Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
This is really more simple than it seems, based on countless talks and interviews with developers.
There are many markets that are untapped and currently viable. Including MMO's. The problem isn't that there isn't profit to be made with creating and old-school MMO. The problem also isn't that devleopers don't want to make the game - because they do. The problem is that the Publishers have been consolidated over the last 10 years to just a handful of huge companies and those companies don't want to get out of bed for any potential game that isn't a guaranteed 10 million copies sold.
All that's required to make an old-school MMO viable at this point is a crowd-funding campaign. I'm sure something is being put together by a studio somewhere. And if not, whoever picks up on this and gets there first is going to reap the rewards. Possibly being set up for life, like Blizzard.
This is really more simple than it seems, based on countless talks and interviews with developers.
There are many markets that are untapped and currently viable. Including MMO's. The problem isn't that there isn't profit to be made with creating and old-school MMO. The problem also isn't that devleopers don't want to make the game - because they do. The problem is that the Publishers have been consolidated over the last 10 years to just a handful of huge companies and those companies don't want to get out of bed for any potential game that isn't a guaranteed 10 million copies sold.
All that's required to make an old-school MMO viable at this point is a crowd-funding campaign. I'm sure something is being put together by a studio somewhere. And if not, whoever picks up on this and gets there first is going to reap the rewards. Possibly being set up for life, like Blizzard.
And if there is a success, it somehow ends up in the hands of the publisher and history tells the rest.
Perhaps, but I think that things might be a tad different this time around.
Keep in mind that most of the CEO's of the famous, small studios were in their teens and 20's when they made it big time. Literally just kids with no business sense. They're older now - you'd think they'd learn from their mistakes, including selling themselves off to the big publishers and destroying their IP's.
Hell even Chris Roberts sold his studio to EA. Everyone did, back then. History doesn't have to repeat itself, necessarily.
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
This is really more simple than it seems, based on countless talks and interviews with developers.
There are many markets that are untapped and currently viable. Including MMO's. The problem isn't that there isn't profit to be made with creating and old-school MMO. The problem also isn't that devleopers don't want to make the game - because they do. The problem is that the Publishers have been consolidated over the last 10 years to just a handful of huge companies and those companies don't want to get out of bed for any potential game that isn't a guaranteed 10 million copies sold.
All that's required to make an old-school MMO viable at this point is a crowd-funding campaign. I'm sure something is being put together by a studio somewhere. And if not, whoever picks up on this and gets there first is going to reap the rewards. Possibly being set up for life, like Blizzard.
And if there is a success, it somehow ends up in the hands of the publisher and history tells the rest.
Perhaps, but I think that things might be a tad different this time around.
Keep in mind that most of the CEO's of the famous, small studios were in their teens and 20's when they made it big time. Literally just kids with no business sense. They're older now - you'd think they'd learn from their mistakes, including selling themselves off to the big publishers and destroying their IP's.
Hell even Chris Roberts sold his studio to EA. Everyone did, back then. History doesn't have to repeat itself, necessarily.
Until kickstarter allows actual investment / ownership of the game, we're just absorbing all the risk for them, and even if we get a game, we could still have it "wowified" and lose the reward,
Someone else always has their finger on the power button.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
This is really more simple than it seems, based on countless talks and interviews with developers.
There are many markets that are untapped and currently viable. Including MMO's. The problem isn't that there isn't profit to be made with creating and old-school MMO. The problem also isn't that devleopers don't want to make the game - because they do. The problem is that the Publishers have been consolidated over the last 10 years to just a handful of huge companies and those companies don't want to get out of bed for any potential game that isn't a guaranteed 10 million copies sold.
All that's required to make an old-school MMO viable at this point is a crowd-funding campaign. I'm sure something is being put together by a studio somewhere. And if not, whoever picks up on this and gets there first is going to reap the rewards. Possibly being set up for life, like Blizzard.
And if there is a success, it somehow ends up in the hands of the publisher and history tells the rest.
Perhaps, but I think that things might be a tad different this time around.
Keep in mind that most of the CEO's of the famous, small studios were in their teens and 20's when they made it big time. Literally just kids with no business sense. They're older now - you'd think they'd learn from their mistakes, including selling themselves off to the big publishers and destroying their IP's.
Hell even Chris Roberts sold his studio to EA. Everyone did, back then. History doesn't have to repeat itself, necessarily.
