.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Take-Two posted a net "income" of negative 109 million dollars for 2012. Yeah I'm going to go ahead and ignore anything they have to say about video game markets, sales and viability.

Oh and their idea is NBA 2K Online? Yeah... they're making a basketball MMO... how is this company not bankrupt yet?

 

[runic knight]

No, hugely successful mmo don't come up here in the states, and that is what he wants. Because he, like most other game CEO has his head up his own ass with what he wants from a game being a complete genre defining money cow, no wonder he doesn't see mmo as successful. When all you damn well do is copy the current big thing, no, you wont ever beat it on the market because people are already playing it.
Seriously, this is just stupid. You can't make a wow killer out of a clone so because of that, obviously the mmo market is dead in america? No, more like you need to not throw money into a god damn pit hoping for a runaway success and get some fucking perspective first. A game can be very successful when you stop demanding they sell 20 million copies to break even by having development costs and advertisements suck up all your money first.
It is amazing that rather then address this horrid business practice, they keep blaming every other thing but their own management choices. It isn't the fans, it isn't the game genre, it isn't the system or graphics or limitations of the consoles. It is the raw greed and delusion that any game can only either do massively good or it fails. The never take into account that games can do well and be successful when they aren't bloated budgeted piles of shit or outright clones bandwagoning in hopes of being the next whatever.