Post by Morreion on Nov 19, 2014 16:27:23 GMT -5
Working As Intended: Niche MMOs vs. the everything box (Massively)
Interesting essay- the author defines a'niche game' here as a game that only has 1 or 2 things to do, picture the typical combat simulator theme park.
...In the early days of Star Wars Galaxies, I ran a medium-sized guild and a very large city. Many of the members of our guild and city were friends of friends gathered over the course of the previous six or seven years, and many of them had serious careers and families but were united in their love of Star Wars. We didn't think of those players in terms of casuals vs. hardcores, but some of them were very definitely casual by today's standards. Here are a few of the more colorful personalities in my guild at the time:
Zabrak Commando: She would return from expeditions on adventure planets to tell tales of how she'd taken down Imperial AT-STs solo in PvP.
Human Squad Leader: He always found new ways to use supposedly broken skills and led us all out on PvE adventures.
Human Architect: She scouted out the beta and became an Architect so we could build our guild hall in record time.
Twi'lek Tailor: Her clothing/image design empire and friends list spanned the entire server.
Human Ranger: This dude always built the best camps in the wilderness for our mission-running crew.
Human Politician: She took the Politician career deadly seriously, devoting half her character's skills to guiding our town's layout and citizenry.
Ithorian Pilot: Once this gal got a starship, I could hardly coax her out of space. Her player did teach me how to fly, though!
Human Musician: I first met him in a cantina, where he was playing the nalargon and chatting with adventurers dropping by for heals.
Trandoshan Merchant. This guy was an industrial genius. I'm not sure he ever maxed any skill trees beyond Artisan and Merchant, but for a couple of hours every week, he coordinated a mining company made up of a network of casual players, making all of them ultra-rich.
I could go on and on here, but the point is that we had ridiculous diversity in playstyles represented in our guild, and it wasn't because our guild was special or because we were particularly skilled at "making our own content," as sandboxes often expect. It was because the game was special.
...We need MMOs to be everything boxes. Catering to discrete niches isn't working, not if you are a fan of MMORPGs as a serious and rich genre. We need dynamic, bold, ambitious MMORPGs that appeal to dozens of simultaneous niches, all within the same game. The MMO genre is big, but it's not so big that we can afford to be spread out over hundreds of tiny games; that's a massive industry, not massive games. We need diversity in players and playstyles and gameplay in every title, else we're boring and dried up and dead like some MOBA with one map that everyone's done a hundred times. I want to play MMOs that have hundreds of gameplay things in them that I don't want to do, that someone else does want to do, so we can all play together in the same gameworld. We need to attract genre newbies with that variety or we're dying, being supplanted by narrow-minded, pop-up titles that pull a mechanic or two out of MMOs and call them a standalone game.
But I don't think it's too late. I don't think we're staring down the slow death of the all-encompassing MMORPG. Sandboxes like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies and even EVE Online didn't cost Blizzard-caliber fortunes to build, and my guildies proved, over and over, how an everything box done well can be enjoyed by both gamers with no time to spare and gamers with too much time on their hands. By many accounts, newly launched ArcheAge offers diverse content for diverse playstyles and is marred only by an unfortunate combination of anti-social play and studio mismanagement. Clearly, it can still be done in 2014, clownshoes aside.
In truth, "niche MMO" is an oxymoron, and we need to stop pretending otherwise in the service of faux diversity and the hope that our personal niches will be gratified. If you're making a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game with niche appeal for a niche audience, you're not making a massive anything at all. What you're making is a fun and worthy diversion, but it's not really an MMORPG. This genre can do better than to settle for niche. It has to.
Interesting essay- the author defines a'niche game' here as a game that only has 1 or 2 things to do, picture the typical combat simulator theme park.
...In the early days of Star Wars Galaxies, I ran a medium-sized guild and a very large city. Many of the members of our guild and city were friends of friends gathered over the course of the previous six or seven years, and many of them had serious careers and families but were united in their love of Star Wars. We didn't think of those players in terms of casuals vs. hardcores, but some of them were very definitely casual by today's standards. Here are a few of the more colorful personalities in my guild at the time:
Zabrak Commando: She would return from expeditions on adventure planets to tell tales of how she'd taken down Imperial AT-STs solo in PvP.
Human Squad Leader: He always found new ways to use supposedly broken skills and led us all out on PvE adventures.
Human Architect: She scouted out the beta and became an Architect so we could build our guild hall in record time.
Twi'lek Tailor: Her clothing/image design empire and friends list spanned the entire server.
Human Ranger: This dude always built the best camps in the wilderness for our mission-running crew.
Human Politician: She took the Politician career deadly seriously, devoting half her character's skills to guiding our town's layout and citizenry.
Ithorian Pilot: Once this gal got a starship, I could hardly coax her out of space. Her player did teach me how to fly, though!
Human Musician: I first met him in a cantina, where he was playing the nalargon and chatting with adventurers dropping by for heals.
Trandoshan Merchant. This guy was an industrial genius. I'm not sure he ever maxed any skill trees beyond Artisan and Merchant, but for a couple of hours every week, he coordinated a mining company made up of a network of casual players, making all of them ultra-rich.
I could go on and on here, but the point is that we had ridiculous diversity in playstyles represented in our guild, and it wasn't because our guild was special or because we were particularly skilled at "making our own content," as sandboxes often expect. It was because the game was special.
...We need MMOs to be everything boxes. Catering to discrete niches isn't working, not if you are a fan of MMORPGs as a serious and rich genre. We need dynamic, bold, ambitious MMORPGs that appeal to dozens of simultaneous niches, all within the same game. The MMO genre is big, but it's not so big that we can afford to be spread out over hundreds of tiny games; that's a massive industry, not massive games. We need diversity in players and playstyles and gameplay in every title, else we're boring and dried up and dead like some MOBA with one map that everyone's done a hundred times. I want to play MMOs that have hundreds of gameplay things in them that I don't want to do, that someone else does want to do, so we can all play together in the same gameworld. We need to attract genre newbies with that variety or we're dying, being supplanted by narrow-minded, pop-up titles that pull a mechanic or two out of MMOs and call them a standalone game.
But I don't think it's too late. I don't think we're staring down the slow death of the all-encompassing MMORPG. Sandboxes like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies and even EVE Online didn't cost Blizzard-caliber fortunes to build, and my guildies proved, over and over, how an everything box done well can be enjoyed by both gamers with no time to spare and gamers with too much time on their hands. By many accounts, newly launched ArcheAge offers diverse content for diverse playstyles and is marred only by an unfortunate combination of anti-social play and studio mismanagement. Clearly, it can still be done in 2014, clownshoes aside.
In truth, "niche MMO" is an oxymoron, and we need to stop pretending otherwise in the service of faux diversity and the hope that our personal niches will be gratified. If you're making a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game with niche appeal for a niche audience, you're not making a massive anything at all. What you're making is a fun and worthy diversion, but it's not really an MMORPG. This genre can do better than to settle for niche. It has to.