Until kickstarter allows actual investment / ownership of the game, we're just absorbing all the risk for them, and even if we get a game, we could still have it "wowified" and lose the reward,
Someone else always has their finger on the power button.
You are absolutely correct in that conjecture. It's a leap of faith to crowd-fund.
But if a reputable developer comes around, promises not to sell to a publisher - says the the game will be designed for "old-school" gamers and remain that way, I think they would probably follow through with their promise.
After all, if the game sells well as an "old-school" game, why change the model? Developers are more like us than we may realize - they're gamers and artists. They're the ultimate customer of their own product. They'd probably like to take control of their own projects. All of the games that we've seen in the past that have evolved for the worst have done so at the beckoning of publishers - not developers.
Though your theory is something to worry about, it's not based on any evidence yet. I'd rather take the leap of faith a few times in the near future as it only costs me (as an individual) $30-60 per game to donate to potentially years of enjoyment, it's a no-brainer for me.
This is really more simple than it seems, based on countless talks and interviews with developers.
There are many markets that are untapped and currently viable. Including MMO's. The problem isn't that there isn't profit to be made with creating and old-school MMO. The problem also isn't that devleopers don't want to make the game - because they do. The problem is that the Publishers have been consolidated over the last 10 years to just a handful of huge companies and those companies don't want to get out of bed for any potential game that isn't a guaranteed 10 million copies sold.
All that's required to make an old-school MMO viable at this point is a crowd-funding campaign. I'm sure something is being put together by a studio somewhere. And if not, whoever picks up on this and gets there first is going to reap the rewards. Possibly being set up for life, like Blizzard.
And if there is a success, it somehow ends up in the hands of the publisher and history tells the rest.
Perhaps, but I think that things might be a tad different this time around.
Keep in mind that most of the CEO's of the famous, small studios were in their teens and 20's when they made it big time. Literally just kids with no business sense. They're older now - you'd think they'd learn from their mistakes, including selling themselves off to the big publishers and destroying their IP's.
Hell even Chris Roberts sold his studio to EA. Everyone did, back then. History doesn't have to repeat itself, necessarily.
Until kickstarter allows actual investment / ownership of the game, we're just absorbing all the risk for them, and even if we get a game, we could still have it "wowified" and lose the reward,
Someone else always has their finger on the power button.
You are absolutely correct in that conjecture. It's a leap of faith to crowd-fund.
But if a reputable developer comes around, promises not to sell to a publisher - says the the game will be designed for "old-school" gamers and remain that way, I think they would probably follow through with their promise.
After all, if the game sells well as an "old-school" game, why change the model? Developers are more like us than we may realize - they're gamers and artists. They're the ultimate customer of their own product. They'd probably like to take control of their own projects. All of the games that we've seen in the past that have evolved for the worst have done so at the beckoning of publishers - not developers.
Though your theory is something to worry about, it's not based on any evidence yet. I'd rather take the leap of faith a few times in the near future as it only costs me (as an individual) $30-60 per game to donate to potentially years of enjoyment, it's a no-brainer for me.
They 'should' be able to sell. I don't want to prevent money from being made. I'd rather have everyone on the same team with the same vision and commitment to the end . A big happy family lol. Id buy future products from that company.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
Good points.
Thanks! I just don't get the faith people have in publishers.
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
Good points.
Thanks! I just don't get the faith people have in publishers.
Do people put faith in lawyers?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
Good points.
Thanks! I just don't get the faith people have in publishers.
Do people put faith in lawyers?
Good point, but . . .
Not sure I like this analogy too much. I think you're making the point regarding these two entities being solely driven by profit and money and people having faith in both? Here's why I disagree a bit with this premise.
A lawyer is typically an individual person or a small group of individuals. Publishers are massive conglomerates and multi-billion dollar corporations with hundreds and thousands of decision makers.
A lawyer would have more far elasticity in regards to business decisions as choices would often be relegated to just one person. A publisher would be far more rigid, unable to take even small risks as such decisions would have to be approved by boards of individuals, middle-management and even shareholders.
People function far differently in a group/majority mindset than they do as individuals. People who work in groups often find that decisions are dilluted to be appealing to everyone in the group and meeting the lowest common denominator. In a board meeting of publishers, what everyone can always agree on is that they want the most money possible. Because who can blame them all for wanting that? So the lowest common denominator always wins. Not integrity, artistry, or the customer. Money is their common denominator.
