Tabula Rasa, now with no FUN!

[Draegan]

If the game actually delivers those things he mentioned in that letter, mechs, clan combat, flashpoints and all the other stuff, I'd pick up the game to try it out again.  Havn't played since BETA.

[MahrinSkel]

I realize that this industry has defined "professionalism" as "you will not point out the stink of someone else's shit."  But this is getting stupid.  You spend $106M to get the market of Anarchy Online, Planetside, WW2O, or Shadowbane (4 games that added together cost 1/5th as much), that would tend to indicate that you did something *really* wrong somewhere.  Like boneheaded, "stack a pile of $100 bills the size of a house and cover it with gasoline" wrong.  But maybe that's just me.

--Dave

[Ratman_tf]

I realize that this industry has defined "professionalism" as "you will not point out the stink of someone else's shit."  But this is getting stupid.  You spend $106M to get the market of Anarchy Online, Planetside, WW2O, or Shadowbane (4 games that added together cost 1/5th as much), that would tend to indicate that you did something *really* wrong somewhere.  Like boneheaded, "stack a pile of $100 bills the size of a house and cover it with gasoline" wrong.  But maybe that's just me.

--Dave

Wasn't the 100 mil dev cost in dispute?

[Lantyssa]

If it was over $15 million it would still be an issue.

[Slyfeind]

There's a lot of us here saying we'd love a good sci-fi MMO, but the latest offering haven't been compelling enough, so we're all still playing WOW. I think that's the market they're shooting for. Plus, there's games that we don't realize we'd like, because they're not marketted at us. I know people in WOW who are playing that as their first game. I invite them to join me in other worlds, but they're so WOW-ized they can't imagine playing anywhere else.

And there's tons of potential gamers out there who haven't even tried it yet. 10 million isn't mass market. American Idol has 70 million viewers. THAT'S mass market.

[Nebu]

And there's tons of potential gamers out there who haven't even tried it yet. 10 million isn't mass market. American Idol has 70 million viewers. THAT'S mass market.

American Idol Online?

[MahrinSkel]

And there's tons of potential gamers out there who haven't even tried it yet. 10 million isn't mass market. American Idol has 70 million viewers. THAT'S mass market.

American Idol Online?

Here you go.

[MahrinSkel]

Wasn't the 100 mil dev cost in dispute?

Let's assume that the NCSoft Korea CFO is dumping other expenses of the American division into that so he can confine the red ink to a single line entry.  It's still hard to believe it was less than $60M, which was still more than the revenue coming back out justifies by a factor of ten.  So it's still the biggest single-title MMO bomb ever.  Not quite matching the EA.com debacle, but that was spread over several titles, each of which did about as well as TR.

--Dave

[Draegan]

And there's tons of potential gamers out there who haven't even tried it yet. 10 million isn't mass market. American Idol has 70 million viewers. THAT'S mass market.

American Idol Online?

Here you go.

Nope, this is what you were looking for.

[Ratman_tf]

And there's tons of potential gamers out there who haven't even tried it yet. 10 million isn't mass market. American Idol has 70 million viewers. THAT'S mass market.

American Idol is passive (setting aside the voting gimmick) entertainment. Completely different fish.

[Slyfeind]

American Idol is passive (setting aside the voting gimmick) entertainment. Completely different fish.

Correct.

70 million subscribers would still be good.

[WayAbvPar]

And there's tons of potential gamers out there who haven't even tried it yet. 10 million isn't mass market. American Idol has 70 million viewers. THAT'S mass market.

American Idol is passive (setting aside the voting gimmick) entertainment. Completely different fish.

That certainly isn't the word I would use to describe it.

[Kageru]

The NPC mechs in tabula rasa are excellent.

That said they were promising PAU's from launch and I never understood it. The game has small maps, sparse high level content and an absence of any end-game challenges. How exactly a PAU was meant to fix any of those issues or actually add much to the gameplay always made me wonder.

[Ratman_tf]

American Idol is passive (setting aside the voting gimmick) entertainment. Completely different fish.

Correct.

70 million subscribers would still be good.

Shit. 6 billion subscribers would be better.

