Valid criticism is always welcomed in my book, what I dont like is paid forum shills , and alt account posters trying to shout down any negativity about any game period on these boards.
So, alt account posts trying to shout down negativity are bad, but alt account posters trying to spread negativity are perfectly fine?
Originally posted by Sephiroso
you're wrong. The definition of when an mmorpg "fails" is typically if it loses a large sum of its playerbase very quickly to varying degrees depending on the game type.
If game was P2P, it fails when they lose so many subs, the game is forced to go f2p if it wants to stay alive, otherwise it would have to shut down its servers. A game that goes f2p no longer has to chug out content as often, or as polished as a p2p game does. So development costs are alot lower, as well as believe it or not, customer service costs. (Huge difference between customer service in a p2p game and a f2p game).
If game was B2P, it fails when it again loses the majority of its stable playerbase and doesn't really gain them back...however as a B2P, it too doesn't really get credited with the term "fail" to much because it isn't under the same pressure to pump out actual content often.
If game was F2P, it fails the moment it was conceived.(I'm kidding....)
The fact that you're trying to create special definitions of failure for MMORPGs that only apply to them is an implicit admission that those definitions are inconsistent with what it actually means for a product to have failed. Profitable = Success. That isn't an opinion, it's a fundamental truth of business.
Originally posted by FinalFikus
The pass/fail criteria for TOR was known long before it was conceived. See SWG. (Profitable from day one to close. Winner of awards and fat bonuses for it's success. Around 70 devs at the NGE.)
So you admit TOR passed? Good to know.
Originally posted by GeezerGamer
Why do people talk about fanboys and haters as opposing factions....like good vs. evil? Go look at some of the most notable fans in certain game forums. Then go see them engaging in the exact same behavior in other game's forums they fought so hard against in their forum of choice. Irrational people are irrational. IT's the same people. The fanboys ARE the haters.
Ding ding ding. Though, a clarification, many of the haters are estranged fanboys. They don't actually have any current game they love, which is why they spend so much time spreading hate, it's misplaced anger over not having a game to drool over. Since they don't have something to love, nobody else should be allowed to love anything either.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
And the definition of failure that you are disagreeing with here isn't the "fanboy" definition, it is the definition of anyone who understands that the game industry is, first and foremost, an industry. If a game is still open, it's because it's turning a profit, and if it's turning a profit, it's a success, no matter how "bad" it is or how many people hate it. Any other definition is just an attempt to legitimize personal opinions by trying to reframe them with objective language.
One small correction is I think a game is a success if it is making a bigger return on investment than other obvious options would have. simply making a profit is not sufficient.
From a more subjective point of view I find it hard to see a game that was billed as a WoW killer and then has to totally change it's business model around in under a year because it has lost something like 3/4 of its subscribers as a huge success but you're right, it's really up to EA to decide whether the game succeeded financially. I just know it failed to keep me interested for more than a month .
One small correction is I think a game is a success if it is making a bigger return on investment than other obvious options would have. simply making a profit is not sufficient.
From a more subjective point of view I find it hard to see a game that was billed as a WoW killer and then has to totally change it's business model around in under a year because it has lost something like 3/4 of its subscribers as a huge success but you're right, it's really up to EA to decide whether the game succeeded financially. I just know it failed to keep me interested for more than a month .
I would say that if it's possible for reasonable people to be arguing about whether something has failed, that is actually proof that it hasn't, and what they are really arguing about is it's degree of success. Failure is an absolute, success on the other hand has substantial range. If the company that produced a product doesn't take a loss on it, it succeeded, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth bragging about. The next question is, did it succeed to a high enough degree to continue to support it with further spending? We can clearly see which games pass that test. The question after that is whether it succeeded enough that other producers seek to emulate things about it? Given how long development cycles are, it takes a while to see that answer, but eventually things can be inferred.
I think a lot of people forget that it's actually normal in the game industry for lots of titles to be true failures, to never even make back the money it cost to develop them. Often companies absolutely need blockbuster releases just to balance out the losses they take on the rest of their games. Judged against the game industry as a whole, MMOs as a category are far more likely to be successful than non-MMOs.
In regard to TOR specifically, I think someone has to be in some pretty deep denial to try to argue that it is a failure in 2014. They can argue hypotheticals all they want about how it would have been a failure if they hadn't laid off some staff and added a free option, but that's all they will ever be, hypothetical, because you can never be certain what was at the end of the road not taken.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Criticism is always acceptable. This is after all a site for gamers to talk about games. It wouldn't be a very interesting discussion site if no one ever offered anything critical to say about a game.
