In perspective: Steam Early Access
What you’ve heard
So now we are supposed to pay FULL PRICE for games that are not even finished yet and test buggy beta builds for free? You would have to be the stupidest person alive to fall for this! It’s obviously just Steam trying to grab a quick buck on projects that are so doomed to fail they can’t even afford to finish the development cycle. What a joke! Who would EVER do this? Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go pre-purchase INJUSTICE and fund a project on Kickstarter.
In Reality
It’s not really a great time to be a gamer. In the good old days we had a very simple system where we could give publishers money for a cartridge that sat on the store shelf, and you went home and popped it in your system to play. Then one day GameStop decided it was sick of Wal-Mart making money off video games while Activision decided it was sick of people not buying its shitty games. A brilliant plan was launched: pre-order a few choice Activision games before anyone knew they were shitty, and get beta access to Call of Duty as “a pre-order bonus” ... but only if you bought it at GameStop. Although this likely wasn’t the first ever example of this, it was one of the game changers, and from this point on every major release became a game of one-upmanship with Wal-Mart and GameStop securing deals for exclusive in-game bonuses if you pre-order the game before its release at their location. Still, pre-orders were not a horrible system for the gamer. They were small, generally $10 to $20, and they could be refunded. Things didn’t totally go to hell until Amazon came along and did what Amazon does; ruin everything for everyone.
Amazon has a vested interest in you not wanting a boxed game, as shipping is not cheap. They started attaching pre-order bonuses exclusively with digital copies of the game. Your digital pre-order wasn’t refundable, so Amazon quickly moved to a system of pre-purchase; give us the FULL selling price today and buy the digital copy, which will unlock when the game is released. Amazingly Wal-Mart and GameStop followed suit, offering the option to fully pay for your physical game before it was released (although still offering the more traditional pre-order option as well). Today, this practice is the standard, offered by EA through Origin, Steam, Ubisoft through Uplay, and by all major retailers.
By the time we got Kickstarter, we just didn’t know any better. We were already so used to paying for games before they came out that we didn’t notice that Kickstarter wasn’t even asking us to pay for something; it was asking us to give people money in the hopes there might be something to buy one day. Kickstarter offers no guarantee of a finished project and even when sold as “for $20, you get a copy of this game when it is released” the guys making that game are in no way obligated to release it. As anyone who backed “Haunts: The Manse Macabre” can tell you, sometimes all you get for your money is the developer telling you they were stupid to try and make the game in the first place. No refunds.
We are already paying for games before we get them and have been for years.
So what’s the deal?
Hey, even when everyone is already getting screwed, it’s disappointing to see someone jump on the screwing us band wagon, so the Steam Early Access announcement is getting a lot of negative press. However, it really shouldn't be, if for no other reason than that Steam has been doing pre-purchase for years. If you believe Gabe (and you have no reason not to, seeing as the man has always been true to his word) he’s using it to try and pressure developers who are already getting your money long before the game is released to give you something for that money right away. This isn’t new; the pre-order bonus for Fable 3 and Bioshock 3 both included mini-games that could be played immediately and were extremely successful. This isn’t altruism obviously; Steam has a vested interest in people being online playing Steam games seeing as they use the service to advertise upcoming releases and sales, and the first time a developer misses a release window with a game that the masses pre-purchased you can bet Steam will be the only poor suckers offering anyone refunds. (Oh wait, that already happened with “Stick of Truth.”). If the players already have a build to play, next time this happens they can get away from being asked for refunds.
Early Access is currently only supporting a small number of independent developers who would agree to the terms, and the games you’re going to find in the program are hardly beta quality. They are fully playable games missing the last bits of refinement that go into video games (traditionally menus, GUI, and sound). I would encourage anyone to check it out.
Monday, 25 March 2013
Friday, 22 March 2013
Should be Playing - Neverwinter Nights
With the second beta weekend for Neverwinter coming up (well, the 3rd … but the second I have an invite to and that’s all that counts) I’m going to spend the next two weeks talking about this game which, as a licensed D&D property, should be near and dear to all our hearts. We start with the game’s colorful history.
Neverwinter Nights is arguably the first ever graphical MMORPG, with the only real argument against coming from saying that no one thought to call it that at the time so it doesn’t count. Its debut on AOL in 1991 predated Sierra's release of “the Realm”, widely considered the first graphical MMO and the game that coined the phrase “massively multiplayer”, by 5 years. The game was re-released in 2002 by Bioware, got a sequel in 2006 from Obsidian, and a side-quel in 2008 in the form of the Storms of Zehir. SOZ was marketed as an expansion but used a completely new engine and updated game play and was sold as a standalone game because Wizards of the Coast would not allow a new game to be published using the 3rd edition rule sets, but had already agreed to up to 3 expansions to NW2. This point becomes important! Each game released to critical and commercial success and it was clear there was more to come.
Obsidian is a top tier studio who are used to getting the projects they want, so when approached to do a 3rd installment they refused unless given creative control of the project, which included the latitude to ignore the 4th edition rule set and make the game in the player preferred 3.5 edition. This isn’t due to some D&D loyalty and was explained by the studios as 4.0 simply lacking the charter customization and options that are the hallmark of Obsidian games. Bioware had no interest as they were involved in a extremely high profile licensed MMO already (which we later discovered to be SW:TOR). Although most of the information from this point on is sketchy at best, the time line that can be best pieced together is something like this:
Obsidian got the green light for the project as a 3.5 edition game in 2008, around the time of 4th edition's less than stellar release. Work on the project was halted around 2009 when Wizards of the Coast R&D started working on 5th edition, presumably because 5th edition very closely resembled 3.5 and would allow for the customization Obsidian was looking for and release a game on a edition now twice removed was not a great idea. This is about the time the world’s economy went to hell. With Wizards hard up for cash the release window for 5.0 was moved from 2011 to 2014, and the idea of funding a game that wouldn’t be released for years was no longer attractive. Obsidian’s involvement was ended, and the game was passed to Cryptic Studios, the developer that brought us City of Heroes. The game was officially announced in August 2010 as “Neverwinter” and quickly disappeared completely until it was shown in a surprisingly late stage of development at E3 2012. We learned it was in fact an MMO, had been in limited beta for almost a year, and was getting a 2013 release.
My first impressions of the game are positive, although it’s not going to be a blockbuster. What’s most exciting to me is the game's focus on the D&D feel and the focus on the story of the world's transition from 3rd edition to 4th edition, the only part of 4th edition that didn’t suck (and was in fact some of the best D&D stories written to date). From petitioning your god for extra xp and loot if you are following their philosophy correctly, to one of the first adventures sending you to a pub followed by a sewer, to the detail put into recreating the sword coast, this game simply feels D&D in spite of the very un-D&D 4th edition rules set. With the day event, I’ll only really have time to play again on Sunday, but look forward to a lot more details next week.
Part 2 - Updated March 29
NeverWinter allows players to create their own content using a toolset called the Foundry. Players can run this custom content whenever they want, with loot and experience generated by the system based on the difficulty of the content. The Foundry is an extremely refined toolset, already used in City of Heroes and Star Trek Online, and allows for complex scenarios, triggered events, variable win conditions, and conversation trees. To me, this is the defining feature of NeverWinter ... I'm more than willing to put up with imperfect game play to be a GM, or experience content that my friends produce for me. This is the core of the D&D system, and the fact that it will be preserved is extremely exciting. More so, given that NeverWinter is completely free to play, I can invite my friends on the adventures I create without them needing to make a financial commitment.
The combat and systems in NeverWinter are great. Combat is enjoyable and fast paced, you feel powerful as combat uses the same "epic combat" system of SW:TOR, pitting you against multiple opponents in each encounter rather than the one on one MMO standard. Exploration is rewarded in the way of hidden chests or experience even in the most linear of adventures, a point lost to the modern MMO. The loot system uses the traditional D&D on "pluses", with +1 items being rare, +2 being more rare, and so on. It's a great touch!