[Ratman_tf]

And there's tons of potential gamers out there who haven't even tried it yet. 10 million isn't mass market. American Idol has 70 million viewers. THAT'S mass market.

American Idol is passive (setting aside the voting gimmick) entertainment. Completely different fish.

That certainly isn't the word I would use to describe it.

Well, I use the term techincally.

[Slyfeind]

American Idol is passive (setting aside the voting gimmick) entertainment. Completely different fish.

Correct.

70 million subscribers would still be good.

Shit. 6 billion subscribers would be better.

Yeah, that too. Harry Potter has over 100 million readers, while the Holy Bible has, you said it, 6 billion sold. We want God's own numbers here!

Seriously though, my point is that I doubt only 10 million people in the entire world will ever be interested in MMOs. That just doesn't seem realistic to me. 10 million is pocket lint in entertainment terms.

[Ratman_tf]

Yeah, that too. Harry Potter has over 100 million readers, while the Holy Bible has, you said it, 6 billion sold. We want God's own numbers here!

Seriously though, my point is that I doubt only 10 million people in the entire world will ever be interested in MMOs. That just doesn't seem realistic to me. 10 million is pocket lint in entertainment terms.

We've had this discussion before, but I'll repeat for the home viewing audience.

I don't know if MMO gaming has peaked with WoW's subscription numbers, but I think it's prudent to seriously consider that possiblity.

Selling hamburgers to vegetarians and all that.

[Venkman]

10mil paying subscribers is alot. But that's chicken feed against the hundreds of millions that have registered for the Asian MMOs. Yea, their numbers are different, but even if every person had five accounts, we're still talking orders of magnitude the number of actual people. They may not pay a flat fee, but they pay through the nose to play the games anyway, and get barked at with ads to boot. Then factor back in the US kiddie MMOs that have various business models and tens of millions between them (plus Habbo which has well in excess of 100mil).

That's why it's important to look beyond just the flat fee game arena. That has probably peaked. But there's way many times that many people playing some other type of MMO.

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah, that too. Harry Potter has over 100 million readers, while the Holy Bible has, you said it, 6 billion sold. We want God's own numbers here!

Seriously though, my point is that I doubt only 10 million people in the entire world will ever be interested in MMOs. That just doesn't seem realistic to me. 10 million is pocket lint in entertainment terms.

We've had this discussion before, but I'll repeat for the home viewing audience.

I don't know if MMO gaming has peaked with WoW's subscription numbers, but I think it's prudent to seriously consider that possiblity.

Selling hamburgers to vegetarians and all that.

We're not there yet (keep in mind the first chart covers only the last third of the second).  Too early to say for certain we've even crossed the linear growth "Early Majority" threshold (as opposed to the exponential growth "Early Adopter" phase.Even if we have, we're at least 10 years from year-over-year growth under 10%.  Admittedly, these charts include WoW's asian numbers, which skews things.  But the sheer number of WH beta apps makes me think we're still in the Early Adopter phase.  I think there's a great deal of "demand tension" in the US/European market right now.  For a while WoW was sucking all the oxygen out of the room, but that's over.

--Dave

[UnSub]

I don't know if MMO gaming has peaked with WoW's subscription numbers, but I think it's prudent to seriously consider that possiblity.

Selling hamburgers to vegetarians and all that.

No way, no how. This is a time when the mainstream are only just starting to get into MMOs. Maybe WoW will be the first and last game to get 2.5 million US players paying $15 a month for the privilege of playing, but other MMOs that have different subscription models and cover different areas will certainly get bigger than that in aggregate over time (barring catestrophic system collapse, of course).

I don't know the figures, but once you've played one MMO, you've broken that barrier and will probably try another. Your 15 yo starting his first WoW character will probably keep going on playing some kind of persistent online game until they die.

There probably - probably - won't be games with 70 million current players. But TV (and all other types of media) is taking big hits from online entertainment, MMOs included. Playing computer games is now more socially acceptable than it ever was and this will continue until saying you play games is the equivalent to saying that you watch TV - everyone does it.

WoW will always be a great case study, but something else will come along and become the new focus of the MMO market.

[UnSub]

Wasn't the 100 mil dev cost in dispute?

