Scott Jennings: Farmville Killed Gaming, V-Worlds, And Your Dog
The battle lines are being drawn between “social games” and traditional gaming, and the rhetoric is getting bloody. Today, MMORPG.com columnnist Scott Jennings takes a look at the issue.
Column By Scott Jennings on March 17, 2010
Looking back at my wrapup of 2009, it does seem as though, three months in, we’re in danger of repeating ourselves. After all, we have Activision Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick asserting his particular brand of fear and loathing with one of his most popular studios, and now it seems the talk of GDC 2010 was… Farmville. Specifically, how metrics-driven game design (such as what Farmville uses) will destroy fun as we know it.
"You want to make an intrinsically interesting game," he said of game designers at large. "[When] you add extrinsic motivators to make your game better, if these studies do apply to games, you're destroying intrinsic motivation to play your game."
"The game industry used to use no metrics whatsoever," he continued. "Everything was gut and by the seat of our pants. Then metrics came around, and [now] we're addicted to metrics. If I change a value of my purple hat, fourteen more people buy it, and we think we're totally in the zone."
"But that's totally missing the point," he said. "That can lead you down a bad path. Extrinsic motivators will lead you towards dull tasks, and you're totally [cornering] yourself into designing sh***y games that you have to pay people to play" with reward structures.
And that’s not even the most apocalyptic take. Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon professor who gave a widely discussed talk about how gaming-style rewards can be used as motivational tools outside of gaming (for good or ill) said, quite literally: ethical game developers are at war with Farmville.
"The 21st century will be a war of attention," Schell said. "We have to choose sides." The world can either be controlled by the designers who only want to make money -- the "persuaders," as Schell labeled them -- or these games can be controlled by the humanitarians, and the artists, and the fulfillers. The persuaders can be beaten, Schell said, but only "if we wake the hell up."
"The war is already here," Schell pleaded. "You're fighting in it right now."
For their part, Zynga, Farmville’s developers, didn’t help matters by giving a well-publicized (at least among furious game developers) patronizing pat on the head.
The weirdest moment came from the guy accepting the Best Online Social Game for Facebook game Farmville (who immediately became known among the buzzing attendees as "that Farmville a**hole"). He used his acceptance speech to take a swipe at all the indie types who had been trashing his game all week, and then he said that Farmville maker Zynga had plenty of openings, not-so-subtly implying that if any of the indie kids wanted to get a REAL job, they could submit an application. Thus he achieved the impossible feat of making everyone in the room hate Farmville even more.
Of course, if you want to know what’s actually happening, follow the money. And that, specifically a panel of venture capitalists – the people who actually fund new game companies - held cold comfort as well for traditional game developers.
"It was easier ten years ago... when you'd just ship a great product and the users pay you up front," [Pacific Crest analyst Evan] Wilson says. "Those days are over."
From there, he raises a controversial question: "How important is game development when you have poor quality free social games generating these kinds of numbers?"
Media companies only care about daily average uniques, Wilson continues. "The industry has been moving in that direction rapidly and it's accelerating and it's scary," he adds. "It is a big, big issue when some of the leading social gaming companies can get over 20 million players on a game in nine days," he adds -- even the best AAA titles can't pull those numbers.
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Aside from this column, Scott is also currently contracting with NCsoft.
Every Wednesday he provides us an insider's look at the MMO industry.
Haven't played farmville. Never heard of it til today. Looked it up - it's a free to play flash game tied to facebook that allows you to buy crap with real dollars to ... farm. Farming? Really?
Just goes to show you - you can sell anything on the internet - even virtual seeds. The question is - how much money is this game really making, and is it legitimate? Without real revenue numbers, there's no way to decide if this is even an issue. Farmville's charity drive raised $321,000 by selling a sweet potato seed. Wow's charity drive raised $1.1 million by selling a virtual pet. Farmville makes nothing if people don't buy crap regularly. Wow makes $15 per month per subscriber even if people don't play. MMO's aren't going anywhere.
I disagree. Publishers want money. What happened when Diablo was a huge success? Everyone started making Diablo clones. What happened when WoW was a huge success? Everyone started to make WoW clones. Were those clones ever as good as the original? Not in my opinion. That doesn't change the fact that a lot of people made money off "the latest hype". Publishers are notorious for being momentum chasers, not momentum changers. Publishers see this new social gaming thing, and think its the net big thing. Do they understand it? I doubt it. They didn't understand why Diablo was fun, or why one couldn't copy WoW.
We will see a major slowdown in MMO development as everyone chases the social gaming revenue. I'd like to think this whole thing is a fad that only housewives, and people bored at work play. That's not going to change the fact publishers, you know the guys with the cash who make the decisions, will now be chasing this new fad for awhile. Clearly, trying to make a copy of WoW hasn't worked out so well for these guys. Right, Koster?
The biggest mistake a mmo developer could make right now would be trying to model farmville. MMO players for the most part already have boring repetitive task that they (legally or no) spend real world money on. What mmo players want isn't more boring repetitive task they want an escape from their boring ass lives, they want to have an adventure. When a mmo developer finally gets this then they will see 80 million players.
What a bunch of sour grapes by the devs! So Farmville gets however many millions of non-mmo playing people to play a sorta-mmo, and all they can do is complain? Morons!
(Just wait until WoW introduces farming.)
I'm not a fan of Farmville, but I know people who are. In truth, most of them (that I know personally) aren't gamers. They're watchers, people who like to be entertained by movies or another person playing a game they can enjoy. With games like Farmville and the combined social site of Facebook, these watchers can not only appreciate the pretty colors and actions of an avatar, but can 'wet their toes' by 'playing' the game via simple clicks and, as simply as that, reap the rewards.
So are games like Farmville and Mafia Wars wrong? I say no, but they do not appeal to me at all. They're catering to a different market, consumers who may one day see the large virtual worlds out there and realize they're ready to try something bigger. Who knows. I'm very keen to see how things pan out in the next decade.
so one more decade of even low quality products so ppl who dont give a damn about the genre can be happy and we the "founders" will wander aimlessy =(
DNA computing come save us all =/
There is no "war" between social games and regular console or MMO's imo. I play Castle age, happy Island, vampire wars, and Starfleet commander on the facebook in the morning, but its only for about 10-20 min tops. Console and MMO's give me far more depth and content than the social games by far. The social games are fun and quick yes but dont equal the satisfaction of console or MMO gaming. Bottom line.