Common to Cryptic games there are events and interactive stories abound. Every few hours a global message will inform players they will reserve bonus xp for joining in a PVE raid encounter, PVP, or doing a given set of story missions, sometimes unique to that event. This helps the game feel alive in a way I haven't felt in an MMO for a while.
On the negative side, NeverWinter looks like it should have been released in 2008, graphics wise (because...it should have been released in 2008). I'm amazed a new set of paint hasn't been tossed on by Cryptic, but at least the art style is amazing. They do everything they can to get as much as possible out of the low polygon count and grey/brown palette ... but there is only so much they can do. My biggest gripe about the game however is the lack of player customization and options. Currently there are only 5 playable classes and almost no way to make them your own. This doesn't represent D&D and is going to be a turn off to a large part of the target audience.
All and all, this is a game you need to try, or at least install so that when I start posting Raven themed adventures to the Foundry you'll be able to play them ;)
Neverwinter Nights is arguably the first ever graphical MMORPG, with the only real argument against coming from saying that no one thought to call it that at the time so it doesn’t count. Its debut on AOL in 1991 predated Sierra's release of “the Realm”, widely considered the first graphical MMO and the game that coined the phrase “massively multiplayer”, by 5 years. The game was re-released in 2002 by Bioware, got a sequel in 2006 from Obsidian, and a side-quel in 2008 in the form of the Storms of Zehir. SOZ was marketed as an expansion but used a completely new engine and updated game play and was sold as a standalone game because Wizards of the Coast would not allow a new game to be published using the 3rd edition rule sets, but had already agreed to up to 3 expansions to NW2. This point becomes important! Each game released to critical and commercial success and it was clear there was more to come.
Obsidian is a top tier studio who are used to getting the projects they want, so when approached to do a 3rd installment they refused unless given creative control of the project, which included the latitude to ignore the 4th edition rule set and make the game in the player preferred 3.5 edition. This isn’t due to some D&D loyalty and was explained by the studios as 4.0 simply lacking the charter customization and options that are the hallmark of Obsidian games. Bioware had no interest as they were involved in a extremely high profile licensed MMO already (which we later discovered to be SW:TOR). Although most of the information from this point on is sketchy at best, the time line that can be best pieced together is something like this:
Obsidian got the green light for the project as a 3.5 edition game in 2008, around the time of 4th edition's less than stellar release. Work on the project was halted around 2009 when Wizards of the Coast R&D started working on 5th edition, presumably because 5th edition very closely resembled 3.5 and would allow for the customization Obsidian was looking for and release a game on a edition now twice removed was not a great idea. This is about the time the world’s economy went to hell. With Wizards hard up for cash the release window for 5.0 was moved from 2011 to 2014, and the idea of funding a game that wouldn’t be released for years was no longer attractive. Obsidian’s involvement was ended, and the game was passed to Cryptic Studios, the developer that brought us City of Heroes. The game was officially announced in August 2010 as “Neverwinter” and quickly disappeared completely until it was shown in a surprisingly late stage of development at E3 2012. We learned it was in fact an MMO, had been in limited beta for almost a year, and was getting a 2013 release.
My first impressions of the game are positive, although it’s not going to be a blockbuster. What’s most exciting to me is the game's focus on the D&D feel and the focus on the story of the world's transition from 3rd edition to 4th edition, the only part of 4th edition that didn’t suck (and was in fact some of the best D&D stories written to date). From petitioning your god for extra xp and loot if you are following their philosophy correctly, to one of the first adventures sending you to a pub followed by a sewer, to the detail put into recreating the sword coast, this game simply feels D&D in spite of the very un-D&D 4th edition rules set. With the day event, I’ll only really have time to play again on Sunday, but look forward to a lot more details next week.
Part 2 - Updated March 29
NeverWinter allows players to create their own content using a toolset called the Foundry. Players can run this custom content whenever they want, with loot and experience generated by the system based on the difficulty of the content. The Foundry is an extremely refined toolset, already used in City of Heroes and Star Trek Online, and allows for complex scenarios, triggered events, variable win conditions, and conversation trees. To me, this is the defining feature of NeverWinter ... I'm more than willing to put up with imperfect game play to be a GM, or experience content that my friends produce for me. This is the core of the D&D system, and the fact that it will be preserved is extremely exciting. More so, given that NeverWinter is completely free to play, I can invite my friends on the adventures I create without them needing to make a financial commitment.
The combat and systems in NeverWinter are great. Combat is enjoyable and fast paced, you feel powerful as combat uses the same "epic combat" system of SW:TOR, pitting you against multiple opponents in each encounter rather than the one on one MMO standard. Exploration is rewarded in the way of hidden chests or experience even in the most linear of adventures, a point lost to the modern MMO. The loot system uses the traditional D&D on "pluses", with +1 items being rare, +2 being more rare, and so on. It's a great touch!
Common to Cryptic games there are events and interactive stories abound. Every few hours a global message will inform players they will reserve bonus xp for joining in a PVE raid encounter, PVP, or doing a given set of story missions, sometimes unique to that event. This helps the game feel alive in a way I haven't felt in an MMO for a while.
On the negative side, NeverWinter looks like it should have been released in 2008, graphics wise (because...it should have been released in 2008). I'm amazed a new set of paint hasn't been tossed on by Cryptic, but at least the art style is amazing. They do everything they can to get as much as possible out of the low polygon count and grey/brown palette ... but there is only so much they can do. My biggest gripe about the game however is the lack of player customization and options. Currently there are only 5 playable classes and almost no way to make them your own. This doesn't represent D&D and is going to be a turn off to a large part of the target audience.
All and all, this is a game you need to try, or at least install so that when I start posting Raven themed adventures to the Foundry you'll be able to play them ;)
Monday, 18 March 2013
In Perspective: Endgame
"endgame"
What you’ve heard
This new MMO is the most disappointing thing to happen to the internet since Emma Watson didn’t do porn immediately upon hitting 18. No one should play it and anyone who does is obviously suffering from some sort of mental illness. There is no ENDGAME! Once you get max level, explore all the areas, do all the quests, collect all the collectibles, do all the dungeons in normal mode, hard mode, and challenge mode, collect the best gear, and unlock all the customizing options there is nothing else do to! This game is a failure!
Except
Let’s take a quick trip over to metacritic to see what games the internet likes the most. We see the top user rated games of all time including titles like Half Life 2, Balder’s gate 2, GTA, and Okami. One thing all these games have in common is an ending, with nothing at all to do once the game has been completed. Half Life 2 and Okami barely have 12 hours of game play between them before you’re at the final credits with no new modes or challenges waiting for you at the start screen. No one seems to have a problem with that. It’s almost like it’s an expected thing that a video game should entertain you for some time and then you should be done with it, moving on to something else.
The best selling game of all time, Call of Duty Black Ops is often heralded for its “infinite replayability” as the main reason it was so successful. In this case infinite means you can grind out the same 8 multiplayer maps over and over again, or play one of 3 zombie maps over and over in a never changing loop. Level advancement was unlocking some new guns and abilities, and when you hit max level you were given the option to start over and do the whole grind again. And although the number of maps went up if you bought map packs for $20 each, this is all the variation the game needed to bring to the table to be seen as something you could play forever.
The modern MMO brings hundreds if not thousands of quests to the table. Using Star Wars the Old Republic, a game that was absolutely shunned by the online community for not having an end game, leveling a character from 1 to 50 takes about 40 to 80 solid hours of game play depending on how much time you spend doing side missions. Star Wars offers 8 completely unique classes to level up with different stories and game play, making the total amount of play time you can milk out of it without having to repeat things in up in the 600 hour range. For free. Guild Wars 2, another game under fire for lack of end game offers a leveling experience that takes about 40 hours, 10 dungeons to explore with 32 levels of variation, and meaningful exploration that more the doubles the amount of time it’s going to take you to fully experience the game. You’ll find the same trend in every modern MMO, 40 to 100 hours of game play in the core experience, and plenty of side missions to keep you going after that. If these were single player games critics and users alike would be praising the exceptional value they offer before moving on to the next game, but because they are MMOs the internet says forget about them because there is nothing to do.