Let's assume that the NCSoft Korea CFO is dumping other expenses of the American division into that so he can confine the red ink to a single line entry.  It's still hard to believe it was less than $60M, which was still more than the revenue coming back out justifies by a factor of ten.  So it's still the biggest single-title MMO bomb ever.  Not quite matching the EA.com debacle, but that was spread over several titles, each of which did about as well as TR.

--Dave

Along with MahrinSkel, I refuse to believe that an all-star group of game developers who also have direct access to the coffers of NCsoft did things on the cheap.

Especially when they restarted the project at least once.

I actually have some concerns about NCsoft in the longer term if they don't get a hit of some kind soon. If Aion tanks... yeesh. It would mean that NCsoft have poured a lot of money into projects to see not much return at all. NCsoft are also meant to be releasing a PS3 MMO this year (my bet is CoH/V or Guild Wars) which has got to be a risk.

I don't want to see NCsoft fail - they are trying to do a few different things in the market - but I'm not going to be surprised if they go on a cost slashing exercise.

[MahrinSkel]

I actually have some concerns about NCsoft in the longer term if they don't get a hit of some kind soon. If Aion tanks... yeesh. It would mean that NCsoft have poured a lot of money into projects to see not much return at all. NCsoft are also meant to be releasing a PS3 MMO this year (my bet is CoH/V or Guild Wars) which has got to be a risk.

I don't want to see NCsoft fail - they are trying to do a few different things in the market - but I'm not going to be surprised if they go on a cost slashing exercise.

They already are.  Several external projects that were never officially announced as having NCSoft as a publisher have been cut loose and are looking for new backing.

--Dave

[Ratman_tf]

WoW will always be a great case study, but something else will come along and become the new focus of the MMO market.

I think at this point we can be pretty sure how many people are interested in RPGs/FPSes/RTSes etc... If some game comes along to kick WoW's ass, I bet it won't be anything a gamer would consider a "real video game". I feel pretty comfortable saying WoW will be the biggest MMORPG, and it's all downhill for that genere now.

(Save this post so I have to print it out and eat it a few years from now...  )

[MahrinSkel]

WoW will always be a great case study, but something else will come along and become the new focus of the MMO market.

I think at this point we can be pretty sure how many people are interested in RPGs/FPSes/RTSes etc... If some game comes along to kick WoW's ass, I bet it won't be anything a gamer would consider a "real video game". I feel pretty comfortable saying WoW will be the biggest MMORPG, and it's all downhill for that genere now.

(Save this post so I have to print it out and eat it a few years from now...  )

If you had made your determination of the market for a Space Exploitation and Warfare game off the success (or lack thereof) of Earth and Beyond and Jumpgate, you would probably have considered those a dead end as well.  But Eve would seem to indicate the subscriber numbers there were not indicative of the actual demand for that kind of game.  They were just bad games, that misunderstood how people wanted to play them.

Planetside and WW2O's initial box sales were quite good, considering when they came out.  Technical and design flaws meant they didn't get much of a subscriber base.  But the *interest* in a persistant world FPS that "gets it right" would certainly seem to be there.

And like I said, my best guess is that the MMORPG market is less than 1/3 tapped in the US/Europe.  How much less I can't guess, but no more than that.  LOTRO and D&D generated lots of beta apps (and so did RG:TR), they just didn't convert those into paying customers.  WH has a chance to break the string, if it does the payoff will be huge and we'll stop talking about the imminent implosion of the industry.  For about 3-4 years.

--Dave

[WindupAtheist]

Wake me up when some of these post-Blizzard industry bitches manages to even top peak EQ1 numbers.

[Venkman]

If some game comes along to kick WoW's ass, I bet it won't be anything a gamer would consider a "real video game".

That's been my point. Maplestory has easily 10 times as many WoW accounts. Habbo has over 12 times. Audition, 13 times. People dismiss these games for three reasons:

• They don't collect a flat fee. Doesn't matter that these games cost 10, 12 or 13 times less to make than WoW did, and don't have nearly the overhead. Nor does it seem to matter that this group is at once far far more numerous, and not playing WoW, even if you assume only 10% of the registered accounts actually ever play the game.
  