I think that's the difference that myself and others are trying to really illustrate here. Publishers are not ignoring certain genres because there isn't any profit in them. They're ignoring them because there's some small risk associated, or not a shit-load of guaranteed money to be made. Old-school MMO's aren't sexy Call of Duty titles. And they aren't WoW. They are potentially good games with a good profit-margin. But why garner "good" potential profits when you can garner "great" profits with a WoW clone and or a console FPS? That's the mindset of a publisher, however flawed it may be. I think that comparing lawyers to publishers is a bit off-base for that reason.
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
Good points.
Thanks! I just don't get the faith people have in publishers.
Do people put faith in lawyers?
I think that's the difference that myself and others are trying to really illustrate here. Publishers are not ignoring certain genres because there isn't any profit in them. They're ignoring them because there's some small risk associated, or not a shit-load of guaranteed money to be made. Old-school MMO's aren't sexy Call of Duty titles. And they aren't WoW. They are potentially good games with a good profit-margin. But why garner "good" potential profits when you can garner "great" profits with a WoW clone and or a console FPS?
The funny thing is, by all data we have, there is far FAR more risk in making a WoW clone. They cost a lot more money and are a lot more prone to failure. The safe choice is making a niche title, if publishers understood the market, but they don't.
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
Good points.
Thanks! I just don't get the faith people have in publishers.
Do people put faith in lawyers?
I think that's the difference that myself and others are trying to really illustrate here. Publishers are not ignoring certain genres because there isn't any profit in them. They're ignoring them because there's some small risk associated, or not a shit-load of guaranteed money to be made. Old-school MMO's aren't sexy Call of Duty titles. And they aren't WoW. They are potentially good games with a good profit-margin. But why garner "good" potential profits when you can garner "great" profits with a WoW clone and or a console FPS?
The funny thing is, by all data we have, there is far FAR more risk in making a WoW clone. They cost a lot more money and are a lot more prone to failure. The safe choice is making a niche title, if publishers understood the market, but they don't.
Exactly. I just added another paragraph to the above post about "group-think" of the massive publisher. I think that's the big difference between the publishers of "old" and the massive ones we have today. It's just their sheer size.
After all, let's not forget that it wasn't always like this with publishers. From recent history we can see that, like with many business verticals, unfettered capitalism has coaxed businesses to consolidate and merge. The gaming industry is no different. In the early 90's, there were literally hundreds (if not thousands) of publishers - often privately owned companies with a single decision-maker. Many developers also published their own games, which is unheard of today. Over the last decade, all of these independent publishers and developers were either eaten by larger companies or killed off when they wouldn't acquiesce. Only a few independent game developers and publishers survive today.
I think it really makes a difference when you have 3-4 major publishers that are worth billions and think in terms of billions, versus having hundreds of smaller publishers than think in terms millions. It's a matter of scale. The boards on these large companies are making decisions on a mutli-billion dollar scale. Games that makes millions of dollars don't even factor into their equations.
Whether it's making the next SWTOR (WoW clone) or Call of Duty (console clone), these guys are stuck thinking on that scale. They can't see the possibility of another Everquest, Ultima Online or Dark Ages of Camelot ever reaching the scale of WoW, so they don't consider it. They just keep gambling and throwing the dice with slightly different iterations of the same formula and then rubbing their heads when it doesn't work. It would be easy to blame one person inside the publisher for this redundancy, but it's never one person making the decision. It's hundreds of people, all muddling together and thinking about what 's going to make the most money. Because even if it fails at least they did what they were "suppose" to do. The first priority of these people isn't to make the best game possible - it's to secure their high-paying jobs, followed by making money for their billion-dollar conglomerate. As long as they can explain what they tried to do to their boss or shareholder, they can afford to keep trying clones.
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
Good points.
Thanks! I just don't get the faith people have in publishers.
Do people put faith in lawyers?
I think that's the difference that myself and others are trying to really illustrate here. Publishers are not ignoring certain genres because there isn't any profit in them. They're ignoring them because there's some small risk associated, or not a shit-load of guaranteed money to be made. Old-school MMO's aren't sexy Call of Duty titles. And they aren't WoW. They are potentially good games with a good profit-margin. But why garner "good" potential profits when you can garner "great" profits with a WoW clone and or a console FPS?