(BBBBBBWWWWWAAAHHHHH gives double plunger salute to Tudors Show!)
@ Kenaoshi
Not necessarily. I think this could do a favor for the game industry as a whole. Not without some teeth-gnashing, of course, but as I said in my first post, these player-watchers may come to want more than games like Farmville have to offer. They may seek out the world that we know and love, and it will be the task of developers to model games that bring the 'new' generation of gamers up to par with what we are used to. It may mean a period of games that are between games like Farmville and AAA titles, but that's the nature of change.
You build, then rebuild, sometimes from scratch.
Not enough people made Diablo clones. I mean there were only a couple AAA Diablo clones, Titan Quest and Dungeon Siege. Diablo is actually a good model for a social game, with the random-statted item drops. Random interval reward systems are even more addictive than fixed interval reward systems like Farmville uses. Also, progresswars would be a better game if you got a random amount of XP per click instead. :P
BattleAxe, Zynga (makers of Farmville) are gearing up to IPO, for over a billion dollar valuation, say the rumors. They make a LOT of money, and Farmville is insanely profitable. (Also, they have done more than one charity drive, and have raised millions of dollars). You need to Google a bit more deeply.
Brostyn, I think we already saw that slowdown in MMO development. There are very few big ones from major publishers these days.
Storm-Dragon, the reason MMO devs need to model on Farmville is simple -- turns out that's what more players want. From a pure pragmatic point of view, the mass market has arrived and it turns out we're not going to persuade them to love dragons and robots. Not to mention that the social bonding techniques that the social games use are something that MMO designers should be paying careful attention to.
Astara, WoW may not introduce farming, but I have to point out that SWG;s resource harvesting is exactly like Farmville's farming just more complex. :)
TJKazmark, some of the social gamers may cross the divide, but I suspect it'll be fewer. I would expect the MMOs to incorportate aspects of the social game designs first, as you say in post #9.
Kenaoshi, Core gamers will be unhappy, I suspect. :( They already are -- this is part of the same overall current as the Wii and the like.
RavingRabbid, there is no war expect for the war for investment dollars. That war shapes what makes it to players' hands.
Reddotmist, plenty of people made Diablo clones. Cloning #1 is a risky technique if you don't have the budget to do it well, though. It's worth pointing out that Zynga made a very polished Diablo clone for Facebook. It died a miserable death and they yanked it.
Yeah, this.
I play both Mafia Wars and Cafe World on my Facebook every day, but that's only for just a few minutes each at a time. They're time wasters, and give some variety to the whole Facebook experience. They're the equivalent of playing Minesweeper or Solitaire on your computer at work to make the day go by faster. That's about it. On the other hand, if I want a more in-depth gaming experience, I'll fire up a game console or my PC and log into an MMO.
I really don't understand all the hand-wringing and whining about games like Farmville. They're social games that attract people who wouldn't otherwise play games. They enhance the Facebook experience, which is good. None of that means that they're going to replace MMO's or kill all gaming as we know it. It's just a different facet of gaming.
Yeah, this.
I play both Mafia Wars and Cafe World on my Facebook every day, but that's only for just a few minutes each at a time. They're time wasters, and give some variety to the whole Facebook experience. They're the equivalent of playing Minesweeper or Solitaire on your computer at work to make the day go by faster. That's about it. On the other hand, if I want a more in-depth gaming experience, I'll fire up a game console or my PC and log into an MMO.
I really don't understand all the hand-wringing and whining about games like Farmville. They're social games that attract people who wouldn't otherwise play games. They enhance the Facebook experience, which is good. None of that means that they're going to replace MMO's or kill all gaming as we know it. It's just a different facet of gaming.
I think that's probably true from a player's point of view, but the war isn't over players and where they spend their time. The war, if there is one, is over money. Obviously, games need money in order to be made. With the success of social games like Farmville, which can be made at a literal fraction of the cost of making a AAA title, more and more investors are looking toward that side of the market.
Think about it this way: If you could make a pile of money by either a) investing a lot and taking a large risk or b) investing a little and taking a much smaller risk, which one are you going to do?
So, do virtual worlds have something to fear from the success of Facebook and other social games? Of course they do. it's not that people are afraid no one's going to play the AAA games, it's the fear that no one's going to fund the AAA games.
Are you forgetting Nox, Sacred(2), Torchlight, Divinity(3), Darkstone, Fate, etc. Granted some of those were fun games, but still complete Diablo Knock-offs.
I get that. And I understand the fear from a business point of view. However, I think past history is on the side of folks who aren't freaked out yet by the more social games.
The success of UO and EQ brought more developers into the MMO genre, including Blizzard. World of Warcraft's success in turn brought everyone else in for their own piece of the pie. Some of those games have succeeded, most have not. Social games like Farmville are no different. Anyone can shovel a cheap, easy browser-based game out the door to try and make a quick buck, and I'm sure a lot of developers will. However, there's also such a thing as market saturation. The same folks playing Farmville and Mafia Wars could look at any glut of new social games and wonder why they should bother when they're already playing a similar game on Facebook.
At some point, the market will be so flooded with cheap browser-based games that folks will want something with more depth instead, and the pendulum will swing back. I'm not quite ready to buy the idea that no one will fund the AAA games to focus on Farmville clones. I think there's room for both, and I suspect the market will see it that way as well.
I have to run out but will simply say this: THIS is the kind of (high) quality, in-depth article mmorpg.com has to aim to release on a consistent basis. We will read more than a 1,000 words if it isn't merely unresearched and unsubstantiated ranting. A great read and I look forward to adding a comment or two once I have some free time.
WoW's success did not bring anyone else in for their own piece of the pie. Since WoW launched, no MMOs have done any better than any of the MMOs pre-WoW. And there have been less of them per year. WoW didn't expand the market except for WoW. (More copies sold, but in terms of subs, WoW just recaptures everyone).
Even if you discount F2P games, LOTRO and Aion have both done better than pre-WoW MMOs in terms of subscription numbers.