• They don't appeal to them personally. This makes sense. But then, 95% of the harder-core part of the genre is games most here don't play personally either. Because they're all time sinks. Who's got the time?
• They haven't been as successful in the West as they have been in the East. This is true except for Habbo, which has and continues to be huge.

Comparing the money only works if you want to talk about the niche side of the genre. Blizzard makes a lot of money, yes. They spent a lot of money, yes. They made a game the post-UO crowd wanted to play, yes. They made a game that converted a lot of other people who were closet DIKU fans too. They've got mass market awareness, which counts for something.

But they're nowhere near a "mass market game". The core game play is still too hardcore for the average gamer.

[Draegan]

Define average gamer.  Housewife playing Peggle?

[Ratman_tf]

Define average gamer.  Housewife playing Peggle?

I suspect that companies eyeing the semi-mythical "casual gamer" are gunning for people who are happy to be playing Suidoku or Bejeweled Deluxe 2. That's fine, but it's not the MMOG market.

[Ratman_tf]

If you had made your determination of the market for a Space Exploitation and Warfare game off the success (or lack thereof) of Earth and Beyond and Jumpgate, you would probably have considered those a dead end as well.  But Eve would seem to indicate the subscriber numbers there were not indicative of the actual demand for that kind of game.  They were just bad games, that misunderstood how people wanted to play them.

It would seem that Eve got their gameplay for their target audience right. Earth and Beyond was trying to be EQ In Space, and failed miserably. Jumpgate was more for the space fighter jocks, and that is a tiny fanbase nowadays. (I miss X-Wing...)

Granted E&B and Jumpgate could have been better games, but I do not see a spaceship game of any kind taking off like EQ1 at it's heyday, much less WoW numbers.

Planetside and WW2O's initial box sales were quite good, considering when they came out.  Technical and design flaws meant they didn't get much of a subscriber base.  But the *interest* in a persistant world FPS that "gets it right" would certainly seem to be there.

There are a ton of people out there who are gamers who just hop around and check out every new thing. They will leave even if you get the game right, because the next shiny is a-coming around the corner.

[IainC]

Wake me up when some of these post-Blizzard industry bitches manages to even top peak EQ1 numbers.

Depends how you define 'MMO'. Some of the web 2.0/casual portals coming out of Asia are making numbers that piss all over WoW and their 10 million subscribers. Never underestimate the craziness of Koreans.

[Venkman]

That.

Define average gamer.  Housewife playing Peggle?

Everyone who buys a game without reading an enthusiast's review of it first.

Or: everyone else.

[Nebu]

Average gamer = noone on these forums. 

We often forget this little bit.

[Ratman_tf]

Average gamer = noone on these forums. 

We often forget this little bit.

They're all over on the Blizzard forums posting ascii pron.

[Slyfeind]

The biggest thing that jumps out at me right now is, everybody saying "Define this" and "Define that." And that's the key, that's what we're all misunderstanding. I can say that the average gamer is a middle-aged housewife, and someone can say "I define the average gamer as someone who logs 40 hours a week on Halo 3," and that pretty much kills the debate right there.

If anyone thinks the market has reached maximum saturation, I invite them to imagine eight years ago when we would laugh at the idea of a game with twenty times the subscribers as EQ. Or fifty years ago, when it would be ludicrous to imagine a TV in every home.

[WindupAtheist]

Wake me up again when someone can tell me how many people actually play Korean MMO X, and not how many free accounts have been created and abandoned over the years.  I'm sure Blizzard's numbers would be much higher if they didn't insist upon accounts being active and paying in order to count.  See NCSoft and their silly "15 million Lineage accounts have been created, but we're not giving actual sub numbers!" press release last year or whenever it was.

Several times in the last few years, some of the old-school developers have given me a distinct vibe of "Blizzard has eaten our lunches so thorougly that we will never, ever, ever be able to compete in a million years... but uh... Korea!  Yeah, you can totally get a lot of accounts made if you give them away free and uncontrolled and don't care how many of them are actually being played!  And even turn a nice profit so long as you make your game on the cheap too!  Really, there's a place left in my industry besides being Blizzard's bitch!  REALLY!"