I do think there is a qualitative difference between thoughtfull criticism and blind hate....just as there is a qualitative difference between thoughtfull praise and blind fanboism.
I think the assertion would be accurate that MMO marketing, in general, badly over-hypes thier products and often creattes false impressions and expectations of them in would be consumers. That's one reason that I think healthy skepticism is very important......... if only to break through all the marketing and PR babble....and get some idea of what a games actual qualities might be and how it might play.
For instance, it's not particularly usefull for me to hear a games combat is going to be "Super-Awesome Terrific, Thrilling, Riveting, Iconic (insert random marketing buzzword here)". It will be usefull for me to understand whether it uses active or more traditional mechanisms, what typical engagement ranges might be, aiming or tab-targeting, does it utilize cover, facing. etc?
That's usefull, and an exploration of the strong points and potential weak points of how some of those features might combine together or play out in the game experience is also usefull/interesting.
One small correction is I think a game is a success if it is making a bigger return on investment than other obvious options would have. simply making a profit is not sufficient.
From a more subjective point of view I find it hard to see a game that was billed as a WoW killer and then has to totally change it's business model around in under a year because it has lost something like 3/4 of its subscribers as a huge success but you're right, it's really up to EA to decide whether the game succeeded financially. I just know it failed to keep me interested for more than a month .
I would say that if it's possible for reasonable people to be arguing about whether something has failed, that is actually proof that it hasn't, and what they are really arguing about is it's degree of success. Failure is an absolute, success on the other hand has substantial range. If the company that produced a product doesn't take a loss on it, it succeeded, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth bragging about. The next question is, did it succeed to a high enough degree to continue to support it with further spending? We can clearly see which games pass that test. The question after that is whether it succeeded enough that other producers seek to emulate things about it? Given how long development cycles are, it takes a while to see that answer, but eventually things can be inferred.
I think a lot of people forget that it's actually normal in the game industry for lots of titles to be true failures, to never even make back the money it cost to develop them. Often companies absolutely need blockbuster releases just to balance out the losses they take on the rest of their games. Judged against the game industry as a whole, MMOs as a category are far more likely to be successful than non-MMOs.
In regard to TOR specifically, I think someone has to be in some pretty deep denial to try to argue that it is a failure in 2014. They can argue hypotheticals all they want about how it would have been a failure if they hadn't laid off some staff and added a free option, but that's all they will ever be, hypothetical, because you can never be certain what was at the end of the road not taken.
"Failure" is falling short of a specified pre-defined goal and is going to vary depending upon the individual being asked. "Failure" for a customer might simply be that the game wasn't entertaining or didn't provide sufficient entertainment value as to be worth thier purchase. For a critic it may simply be not meeting certain arbitray and subjective levels of "quality". For a Developer it may simply be not making enough money to allow them to support thier operation of it and pay thier salary. For a stock-holder or investor it may be not providing an expected return on investment within a set time period.
I think the latter is what Iri is really referencing....and it's quite important. For example, if I'm an investor and you've pitched to me that if I sink 100K into your project, I'll get my money back in the first 6 months after release and start seeing a 25 percent ROI per annum for the next 5 years and you take 16 months after release to pay me back and I only see a 15 percent per annum investment....then I'm very likely to have viewed that project as a "failure" even though the game is turning a proffit and I'm making some money. That's especialy true, if I could have taken that same 100K 5 years ago and invested it in a mutual fund and started seeing a 10 percent ROI from day one.
you're wrong. The definition of when an mmorpg "fails" is typically if it loses a large sum of its playerbase very quickly to varying degrees depending on the game type.
If game was P2P, it fails when they lose so many subs, the game is forced to go f2p if it wants to stay alive, otherwise it would have to shut down its servers. A game that goes f2p no longer has to chug out content as often, or as polished as a p2p game does. So development costs are alot lower, as well as believe it or not, customer service costs. (Huge difference between customer service in a p2p game and a f2p game).
If game was B2P, it fails when it again loses the majority of its stable playerbase and doesn't really gain them back...however as a B2P, it too doesn't really get credited with the term "fail" to much because it isn't under the same pressure to pump out actual content often.
If game was F2P, it fails the moment it was conceived.(I'm kidding....)