So what’s the deal?
There are two things going on here. First, the “blockbuster” MMO started with EverQuest and moved onto World of Warcraft, two games that did nothing at all to make the leveling experience engaging or entertaining. It was a means to an end, and that end was the endgame grind. It wasn’t until you had max level that you even begin to experience the game in full, and everything was gated by gear and lesser achievements. You had to pull the right levers a given number of times before you were allowed to pull even bigger levers in a never ending cycle. By the time most people were done with a set of levers, the game would release new ones. A decade later, people are still playing these games and at their peak the player bases they had were enormous. They made millions of dollars a month for years on end.
The modern MMO isn't trying to do that. They made the leveling experience as enjoyable as possible and are trying to shift that to the core experience. For many games the idea of a single player spending years and years in the game is not only not a goal but undesirable. Free to play games don’t benefit from people logging on unless they are going to spend money, and most of that money is spent on items like xp boosts or character unlocks that are only useful in the core leveling experience. They don’t profit from end game the way subscription games do, so they have had to shift focus. They want people to try the game, spend $20 to $60, play for 10 to 60 hours, then leave and never come back - just like we do with every other game we ever buy that isn't an MMO. They are not trying to make a million dollars a month, they are trying to make one dollar more than it costs to pay everyone’s salary and the electricity bill. A lot of players will not accept this and regardless of how much fun there is to be had in the leveling up, they still see it as just the means to an end; an end that isn’t there anymore, and see any game that isn't a mega blockbuster hit as a failure.
This leads to the second point. To the old school MMO player this isn't just a shift in market strategy, it’s an assault on his way of life. No one played WoW for 8 years because it was a fun and rewarding game experience, they played it out of the drive to achieve. Endgame progress is the benchmark by which they measure personal success and in an unhealthy but large segment of that population it’s also how they measure personal worth. If today’s gamer isn't exposed to a meaningful endgame after a grueling and undesirable leveling grind, how are they ever going to understand how awesome the old school MMO player is because he woke the sleeper as a global first? This has given birth to a new type of gamer who moves from new MMO to new MMO with no goal other than to spam on the forum and in common chat about how much harder, better, and more meaningful the MMO where they achieved things is, and how anyone happy with THIS game is stupid.
It’s the “in my day we walked to school barefoot and we LIKED it” of our generation, and it’s not going away any time soon. Thankfully, the video game industry isn't listening and slowly but surely nether are video game players. In fact, just the opposite; games like WOW and Everquest have gone back and completely redesigned the leveling process so it's quicker, easier and more enjoyable. They understand now that people have seen a better way, very few people are going to chose the old grind.
What you’ve heard
This new MMO is the most disappointing thing to happen to the internet since Emma Watson didn’t do porn immediately upon hitting 18. No one should play it and anyone who does is obviously suffering from some sort of mental illness. There is no ENDGAME! Once you get max level, explore all the areas, do all the quests, collect all the collectibles, do all the dungeons in normal mode, hard mode, and challenge mode, collect the best gear, and unlock all the customizing options there is nothing else do to! This game is a failure!
Except
Let’s take a quick trip over to metacritic to see what games the internet likes the most. We see the top user rated games of all time including titles like Half Life 2, Balder’s gate 2, GTA, and Okami. One thing all these games have in common is an ending, with nothing at all to do once the game has been completed. Half Life 2 and Okami barely have 12 hours of game play between them before you’re at the final credits with no new modes or challenges waiting for you at the start screen. No one seems to have a problem with that. It’s almost like it’s an expected thing that a video game should entertain you for some time and then you should be done with it, moving on to something else.
The best selling game of all time, Call of Duty Black Ops is often heralded for its “infinite replayability” as the main reason it was so successful. In this case infinite means you can grind out the same 8 multiplayer maps over and over again, or play one of 3 zombie maps over and over in a never changing loop. Level advancement was unlocking some new guns and abilities, and when you hit max level you were given the option to start over and do the whole grind again. And although the number of maps went up if you bought map packs for $20 each, this is all the variation the game needed to bring to the table to be seen as something you could play forever.
The modern MMO brings hundreds if not thousands of quests to the table. Using Star Wars the Old Republic, a game that was absolutely shunned by the online community for not having an end game, leveling a character from 1 to 50 takes about 40 to 80 solid hours of game play depending on how much time you spend doing side missions. Star Wars offers 8 completely unique classes to level up with different stories and game play, making the total amount of play time you can milk out of it without having to repeat things in up in the 600 hour range. For free. Guild Wars 2, another game under fire for lack of end game offers a leveling experience that takes about 40 hours, 10 dungeons to explore with 32 levels of variation, and meaningful exploration that more the doubles the amount of time it’s going to take you to fully experience the game. You’ll find the same trend in every modern MMO, 40 to 100 hours of game play in the core experience, and plenty of side missions to keep you going after that. If these were single player games critics and users alike would be praising the exceptional value they offer before moving on to the next game, but because they are MMOs the internet says forget about them because there is nothing to do.
So what’s the deal?
There are two things going on here. First, the “blockbuster” MMO started with EverQuest and moved onto World of Warcraft, two games that did nothing at all to make the leveling experience engaging or entertaining. It was a means to an end, and that end was the endgame grind. It wasn’t until you had max level that you even begin to experience the game in full, and everything was gated by gear and lesser achievements. You had to pull the right levers a given number of times before you were allowed to pull even bigger levers in a never ending cycle. By the time most people were done with a set of levers, the game would release new ones. A decade later, people are still playing these games and at their peak the player bases they had were enormous. They made millions of dollars a month for years on end.
The modern MMO isn't trying to do that. They made the leveling experience as enjoyable as possible and are trying to shift that to the core experience. For many games the idea of a single player spending years and years in the game is not only not a goal but undesirable. Free to play games don’t benefit from people logging on unless they are going to spend money, and most of that money is spent on items like xp boosts or character unlocks that are only useful in the core leveling experience. They don’t profit from end game the way subscription games do, so they have had to shift focus. They want people to try the game, spend $20 to $60, play for 10 to 60 hours, then leave and never come back - just like we do with every other game we ever buy that isn't an MMO. They are not trying to make a million dollars a month, they are trying to make one dollar more than it costs to pay everyone’s salary and the electricity bill. A lot of players will not accept this and regardless of how much fun there is to be had in the leveling up, they still see it as just the means to an end; an end that isn’t there anymore, and see any game that isn't a mega blockbuster hit as a failure.
This leads to the second point. To the old school MMO player this isn't just a shift in market strategy, it’s an assault on his way of life. No one played WoW for 8 years because it was a fun and rewarding game experience, they played it out of the drive to achieve. Endgame progress is the benchmark by which they measure personal success and in an unhealthy but large segment of that population it’s also how they measure personal worth. If today’s gamer isn't exposed to a meaningful endgame after a grueling and undesirable leveling grind, how are they ever going to understand how awesome the old school MMO player is because he woke the sleeper as a global first? This has given birth to a new type of gamer who moves from new MMO to new MMO with no goal other than to spam on the forum and in common chat about how much harder, better, and more meaningful the MMO where they achieved things is, and how anyone happy with THIS game is stupid.
It’s the “in my day we walked to school barefoot and we LIKED it” of our generation, and it’s not going away any time soon. Thankfully, the video game industry isn't listening and slowly but surely nether are video game players. In fact, just the opposite; games like WOW and Everquest have gone back and completely redesigned the leveling process so it's quicker, easier and more enjoyable. They understand now that people have seen a better way, very few people are going to chose the old grind.
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
In Perspective
Anyone who follows the gaming world knows that the “leaders” in game reporting are wrong just about 100% of the time and even when they are right they play on fears and ignorance to make the news as controversial as possible, showing only the most negative spin. This is a good thing! It means video game news is getting treated just like normal news.
