Definition of Success

TheLizardbones

The recent release of Guild Wars 2 and the not so recent trials and tribulations of Star Wars: The Old Republic has gotten me thinking about the meaning of Success and Failure as it relates to MMORPG.

If SWToR goes F2P and their income doubles, are they still a failure? Is that failure a permanent state that they'll never get away from?

What about GW2? Currently, they seem to be wildly successful. They've actually stopped directly selling copies of the game from their website because they've sold so many copies in such a short period of time. If that's not successful, I don't know what is. What about six months from now? What if there's only one server left and that one is sparsely populated?

Here's what I think. The idea of "Success" or "Failure" isn't a constant state. It has to be evaluated for "Right Now". A game could be a failure yesterday, and a success today, and then a failure tomorrow. It's an ongoing test and doesn't stop until the game shuts down for good.

Draron

If the game's still running, getting content updates, and is fun then I consider it successful. 

Oracle_Fefe

Sadly, SWTOR was dealt a hard hit for what it went through. A lot of money, big company, famous brand, yet disliked by many. In my opinion it damaged the views of MMOs in general that MMO players had.

 

If GW2 falls through the same slope, then from my views..MMOs are just going to do into a darker age. I honestly feel that we're in somewhat of a dark age of MMOs as we find many indie multiplayer games falling, the big shots releasing famous-brand games that are made to eat out the wallets of customers (Star Trek Online.) And what seems to be a near-monopoly of the MORPG genre World of Warcraft  which split customers into either loving the game and playing it, or hating the game and playing something else to get away from it and the customers that love it.

bobfish

Success for those that work in the industry = profit

 

Success for the average MMO fan / addict = having more players in your favorite MMO than the competition

Phaserlight

"Success":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCOyHyxXc8Q

arieste

Originally posted by lizardbones

The recent release of Guild Wars 2 and the not so recent trials and tribulations of Star Wars: The Old Republic has gotten me thinking about the meaning of Success and Failure as it relates to MMORPG.

If SWToR goes F2P and their income doubles, are they still a failure? Is that failure a permanent state that they'll never get away from?

What about GW2? Currently, they seem to be wildly successful. They've actually stopped directly selling copies of the game from their website because they've sold so many copies in such a short period of time. If that's not successful, I don't know what is. What about six months from now? What if there's only one server left and that one is sparsely populated?

Here's what I think. The idea of "Success" or "Failure" isn't a constant state. It has to be evaluated for "Right Now". A game could be a failure yesterday, and a success today, and then a failure tomorrow. It's an ongoing test and doesn't stop until the game shuts down for good.

Commercial Success - highly profitable game. 

 

Success - good game that is also at least somewhat profitable.  

 

So to you use your example, SWTOR may one day become commercially successful, but it'll forever remain a failure as a game.

 

Generally in the arts, the flipside of commercial success is "critical success".  However, the lack of respected and impartial media in video games has resulted in most video game criticism being dismissable and laughable, so at the moment, it is quite difficult to ascertain the degree of "critical success" of anything.   (The lack of established criteria or "science" with which to review MMOs is probably also at fault for not arming what media there is with the right tools to do their jobs.)

kevjards

i've always considered a game successful if they are running,have a reasonable population.take vanguard for instance..when released or even now people call it a failure..not so..the game has been running for 5 yrs..to me thats a success in itself given the situation at release..other people may think different.

Sicae

Success is when you don't have to worry about employee salaries and can hire enough people to keep releasing new content. Failure is when you have to fire people because your game didn't sell enough.

GrumpyMel2

It depends alot on what context you are using the term under. However if we are talking from a strictly financial standpoint, that's really about meeting expectations on Return On Investment. A big factor there is TIME as well. So I'm not actualy sure it's possible for TOR to become a "success" in those terms.

Financialy, speaking if I'm expecting a Return On My money in 2 months,  and I don't actualy get that return for another 4 years, thats a HUGE difference. The thing you have to factor into consideration is Opportunity Costs. If my money is sitting around tied up for 4 years, then it's not availble to do other things with (like invest in other projects that get me thier own Returns).

It's essentialy the difference between saying do you want to make $50 every 2 days or every 2 months....the answer is pretty obvious.

There are other important factors to consider as well...things like risk, etc.  But essentialy if you are talking financials, it's important for projects to meet or exceed thier expectations. If not then the people or companies that have sunk money into them can't really plan effectively.

It's possible that TOR may turn things around at some point and start reaping some good returns. If it does that well enough, it may even eventualy be considered a "success", but even if it does that, what actualy happaned is always going to be a black mark on it's record..... simply because it performed so differently then it was expected (at least as far as the public was pitched and EA is a publicaly held company) to perform.