Post by Morreion on Sept 14, 2010 9:15:42 GMT -5
The Great MMO Paradox: Why Success Keeps Trumping Quality (Wolfshead Online)
Wolfshead is often seen as a curmudgeon, but I often find myself agreeing with him. In this article, he makes the point that success in the MMO field (often attributed to the wild subscription numbers of WoW) is antithetical to a good gaming experience because numbers trump quality.
I think that part of this is due to the inevitable popularization of the genre, with millions of new players flooding in with very different ideas of what a game should be like compared to the original cult-fan following. The part that is hard to swallow for me at least is that the MMO genre is becoming less MMO-like in this process. As the MMO market becomes more FPS-like or social-gaming-like, the original MMO fanbase feels like the genre is leaving them. I think that is more of an issue of concern to me than whether games suck these days.
Too often in our society, we let sales figures and numbers of hamburgers sold indicate and validate success. We’ve been seduced by the popular bandwagon hopping culture into thinking that success is more important than quality. Just because a game is successful doesn’t mean that game is great.
Which leads me to the flip side of this equation: just because a game is great doesn’t guarantee that the game will bring success to its creators. Looking at this from a purely Darwinian perspective, only the companies that survive will be able to make games. If being successful means the video game industry must create games that will attract more subscribers than a higher quality game where more skill is required from its participants then success will trump quality every time.
Which leads me to the flip side of this equation: just because a game is great doesn’t guarantee that the game will bring success to its creators. Looking at this from a purely Darwinian perspective, only the companies that survive will be able to make games. If being successful means the video game industry must create games that will attract more subscribers than a higher quality game where more skill is required from its participants then success will trump quality every time.
Wolfshead is often seen as a curmudgeon, but I often find myself agreeing with him. In this article, he makes the point that success in the MMO field (often attributed to the wild subscription numbers of WoW) is antithetical to a good gaming experience because numbers trump quality.
I think that part of this is due to the inevitable popularization of the genre, with millions of new players flooding in with very different ideas of what a game should be like compared to the original cult-fan following. The part that is hard to swallow for me at least is that the MMO genre is becoming less MMO-like in this process. As the MMO market becomes more FPS-like or social-gaming-like, the original MMO fanbase feels like the genre is leaving them. I think that is more of an issue of concern to me than whether games suck these days.