Thankfully for the gaming world, I am here to serve as the level headed voice of reason and put some of the biggest news stories in gaming into perspective.
Wii U sales
By the time I’ve finished writing this, Nintendo will be out of business and Satoru Iwata will have committed ritual suicide due to the horrible, unthinkably failure that is the launch of the Wii U. It’s the worst thing that ever happened and hints to the death of the console game market as a whole.
Except
The Wii U sold 1.3 million units in 30 days. Compare that to the xbox 360 which sold around 1.1 million units in 30 days. Sony was extremely tight lipped on early PS3 sales (as they were horrible), but they are widely accepted to be between 300,000 to 400,000 in the first 30 days. It was over a year before Sony had reached the million sales milestone. The 360 sold just fewer than 4 million units in its first year, while the Wii U is on target for 4.4 million in sales by year’s end.
This makes the Wii U the second most successful console launch of all time, surpassed only by the Wii.
So what’s the deal?
There are two groups of investors; early adopts and late additions. You can see that as the people who get on board before the big thing and the people who get on board after. Or, put another way, the people who make a lot of money because they are smart and the people who lose money because they are stupid.
Obviously the majority of investors banking on the Wii U are the second group , having already missed the big thing that was the Wii, and not being all too bright they were looking for Nintendo to somehow repeat the success of that console. This was never possible. The Wii was the perfect storm of gaming; Sony and MS had just confirmed they would not be putting out anything new until at least 2012 (4 years from the Wii’s launch in 2008), motion control was a great gimmick, and the price was lower than the current hardware. So what we get is a knee jerk reaction to a product not living up to expectations that should never have been there to begin with.
This has become a common phenomena is business reporting where not living up to the hype is equated with failure. This just isn't how business works. The install base of the Wii U will be more than enough to get games made for it, and sales and attach rate numbers show Nintendo made a boat load of money last quarter off its launch. The fact that some people were expecting two boat loads doesn't lessen that achievement.
The death of the handheld market
Hand held gaming? Bitch PLEASE. I have a phone, I have all the gaming on the go I need. Zanga made 11 million dollars off Farmville and EA’s most profitable game is SIMs 3, obviously the casual market is where it’s at. So why would anyone, least of all the causal gamer, pay $250 for a system then $40 for a game when they can play angry birds for $1 on the system they already own? While mobile gaming sales drop, app sales have qur-doubled-trip-dupaled. Handheld gaming is deader than dead, right?
Except
Except everything. First the assumption that more people are playing mobile games on phones then gaming platforms is extremely suspect. There are almost 200 million DS units (including DS lite, DSi, 3DS, and the XLs of each), 80 million PSPs, and I think a few dozen people even bought the vita (ok, it’s like 10 million, but I can’t pass up a vita joke). So with 290 million handhelds out there, the install base is not too shabby … about double the home casual market.
Software sales are extremely strong as well with Nintendo pumping out a respectable billion units between its platforms, working out to about 200 million a year while Sony sold just under than 9 million units last year (with similar numbers for the last 6). I guess that’s why Sony is a bit less forthcoming then Nintendo with sales figures. Still, with an average sale price around $30, the 6 billion dollar a year industry that is the handheld market kicks the living piss out of the 2.1 billion dollar industry which is the application market (apple app store, Google play, Nokia and BB included). I don’t know where the idea this market is declining even comes from; sales of mobile games increased by almost 9% in 2012 while the rest of the video game market dropped like a stone.
On the hardware front, everyone talks about global markets and total units. Unfortunately, the “global market” for the PS3 and Vita is the UK, Japan, and North America (the only places you can buy one) while the global market for phones is actually global . So where 400 million smart phones were sold last year, the number that is going to people who have the option of using a handheld to game is much lower. This means the assumption that a dollar spent on a phone game is a dollar not spent on a mobile game is way off, and not supported by reality of software sales.
On the software side, only about 70% of smart phones are ever used to buy an app, and 30% to 40% of all apps ever bought are used once and never again. This number includes both games and productivity software, as I can’t find anyone who reports the numbers separately. The argument that people are even buying games on phones is hard to substantiate. The top 10 games on the apple app store and 8 of the top 10 on Google play as of the writing of this article are all ad supported free games. The argument simply doesn't work unless people are PAYING for games on phones, not simply playing them. Are people honestly trying to say that someone with $30 to spend on gods of death and dismemberment of the PSP or happy fun bunny play time for 3DS downloads a free game and decides to put that money in an RRSP instead? Unless someone else is taking that $30, he’s still going to spend it on the game.
So what’s the deal?
Phones are great and you can game on them. A lot of phones are selling. People are playing games on phones. All of this is true, but boring news that’s not going to get you on a gaming site. So they started spinning the story, equating money spent on phone games to money not spent on mobile games. When that got old, they started equating money spent on phones themselves to money not spent on mobile gaming consuls because they have kind of the same function. Like how no one in the world would consider buying a car if they already knew how to walk. It’s called sensationalism and it’s the bedrock of the modern media.
What do you think?
Thankfully for the gaming world, I am here to serve as the level headed voice of reason and put some of the biggest news stories in gaming into perspective.
Wii U sales
By the time I’ve finished writing this, Nintendo will be out of business and Satoru Iwata will have committed ritual suicide due to the horrible, unthinkably failure that is the launch of the Wii U. It’s the worst thing that ever happened and hints to the death of the console game market as a whole.
Except
The Wii U sold 1.3 million units in 30 days. Compare that to the xbox 360 which sold around 1.1 million units in 30 days. Sony was extremely tight lipped on early PS3 sales (as they were horrible), but they are widely accepted to be between 300,000 to 400,000 in the first 30 days. It was over a year before Sony had reached the million sales milestone. The 360 sold just fewer than 4 million units in its first year, while the Wii U is on target for 4.4 million in sales by year’s end.
This makes the Wii U the second most successful console launch of all time, surpassed only by the Wii.
So what’s the deal?
There are two groups of investors; early adopts and late additions. You can see that as the people who get on board before the big thing and the people who get on board after. Or, put another way, the people who make a lot of money because they are smart and the people who lose money because they are stupid.
Obviously the majority of investors banking on the Wii U are the second group , having already missed the big thing that was the Wii, and not being all too bright they were looking for Nintendo to somehow repeat the success of that console. This was never possible. The Wii was the perfect storm of gaming; Sony and MS had just confirmed they would not be putting out anything new until at least 2012 (4 years from the Wii’s launch in 2008), motion control was a great gimmick, and the price was lower than the current hardware. So what we get is a knee jerk reaction to a product not living up to expectations that should never have been there to begin with.
This has become a common phenomena is business reporting where not living up to the hype is equated with failure. This just isn't how business works. The install base of the Wii U will be more than enough to get games made for it, and sales and attach rate numbers show Nintendo made a boat load of money last quarter off its launch. The fact that some people were expecting two boat loads doesn't lessen that achievement.
The death of the handheld market
Hand held gaming? Bitch PLEASE. I have a phone, I have all the gaming on the go I need. Zanga made 11 million dollars off Farmville and EA’s most profitable game is SIMs 3, obviously the casual market is where it’s at. So why would anyone, least of all the causal gamer, pay $250 for a system then $40 for a game when they can play angry birds for $1 on the system they already own? While mobile gaming sales drop, app sales have qur-doubled-trip-dupaled. Handheld gaming is deader than dead, right?
Except
Except everything. First the assumption that more people are playing mobile games on phones then gaming platforms is extremely suspect. There are almost 200 million DS units (including DS lite, DSi, 3DS, and the XLs of each), 80 million PSPs, and I think a few dozen people even bought the vita (ok, it’s like 10 million, but I can’t pass up a vita joke). So with 290 million handhelds out there, the install base is not too shabby … about double the home casual market.
