Post by Morreion on Oct 15, 2014 20:12:34 GMT -5
Perfect Ten: MMO industry moves I didn't see coming (Massively)
Despite -- or more accurately, because of -- my love for video games, I would never want to work in the games industry as a developer or what have you. I think it's an industry that doesn't have a good track record of job security, sane hours, or products that you could feasibly spend years working on that might not make it to ship. But I love writing about the industry. I love the news. That's why I adore being at Massively.
I also love the news because MMOs and studios constantly surprise me. Hey, maybe you're an amazing clairvoyant person who can not only predict but accurately foresee all of the jukes and twists that the industry makes. I am not. When mental superpowers were being handed out, I got "setting people on fire with a mere thought" instead of what appears to be the widespread "know it all" ability. I don't regret it...
1. The Elder Scrolls Online and WildStar going full-on subscription-only
OK, first of all Carbine, don't split hairs and say that your business model is hybrid-anything because that's like saying a normal car with a AA battery strapped to the dashboard is a hybrid. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, did anyone really see this coming? Two of the biggest MMOs currently in development both announcing -- within two days of each other -- that they're bringing back a sub-only model? It was a news bomb that still has people chattering away at it and endlessly debating the worthiness of a subscription model.
I'm starting off this list with these examples because really, only in MMOs do you see this sort of weirdness happen. Conventional wisdom and the collective learned lessons of the past few years has shown that free-to-play is the standard and games launching sub-only don't stay that way for long. Yet there you go.
2. The explosion of free-to-play
It's always amazing to me how quick culture and our micro-societies are able to adjust to change so much that we fool ourselves into thinking that this has always been the case. Kind of like we're brainwashing ourselves. But such free-to-play pervasiveness wasn't the de facto standard prior to 2009, when Dungeons and Dragons Online threw a hail Mary pass by changing its business model and scoring big in doing so. Prior to 2009, I would have just assumed, much like anyone else, that MMOs would keep coming out with a subscription model and we'd have to choose which games we wanted to play based on our budget. Virtually overnight, all that changed as other games jumped onto the F2P bandwagon and gaming for frugal players became an all-you-can-eat buffet.
4. The current epidemic of upcoming sandbox titles
I've always felt that the pro-sandbox crowd, including many of my colleagues here at Massively, are a very vocal but definitely minority subset of MMO gamers. It's seemed like gamers generally gravitate more toward themepark titles, and that's what studios have been building almost exclusively for nearly a decade now. Yet with the explosion of Minecraft, game modding, and a combined player-developer revolution against the norm, we're seeing a tidal wave of upcoming sandboxes heading our way. That's cool with me, by the way; I think many of them sound awesome. I just never would've imagined that there would be so many of them almost all at once.
10. The return of Asheron's Call 2
Well, I just had to end with this one. Despite the fact that Turbine is strangely reluctant to talk about its decision to bring back AC2 (and trust me, we've sent multiple interview inquiries regarding it), the fact that the studio did it at all was just out of left field. I mean, how often do you see games return from the dead years after the fact just because? Exactly.
Despite -- or more accurately, because of -- my love for video games, I would never want to work in the games industry as a developer or what have you. I think it's an industry that doesn't have a good track record of job security, sane hours, or products that you could feasibly spend years working on that might not make it to ship. But I love writing about the industry. I love the news. That's why I adore being at Massively.
I also love the news because MMOs and studios constantly surprise me. Hey, maybe you're an amazing clairvoyant person who can not only predict but accurately foresee all of the jukes and twists that the industry makes. I am not. When mental superpowers were being handed out, I got "setting people on fire with a mere thought" instead of what appears to be the widespread "know it all" ability. I don't regret it...
1. The Elder Scrolls Online and WildStar going full-on subscription-only
OK, first of all Carbine, don't split hairs and say that your business model is hybrid-anything because that's like saying a normal car with a AA battery strapped to the dashboard is a hybrid. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, did anyone really see this coming? Two of the biggest MMOs currently in development both announcing -- within two days of each other -- that they're bringing back a sub-only model? It was a news bomb that still has people chattering away at it and endlessly debating the worthiness of a subscription model.
I'm starting off this list with these examples because really, only in MMOs do you see this sort of weirdness happen. Conventional wisdom and the collective learned lessons of the past few years has shown that free-to-play is the standard and games launching sub-only don't stay that way for long. Yet there you go.
2. The explosion of free-to-play
It's always amazing to me how quick culture and our micro-societies are able to adjust to change so much that we fool ourselves into thinking that this has always been the case. Kind of like we're brainwashing ourselves. But such free-to-play pervasiveness wasn't the de facto standard prior to 2009, when Dungeons and Dragons Online threw a hail Mary pass by changing its business model and scoring big in doing so. Prior to 2009, I would have just assumed, much like anyone else, that MMOs would keep coming out with a subscription model and we'd have to choose which games we wanted to play based on our budget. Virtually overnight, all that changed as other games jumped onto the F2P bandwagon and gaming for frugal players became an all-you-can-eat buffet.
4. The current epidemic of upcoming sandbox titles
I've always felt that the pro-sandbox crowd, including many of my colleagues here at Massively, are a very vocal but definitely minority subset of MMO gamers. It's seemed like gamers generally gravitate more toward themepark titles, and that's what studios have been building almost exclusively for nearly a decade now. Yet with the explosion of Minecraft, game modding, and a combined player-developer revolution against the norm, we're seeing a tidal wave of upcoming sandboxes heading our way. That's cool with me, by the way; I think many of them sound awesome. I just never would've imagined that there would be so many of them almost all at once.
10. The return of Asheron's Call 2
Well, I just had to end with this one. Despite the fact that Turbine is strangely reluctant to talk about its decision to bring back AC2 (and trust me, we've sent multiple interview inquiries regarding it), the fact that the studio did it at all was just out of left field. I mean, how often do you see games return from the dead years after the fact just because? Exactly.
