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Can eve still be considered a niche game?
SgtFrog
Member Posts: 5,001
in EVE Online
I constantly see people calling eve a niche game but can a game with 360k subs really be considered a niche still? I mean it has more subs than most Western mmorpg out currently.
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Comments
It still can be considered niche because it catters to a specific audience wich has grown and CCP refuses to try to adopt a formula to cater to the masses (YAY CCP),and keeps the game hardcore.
Personaly I think EVE has the best formula for a sucesfull MMOG,it needs just abit more tweaking.. but not in the direction of simplicity.. but better yet expand on it.I still play EVE on and off because I can play for tehnicly free anyway and I still have tons of fun.
Eve is indeed growing nicely (http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility) but compared to mainstream games it holds small share of the market. Mind that out of that 360k subs there are maybe 120-150k actual players.
if you look at numbers is not a niche but if you look at gameplay and the way the game is played EvE dominates that niche of gameplay, afaik there is no SCI-FI game whit pvp + droop loot + player controlled territory + excelBestSigEver :P
Nice job pulling numbers out of your ass.
Eve is still one of the biggest western mmos out there. Since most companies don't release subscription numbers it is difficult to say how big Eve is in relation to others however.
All you have to do is look at login screen. Its been a couple of years, but the last time I logged in at 6 a.m. in the morning central standard time. There were 269K+ subs. I sure there is a lot more than that now. Eve is the only game that I know that tells you at login how many folks are online playing. I am sure the rest are offline training skills.
And to answer the op yes even with 300k subs it is still a niche game it caters to a certain personality.
Who really cares how many play it? IMO it's stil a niche game. CCP has always done what they wanted, regardless of what the mainstream does. It's the only MMO I have played for more than a couple yrs. Played from Beta until summer of 2008. The game isn't for your avg everyday fan of MMO's.
Good game all around, too bad I don't like the direction CCP is taking it, but thats for another post.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
Nice job pulling numbers out of your ass.
Eve is still one of the biggest western mmos out there. Since most companies don't release subscription numbers it is difficult to say how big Eve is in relation to others however.
More of an estimate based on people i know and how many accounts they have. There are barely any people playing eve on just 1 account, most play 2-3 and quite a few play 10+ (like i did in my trading days). so i'm quite sure that number 150k is about right.
Yeah it seems like about 1/3 of the people that I know have multiple accounts and many have more than 2. I know someone that has 7+ so that number, while an estimate, seems likely close.
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First its proven that a very small percentage of players have multiple accounts.
Is EvE still a nich game?
Of course afterall how many other sci-fi spaceship PvP focussed MMO's are there?
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
Hardly, well at least WAR or AoC are not a niche games. Those two titles probably have less players combined then EVE years ago.
You're basing your guesstimates on anecdotal reference.
The truth is, that nobody knows how many accounts a player owns. CCP can only get hints of how high the number of multi accounts is through credit card payments and probably ips. Not every account is billed using credit cars and in the days of growing amounts of dynamic ips and transparent proxies, neither of these metrics are reliable.
However, they did release a glimpse which suggested that the number of people with multiple accounts is not higher than a single digit percentage. And tbh., as flawed as the official data is, it's still a million times more accurate than your guesstimate.
Besides, it's completely irrelevant, since only the number of accounts is of interest for comparing mmo account numbers (duh).
Oh by the way, if something attracts a lot of people, it is mainstream simply by the definition of the word. If Eve is the third largest western mmo, then it is a mainstream mmo.
It's not worth arguing about because "niche" game doesn't really mean anything. It's like asking if EVE is an "AAA" MMO. What does that even mean? How does one define the term?
What does it matter if it is a "niche" game anyway? Who's going to say "Well I like the look of it and it has some great concepts, and it's still growing but I'm not going to play it because I dont like "niche" games?".
That said... My idea of a "niche" game is one that's strongly focused on a very specific gameplay element or theme. EVE supports a very large number of gameplay styles and elements, perhaps the most of any MMO, therefore I dont think of it as niche. It's certainly too big to be related to "niche" status purely on its subscriber numbers.
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Well, if you need to have WOW sub numbers to be mainstream, then few games really qualify.
But if how a game is designed is the qualifier we're really measuring against, then I'd say EVE is clearly a niche game since it eschews many (not all of course) of the gameplay mechanics followed by a majority of games.
Some of this is due to its genre of course, but some features such as its real time skill training (love it or hate it), its PVP model and several other things make it appeal to a definite niche market.
Oh yeah, and women largely hate the game for some reason, perhaps with Avatars it will draw a few more of them.
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if you compare it to wow then yes
It could have 10million subscribers and still be a niche game.
10million subscribers would just mean that 10million people in the world found what was missing in their lives. It's no coincidence that more than half the people you meet in EVE are in the IT field in some form or another. Where as the people you meet in WoW are from all different walks of life. Janitors to Doctors and everything in between.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm pretty sure about 75% of the people I've talked to and got to know in EVE, do something in the IT field to make their real world living. The game itself just attracts that kind of people. I'm sure there are more than 10million people worldwide that do something in the IT field.
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So what people are saying as a mmo it is mainstream but its gaming mechanics is niche?
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
Yeah, it just doesn't really appeal to the mainstream audience where games like WoW and LoTRO do.
Just because alot of people have broken out of the mainstream and found EVE, really doesn't make it any less of a niche game. Because, Joe from down the block would never even consider playing it.
God knows, I've talked to probably a hundred people IRL about playing EVE. Not a single one has even downloaded the client.
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If you can tell us what you mean by "niche" then we can tell you if EVE qualifies.
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Well when I first started the thread I was talking about the game being a niche (well if it was still a niche) from a market point of view..but some people have made good points about just the gaming mechanics being a niche.
I guess I should have been a little clearer
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"A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact."
I would say Eve is still a niche product. 360k is nothing compared to the 20 millon or so total MMO subscribers.
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Then almost all other MMOs would be considered niche too. Niche isn't just sub numbers.
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a niche for me is like running alone on a lane even 3/4 studios running on same lane can be considered niche when you have more that 5 on the same lane is not a niche anymore
another point is when a studio try to merge 2 different niches to create a new niche (like Darkfall did free for all pvp whit loot + FPS = a MMOFPS) but some times a studio take different niches dilute them and make them wide and merging them under a new products if you look at wow this is the prefect example
PVE raids diluted compared to EQ + instances for availability/no NPC scarcity like on EQ => new raids system for anyone that get the numbers
BG diluted from DAOC(no siege)+ instances for the fairness in numbers+capture the flag => new type of BG
same for other features
you take all this and put them under a product and that product is no niche anymore is like a river whit many affluent but a niche is like Nile
do this make sense to you OP ?
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So what MMO has 20 mil subs?
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
WoW is a niche game in the Farmville genre.
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I think he meant overall. I don't think it's a bad guesstimate, if you just count P2P subscribers.
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