The funny thing is, by all data we have, there is far FAR more risk in making a WoW clone. They cost a lot more money and are a lot more prone to failure. The safe choice is making a niche title, if publishers understood the market, but they don't.
You can't clone popularity forever.
However, we always end up under their thumb somehow.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
The games aren't failures at least financially. F2P lowers the threshold.
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa You guys seem to have this weird faith in publishers. You say "If the market existed, thered be a game for it" as if Publisher understood the market. IF publishers understood MMOs, we wouldn't have the massive commercial failures that almost every AAA MMO has seen over the last 8 years.
Bump.
In this day and age, a publisher isn't really necessary for most MMOs, especially a niche one.
That's immaterial, though, as no one is putting blind faith in publishers. However it's a pretty damn good bet that they have done a lot deeper research and have far more reliable numbers at their disposal than those who are here waggling fingers at them. Right?
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
The games aren't failures at least financially. F2P lowers the threshold.
This is true, they aren't complete failures as they at least break even and make some profit. They are considered moderate failures from the perspective of the publisher, though. Opportunity cost and resources invested that could have gone elswhere. Market share relative to competitors. Brand name cost - reputation cost. Lots of factors to consider there.
Sure, 200 million dollars on SWTOR isn't EA gambling it's company away on a whim - they could sustain that loss grudgingly. But even if they broke even on their investment (which they did), we should consider that they spent 200 million over a period of many years that could have gone elsewhere. It's a waste of time for them. And the game basically killed Bioware, their newly acquired flagship studio. Overall, that investment would be considered a blow to EA in the grand scheme of things. To be considered a success by these people, they would have to triple their budget in profits, or more.
I'd like to see a modern game with some old school elements. I really liked EQ - and its not just 'nostalgia' the game was different. The big difference is actually philsophical.
I'd really like to see a Holy Trinity game with challenging leveling and commitment to immersion. But to it you could add modern features like top notch graphics, shooter style combat, dynamic events, procedurally created content, housing etc, etc. Its very clear to me that the modern engines are lettling developers create much more content with much less effort - and they can let them do alot of neat things.
i take the opposite tack of most posters here. Most guys here are crying out for something 'new.' I just want 'better'. You can do the same thing - and do a better job of it - and make a much better game. This is what the gaming industry is good at actually. GT6 isn't much different then other driving games. GTA V isn't much different then other GTA - its just better. The best shooters are just better version of older shooters.
It kills me that games like EQNext think they need to throw out leveling, raiding, stats in gear and so on and so forth.. WoW is as close as we have gotten to a better version of the old games - but its not hard to see how it could be improved with at least some sandbox 'style' aspects and a modern engine and graphics. But everyone is scared to take Blizzard head on.
It's a mistake - the WoW engine is a dinosaur..its ripe for attack.
I'd like to see a modern game with some old school elements. I really liked EQ - and its not just 'nostalgia' the game was different. The big difference is actually philsophical.
I'd really like to see a Holy Trinity game with challenging leveling and commitment to immersion. But to it you could add modern features like top notch graphics, shooter style combat, dynamic events, procedurally created content, housing etc, etc. Its very clear to me that the modern engines are lettling developers create much more content with much less effort - and they can let them do alot of neat things.
i take the opposite tack of most posters here. Most guys here are crying out for something 'new.' I just want 'better'. You can do the same thing - and do a better job of it - and make a much better game. This is what the gaming industry is good at actually. GT6 isn't much different then other driving games. GTA V isn't much different then other GTA - its just better. The best shooters are just better version of older shooters.
It kills me that games like EQNext think they need to throw out leveling, raiding, stats in gear and so on and so forth.. WoW is as close as we have gotten to a better version of the old games - but its not hard to see how it could be improved with at least some sandbox 'style' aspects and a modern engine and graphics. But everyone is scared to take Blizzard head on.
It's a mistake - the WoW engine is a dinosaur..its ripe for attack.
Do you see Vanguard fitting what you're looking for? If you've played it and it doesn't, what where the things it was missing?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Be nice and support the devs who actually care about still being oldschool, like camelot unchained and brad mcquaid's game. That would be a good start.
Comments
Numbers are absolutely useless if you don't understand their context. MMORPGs are far more complex than just about any game genre out there, and really hard to understand unless you've been there from the start.