Software sales are extremely strong as well with Nintendo pumping out a respectable billion units between its platforms, working out to about 200 million a year while Sony sold just under than 9 million units last year (with similar numbers for the last 6). I guess that’s why Sony is a bit less forthcoming then Nintendo with sales figures. Still, with an average sale price around $30, the 6 billion dollar a year industry that is the handheld market kicks the living piss out of the 2.1 billion dollar industry which is the application market (apple app store, Google play, Nokia and BB included). I don’t know where the idea this market is declining even comes from; sales of mobile games increased by almost 9% in 2012 while the rest of the video game market dropped like a stone.
On the hardware front, everyone talks about global markets and total units. Unfortunately, the “global market” for the PS3 and Vita is the UK, Japan, and North America (the only places you can buy one) while the global market for phones is actually global . So where 400 million smart phones were sold last year, the number that is going to people who have the option of using a handheld to game is much lower. This means the assumption that a dollar spent on a phone game is a dollar not spent on a mobile game is way off, and not supported by reality of software sales.
On the software side, only about 70% of smart phones are ever used to buy an app, and 30% to 40% of all apps ever bought are used once and never again. This number includes both games and productivity software, as I can’t find anyone who reports the numbers separately. The argument that people are even buying games on phones is hard to substantiate. The top 10 games on the apple app store and 8 of the top 10 on Google play as of the writing of this article are all ad supported free games. The argument simply doesn't work unless people are PAYING for games on phones, not simply playing them. Are people honestly trying to say that someone with $30 to spend on gods of death and dismemberment of the PSP or happy fun bunny play time for 3DS downloads a free game and decides to put that money in an RRSP instead? Unless someone else is taking that $30, he’s still going to spend it on the game.
So what’s the deal?
Phones are great and you can game on them. A lot of phones are selling. People are playing games on phones. All of this is true, but boring news that’s not going to get you on a gaming site. So they started spinning the story, equating money spent on phone games to money not spent on mobile games. When that got old, they started equating money spent on phones themselves to money not spent on mobile gaming consuls because they have kind of the same function. Like how no one in the world would consider buying a car if they already knew how to walk. It’s called sensationalism and it’s the bedrock of the modern media.
What do you think?
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
2013 Gaming News Predictions
I’m going to start with a list of out there, but not too far fetched predictions of what we are going to see in 2013, which I can already tell is going to be the biggest year in gaming since 2012.
The PS4 isn’t coming out
Sony’s party line has always been “10 years of PS3”, and although it’s not like they are ones to keep their word (last guardian anyone?) I don’t see any reason why they wouldn't stick to a 2014 launch for the PS4. The PS3 is finally catching up with XBOX in terms of sales, and is a very nice unit at the price. Forgetting games, it has blue ray and a huge hard drive, making it fantastic unit for people looking for a net TV. They also have about 11 exclusives scheduled for this year; some very late this year. More importantly, I think Sony understands that the gaming market, although it feel slower and is recovering faster than most, is not recovering fast enough to deal with the fact that …
The PS4 will be an ungodly nightmare of features
Nintendo is Nintendo plus it has the game pad. Microsoft is able to build on the huge PC influence and create a new xbox that will have plenty of gimmicks. Sony, just like last generation, has nothing to draw on but raw power. The PS4 is going to have native support for EHD, 3D, and sound and video formats we don’t even know about yet. It will have a SSD by default. It will support 802.11AC, blue tooth, and every other standard there is. In short, it will be a repeat of the PS3 … absolutely top of the line with a price tag to match. The base model will be $400+, with at least one option in the $600 range. A bad starting point, seeing it will need to compete with …
The new xbox (which will be called simply xbox) will run windows RT and direct x11.1
Microsoft is one of the smartest and most resilient corporations in the world. They know when they are beat and know when to shift direction, and they understand what’s going on with the PC market. They are focusing on mobile technology and are not going to pass up the chance to turn the xbox into a product that motivates you to buy a PC, a tablet, and a windows phone. The focus will be integration and ease of use, while shearing functionally. They will move to alienate people from other operating systems. Is your 9 year old still going to want an iPad when the xbox he’s been playing for years runs the same OS as the surface? Microsoft is going to bet all-in on no. Direct x11.1 support will allow for continued momentum in the PC gaming market as ports will be even easier than they are today. Which is important, given …
Source 2.0 will not support direct x
Steam is huge, but most forget that it’s not Gabe’s real license to print money; that would be valve. Sure, they don’t release a lot, but you can find every single game they have ever released on the first page of meta-critics list of best games of all time. How big is half-life? Steam is what it is today because half-life 2 required it. It didn't just set the sales record at the time, it redefined what PC sales could mean. It sold more then doom was stolen. Not to mention COD is nothing more than an updated counter strike. Gabe has been working on 3 things in secret; the “steam box” (a self contained gaming PC with a custom OS), source 2.0, and porting games to Linux. He’s also been pretty public about how much he hates windows 8. Add that all together and you get the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in gaming; why hasn't half life 3 been released when it is guaranteed to make tons of money? Half-life 3 will be the first game using the new source 2 engine, which will forgo direct x compatibility in favor of optimization for Linux. The steam box will dual boot into a custom Linux shell for everyone looking for a way to run Linux without having to deal with the inherent difficulties. Basically what I'm trying to say here is that ...
Half life 3 will be a Linux exclusive.
That is why we are waiting so long. Hell, the game could be excessive to the dreamcast and it's still going to make money, but Gabe is waiting for a time when Linux is accessible enough that Half Life 3 is the "killer app" that has people installing it on PCs. That's going to be made a lot easier when ...
Steam will start publishing and writing Linux drivers.
Why can steam update my video drivers faster and more reliability then ATI? Why is steam gathering data on what type of hardware its users run? Why did steam just start selling apps? Why is valve porting everything they have to Linux? Simple; steam wants to be the only application you need to play games on a PC, but as a means to an end. That ends being an OS. Once they have gained the trust of the average user, they will start delivering drivers and driver bundles for a custom Linux build. Steam will be able to determine your compatibility while you are logged in though windows or Mac, and if you qualify, you’ll have a one button install. A novelty at first, with only valve and a few other publishers offering Linux titles, it won’t stay a novelty for long. If Wal-Mart told WB it wouldn't carry its DVDs unless it also included a beta-max copy, we would see a format revival instantly. And when you can't sell windows games on steam unless you releases them for Lunix ... that's going to change everything. Current estimates put steam at around 80% of the digital and 50% of the PC market … making them much bigger then Wal-Mart. Once steam moves from being a application to an operating system, their power will be unstoppable (but still insignificant when compared to the power of the force). And they will have a great position on the market once ...
EA gives up
EA finishing behind Ubisoft AND activation this year is akin to PepsiCo and … I don’t even know … Royal crown? both out selling Coke products. It should never have happened. It’s pretty obviously the reason … focusing on buying up every developer or unfinished game worth mentioning, they forget to release anything that wasn't horrible. It wasn't simple fan reaction to destroying Bioware or releasing a FIFA that didn’t even bother to update the menus from last year; they simply had nothing to offer. On a management level, they have made more wrong choices then should be possible. EA said no to publishing XCOM because it was too niche, then it went on to sell millions and win GOTY with most PC exclusive sites. They refused to publish a point and click game, motivating the developer to instead go to Kick Starter where he raised almost 4 million dollars. I’m not saying EA is going away, or will stop being a driving force in video games, but they are going to give up on being EA … no more buying up everything in sight, no more 100 million dollar games.
What do you think we are going to see in 2013? What do you think I got wrong or got totally wrong? I would love to hear it!