The fact that you're trying to create special definitions of failure for MMORPGs that only apply to them is an implicit admission that those definitions are inconsistent with what it actually means for a product to have failed. Profitable = Success. That isn't an opinion, it's a fundamental truth of business.
And this is where you're wrong. Profitable does not equal success in business. If you have to expend so much work and effort and money and you're only making a couple thousand dollars in profit for an entire business, it is not a success. It isn't worth the effort put out to maintain it. You have to be making a certain measure of profits to be considered a success.
And as i outlined in my previous post, depending on the type of game, that measure of profits changes. It's the highest for P2P for obvious reasons, next in line is B2P, followed by the least with F2P games. This is all stemmed from common sense. When a P2P game changes its model and becomes a F2P game, it's obvious it has failed as a P2P game and is trying to keep its doors open by converting to a F2P business model which entails lots of changes. Like severely decreased customer support workers, drastically reduced on-hand programmers as you don't need to pump out content as fast when you're F2P as compared to P2P, and bunch of other changes mainly resulting in lots of people losing their jobs and other changes to reduce the cost of maintaining the game, so that the lowered income your game has been receiving will still be able to survive.
"Failure" is falling short of a specified pre-defined goal and is going to vary depending upon the individual being asked. "Failure" for a customer might simply be that the game wasn't entertaining or didn't provide sufficient entertainment value as to be worth thier purchase. For a critic it may simply be not meeting certain arbitray and subjective levels of "quality". For a Developer it may simply be not making enough money to allow them to support thier operation of it and pay thier salary. For a stock-holder or investor it may be not providing an expected return on investment within a set time period.
I think the latter is what Iri is really referencing....and it's quite important. For example, if I'm an investor and you've pitched to me that if I sink 100K into your project, I'll get my money back in the first 6 months after release and start seeing a 25 percent ROI per annum for the next 5 years and you take 16 months after release to pay me back and I only see a 15 percent per annum investment....then I'm very likely to have viewed that project as a "failure" even though the game is turning a proffit and I'm making some money. That's especialy true, if I could have taken that same 100K 5 years ago and invested it in a mutual fund and started seeing a 10 percent ROI from day one.
But if we look at success and failure in the context of the game industry specifically, it seems perfectly fair to call anything profitable a categorical success. We're talking about an industry where the large companies churn out tons of games, with the full knowledge that many of them won't come anywhere close to making back their development budgets, because when they do get major hits they tend to make enough money to make up for several failed games in addition to covering their own costs. They are throwing everything at the walls and seeing what sticks.
In the context of MMOs specifically, if a game is bringing in enough money that it receives regular content updates, and seems to have a happy and healthy player base which is large enough to finance those content updates, how could any rational person label that as a failure?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
But if we look at success and failure in the context of the game industry specifically, it seems perfectly fair to call anything profitable a categorical success. We're talking about an industry where the large companies churn out tons of games, with the full knowledge that many of them won't come anywhere close to making back their development budgets, because when they do get major hits they tend to make enough money to make up for several failed games in addition to covering their own costs. They are throwing everything at the walls and seeing what sticks.
I don't think this is true particularly with games with the kind of budgets MMOs have. If you're talking indie games or something then sure but I think this is a big reason why MMO publishers are so conservative and risk-averse (to the detriment of the games). They *need* to at least make cost of production back or the dev studio might get shut down.
In the context of MMOs specifically, if a game is bringing in enough money that it receives regular content updates, and seems to have a happy and healthy player base which is large enough to finance those content updates, how could any rational person label that as a failure?
If it hasn't made back the money it cost to produce it yet or if it was hyped up so much that people expected it to be a big huge "WoW killer". If you're talking about SWTOR it was the most expensive game ever made and launched with huge hype and until recent F2P numbers came out it seemed to be barely keeping its head above water (and personally I think those F2P numbers are somewhat questionable because it's in EA's interests to make the game seem successful even if it isn't and it's pretty easy for a big company like that to manipulate their books.)
Everyone is a critic. It seems to happen a lot on these forums that a pre-release game gets hyped by the fanboys and the critics are scorned. Try saying something negative about ESO. Criticizing is exactly what games need to make them better.
Originally posted by maybebaked Everyone is a critic. It seems to happen a lot on these forums that a pre-release game gets hyped by the fanboys and the critics are scorned. Try saying something negative about ESO. Criticizing is exactly what games need to make them better.