Publishers are in the business of making money, not studying social theory and game design. What works with other genres is to look at what is selling and make games more like that. It usually works. It doesn't with MMOs.
The numbers publishers see is hmm, EverQuest, 500k at peak. UO and SWG, 300k at peak, DAoC, 250k at peak. Hmm, WoW, 13 million... GUESS WHAT WE'RE INVESTING IN BOYS!
They don't dig into the very timing oriented circumstances that birthed WoW. They don't look into specific markets and see which ones are tapped and which ones aren't. They see how many subs WoW has, and they see how many subs hardcore MMOs have. (well some, but most numbers are never released). They see that DAoC has a declining playerbase. They don't dig deep to discover that players started leaving after EA forced the game to be more like WoW. They don't see that SWG died after it got WoWified.
Know why I think that? Because in what SANE world would publishers perfectly understand the market, see 8 years of AAA WoW clones failing to survive beyond a year, and then make another huge budget WoW clone?
All the tales from devs using kickstarter paint a bleak picture. Publishers aren't interested in concentrated core experiences. Wasteland 2 got shot down hundreds of times.
Publishers don't get social glue, or how inconveniences in MMOs breed socializing, which breeds players staying longer. Those numbers take someone smart and immersed in the work to understand. Someone like Raph Koster. Not someone like Bobby over at Activision.
Publishers don't understand MMOs, that's why they keep backing failed themeparks. Is it more logical that publishers don't understand MMOs, or that the 1million+ people that enjoyed MMOs before WoW turned everything into a themepark... just all vanished?
And if there is a success, it somehow ends up in the hands of the publisher and history tells the rest.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Perhaps, but I think that things might be a tad different this time around.
Keep in mind that most of the CEO's of the famous, small studios were in their teens and 20's when they made it big time. Literally just kids with no business sense. They're older now - you'd think they'd learn from their mistakes, including selling themselves off to the big publishers and destroying their IP's.
Hell even Chris Roberts sold his studio to EA. Everyone did, back then. History doesn't have to repeat itself, necessarily.
Good points.
Until kickstarter allows actual investment / ownership of the game, we're just absorbing all the risk for them, and even if we get a game, we could still have it "wowified" and lose the reward,
Someone else always has their finger on the power button.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
You are absolutely correct in that conjecture. It's a leap of faith to crowd-fund.
But if a reputable developer comes around, promises not to sell to a publisher - says the the game will be designed for "old-school" gamers and remain that way, I think they would probably follow through with their promise.
After all, if the game sells well as an "old-school" game, why change the model? Developers are more like us than we may realize - they're gamers and artists. They're the ultimate customer of their own product. They'd probably like to take control of their own projects. All of the games that we've seen in the past that have evolved for the worst have done so at the beckoning of publishers - not developers.
Though your theory is something to worry about, it's not based on any evidence yet. I'd rather take the leap of faith a few times in the near future as it only costs me (as an individual) $30-60 per game to donate to potentially years of enjoyment, it's a no-brainer for me.
They 'should' be able to sell. I don't want to prevent money from being made. I'd rather have everyone on the same team with the same vision and commitment to the end . A big happy family lol. Id buy future products from that company.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Thanks! I just don't get the faith people have in publishers.
Do people put faith in lawyers?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Good point, but . . .
Not sure I like this analogy too much. I think you're making the point regarding these two entities being solely driven by profit and money and people having faith in both? Here's why I disagree a bit with this premise.
A lawyer is typically an individual person or a small group of individuals. Publishers are massive conglomerates and multi-billion dollar corporations with hundreds and thousands of decision makers.
A lawyer would have more far elasticity in regards to business decisions as choices would often be relegated to just one person. A publisher would be far more rigid, unable to take even small risks as such decisions would have to be approved by boards of individuals, middle-management and even shareholders.
People function far differently in a group/majority mindset than they do as individuals. People who work in groups often find that decisions are dilluted to be appealing to everyone in the group and meeting the lowest common denominator. In a board meeting of publishers, what everyone can always agree on is that they want the most money possible. Because who can blame them all for wanting that? So the lowest common denominator always wins. Not integrity, artistry, or the customer. Money is their common denominator.