The PS4 isn’t coming out
Sony’s party line has always been “10 years of PS3”, and although it’s not like they are ones to keep their word (last guardian anyone?) I don’t see any reason why they wouldn't stick to a 2014 launch for the PS4. The PS3 is finally catching up with XBOX in terms of sales, and is a very nice unit at the price. Forgetting games, it has blue ray and a huge hard drive, making it fantastic unit for people looking for a net TV. They also have about 11 exclusives scheduled for this year; some very late this year. More importantly, I think Sony understands that the gaming market, although it feel slower and is recovering faster than most, is not recovering fast enough to deal with the fact that …
The PS4 will be an ungodly nightmare of features
Nintendo is Nintendo plus it has the game pad. Microsoft is able to build on the huge PC influence and create a new xbox that will have plenty of gimmicks. Sony, just like last generation, has nothing to draw on but raw power. The PS4 is going to have native support for EHD, 3D, and sound and video formats we don’t even know about yet. It will have a SSD by default. It will support 802.11AC, blue tooth, and every other standard there is. In short, it will be a repeat of the PS3 … absolutely top of the line with a price tag to match. The base model will be $400+, with at least one option in the $600 range. A bad starting point, seeing it will need to compete with …
The new xbox (which will be called simply xbox) will run windows RT and direct x11.1
Microsoft is one of the smartest and most resilient corporations in the world. They know when they are beat and know when to shift direction, and they understand what’s going on with the PC market. They are focusing on mobile technology and are not going to pass up the chance to turn the xbox into a product that motivates you to buy a PC, a tablet, and a windows phone. The focus will be integration and ease of use, while shearing functionally. They will move to alienate people from other operating systems. Is your 9 year old still going to want an iPad when the xbox he’s been playing for years runs the same OS as the surface? Microsoft is going to bet all-in on no. Direct x11.1 support will allow for continued momentum in the PC gaming market as ports will be even easier than they are today. Which is important, given …
Source 2.0 will not support direct x
Steam is huge, but most forget that it’s not Gabe’s real license to print money; that would be valve. Sure, they don’t release a lot, but you can find every single game they have ever released on the first page of meta-critics list of best games of all time. How big is half-life? Steam is what it is today because half-life 2 required it. It didn't just set the sales record at the time, it redefined what PC sales could mean. It sold more then doom was stolen. Not to mention COD is nothing more than an updated counter strike. Gabe has been working on 3 things in secret; the “steam box” (a self contained gaming PC with a custom OS), source 2.0, and porting games to Linux. He’s also been pretty public about how much he hates windows 8. Add that all together and you get the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in gaming; why hasn't half life 3 been released when it is guaranteed to make tons of money? Half-life 3 will be the first game using the new source 2 engine, which will forgo direct x compatibility in favor of optimization for Linux. The steam box will dual boot into a custom Linux shell for everyone looking for a way to run Linux without having to deal with the inherent difficulties. Basically what I'm trying to say here is that ...
Half life 3 will be a Linux exclusive.
That is why we are waiting so long. Hell, the game could be excessive to the dreamcast and it's still going to make money, but Gabe is waiting for a time when Linux is accessible enough that Half Life 3 is the "killer app" that has people installing it on PCs. That's going to be made a lot easier when ...
Steam will start publishing and writing Linux drivers.
Why can steam update my video drivers faster and more reliability then ATI? Why is steam gathering data on what type of hardware its users run? Why did steam just start selling apps? Why is valve porting everything they have to Linux? Simple; steam wants to be the only application you need to play games on a PC, but as a means to an end. That ends being an OS. Once they have gained the trust of the average user, they will start delivering drivers and driver bundles for a custom Linux build. Steam will be able to determine your compatibility while you are logged in though windows or Mac, and if you qualify, you’ll have a one button install. A novelty at first, with only valve and a few other publishers offering Linux titles, it won’t stay a novelty for long. If Wal-Mart told WB it wouldn't carry its DVDs unless it also included a beta-max copy, we would see a format revival instantly. And when you can't sell windows games on steam unless you releases them for Lunix ... that's going to change everything. Current estimates put steam at around 80% of the digital and 50% of the PC market … making them much bigger then Wal-Mart. Once steam moves from being a application to an operating system, their power will be unstoppable (but still insignificant when compared to the power of the force). And they will have a great position on the market once ...
EA gives up
EA finishing behind Ubisoft AND activation this year is akin to PepsiCo and … I don’t even know … Royal crown? both out selling Coke products. It should never have happened. It’s pretty obviously the reason … focusing on buying up every developer or unfinished game worth mentioning, they forget to release anything that wasn't horrible. It wasn't simple fan reaction to destroying Bioware or releasing a FIFA that didn’t even bother to update the menus from last year; they simply had nothing to offer. On a management level, they have made more wrong choices then should be possible. EA said no to publishing XCOM because it was too niche, then it went on to sell millions and win GOTY with most PC exclusive sites. They refused to publish a point and click game, motivating the developer to instead go to Kick Starter where he raised almost 4 million dollars. I’m not saying EA is going away, or will stop being a driving force in video games, but they are going to give up on being EA … no more buying up everything in sight, no more 100 million dollar games.
What do you think we are going to see in 2013? What do you think I got wrong or got totally wrong? I would love to hear it!
Monday, 12 December 2011
SW:TOR vs. WoW .... FIGHT
I’m a Starwars fan. I’ve struggled with hit and miss books, comics and graphic novels, but like most Starwars fans what I’ve enjoyed most are the video games. Starwars fans are unique in that we generally can’t hope for the next thing the way a Harry Potter fan can hope for a new J.K. Rowling book or Trek fans can wait for the next movie, because there is nothing we fear more than George Lucas doing anything else with the series. Bioware has already shown (with KOTOR) that they get the Starwars feel, so the idea of another game from them is more promising to most true fans than the last 3 movies.
The controversy this time around, which put it on the radar of non fans, is that is it an MMO. The internet is abuzz with predictions, hype, and nay-saying, as the internet is to prone to do. The gods of MMO have chosen World of Warcraft as their avatar and the disciples of this great power are quick to defend its continued dominance. SW:TOR fans seem just as quick to prop up this game as the second coming, a truly monumental event that will show these lost souls the true light. Most of us are a bit more level headed, and understand the internet is the internet and haters are gonna hate. So join me while I examine the most irrelevant question of our age, which somehow still manages to matter to about 10 million people: will SW:TOR be the “WoW killer”
First, calling anything the “x killer” is a bit much (except fear, which is universally accepted to be the mind killer). There are complex factors that affect the rise and fall of everything, and an MMO is one of the most complex systems there is. WoW has a lot to worry about without Star Wars even joining the conversation, and that’s something we need to understand a bit more before we move forward.
We’ve all heard the number 10 million (referring to the number of active WoW accounts), and I would hope we know enough about the media to know the number of times a statistic is repeated is inversely proportional to its relevance and accuracy. The argument is always the same: 10 million x $15 a month = OMG levels of money. A number so high that it effectively buffers WoW from failure while setting it apart in profitability from every game that has ever been or will be. There is a lot of truth in this; WoW is a money making powerhouse by industry standards but it is not even close to as big as you think.
Ten million is not the number of US players; it’s the number of players world-wide. WoW is more popular in Asia than it is in North America, with its single largest “subscription” base being in China - a country notoriously easy to make your largest market sector by the very nature of the insane numbers of people living there (for some reason, MMOs don’t have the same success in India). The observant among you might have noticed the quotes around subscription and already written it off as just a by-product of me being a bad writer, but that’s not the only reason. There no subscription fee in China. Instead, it’s a pay-as-you-go model that works out to pennies on the dollar of what we pay here in North America. This also leads to the guy who has 10 minutes of pay as you go time left counting as an active account until the time expires, even if he doesn’t log in for a year. Add to this the more basic “padding” tricks used by every MMO ever (free accounts, grace periods on accounts cancelled for non-payment, and generally creative accounting), and half of the money you thought WoW was making isn’t really there.
It’s not all bad news for WoW though. Most importantly, 10 million x $15 / 2 is still a lot of money, and the above explanation completely invalidates one of the most commonly quoted statistics from WoW haters: WoW has lost 4 million subscribers this year alone. Which is true, and if they stopped talking right then and there we wouldn’t have a problem. But this is the internet, and you can’t put out negative facts without some good old fashioned doom speaking. You’ll hear how this proves the game is on a decline, you’ll hear how losing $60 million a month in income that quickly is “unrecoverable” and how this trend will continue, claims running the gamut from unsubstantiated to flat out wrong. Just by numbers, if you lose a lot of accounts most should come from the area you have the most subscribers - which means China again. So worst case, “most” of the people they lost are the low paying type (it should work out to just about half, as just over half the population of the game is from ths region). However, Activision / Blizzard were clear that an even larger proportion are from China than would be expected, unfortunately without solid details. The bottom line is that the number of healthy full price paying accounts lost this year is much lower than 4 million, the amount of money lost much lower than $60 million, and the recoverability of this loss is hardly doom and gloom.
How about the game being on the decline and the trend continuing? Well, any 7 year old game is going to be on a decline but that doesn’t mean you can’t make money so expect WoW numbers to go down for as long as it’s around. Losing another 4 million players next year, however, seems unlikely. There is strong speculation that the mass exodus of China’s players is strongly tied to the gold trade, which is on a steep decline as fewer new people join and the profitability of sales falls sharply. WoW is no longer a moneymaker for the human farms who would spend hours earning gold to sell to people in game, as most people still playing WoW are either concerned with things money can’t buy or in a position to earn the gold themselves. And although this does point to a general decline in interest over all and is a strong indicator that new people are simply not joining any more (as if we didn’t get the hint from the change in the free trial system) this isn’t anything unexpected from an MMO this late in its life cycle.
The reason I spent so much time on this is because it’s important to understand just how self-fulfilling the “WoW will lose people to Star Wars” prophecy is. It’s in line with my major predictions for 2012: that the rich will get richer, snow will be wet, and music will continue to suck. But is there any reason at all to believe that Star Wars is going to have anything to do with that? Ironically, the people who seem to believe this most strongly are Activision’s CEOs. They collectively crapped in their pants after a survey (using under half of what would be considered a statistically significant sample, I might add!) indicated that about 78% of current WoW players were going to try SW:TOR, with about 50% of that number already having it pre-ordered. Just like the McDonalds CEO assuming that anyone who tries Burger King will never again eat at McDonalds, they made such a big deal of this number that they blamed a stock decrease on it. Seems like a pretty clear indicator that WoW has a lot to fear from the new kid on the block, but I’m not sure this theory is anything but clever deflection. “We are on a decline due to this incredible once in a life time competitor” is a much better sales pitch to your investors then “We are on a decline due to the inevitable and unreversable slow death of our product” after all. And what a competitor it is.
Bioware are the undisputed gods of RPGs, may all gamers praise their name (Glory to Bioware in the highest). They have proven themselves more than capable of making fantastic role playing games (everything they did until 2005), outstanding action based RPGs (Dragon Age, Mass Effect) and have shown they understand the “feel” of Star Wars better than George Lucas (Knights of the Old Republic), which is like a fan fiction Harry Potter book being better accepted by its fans then the actual novels. They even have experience taking a franchise that has gone to hell, and making it awesome again (that crazy Sonic game they made for the DS). As such, a lot of people are very excited for SW:TOR. Having played my share of the game in beta I can tell you very few of them will be disappointed; it has a single player experience on par with Dragon Age, a triple A release that sold millions. They have seamlessly woven what makes a good single player game into an MMO; a party of NPCs, rich storytelling and voice acting, and a sense of personal accomplishment. The game is simply a blast to play. And although even I was sceptical of how such a fantastic single player game could redefine itself as a greater experience just be having you join a group, the first time I did so and ran a “flash point” my eyes were open and I saw the fusion of MMO and “just really kick ass co-op”. Add in a very balanced and engaging PVP system and some raid content and we have a very complete, very polished package that is going to impress.
Strong sales numbers are a given. With close to 3 million pre-orders a week before launch it’s very likely week one sales will be TEN TIMES higher than the previous MMO record (400,000, set by Conan. Lich King doesn’t count, it’s an expansion). With most of these being a “digital collector's” edition at $70 and an undisclosed but presumably high number of $150 physical collector's editions selling out almost instantly, the day one revenue is going to be hundreds of millions range. Industry analysts are confident in about 2 million taking the six month subscription option offered day one, adding another $150 million dollars. The much more debated number of how many people will take month to month options is unclear, but safe to say it will be a large number. Bottom line is that on day one, SW:TOR could (and by all estimates will) be earning half of what WoW took 7 years to build up to. The big variable here is an ability to keep people for the long term and build on that player base, and not even my providence is up to the task of that prediction. Great MMOs fail to catch on (Everquest 2, Warhmmer, City of Heroes) and abysmal MMOs take off (Original Everquest, Lineage, WoW for its first 3 years) for seemingly random reasons. I will say this though: Star Wars Galaxies kept almost 400,000 subscribers for 5 years despite being the first scientifically proven existence of “anti-fun”. Anyone who thinks there are not 500,000 people (EA’s stated profitably target) willing to pay $15 a month just to run around with a lightsaber just doesn’t get the power of the Star Wars brand. We spent $16 each to go see three movies we absolutely hated, then bought them on DVD. SW:TOR is going to be around for a while.
At this point you may have noticed two things about this article; it talks about how WoW is going to be around and successful for the conceivable future, and how SW:TOR is also going to be around and successful for the conceivable future. Notably absent is any hint of how these two facts might be related because, alas, I don’t think they are. SW:TOR is a game for people who love RPGs, love rich story, and most importantly love Star Wars. WoW is a game for hardcore MMO fans who are driven to compete in the race to be the best or are already too addicted to the carrot dangling to ever stop. Although both will compete for a 3rd, casual market of gamers, the Venn diagram of WoW’s target audience and SW:TOR’s target audience is two circles in different rooms. Just as important is the fact that this “casual gamer”, who is playing a MMO for the sake of playing an MMO, is the guy who was going to leave WoW this year anyways because he was simply done with it. People all over the internet will make the point that this guy used to be playing WoW, he left, and now he is playing Star Wars, therefore he left WoW for Star Wars. I encourage you to stop by XKCD comic number 552 before adopting this thinking. Go on, I’ll wait.
In short nothing can be a WoW killer because an MMO of that calibre simply never dies. Everquest just put out its 22nd expansion this year. It took exactly zero time for a hacked free to play server to replace Star Wars Galaxies after Sony announced they are pulling the plug this month. Final Fantasy 11 is still around despite being replaced by its own sequel (and being horrible), and that sequel is still around despite the fact that it’s so bad they had to give it away free for over a year. So, with apologies to haters on both sides, the verdict is pretty clear: SW:TOR and WoW are both going to be dominating forces in the MMO and video game industry for years to come. So may the force be with you, or ... I guess .. may the teabagging orc be with you. Whatever floats your boat.
The controversy this time around, which put it on the radar of non fans, is that is it an MMO. The internet is abuzz with predictions, hype, and nay-saying, as the internet is to prone to do. The gods of MMO have chosen World of Warcraft as their avatar and the disciples of this great power are quick to defend its continued dominance. SW:TOR fans seem just as quick to prop up this game as the second coming, a truly monumental event that will show these lost souls the true light. Most of us are a bit more level headed, and understand the internet is the internet and haters are gonna hate. So join me while I examine the most irrelevant question of our age, which somehow still manages to matter to about 10 million people: will SW:TOR be the “WoW killer”
First, calling anything the “x killer” is a bit much (except fear, which is universally accepted to be the mind killer). There are complex factors that affect the rise and fall of everything, and an MMO is one of the most complex systems there is. WoW has a lot to worry about without Star Wars even joining the conversation, and that’s something we need to understand a bit more before we move forward.
We’ve all heard the number 10 million (referring to the number of active WoW accounts), and I would hope we know enough about the media to know the number of times a statistic is repeated is inversely proportional to its relevance and accuracy. The argument is always the same: 10 million x $15 a month = OMG levels of money. A number so high that it effectively buffers WoW from failure while setting it apart in profitability from every game that has ever been or will be. There is a lot of truth in this; WoW is a money making powerhouse by industry standards but it is not even close to as big as you think.
Ten million is not the number of US players; it’s the number of players world-wide. WoW is more popular in Asia than it is in North America, with its single largest “subscription” base being in China - a country notoriously easy to make your largest market sector by the very nature of the insane numbers of people living there (for some reason, MMOs don’t have the same success in India). The observant among you might have noticed the quotes around subscription and already written it off as just a by-product of me being a bad writer, but that’s not the only reason. There no subscription fee in China. Instead, it’s a pay-as-you-go model that works out to pennies on the dollar of what we pay here in North America. This also leads to the guy who has 10 minutes of pay as you go time left counting as an active account until the time expires, even if he doesn’t log in for a year. Add to this the more basic “padding” tricks used by every MMO ever (free accounts, grace periods on accounts cancelled for non-payment, and generally creative accounting), and half of the money you thought WoW was making isn’t really there.
It’s not all bad news for WoW though. Most importantly, 10 million x $15 / 2 is still a lot of money, and the above explanation completely invalidates one of the most commonly quoted statistics from WoW haters: WoW has lost 4 million subscribers this year alone. Which is true, and if they stopped talking right then and there we wouldn’t have a problem. But this is the internet, and you can’t put out negative facts without some good old fashioned doom speaking. You’ll hear how this proves the game is on a decline, you’ll hear how losing $60 million a month in income that quickly is “unrecoverable” and how this trend will continue, claims running the gamut from unsubstantiated to flat out wrong. Just by numbers, if you lose a lot of accounts most should come from the area you have the most subscribers - which means China again. So worst case, “most” of the people they lost are the low paying type (it should work out to just about half, as just over half the population of the game is from ths region). However, Activision / Blizzard were clear that an even larger proportion are from China than would be expected, unfortunately without solid details. The bottom line is that the number of healthy full price paying accounts lost this year is much lower than 4 million, the amount of money lost much lower than $60 million, and the recoverability of this loss is hardly doom and gloom.
How about the game being on the decline and the trend continuing? Well, any 7 year old game is going to be on a decline but that doesn’t mean you can’t make money so expect WoW numbers to go down for as long as it’s around. Losing another 4 million players next year, however, seems unlikely. There is strong speculation that the mass exodus of China’s players is strongly tied to the gold trade, which is on a steep decline as fewer new people join and the profitability of sales falls sharply. WoW is no longer a moneymaker for the human farms who would spend hours earning gold to sell to people in game, as most people still playing WoW are either concerned with things money can’t buy or in a position to earn the gold themselves. And although this does point to a general decline in interest over all and is a strong indicator that new people are simply not joining any more (as if we didn’t get the hint from the change in the free trial system) this isn’t anything unexpected from an MMO this late in its life cycle.
The reason I spent so much time on this is because it’s important to understand just how self-fulfilling the “WoW will lose people to Star Wars” prophecy is. It’s in line with my major predictions for 2012: that the rich will get richer, snow will be wet, and music will continue to suck. But is there any reason at all to believe that Star Wars is going to have anything to do with that? Ironically, the people who seem to believe this most strongly are Activision’s CEOs. They collectively crapped in their pants after a survey (using under half of what would be considered a statistically significant sample, I might add!) indicated that about 78% of current WoW players were going to try SW:TOR, with about 50% of that number already having it pre-ordered. Just like the McDonalds CEO assuming that anyone who tries Burger King will never again eat at McDonalds, they made such a big deal of this number that they blamed a stock decrease on it. Seems like a pretty clear indicator that WoW has a lot to fear from the new kid on the block, but I’m not sure this theory is anything but clever deflection. “We are on a decline due to this incredible once in a life time competitor” is a much better sales pitch to your investors then “We are on a decline due to the inevitable and unreversable slow death of our product” after all. And what a competitor it is.
Bioware are the undisputed gods of RPGs, may all gamers praise their name (Glory to Bioware in the highest). They have proven themselves more than capable of making fantastic role playing games (everything they did until 2005), outstanding action based RPGs (Dragon Age, Mass Effect) and have shown they understand the “feel” of Star Wars better than George Lucas (Knights of the Old Republic), which is like a fan fiction Harry Potter book being better accepted by its fans then the actual novels. They even have experience taking a franchise that has gone to hell, and making it awesome again (that crazy Sonic game they made for the DS). As such, a lot of people are very excited for SW:TOR. Having played my share of the game in beta I can tell you very few of them will be disappointed; it has a single player experience on par with Dragon Age, a triple A release that sold millions. They have seamlessly woven what makes a good single player game into an MMO; a party of NPCs, rich storytelling and voice acting, and a sense of personal accomplishment. The game is simply a blast to play. And although even I was sceptical of how such a fantastic single player game could redefine itself as a greater experience just be having you join a group, the first time I did so and ran a “flash point” my eyes were open and I saw the fusion of MMO and “just really kick ass co-op”. Add in a very balanced and engaging PVP system and some raid content and we have a very complete, very polished package that is going to impress.
Strong sales numbers are a given. With close to 3 million pre-orders a week before launch it’s very likely week one sales will be TEN TIMES higher than the previous MMO record (400,000, set by Conan. Lich King doesn’t count, it’s an expansion). With most of these being a “digital collector's” edition at $70 and an undisclosed but presumably high number of $150 physical collector's editions selling out almost instantly, the day one revenue is going to be hundreds of millions range. Industry analysts are confident in about 2 million taking the six month subscription option offered day one, adding another $150 million dollars. The much more debated number of how many people will take month to month options is unclear, but safe to say it will be a large number. Bottom line is that on day one, SW:TOR could (and by all estimates will) be earning half of what WoW took 7 years to build up to. The big variable here is an ability to keep people for the long term and build on that player base, and not even my providence is up to the task of that prediction. Great MMOs fail to catch on (Everquest 2, Warhmmer, City of Heroes) and abysmal MMOs take off (Original Everquest, Lineage, WoW for its first 3 years) for seemingly random reasons. I will say this though: Star Wars Galaxies kept almost 400,000 subscribers for 5 years despite being the first scientifically proven existence of “anti-fun”. Anyone who thinks there are not 500,000 people (EA’s stated profitably target) willing to pay $15 a month just to run around with a lightsaber just doesn’t get the power of the Star Wars brand. We spent $16 each to go see three movies we absolutely hated, then bought them on DVD. SW:TOR is going to be around for a while.
At this point you may have noticed two things about this article; it talks about how WoW is going to be around and successful for the conceivable future, and how SW:TOR is also going to be around and successful for the conceivable future. Notably absent is any hint of how these two facts might be related because, alas, I don’t think they are. SW:TOR is a game for people who love RPGs, love rich story, and most importantly love Star Wars. WoW is a game for hardcore MMO fans who are driven to compete in the race to be the best or are already too addicted to the carrot dangling to ever stop. Although both will compete for a 3rd, casual market of gamers, the Venn diagram of WoW’s target audience and SW:TOR’s target audience is two circles in different rooms. Just as important is the fact that this “casual gamer”, who is playing a MMO for the sake of playing an MMO, is the guy who was going to leave WoW this year anyways because he was simply done with it. People all over the internet will make the point that this guy used to be playing WoW, he left, and now he is playing Star Wars, therefore he left WoW for Star Wars. I encourage you to stop by XKCD comic number 552 before adopting this thinking. Go on, I’ll wait.
In short nothing can be a WoW killer because an MMO of that calibre simply never dies. Everquest just put out its 22nd expansion this year. It took exactly zero time for a hacked free to play server to replace Star Wars Galaxies after Sony announced they are pulling the plug this month. Final Fantasy 11 is still around despite being replaced by its own sequel (and being horrible), and that sequel is still around despite the fact that it’s so bad they had to give it away free for over a year. So, with apologies to haters on both sides, the verdict is pretty clear: SW:TOR and WoW are both going to be dominating forces in the MMO and video game industry for years to come. So may the force be with you, or ... I guess .. may the teabagging orc be with you. Whatever floats your boat.
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