Slightly wrong. It is not criticizing that games need to make them better. It's a smart team that has the ability to sift through the criticism and pick out the valid ones and then fix their game to solve those criticisms.
A lot of people have forgotten how to give constructive criticism. They're very 'all or nothing' in their worldviews. Experience does give perspective, but a lot of people can't say " this n that seem odd, here's why, but the rest seems alright.". They need to attack the whole game. Or conversely, defend the whole without being able to acknowledge any possible flaws. So it goes....
Originally posted by jandrsn A lot of people have forgotten how to give constructive criticism. They're very 'all or nothing' in their worldviews. Experience does give perspective, but a lot of people can't say " this n that seem odd, here's why, but the rest seems alright.". They need to attack the whole game. Or conversely, defend the whole without being able to acknowledge any possible flaws. So it goes....
It's not the customers job to be constructive with criticism. The people getting paid can translate it or ignore it. The alternative is silence.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Over the Years, NEW MMOs been overhyped pre-release. We see major levels of hype from the developers and the industry. We seen some promotions and marketing from them, that just is just that. Marketing, and the final product is almost never like that.
Some would call this method of marketing, "misleading", or "False Marketing".
But in just about every hyped up release, always has a small set of Critics. And it always seem as if these critics were right, when we get to all experience the game for ourselves after release.
Its as if the critics have sight beyond the blindness of hype.
Now I am not trying to blame anybody here. I am just saying, that maybe if we stop demonizing the critics in our community,
just maybe, these New MMOs would be more productive products, and better developed.
We as a community would actually for once, hold developers to their word.
In the process, we would actually get better MMO products.
Isnt that the number 1 complain around here, is the quality of MMOs now days?
So are Critics now justified for their actions or remain silent?
That's why ya'll need to pay attention to my posts :
1- You'll save a bunch of money
2- You'll rage a lot less
3- You'll sleep a lot smarter knowing you didn't throw 60 bucks on a crappy copycat game.
Never follow on a hype, it just leads to disappointment, if you've played MMO's for 5+ years on a regular basis, then you do not need a useless hype to make you decide if a game is worth buying or not. Because you need to be smart, if you don't do your homework properly and decide to throw 60$ on a new MMO and you quit before the 1st month, then that's a huge win for the Dev. Take TESO for example, let's say they sale for 40 million copies at 60$ a copy, that's 2.4 billion. Now let's say only 1 million remains to play the game at 15$ a month, that means Bethesda really fooled a crap load of people and have banked big time on your blindness. Do your homework and stop falling for false hypes, TESO isn't all that, it's all about box sales and if TESO sales A LOT but only 5% who the buyers remain to P2P, we're going to be in a lot of trouble with the Eastern Devs releasing copy cats of TESO, feeding on peoples disappointment. I'm really hoping TESO will remain at 60% of it's player base within the first year, if it drops to 20-25%, we can kiss the MMORPG Fantasy world good bye. Because if people quit a game within a month after paying 60$, nothing is stopping them on putting 60$ on a F2P title over a year. That's why Eastern Devs are hoping TESO will fail or lose a lot of it's appeal within the first few months of release. Damn it Bethesda, why not just make Skyrim multi player? It would of been a lot less a pain in the ass for everyone.
One small correction is I think a game is a success if it is making a bigger return on investment than other obvious options would have. simply making a profit is not sufficient.
From a more subjective point of view I find it hard to see a game that was billed as a WoW killer and then has to totally change it's business model around in under a year because it has lost something like 3/4 of its subscribers as a huge success but you're right, it's really up to EA to decide whether the game succeeded financially. I just know it failed to keep me interested for more than a month .
I would say that if it's possible for reasonable people to be arguing about whether something has failed, that is actually proof that it hasn't, and what they are really arguing about is it's degree of success. Failure is an absolute, success on the other hand has substantial range. If the company that produced a product doesn't take a loss on it, it succeeded, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth bragging about. The next question is, did it succeed to a high enough degree to continue to support it with further spending? We can clearly see which games pass that test. The question after that is whether it succeeded enough that other producers seek to emulate things about it? Given how long development cycles are, it takes a while to see that answer, but eventually things can be inferred.
I think a lot of people forget that it's actually normal in the game industry for lots of titles to be true failures, to never even make back the money it cost to develop them. Often companies absolutely need blockbuster releases just to balance out the losses they take on the rest of their games. Judged against the game industry as a whole, MMOs as a category are far more likely to be successful than non-MMOs.
In regard to TOR specifically, I think someone has to be in some pretty deep denial to try to argue that it is a failure in 2014. They can argue hypotheticals all they want about how it would have been a failure if they hadn't laid off some staff and added a free option, but that's all they will ever be, hypothetical, because you can never be certain what was at the end of the road not taken.
Your arguments are so full of fallacies. If there are degrees to success then there are degrees to failure. If something is half full it can be viewed as half empty. You are very good at dismissing people when they disagree with you. How about you take the time to read, soak it up, and come back with a real argument. How can you possibly believe that there are variations of success but not the inverse?
ToR was a failure. It had a goal and it couldnt meet it. Is it a failure to this day, I have no idea. Did they set new goals? Are they running it until its in the black then going to put it on maintenance mode? Was Vanguard a success since it sat in maintenance mode yet still existed for years but is now only a failure due to shutting down? If your opinion is that there are varying degrees of success and the only failure is shutting down, you have a very oddly skewed look on life. I guess when you participated in sports as a child, every kid got a trophy...
That sentence is an ad hominem. Your arguments are full of them. When you say things like " if you understood the industry " you are trying to demean others and state your superiority. How about you approach people with " I work in the industry so I have direct knowledge of this subject ", then you could be viewed as having knowledge pertaining to the subject without having to stoop to demeaning others...
I don't think this is true particularly with games with the kind of budgets MMOs have. If you're talking indie games or something then sure but I think this is a big reason why MMO publishers are so conservative and risk-averse (to the detriment of the games). They *need* to at least make cost of production back or the dev studio might get shut down.
If it hasn't made back the money it cost to produce it yet or if it was hyped up so much that people expected it to be a big huge "WoW killer". If you're talking about SWTOR it was the most expensive game ever made and launched with huge hype and until recent F2P numbers came out it seemed to be barely keeping its head above water (and personally I think those F2P numbers are somewhat questionable because it's in EA's interests to make the game seem successful even if it isn't and it's pretty easy for a big company like that to manipulate their books.)
In regard to smaller studios that focus exclusively on MMOs, I agree, they must succeed for the studio to have a decent chance of surviving. Companies like EA and Activision have enough resources that no single product, no matter how big, will drive them out of business by failing. As for the numbers being questionable, I seriously doubt they are going to manipulate their books when they can simply not talk about numbers that are unfavorable. Not when getting caught manipulating their books could get them in serious trouble.
And if any company is going to take the "shoot the dog" approach to an ailing game, don't you think it would be EA? Do you really think Disney would want to extend the license for ten years if the only SW product EA has done recently was an epic failure?
Originally posted by g0m0rrah
Your arguments are so full of fallacies. If there are degrees to success then there are degrees to failure. If something is half full it can be viewed as half empty. You are very good at dismissing people when they disagree with you. How about you take the time to read, soak it up, and come back with a real argument. How can you possibly believe that there are variations of success but not the inverse?
ToR was a failure. It had a goal and it couldnt meet it. Is it a failure to this day, I have no idea. Did they set new goals? Are they running it until its in the black then going to put it on maintenance mode? Was Vanguard a success since it sat in maintenance mode yet still existed for years but is now only a failure due to shutting down? If your opinion is that there are varying degrees of success and the only failure is shutting down, you have a very oddly skewed look on life. I guess when you participated in sports as a child, every kid got a trophy...
I phrased that poorly; whether something is a failure or not is an absolute, the line between success and failure is clear. I wasn't differentiating between degrees of failure because actual failures are almost never discussed on forums like this. Instead we have people trying to frame success as failure, as you yourself go on to do in your post, when what they should be saying is that something was less successful than was hoped.
But yes, in the case of MMOs, if it hasn't shut down, it hasn't failed. These aren't charities. When they stop being profitable for more than a handful of months in a row, the plug gets pulled. Degrees of failure in this context are determined by how long a game lasts before shutting down, and whether or not it made back it's investment. A game that shuts down in it's first year, *if* it failed to make back it's cost of development, is a substantial failure. As long as, at the end of the product's lifetime, it has made the company more money than it cost, it isn't reasonable to call it a failure. Companies don't give us the numbers we need to know exactly how much they make on a given game, but once a game has been around for a few years with a decent population size, it's probably safe to say the investment has been recovered.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
One small correction is I think a game is a success if it is making a bigger return on investment than other obvious options would have. simply making a profit is not sufficient.
From a more subjective point of view I find it hard to see a game that was billed as a WoW killer and then has to totally change it's business model around in under a year because it has lost something like 3/4 of its subscribers as a huge success but you're right, it's really up to EA to decide whether the game succeeded financially. I just know it failed to keep me interested for more than a month .
I would say that if it's possible for reasonable people to be arguing about whether something has failed, that is actually proof that it hasn't, and what they are really arguing about is it's degree of success. Failure is an absolute, success on the other hand has substantial range. If the company that produced a product doesn't take a loss on it, it succeeded, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth bragging about. The next question is, did it succeed to a high enough degree to continue to support it with further spending? We can clearly see which games pass that test. The question after that is whether it succeeded enough that other producers seek to emulate things about it? Given how long development cycles are, it takes a while to see that answer, but eventually things can be inferred.
I think a lot of people forget that it's actually normal in the game industry for lots of titles to be true failures, to never even make back the money it cost to develop them. Often companies absolutely need blockbuster releases just to balance out the losses they take on the rest of their games. Judged against the game industry as a whole, MMOs as a category are far more likely to be successful than non-MMOs.
In regard to TOR specifically, I think someone has to be in some pretty deep denial to try to argue that it is a failure in 2014. They can argue hypotheticals all they want about how it would have been a failure if they hadn't laid off some staff and added a free option, but that's all they will ever be, hypothetical, because you can never be certain what was at the end of the road not taken.
Your arguments are so full of fallacies. If there are degrees to success then there are degrees to failure. If something is half full it can be viewed as half empty. You are very good at dismissing people when they disagree with you. How about you take the time to read, soak it up, and come back with a real argument. How can you possibly believe that there are variations of success but not the inverse?
ToR was a failure. It had a goal and it couldnt meet it. Is it a failure to this day, I have no idea. Did they set new goals? Are they running it until its in the black then going to put it on maintenance mode? Was Vanguard a success since it sat in maintenance mode yet still existed for years but is now only a failure due to shutting down? If your opinion is that there are varying degrees of success and the only failure is shutting down, you have a very oddly skewed look on life. I guess when you participated in sports as a child, every kid got a trophy...
That sentence is an ad hominem. Your arguments are full of them. When you say things like " if you understood the industry " you are trying to demean others and state your superiority. How about you approach people with " I work in the industry so I have direct knowledge of this subject ", then you could be viewed as having knowledge pertaining to the subject without having to stoop to demeaning others...
Comments
Ding ding ding. Though, a clarification, many of the haters are estranged fanboys. They don't actually have any current game they love, which is why they spend so much time spreading hate, it's misplaced anger over not having a game to drool over. Since they don't have something to love, nobody else should be allowed to love anything either.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
One small correction is I think a game is a success if it is making a bigger return on investment than other obvious options would have. simply making a profit is not sufficient.
From a more subjective point of view I find it hard to see a game that was billed as a WoW killer and then has to totally change it's business model around in under a year because it has lost something like 3/4 of its subscribers as a huge success but you're right, it's really up to EA to decide whether the game succeeded financially. I just know it failed to keep me interested for more than a month .
I would say that if it's possible for reasonable people to be arguing about whether something has failed, that is actually proof that it hasn't, and what they are really arguing about is it's degree of success. Failure is an absolute, success on the other hand has substantial range. If the company that produced a product doesn't take a loss on it, it succeeded, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth bragging about. The next question is, did it succeed to a high enough degree to continue to support it with further spending? We can clearly see which games pass that test. The question after that is whether it succeeded enough that other producers seek to emulate things about it? Given how long development cycles are, it takes a while to see that answer, but eventually things can be inferred.
I think a lot of people forget that it's actually normal in the game industry for lots of titles to be true failures, to never even make back the money it cost to develop them. Often companies absolutely need blockbuster releases just to balance out the losses they take on the rest of their games. Judged against the game industry as a whole, MMOs as a category are far more likely to be successful than non-MMOs.
In regard to TOR specifically, I think someone has to be in some pretty deep denial to try to argue that it is a failure in 2014. They can argue hypotheticals all they want about how it would have been a failure if they hadn't laid off some staff and added a free option, but that's all they will ever be, hypothetical, because you can never be certain what was at the end of the road not taken.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Criticism is always acceptable. This is after all a site for gamers to talk about games. It wouldn't be a very interesting discussion site if no one ever offered anything critical to say about a game.
I do think there is a qualitative difference between thoughtfull criticism and blind hate....just as there is a qualitative difference between thoughtfull praise and blind fanboism.
I think the assertion would be accurate that MMO marketing, in general, badly over-hypes thier products and often creattes false impressions and expectations of them in would be consumers. That's one reason that I think healthy skepticism is very important......... if only to break through all the marketing and PR babble....and get some idea of what a games actual qualities might be and how it might play.
For instance, it's not particularly usefull for me to hear a games combat is going to be "Super-Awesome Terrific, Thrilling, Riveting, Iconic (insert random marketing buzzword here)". It will be usefull for me to understand whether it uses active or more traditional mechanisms, what typical engagement ranges might be, aiming or tab-targeting, does it utilize cover, facing. etc?
That's usefull, and an exploration of the strong points and potential weak points of how some of those features might combine together or play out in the game experience is also usefull/interesting.
"Failure" is falling short of a specified pre-defined goal and is going to vary depending upon the individual being asked. "Failure" for a customer might simply be that the game wasn't entertaining or didn't provide sufficient entertainment value as to be worth thier purchase. For a critic it may simply be not meeting certain arbitray and subjective levels of "quality". For a Developer it may simply be not making enough money to allow them to support thier operation of it and pay thier salary. For a stock-holder or investor it may be not providing an expected return on investment within a set time period.
I think the latter is what Iri is really referencing....and it's quite important. For example, if I'm an investor and you've pitched to me that if I sink 100K into your project, I'll get my money back in the first 6 months after release and start seeing a 25 percent ROI per annum for the next 5 years and you take 16 months after release to pay me back and I only see a 15 percent per annum investment....then I'm very likely to have viewed that project as a "failure" even though the game is turning a proffit and I'm making some money. That's especialy true, if I could have taken that same 100K 5 years ago and invested it in a mutual fund and started seeing a 10 percent ROI from day one.
And this is where you're wrong. Profitable does not equal success in business. If you have to expend so much work and effort and money and you're only making a couple thousand dollars in profit for an entire business, it is not a success. It isn't worth the effort put out to maintain it. You have to be making a certain measure of profits to be considered a success.
And as i outlined in my previous post, depending on the type of game, that measure of profits changes. It's the highest for P2P for obvious reasons, next in line is B2P, followed by the least with F2P games. This is all stemmed from common sense. When a P2P game changes its model and becomes a F2P game, it's obvious it has failed as a P2P game and is trying to keep its doors open by converting to a F2P business model which entails lots of changes. Like severely decreased customer support workers, drastically reduced on-hand programmers as you don't need to pump out content as fast when you're F2P as compared to P2P, and bunch of other changes mainly resulting in lots of people losing their jobs and other changes to reduce the cost of maintaining the game, so that the lowered income your game has been receiving will still be able to survive.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
But if we look at success and failure in the context of the game industry specifically, it seems perfectly fair to call anything profitable a categorical success. We're talking about an industry where the large companies churn out tons of games, with the full knowledge that many of them won't come anywhere close to making back their development budgets, because when they do get major hits they tend to make enough money to make up for several failed games in addition to covering their own costs. They are throwing everything at the walls and seeing what sticks.
In the context of MMOs specifically, if a game is bringing in enough money that it receives regular content updates, and seems to have a happy and healthy player base which is large enough to finance those content updates, how could any rational person label that as a failure?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Sure are a lot of people on here that think people should only speak if its positive.
Personally I enjoy free speech, opposing views and trying to hear another persons perspective and I find few things more repugnant than a yes man.
I don't think this is true particularly with games with the kind of budgets MMOs have. If you're talking indie games or something then sure but I think this is a big reason why MMO publishers are so conservative and risk-averse (to the detriment of the games). They *need* to at least make cost of production back or the dev studio might get shut down.
If it hasn't made back the money it cost to produce it yet or if it was hyped up so much that people expected it to be a big huge "WoW killer". If you're talking about SWTOR it was the most expensive game ever made and launched with huge hype and until recent F2P numbers came out it seemed to be barely keeping its head above water (and personally I think those F2P numbers are somewhat questionable because it's in EA's interests to make the game seem successful even if it isn't and it's pretty easy for a big company like that to manipulate their books.)
Slightly wrong. It is not criticizing that games need to make them better. It's a smart team that has the ability to sift through the criticism and pick out the valid ones and then fix their game to solve those criticisms.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
It's not the customers job to be constructive with criticism. The people getting paid can translate it or ignore it. The alternative is silence.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
That's why ya'll need to pay attention to my posts :
1- You'll save a bunch of money
2- You'll rage a lot less
3- You'll sleep a lot smarter knowing you didn't throw 60 bucks on a crappy copycat game.
Never follow on a hype, it just leads to disappointment, if you've played MMO's for 5+ years on a regular basis, then you do not need a useless hype to make you decide if a game is worth buying or not. Because you need to be smart, if you don't do your homework properly and decide to throw 60$ on a new MMO and you quit before the 1st month, then that's a huge win for the Dev. Take TESO for example, let's say they sale for 40 million copies at 60$ a copy, that's 2.4 billion. Now let's say only 1 million remains to play the game at 15$ a month, that means Bethesda really fooled a crap load of people and have banked big time on your blindness. Do your homework and stop falling for false hypes, TESO isn't all that, it's all about box sales and if TESO sales A LOT but only 5% who the buyers remain to P2P, we're going to be in a lot of trouble with the Eastern Devs releasing copy cats of TESO, feeding on peoples disappointment. I'm really hoping TESO will remain at 60% of it's player base within the first year, if it drops to 20-25%, we can kiss the MMORPG Fantasy world good bye. Because if people quit a game within a month after paying 60$, nothing is stopping them on putting 60$ on a F2P title over a year. That's why Eastern Devs are hoping TESO will fail or lose a lot of it's appeal within the first few months of release. Damn it Bethesda, why not just make Skyrim multi player? It would of been a lot less a pain in the ass for everyone.
Your arguments are so full of fallacies. If there are degrees to success then there are degrees to failure. If something is half full it can be viewed as half empty. You are very good at dismissing people when they disagree with you. How about you take the time to read, soak it up, and come back with a real argument. How can you possibly believe that there are variations of success but not the inverse?
ToR was a failure. It had a goal and it couldnt meet it. Is it a failure to this day, I have no idea. Did they set new goals? Are they running it until its in the black then going to put it on maintenance mode? Was Vanguard a success since it sat in maintenance mode yet still existed for years but is now only a failure due to shutting down? If your opinion is that there are varying degrees of success and the only failure is shutting down, you have a very oddly skewed look on life. I guess when you participated in sports as a child, every kid got a trophy...
That sentence is an ad hominem. Your arguments are full of them. When you say things like " if you understood the industry " you are trying to demean others and state your superiority. How about you approach people with " I work in the industry so I have direct knowledge of this subject ", then you could be viewed as having knowledge pertaining to the subject without having to stoop to demeaning others...
In regard to smaller studios that focus exclusively on MMOs, I agree, they must succeed for the studio to have a decent chance of surviving. Companies like EA and Activision have enough resources that no single product, no matter how big, will drive them out of business by failing. As for the numbers being questionable, I seriously doubt they are going to manipulate their books when they can simply not talk about numbers that are unfavorable. Not when getting caught manipulating their books could get them in serious trouble.
And if any company is going to take the "shoot the dog" approach to an ailing game, don't you think it would be EA? Do you really think Disney would want to extend the license for ten years if the only SW product EA has done recently was an epic failure?
I phrased that poorly; whether something is a failure or not is an absolute, the line between success and failure is clear. I wasn't differentiating between degrees of failure because actual failures are almost never discussed on forums like this. Instead we have people trying to frame success as failure, as you yourself go on to do in your post, when what they should be saying is that something was less successful than was hoped.
But yes, in the case of MMOs, if it hasn't shut down, it hasn't failed. These aren't charities. When they stop being profitable for more than a handful of months in a row, the plug gets pulled. Degrees of failure in this context are determined by how long a game lasts before shutting down, and whether or not it made back it's investment. A game that shuts down in it's first year, *if* it failed to make back it's cost of development, is a substantial failure. As long as, at the end of the product's lifetime, it has made the company more money than it cost, it isn't reasonable to call it a failure. Companies don't give us the numbers we need to know exactly how much they make on a given game, but once a game has been around for a few years with a decent population size, it's probably safe to say the investment has been recovered.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.