I think that's the difference that myself and others are trying to really illustrate here. Publishers are not ignoring certain genres because there isn't any profit in them. They're ignoring them because there's some small risk associated, or not a shit-load of guaranteed money to be made. Old-school MMO's aren't sexy Call of Duty titles. And they aren't WoW. They are potentially good games with a good profit-margin. But why garner "good" potential profits when you can garner "great" profits with a WoW clone and or a console FPS? That's the mindset of a publisher, however flawed it may be. I think that comparing lawyers to publishers is a bit off-base for that reason.
The funny thing is, by all data we have, there is far FAR more risk in making a WoW clone. They cost a lot more money and are a lot more prone to failure. The safe choice is making a niche title, if publishers understood the market, but they don't.
Exactly. I just added another paragraph to the above post about "group-think" of the massive publisher. I think that's the big difference between the publishers of "old" and the massive ones we have today. It's just their sheer size.
After all, let's not forget that it wasn't always like this with publishers. From recent history we can see that, like with many business verticals, unfettered capitalism has coaxed businesses to consolidate and merge. The gaming industry is no different. In the early 90's, there were literally hundreds (if not thousands) of publishers - often privately owned companies with a single decision-maker. Many developers also published their own games, which is unheard of today. Over the last decade, all of these independent publishers and developers were either eaten by larger companies or killed off when they wouldn't acquiesce. Only a few independent game developers and publishers survive today.
I think it really makes a difference when you have 3-4 major publishers that are worth billions and think in terms of billions, versus having hundreds of smaller publishers than think in terms millions. It's a matter of scale. The boards on these large companies are making decisions on a mutli-billion dollar scale. Games that makes millions of dollars don't even factor into their equations.
Whether it's making the next SWTOR (WoW clone) or Call of Duty (console clone), these guys are stuck thinking on that scale. They can't see the possibility of another Everquest, Ultima Online or Dark Ages of Camelot ever reaching the scale of WoW, so they don't consider it. They just keep gambling and throwing the dice with slightly different iterations of the same formula and then rubbing their heads when it doesn't work. It would be easy to blame one person inside the publisher for this redundancy, but it's never one person making the decision. It's hundreds of people, all muddling together and thinking about what 's going to make the most money. Because even if it fails at least they did what they were "suppose" to do. The first priority of these people isn't to make the best game possible - it's to secure their high-paying jobs, followed by making money for their billion-dollar conglomerate. As long as they can explain what they tried to do to their boss or shareholder, they can afford to keep trying clones.
You can't clone popularity forever.
However, we always end up under their thumb somehow.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
The games aren't failures at least financially. F2P lowers the threshold.
This is true, they aren't complete failures as they at least break even and make some profit. They are considered moderate failures from the perspective of the publisher, though. Opportunity cost and resources invested that could have gone elswhere. Market share relative to competitors. Brand name cost - reputation cost. Lots of factors to consider there.
Sure, 200 million dollars on SWTOR isn't EA gambling it's company away on a whim - they could sustain that loss grudgingly. But even if they broke even on their investment (which they did), we should consider that they spent 200 million over a period of many years that could have gone elsewhere. It's a waste of time for them. And the game basically killed Bioware, their newly acquired flagship studio. Overall, that investment would be considered a blow to EA in the grand scheme of things. To be considered a success by these people, they would have to triple their budget in profits, or more.
I'd like to see a modern game with some old school elements. I really liked EQ - and its not just 'nostalgia' the game was different. The big difference is actually philsophical.
I'd really like to see a Holy Trinity game with challenging leveling and commitment to immersion. But to it you could add modern features like top notch graphics, shooter style combat, dynamic events, procedurally created content, housing etc, etc. Its very clear to me that the modern engines are lettling developers create much more content with much less effort - and they can let them do alot of neat things.
i take the opposite tack of most posters here. Most guys here are crying out for something 'new.' I just want 'better'. You can do the same thing - and do a better job of it - and make a much better game. This is what the gaming industry is good at actually. GT6 isn't much different then other driving games. GTA V isn't much different then other GTA - its just better. The best shooters are just better version of older shooters.
It kills me that games like EQNext think they need to throw out leveling, raiding, stats in gear and so on and so forth.. WoW is as close as we have gotten to a better version of the old games - but its not hard to see how it could be improved with at least some sandbox 'style' aspects and a modern engine and graphics. But everyone is scared to take Blizzard head on.
It's a mistake - the WoW engine is a dinosaur..its ripe for attack.
Do you see Vanguard fitting what you're looking for? If you've played it and it doesn't, what where the things it was missing?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre