MMO's do NOT work in the U.S.Follow

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/30/4381742/take-two-chairman-on-used-games

Tell me your opinions on the comments made by Take-Two president Strauss Zelnick.

I for one tend to believe that his argument is flawed in that there are certainly more than 2 successful MMOs to be released in the U.S. Hell, XI is SE's most profitable game of all time.

I'm more interested in hearing your opinions on what this says about the genre as a whole, especially what this says about how developers will approach further MMO production in the future.

I for one believe if XIV ARR and Elder Scrolls Online flop, you can kiss MMOs in the U.S. goodbye.

That's crazy talk.

You'll continue to see indie and crowdsourced MMO projects, but probably less triple-A titles.

I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts together. I think I'm just so disappointed in the gaming industry right now. If they can't sell you DLC and in game currency I don't think they're going to bother producing It any more. I think Kachi is partly right that MMOs will come from smaller developers. I would just add that games as we're used to seeing them and the kind of games I feel the majority of this community wants to see will come from there too. I think it will be fans of traditional gaming that continue make traditional games while companies like EA, Take 2, SE and large studios will continue to make games which are thinly disguised vending machines.

I would also say that MMOs still do work in the US. But only the good ones. There's a reason he mentioned wow and eq they're the pillars of their genre. Two of the strongest anyway.

Sorry for rambling



Edited, Jun 1st 2013 12:59pm by LebargeX

You will never get the same feeling you got when playing your very first MMO. That is mostly why most MMO Fail, we go into them with the expectation of feeling this new fresh experience, when in fact, we already know what we are gonna get, so i have to kill x rats and you give me rewards ? Kay! I can craft my own weapons ? Duh!, i should party in order to progress... Kay! Is all the same, we just love to kid ourselves in expecting something new and shiny

XI never felt like that to me. I never felt like I encountered that until I tried other games. I'm sure there was a lot of that scenario in XI, but it always felt like fun instead of a chore. I know I'm looking through rose tinted glasses back in my days with XI, but seriously that game was a helluvalot better than any other mmo I've tried since. It always seemed like XI was more about the journey than the destination.

MMO's should give a rich experience and things to do throughout the whole game that are fun and engaging with friends instead of just being a race to cap and gear whoring. That's where I believe most MMO's fail.

Americans, at least the younger generation, do not have the patience or attention span to invest in a MMO, especially since most involve the creating and growing of a character. Most want instant gratification. It's a tough sell to convince them to start at level 1 and work their way up to level XX, learning how to use a various character skill set.

Also, the gaming industry has been on a down recently so that could also be a reason so many MMO's are 'failing.'

Or the market is over saturated that people are closely selecting what they're investing in. A certain genre only appeals to so many people. That pool of players is now divided over a plethora of titles, not just a 2 or 3 the way it would have been 8-10 years ago.

MMOs don't work the way that game companies want them to work.

They want five million people to sign up on day one and keep playing for ten years straight.

You can get 500K people to do so with a very good game (FFXI hovered around that for a few years after the peak), but you also have to constantly re-invest your profits back into the game to keep their attention. You also have to have a large amount of content, and a wide variety of it, to keep people around. Shiny graphics, good story, and engaging gameplay aren't enough - you have to constantly release new stuff, too.

The last MMOs I've played were fun...while they lasted.

End game for me is, the end. I don't really like raiding in the classical sense.

However if there was a world that I loved to remain in, while being entertained in other ways, I'd keep playing forever.

I think MMOs need to focus less on "end game" and create either more horizontal content or just more content in general.

PvP, and Raids just aren't sufficient for longevity anymore.

Final Fantasy's strength is it's story and world and I'd argue it's novelty. It needs to keep me in that world, without repetitive content.

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I'm just one person and I don't know why people leave MMOs in general, but one thing WoW did right was ask on a questionnaire when you left stating, "Why did you leave; what things could we improve on." In addition to other things WoW did, I think this was a genius move.

As I've posted in another thread (and I don't want to bring up F2P) but I think the buisiness strategy for current MMOs is, if it doesn't work out, there's always the cash shop. And as I've stated, that's a horrible business model.

Developers and gaming companies need to realize what keeps players rather than creating a revolving door; that will create a loyal player base, longevity and stop MMOs from dying.

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Look, a lot of Final Fantasy fans are still playing FFVII and it's spin offs 15 years later and the main game was about 12.5 days of playtime (give or take a few days). SE needs to tap into that and developers in general need to tap into what makes games special, rather than making the next big thing.

GW2 and Rift were those fun games, but they didn't have that special feeling. Mechanically they were innovative and fun, but there was no thought into the future. I'd argue that WoW and FFXI didn't think too much about the future, but WoW did a better job at listening to their player base and having the previous experience of creating an online game to do something about those complaints. SE, IMO got by, by name alone and by not overextending themselves in development; remaining a niche game.

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So in the end, like the success thread, MMO developers need to focus on their strengths and know their player base in addition to creating interesting and involving content. The irony is Indie developers do this naturally; they do it for the love and things fall into place.
Sure, if you want to make lots of money, then sell your game in China/Korea but that doesn't mean a niche MMO in America can't be successful/profitable as well.

I do, but that's not the same thing as "lacking patience or attention span." It's contextual. The kids haven't changed--their environment has. And when it's an important social issue, like education, that's concerning, but also not their fault (and generally speaking, has shown that their patience and attention spans are fine). When it's a question of which video game they choose when they plop down in front of a screen, it has nothing to do with patience or attention span, but a desire for stimulation. You can blame MMOs for not being more stimulating (because they're repetitive, boring, and one of the last things you want young people to spend their time on), but you can't blame kids for being discerning consumers of media.

i.e., it's not about "instant" gratification, but the quality of the gratification. MMOs just don't really deliver much in that regard. And who cares?

Wouldn't all games be considered repetitive?
A sports title is redundant, especially if you do any season or career mode and shooters will usually have the same maps, enemies, and spawn points.

I think most people are overlooking the painfully obvious here. I'm not gonna go all back in my day but todays gamers/younger generation play entirely different than most of us did. This is the age of Call of Duty, Halo and Assassins Creed. Younger gamers today play in a way different style. MMO's in general are not going to appeal to them or if they do not for long. On the other end of the spectrum the gamers out there that do/would like games with a need to build your way up are getting older, have gotten married and or have jobs something that's pretty counter productive to the time commitment MMO's require if you ever want to "max out". I won't say MMO's are dead in the US but I think it's going to become a very niche market that won't be kind to a lot of competition. (In the western world)

And take two has decided that rather than try to make something better they are just going to schlep more crap to Asia. Way to innovate