It is growth only in the sense that there are more ways to get money out of making games.
I have been playing games since before 3D, before color even (jumpman rocked on that green text monitor we had). For a while there was real growth, with technologies improving and new immersive gaming coming out. There was wolfenstein and Doom which ushered in a new age of gaming. Followed by Descent and Duke Nukem 3D which explored further into 3D. I played many shooters for a while (Quake, Heretic etc.) and they were all more advanced but kind of the same game.
I remember when we first got nintendo and thought it was amazing. I remember when Mario Kart first appeared. I remember thinking no game could surprise me anymore and then Half-Life came around. The characters actually followed you with their eyes and head when talking to you. The game actually scared you and you never knew what would be around the next corner. It was amazing.
I remember playing The Realm and being amazed that all those other characters walking around were other people, I remember being excited when UO was getting ready to release because it was even more amazing then The Realm. I remember finding a virtual 3D chat room way back then (amazing how the majority of chat rooms and forums are still just text and login names when 3D virtual chat rooms were invented something like a decade ago).
I remember playing Battlefield for the first time and thinking the concpet of people on foot, people in tanks, in planes, in jeeps all at the same time was amazing.
But in the last ~10 years it's slowly become more disturbing. First there was Halo on the Xbox. Nothing about this game was original or new. I mean come on it was even a space marine in green armor (Doom). But because it was released on console, all of the people who thought playing console games were cool but playing PC games made you a dork suddenly found the FPS genre and thought Halo was the most amazing game in all of history. These same people had no idea of the amazing games before this and how much better most of them were. Thus the Halo franchise, an extremely unoriginal franchise, became one of the best ever.
WoW came along and did nothing new with MMOs, not a single solitary thing. But all the people who thought playing regular games like Warcraft was cool but playing MMOs was for nerds suddenly decided to try the genre. Instantly they all though the most amazing game had ever been created, oh and how amazing and new and original it was! They had no idea how every concept in WoW had been lifted from another type of game. And thus the best selling MMO of all time was born.
Web games started to show up, and a company made a little game called bejeweled. Suddenly people who though gaming on a PC or console was ridiculous or just for kids found out that gaming can be fun. Bejeweled rocketed to one of the best selling games ever.
Web games where you built up land, or had armies, or had gangs, and you had turns and could click on adds or use money to advance your stuff had been around for a long long time. But suddenly a company decided to tie one into face book. Suddenly all these face book users who though wasting time in progressive web games was for nerds thought casual web "gaming" was the coolest thing, and SO ORIGINAL!!! Suddenly farmville becomes the most profitable game around.
Every time you dumb down gaming, or completely copy games that have always exsited but put them in a new media or technology people go nuts and "discover" gaming. All this does is encourage the industry to not be original, not create new things, not challenge the market or their players. It does encourage copying and dumbing down and allowing people to spend much more money on the same product. Gaming is dying, and has been for a while and it's only getting worse and worse. Real games will be rare in the future and it will be sad.
But it's how this country rolls now a days, we're in a "milk your customers of every last cent while giving them less" age. Hopefully it turns around but it seems almost too profitable to ever change.
Sorry I didn't plan on it becoming that long of a post, but this issue does bother me.
Sure it did. Not in terms of success, but rather in terms of people aiming for their own game to capture the market.
Farmville and all these other social games are the same way. They're successful, so now everyone else will want to try their own hand at a cheap, easy browser-based game. Some will do well, most will not, just like the MMO market.
I think the answer is no, and it is because the entertainment industry investors are addicted to "big hits." It is the same reason that they use predictable returns from romantic comedies to invest in more ambitious and risky mega-blockbusters. Or on TV, for several decades the model was to use the steady predictable income from children's shows, daytime soaps, etc to spend on big budget prime time shows that failed most of the time.
I think the revenue model of "social gaming" is a fad, just like arcades used to be, just like music games (rock band, etc) a few years ago. Right now these little facebook games are new and novelty, and that's why masses of non-gamers play them, but very soon the market will get saturated and the novelty will decline. In the early days of arcades (pac-man) you would get non-gamer types playing a few rounds, just to see the world's latest novelty. But as the 80s pressed on the games did not change much and so the novelty evaporated, leaving only 'hardcore' gamers behind in the arcade.
I'm an old fan of online games, but this "war" between social gaming and other gaming really doesn't exist. They mostly attract different people for different reasons.
And WoW's supposed market dominance is of course, overstated. I was an original WoW tester, and I couldn't stand it for more than 6 months.
Great write up as usual , Scott
So anyway.
As I see it. What happened to games is the same thing that happened in whole area of entertainment art.
What happened is that online games had started small. Catering first to game enthusiasts , roleplayers.
And than it grew and slowly started catering to the masses (thanks to WOW mainly).
So It changed to fit simple tastes of the masses.
But the original crowd of game enthusiasts didnt disapear. They are smaller but not in numbers. Statistically, because they are part of bigger group now.
So there is still market for GOOD GAMES, real games. Its just have to learn it will not make 20 million subscribers in a week.
The real lesson here is
We are ALTERNATIVE SCENE NOW.
Companies have to understand that. And stop trying to please or get the simpleton masses.
If you make game for a real gamer. Make it on smaller budget and with real complicated advanced gameplay.
If you make game for simpleton masses.
Well... just make Farmville 2
I haven't seen any numbers for Aion subscribers broken out by territory. Does it have millions in NA/Europe?
LOTRO's what, a million or so?
That really is not "rising tide for everyone" sorts of results. Better, but 2-3x improvement in 7-8 years?
More telling, only two examples?
"It was easier ten years ago... when you'd just ship a great product and the users pay you up front," [Pacific Crest analyst Evan] Wilson says. "Those days are over."
From there, he raises a controversial question: "How important is game development when you have poor quality free social games generating these kinds of numbers?"
Media companies only care about daily average uniques, Wilson continues. "The industry has been moving in that direction rapidly and it's accelerating and it's scary," he adds. "It is a big, big issue when some of the leading social gaming companies can get over 20 million players on a game in nine days," he adds -- even the best AAA titles can't pull those numbers."
What is more of a threat to 'quality games' is people who start making whatever type of game gets the bigger market share, rather than the type of game they love that appeals to different (smaller) niches of players.
Not every genre of game can attract 20 million people. If that number of players becomes the requirement for a game to be called a 'success' in the future by publishers and investors, then we'll have a real problem on our hands, but it won't be the fault of Farmville.
Fantastic article for sure
What are the chances that this "war" could end up being good for the genre? Over the last few years we the gamer have been inundated with sub par, incomplete, and often just plain terrible games because MMOs are big money so everyone wants a piece of the pie. I don't think many people will argue with me in saying that the market is oversaturated and with garbage none the less.
From a consumer standpoint, if a large portion of that investor money began to shift in the direction of quick return social games, and the money that is left is scarce it will force developers to step it up a notch in order to compete for the money that is left. While this could be bad for a lot of game development companies, I think in some respects the MMO gamer might win in that we start to see a better quality product in the long term and less AoCs, Anarchy Onlines, Tabula Rasas etc. and AAA titles could be based on the game itself rather than the fact that they have a $100 million budget like every other game out their.
Its going to be harder for indie companies like AV and MH and Hi-Rez to compete, but competition is good.
The day when such "games" will actually eat a meaningful share off the "regular" games market will be the end of the Human Sapiens. There are a lot of regular Bills and Joes that are hard put to it when it comes to plugging the mouse into the right USB, yet it is not the thing masses should aspire for.
Everyone starts at 0. It is by overcoming challenges that we learn and evolve. Thus, the day when challeges become uncool will be a very bad day indeed. And these games are avatars of this cool uncoolness.
Not again this argument... didnt we just have the same 2 weeks ago?
Farmville killing gaming... shoot. THE END IS NIGH! =P
I really didn't want to be reminded of this. This topic has popped up quite a few times since Facebook games took off. The "Farmville Side" (Or the social, micro-transaction, pay for results side of the coin) really believe this is the future of video games as a whole. It's scary how sure they are sometimes. I mean, you hear them talk and they're in the industry and you're not, so you have to ask yourself, "What if he's right?"
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/402?ch=1
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=2
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=3
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/401?ch=4
I recommend everyone check out this episode of the Bonus Round. It's a discussion on the state of the industry. The guy in the middle is so certain that games, we're talking hardcore games like your Call of Duty's, World of Warcraft's, sports games and such are all going to follow the Farmville approach where you can pay to unlock everything. He believes games will require longer time investments to unlock everything, but will all offer micro-transactions to unlock and upgrade faster for the players who don't have time or don't want to work at it.
It caused a lot of anger on Gametrailers.com and I can't blame blame them. We as gamers and not developers have to speak with our wallets and word of mouth to make sure this shift never occurs.
Actually - the argument is that Farmville and it's ilk are scamming people.
Rest assured, it will not occur. There will always be games as we know them. Like there is only place for one WOW, there just isnt a market for dozens or more Farmville's. And then what will the other game developers do?
This is total nonsense talk.
Great! So, the backlash of this is the so-called AAA developers now decide that they might as well make their games even more shallow and less like worlds (sim-like) to cut even more costs to make them more attractive toward investors. Perfect. Just, perfect. Oh, sure, there may be more logical steps to take in this case, steps that I may even embrace. But if there is one thing this industry has shown me since WoW is that the heads of these companies aren't anywhere near logical nor do they have creativity anywhere in their mindset. They are indeed chasing metrics and there hasn't been any miraculous event that is going to stop them from this pattern of behavior.
If World of Darkness Online and/or Copernicus don't offer up well-rounded world's and instead are more of the same old same AAA offerings of late, then I'm seriously done with this genre of gaming. I'm going to go to Facebook, unblock Farmville and start playing it non-stop. I, and many others, have been begging, kicking and screaming for a return to the depth and variety of gameplay that UO and early SWG offered and have been continuously ignored. Well, if hitching my wagon to Zynga and finally accepting a paper dixie cup full of Aihoshi's Blue Kool-Aid in any minute way screws over the establishment (the AAA P2Pers) and allows me to throw up a parting middle digit, well, in the infamous words of Palpatine..."So be it, Jedi..."
Nice article, but there is a bit of a dot-com, beanie baby ring to the way "social games" are being talked about these days. Yes like any "trendy" things some implimenters can make a good chunk of change off it if they luck into hitting it at the right time and place.... but most won't and alot that invest heavily in it will loose thier shirts. The VC's have a vested interest in hyping this up as well...I've seen the way alot of these guys work... they are like snake-oil salsemen... they don't make the bulk of thier returns off of sustained revenue like a traditional business would (i.e. making a doughnut costs 50 cents, you can sell one for $1 ...repeat a couple million times and your making money).... they do it buy jumping into a company product early with a chunk of cash...hyping it up to show that it has "growth metrics" and then turning around and making a windfall by selling it to some other poor slob investor who suddenly discovers that "growth metrics" doesn't equal sustainable proffit.
I think one of the posters in one of the discussions linked to put it best....essentialy he said....
So what if some social game has x zillion users, how many of them are actualy paying anything? A thousand people drive by my house every day, not one of them gives me any money...does that make me rich?
That shouldn't be too hard to understand...USERS/VISITORS are not a revenue source...they are a COST source... CUSTOMERS are a revenue source (i.e. money changes hands).
Now traditionaly...alot of high volume sites have tried to cash in on that volume by selling advertising space or targeted mailing lists or other crap like that.... but that business model is getting harder and harder to pitch ever since the economy took a down turn and corporate budgets got tighter. The CFO's at the big Corps have finally started to finally wise upto the fact that just because you put your corporate logo in front of millions of eye-balls doesn't mean your bottom line is going to budge one millimeter. Things like "brand-awareness" and all that other fuzzy stuff that Marketers love to tout are being put under a harsh spot-light these days.... and the view, unsurprisingly isn't pretty.
The big corps (rightfully so) aren't much interested in paying for things like "site views" or "unique visitors" or "even click throughs".....increasingly the only thing they are willing to shell out cash for is "conversions"..... that is something that shows that the pair of eye-balls you directed there way actualy plunked down cold hard cash to BUY something from them.
That's the real kicker (as in bring you back to reality) about this whole Social Network phenominom.... at the end of the day, Volume doesn't mean crap if somewhere down the line, money isn't changing hands.
That isn't to say that there isn't some decent money to be had in the social gaming arena. Some users do derive some value (entertainment or otherwise) from those social venues and (just like those of us who like to light up digital zombies with a 12 gauge) are willing to plunk down some cash for that experience.
However, "social gaming" and social media in general these days are alot more hype then they are SUSTAINABLE revenue.... and anyone that tries to tell you different is probably trying to sell you something.
I think it is just an expanding online world. My gal plays facebook games and would never play a MMORPG - just wouldnt invest that much time. I think they are very different targeted audiences, just happen to be online and games.
Make sure she is on the lookout for scams. Big time.
Meh, my girl played Farmville pretty hardcore for about a month and got bored, never spent a dime on it but I'm sure there are some that have. I don't see how people can enjoy it, it looks soooooo boring. To each his own though. Either way, it's a trend, it will die out. Just like Myspace did before Facebook became the "in" thing. I really don't see games similar to Farmville destroying anyones fun, no real gamer is going to sit there and play these things for more than a couple days without getting absolutely bored of it.
Agreed.
It's one thing for Zynga to have a dozen different variations of Mafia Wars and Farmville on Facebook. It's another thing entirely for dozens of other developers to flood Facebook and other social media sites with knockoffs of Mafia Wars and Farmville to try and replicate their success. The crowd that gravitates towards a game like Farmville isn't necessarily going to follow a dozen more clones of it or give those other games any money or time at all. They've got their Facebook routine down, and they're going to stick to it.
Also, nothing on Facebook is going to kill traditional gaming. The whole idea that companies are suddenly going to divert all their funding away from larger AAA titles towards cheaply made Farmville clones is absurd. Developers can easily do both. Look at Ubisoft-- for every ridiculous piece of Wii or DS shovelware that they put out (the Petz and Imagine games, the My Coach series, etc.) they ALSO still put out more serious, hardcore games for the traditional gamer. Why can't the same hold true here?
If an MMO developer decides to put a game on Facebook, like SOE has with Pox Nora, that doesn't detract from their other games in development, like DCU Online, and it doesn't fundamentally alter the game market. It's just a developer casting the widest possible net for potential customers.
The problem with games like Farmville or any of the facebook games. They operate 24/7 so you have to contantly be online to tend your game. Completely ridiculous. I can play a MMO when I want in most situations. Same with any FPS or stategy game and not worry about logging on in the middle of the night.
They do not threaten gaming at all in my opinion, they just seem to attract people who are not really gamers.
This is a funding war. I actually think MMOs as a genre will survive just fine, because face it - MMO fans are a niche market. What will be interesting is what happens to the rest of gaming - I can't imagine that EA, Activision, and their investors are very happy to watch Zynga. Not to mention what Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are feeling right now.
It might actually be healthy for PC Gaming - remember the dead gaming platform, no one will play games on their PC anymore - that was the forecast a few years ago from all the big publishers/console makers.
I played Farmville for a while, until family got way to competitive. In retrospect it was hilarious to watch my sisters and brothers have melt downs over berries and which had the better barn. It was fun for a while, played it longer than I've played many games including some MMOs. Parts of it are more Sims like and part of it is frankly just like a lot of MMOs - a grind fest.
It is healthy for the game developers to be discussing grind fests, because they truly lack creativity. Farmville really does have the whole levelling for your carrots (and other edibles) thing mastered. I'm waiting for a review that compares the grind in a new MMO to Farmville - we now have a standard that can be measured against.
As an example - is there any difference (except for time) between planting/harvesting berries in Farmville and killing Salamandars in LOTRO (for a deed)? Farmville actually has LOTRO beat on this one, it takes less time, though you will have to do something else for the hours that the berries are growing.
What will be really kewl is if more in depth games tackle Facebook. I can't wait to see what Firaxis does with Civ on Facebook.
Social games are just that, social. Good for what they target, families.
Just in my wife's family, she has 2 sisters, nephews, nieces, a brother, and even her 60+ year old mother spend a few minutes a day on face book and farm town.
Just another way besides e-mail, or the phone to keep in contact.
None of them actually spend cash to add to their farms, and when my wife is ready and has time to play games, she goes on-line and plays with her gaming friends. DAOC, FE, are the 2 games she spends time on now. She does not consider farm town a game, just an extension of face book that she and her family uses to talk and visit with and about, a few minutes each day.
The vast majority of people are the same as my wife and her family i would imagine, never spend cash on these sites just use them to keep in contact a little each day. By the way, none of the others in her family on face book, play other on-line games now or have they in the past.
Just a social site that they can chat for a few minutes if they happen to be online at the same time and leave a message for them each day.
I do not think that there is much competition between the 2, On-line games and the social sites. As i said, just in my wife's family, the ones that have or will play and pay for on-line games have and will continue to do so, but not on the social sites, they go with the regular on-line games.
i dont really consider Farmville killing gaming. its merely a social game, a time waster, some people obviously spend money on it, but most dont. I dont play farmville and I probably never will. I just think I consider it a killer of gaming, as it doesnt directly compete with traditional games.
but I also think its a good thing that these 'games" are here as they introduce non gamers to the joy of gaming, whether it be a social game, a psuedo-RPGesque game. It gives a person who would not necessarily be interested in gaming in general a reason to be curious and venture further into perhaps console gaming such as buying a PS3, wii, or xbox360 or even getting PC games. I think they are in some respect are a benefit to the industry as a whole.
It's the same choir we hear every time something new comes up. When Second Life was new, all those experts predicted that in a few years normal MMOs would be dead and everyone would play games like Second Life. Or like for 20 years consoles make PC gaming dead. Or whatever is fashion to say that X is going to kill Y.
I really stopped listening to this.
Only time will tell whether or not it lasts. My opinion is that it is like cell phone gaming. Yes, it's profitable for those that survive, but you don't see Capcom shelving its AAA games to focus solely on cell phones. Companies will make money off of it while it lasts as a fad, and keep making their AAA games.
We've had so much pontification though on the MMO scene that anything anyone says I am starting to doubt.
farmville is not even a real game, cmon -.-
my gf plays in when she is facebooking. i simply laugh at this, but this kind of game suits her fine. ill stay with real games :D
Hi John,
This is not dissimilar to the differences between Mainframe solutions and the introduction to the PC or Custom written software versus off-the-shelf software that has happened in the commercial side of computer usage. For that matter, you can look at the web for similar examples... roll-your-own HTML produced from 1993-1996ish vs. WYSIWYG editors that completely hide HTML from the developer.
I think you'll see development of solutions that allow you to create triple A games for a fraction of the development time and cost evolve similar to the Game Engines that were developed by FPSs. Frameworks will evolve to assist in building out the rules sets and allow balancing. Art and music will be a challenge but we've already seen giant leaps in the tool sets used in computer generated media.
I also think that this will be an incentive to reducing the entry barrier (and I'm not talking costs) to MMOs. If you want a more general audience to play your game, you'll have to make it easily understandable to non-gamers. This, I think, is the biggest thing "social games" get right today.
My HOPE (and others have already said this) is that some of these people in the new games will get bored and want a greater challenge, drawing them to more traditional MMOs. Being a sandbox player, I've long held out hope that the theme park MMOs would act as 'trainers' to users who would migrate to sandbox solutions but, to this point, that has not occurred as yet (I say it's because the only triple A game was SWG but I'm wearing my rose coloured glasses) so maybe all of my thoughts here are just wishful thinking.
QFT, first article I read from the first word to the last paragraph in years on this site. Keep it up, and redesign the aweful graphics of the site (remove most flash adds and make the site use modern fonts and colors) and you will gain our trust and interest back from sites such as massively. =)
I would almost consider this a good thing. The current developerXpublisher companies are producing lackluster products, and quality has not been a characteristic of any game that has released, since LOTRO. If it is more difficult for developers to obtain funds, then hopefully they will put that much more time into developing and producing a good quality product.
Calling Farmville a "social" game is like calling solitair a social game. You play it alone. You don't team up with anyone to plant seeds or harvest your crops. The most social thing you can do in Farmville is fertilize/weed the plots on your neighbor's farms, alone.
Real social games are MMORPG's where people team up for adventure to achieve common goals. True socializing happens in MMORPG's. Not in play-for-10-minutes-between-classes time wasters like Farmville.
I've played a number of those social networking games including Farmville to level 24 and I've stopped because it's horrendously laggy and painfully time wasting. They're very buggy and have constant desync issues and the spam advertising has changed the spirit of Facebook. On top of this, Facebook constantly make annoying changes to the interface, such as 'newsfeed' intended to bombard people. Where once you could configure and control different types of newsfeeds, you now can't do anything to get rid of them.
I marvel how these Zynga dudes got in at the right time to get direct access and exploit 300 million users. The games are simple, and as has been said, it's suckered in all those non gamers, primarily the females. Their brutal spam methods are shamelessly scammy and I'm wondering if these guys are going to end up with some lawsuit in the near future.
Civ is going there and so is Richard Garriott because they know there's a market to be tapped here. It might not affect big companies and real gamers but it's not going to do Indies any favours.
Of the 80 million farmville players, how many are actively playing? Most people play farmville off and on and I don't know anyone who doesn't spend more then a few minutes a day on it. It is no competition to real games. No gamer would ever say, instead of buying a game I really want, I will play Farmville instead.
I have no problem with gaming like farmville. The people i want to play with in MMO's are not the farmville type. Therefore it wont affect my fun in the least. As a player who loves EVE i have not a single bit of desire to play anything even remotely like farmville. I would like to think that other players who love games like EVE feel the same way. So what the hell do i care?
This is one of my passive hopes. It would be great to see the price of art developing tools to drop low enough for people to pick it up as a hobby; much like how people can paint and draw on their free time.
How can anyone watch developers churn out clone after clone and honestly deny the fact that those same developers would stoop to milking the Farmville cow? Does anyone really think they'll still pump millions of dollars into this genre, when they've proven to many times to count how they can't even deviate from attempts to copy the success of the WoW model?
Oh noz!
www.youtube.com/watch
My thoughts on this LMMFAO. Seriously MMO devs whining and b****ing over an app a f*****g app? I have now seen it all here is a solution stop focusing on an app who has 80 million people who have played in the past but not actually playing. It's like tossing someone the number of accounts you have but not giving the number of active players. Instead of worrying about Farmville how about you get back to work with an original MMO and not a clone of WoW (Thank you SE you seem to be the only one who can figure this out) or a AAA thats unfinished with so many bugs and glitches you lose your whole player base after the free month.
Someone from Blizzard of all people b******g about this? (I could say so much stuff about Blizzard and their golden egg but I wont) Please don't flame me I have played WoW for a few years until they decided to turn it into an easy immature filled game.
Trust me, real gaming has nothing to worry about when it comes to social gaming. Social gaming is another word for convenient gaming. I played farmville ONLY because I was logged into facebook and for no other reason. Its a distraction while you're logged into Facebook. nothing more. It will never compete with real gaming because they are two different worlds. As far as Zygna is concerned, they rip off thier "ideas" from other gaming programmers. He was so obvious about it he got sued for 10 million.
a very interesting read, and very well summarised.
jennings is by far the best writer here - informed, neutral, interesting and informative (unlike the controversial flame-baiting tabloid articles of late).
oh and btw (had to add this sry) - we all know in which category Smedley is in the new scheme of things...
It is a bummer money could be diverted to these facebook games, but I don't think it is all bad. I know several people that would never have ever played a AAA game but facebook games can almost act as a gateway drug. My aunt played farmville and liked it but then got bored because there was no depth and limited social interaction. With a small push it would be easy to get her to play an mmo with similar offerings as old SWG. All the depth of crafting and entertaining would be really appealing to people like her after getting over the stigma of playing a video game online.
People like my aunt may not fit the hardcore AAA segment but AAAs can be expanded to include roles for players like her. This type of player does not want to be a hero, they want to make things and interact with people which could fit in nicely with an in game economy. I can just see myself calling my aunt up and asking her to make armor for me in the next mmo, lol - you know its all gonna be pink and cute too 8)
Am I the only person who read this, and thought why are they giving up? Lets look at what farmville is, it's a game where you farm crops, and buy SEEDS and people love it. Now does this not open the door for social oriented, virtual worlds? The very thing Koster always wanted to sell?
If a game based on farming can sell to so many people. Why wouldn't a fully fleshed out virtual world not devoted to combat? Rather social activity, and good old fun.
I admit that I played the facebook games for awhile, including farmville. They were easy and accessible. However, I left them all (save a little game called Fairyland) when I finally found a mmo sandbox game that actually had what I'd always wanted. So players WILL leave them for something decent in the mmo world. BUT the industry HAS to stop making all these cookie cutter PTP and FTP games that are all the same ole stale crap. When a good one comes along like Atlantica, the company quickly turns it into a parasitic rapist of the players with nerfs and item mall pushes. (They are never satisfied with a decent income, they have to bleed you dry!). If companies would make something different and playable (Like a professional version of Haven and Hearth) you might actually see people begin to STOP following the "dumb down trend" that seems to be raping the public on every issue, from TV to Music to games and go back to playing things that require even the slightest bit of intellect!.
A lot of people are trivializing this, or misunderstanding where the fear is coming from. Let me explain how I see it.
Take an example from these forums. You've probably read a few threads about people who complain that death penalties nowadays are too lenient, or maybe they want full corpse looting in their world pvp. You might shrug them off, or you might flame them and tell them that most people don't want that kind of game. It's true, games that are really challenging and punishing have become niche, and most people don't want to lose experience and gear when they die. The market shifted from those niche games, like UO, to more accessible games for more casual players, like WoW.
That's all well and good, if you're not one of those niche players who wants the UO experience. Those old school gamers now have to cling to games like Darkfall and Mortal Online, because there aren't as many developers or publishers who will make or fund games for a smaller market, when you've got this cash cow of casual players staring you in the face.
This has all already happened. the marginalization of the will of the older, more hardcore gamers.
The fear of these Facebook games is that these kinds of players (people who we don't even consider gamers) are going to be the main market that developers and publishers aim to please, and we are going to become the niche, the marginalized, the too-hardcore-to-warrant-attention crowd. We are going to become those same people we dismiss on these forums because they cling to archaic game mechanics and old school styles of entertainment.
True, maybe the UO flavor isn't what the masses want. However, what about a game based on social functionality, player ownership, and player business. Yet involves no combat?
I made a post about this in the pub, but I'll highlight a little on what i'm saying here.
Think about a game where you can be what ever you want to be. Want to run a pool hall and charge players in-game currency to play? Want to create an arcade and charge players again IGC to play? Want to be in a cover band, and perform in the local night club?
Take SWG's social functions combine them with game play similar to sims, with a more hands on feel. You might have the next big blockbuster. All it would take would be AAA design and shimmer, a few easy to obtain licenses, music and old arcade games possibly clothing. And you have a game that has never been done before.
If a game like farmville is popular there's no reason a game like that wouldn't be.
I think rather than approach the issue with imagination they are admitting defeat. That's just my opinion though.
There is media for the mass market and there is art, which is not for mass market. Building a virtual world and make it work like in games like Eve and forgotten games like Asherons Call is a piece of art. A virtual, breathing world which is not too far of a real world.
Games like Farmville and WoW are just money machines designed to cater to the lowest denominator. They have little innovation, sophistication more than the latest action flick by Michael Bay.
So yeah, alot of people are playing Farmville and WoW and alot of people are eating at McDonalds and watching Transformers XX. That does not mean either of those are actually high quality or evolvement of the genre. It just mean they cater to the masses.
True, maybe the UO flavor isn't what the masses want. However, what about a game based on social functionality, player ownership, and player business. Yet involves no combat?
I made a post about this in the pub, but I'll highlight a little on what i'm saying here.
Think about a game where you can be what ever you want to be. Want to run a pool hall and charge players in-game currency to play? Want to create an arcade and charge players again IGC to play? Want to be in a cover band, and perform in the local night club?
Take SWG's social functions combine them with game play similar to sims, with a more hands on feel. You might have the next big blockbuster. All it would take would be AAA design and shimmer, a few easy to obtain licenses, music and old arcade games possibly clothing. And you have a game that has never been done before.
If a game like farmville is popular there's no reason a game like that wouldn't be.
I think rather than approach the issue with imagination they are admitting defeat. That's just my opinion though.
I was thinking about this the other day as I was playing Fallen Earth on my gaming rig and my wife was playing Farmville on her laptop.
What if the 2 merged together (Social Networking-Facebook/Myspace and MMO/Virtual World). Sort of like SiMs Online but more player control, sort of like Second Life but less player control (porn) and not as clunky.
A Facebook/MySpace Online. FaceSpace Online! Where, instead of people creating their own personal "Page", people/players can create their own World/Instance and can visit other peoples "worlds". Again much like we see in 2nd Life.
I hate to admit it, but one of my most favorite and fun things I enjoyed doing was going to Social Events in SWG. Talking with others, dancing, looking at how they have designed their house/guild hall.
That in itself was player created content at its finest.
I bet that we see more Social Networking type MMO's coming in the future. Ones that are not so much geared towards pewpew hack-n-slash as they are to OMGHi2U2!
Correct me if I'm wrong, however I don't read the article as being about Farmville, I read the article as saying Farmville has MMO developers in an uproar.
This.
80 million players beats the WoW subscription base eightfold. You can bet Blizzard and every other game development company is paying attention to the kind of revenue stream Farmville is generating. And in every industry, where the money is tends to be where the development goes.
I was thinking about this the other day as I was playing Fallen Earth on my gaming rig and my wife was playing Farmville on her laptop.
What if the 2 merged together (Social Networking-Facebook/Myspace and MMO/Virtual World). Sort of like SiMs Online but more player control, sort of like Second Life but less player control (porn) and not as clunky.
A Facebook/MySpace Online. FaceSpace Online! Where, instead of people creating their own personal "Page", people/players can create their own World/Instance and can visit other peoples "worlds". Again much like we see in 2nd Life.
I bet that we see more Social Networking type MMO's coming in the future. Ones that are not so much geared towards pewpew hack-n-slash as they are to OMGHi2U2!
I can see the SL comparison, but I would much prefer the world be one theme while your own creations have their place in it, think real life, in a SWG type of environment. In SL it was really off putting to go from a fantasy zone to a sci-fi,then into as you put it, porn LOL. I'm thinking a thriving city possibly even vehicles or mass transit (metro-buses).
Customizable vehicles, is another route of uncharted dev territory. Mechanic as a trade?
I'm just saying they've never truly fleshed out the virtual world at this point, and they're already giving up. It's slightly bothersome tbh. Especially in Kosters case, if anyone would create something along those lines, I would think it would be him.I guess that won't be happening.
That would have been Metaplace. You didn't show up. :)
I think that's probably true from a player's point of view, but the war isn't over players and where they spend their time. The war, if there is one, is over money. Obviously, games need money in order to be made. With the success of social games like Farmville, which can be made at a literal fraction of the cost of making a AAA title, more and more investors are looking toward that side of the market.
Think about it this way: If you could make a pile of money by either a) investing a lot and taking a large risk or b) investing a little and taking a much smaller risk, which one are you going to do?
So, do virtual worlds have something to fear from the success of Facebook and other social games? Of course they do. it's not that people are afraid no one's going to play the AAA games, it's the fear that no one's going to fund the AAA games.
First, Howdy Raph! Thanks for making my best gaming experiance (also my first).
I don't thing the MMORPG genere will disappear but we have seen drastic changes alter the whole. Upward progress was being made in Sandbox style games. Methods of adapting content had much to go but was happening. Then WOW changed the entire ball game from the side of the investors. WOW made its splash with less then the standard sandboxxer and showed managers and investors more bang for thier buck for less. Demographics aside. The fear here is that we might see another WOW level effect to the genere. WOW pretty much killed developement of heavy world sims for simple combat engines. Quicker turnaround on investments done with less managment of servers and development resources. Just milk that cow until she goes dry or drops. Item shops and TCG's just prolongs this state but not my much. Community building is totally off the table and is only a issue for trouble shooting. Let the forums handle that or in this case the base Facebook.
Its all strange as tech is going up up up, standards and qualities sink further down down down.
"How can we milk the reubs for the same amount but for less investment?"
That would have been Metaplace. You didn't show up. :)
Make the game I'm talking about above and I'll show up:). Pretty please?
Great post Malickie!
I don't know why I feel I need to say this, but I play Farmville as well as MMOs and MMORPGs. I don't regard one as "real" gaming and one as gaming that is not real.
So - what is Farmville. Farmville is a simulation game where you simulate farming, mostly. Think of it as more like having an estate or maybe a village. You start small and build up. There is some cuteness (the animals on the ferris wheel are cute) and even a little sci-fi stuff. I have a downed spaceship on my estate. It's browser based. You plow land and "farm" with a few clicks. You buy trees and harvest them. You acquire animals and you get wool or eggs from them (no killing in farmville). You can acquire houses, a post office, a pond. Like other sim games, the game goes on when you aren't there. If it take two days for your crops to grow, you go back after two days and your crops are grown and you harvest them (a couple of clicks). Like other games (hmmm?) you acquire both money and experience. With additional experience you unlock other items. Yes there's a grind (though blessedly short) - harvesting crops -- doesn't seem all that different from killing monsters or finding rare materials, to me.
The social part -- you go to your friends farms, and help out (couple of clicks) -- you weed, you fertilize. Your friends give you gifts (a tree, a mystery gift) and you give your friends gifts. Occasionally an event happens -- example, the game tells you that a lonely calf wandered onto your "farm" and can you find a home for the calf? If you choose (always your choice) you let it post on Facebook and your facebook friends can get a calf for their farm.
Now, let's decontruct what's going on. Facebook plays in a browser, no setup, and you can play it anywhere. It's a classic, make it pretty, build a place, kind of game -- You are putting the pieces together, that's all, but people tend to make their farm their own, like you do with the "making a home" part of any game that has housing. It's competitive in the sense that you try to make a nice place, but that's it. No one interferes with your fun. There's no combat, and no killing and we all enjoy each other's places. But remember, there's leveling and you acquire in-game money.. You don't have to spend "real money" but yes, I've spent a litte money on facebook.
Facebook feels just as "real" to me as any other game I've played. It doesn't feel cheap or shoddy. It's simple by design, and it's designed to be played in little bits of time. The "time passing when you aren't there" is a nice feature. I can't see what the fuss is about -- more people playing games then before so gaming isn't elist? I don't get it.
Here's another facebook related story. I have a cousin who told me about Kingdoms of Camelot, another facebook game. It looks a bit like Travian, or even Civilization, a strategy, command and conquer kind of game -- played in a browser. It's an RTS, real time strategy game, and though you start simple, the game looks reasonably complex to me. My cousin does not consider herself to be a "gamer", but she wants to try something a little harder, the game places in a browser, she doesn't have to buy anything, and so she and her hustband are going to try it. That's an example of a person who, if I would have told her that she might have enjoyed a RTS game -- she would have never believed me, and now she's giving it a try.
It you don't game -- the path to gaming -- it's so hard. -- special consoles, really good PCs, long learning curve, and no one like you seems to be doing it. If you want to play a game with people, well, as we know, there's a lot of people I would consider "mean" online -- we are all supposed to learn that when you get in an online world, don't expect kind and helpful people and 'watch your back". Now - some people might like gaming if -- they could start small, no extra equipment required, you can play in little bits of time, and, for games where there is some person interaction, you only interact with people you know, nice people. That, and you can find things to do that don't involve combat, though there is some combat type stuff if you want that. Honestly, who in the gaming industry could object to this? To me, it seems like a win all around.
I also know people who have been in both the "conventional" gaming industry and the "social" gaming industry. They don't seem to see this big distinction, and they don't think it's a bad thing. why should I?
That would have been Metaplace. You didn't show up. :)
OMG! OMG! OMG! Raph Koster replied to my post. Ill never wash my computer again!! /nerdswoon
LOFL! j/k man. Nice to see ya. :D
Anyway, I showed up and think Metaplace was interesting, but I never really got into it. On your website, you stated that it failed because " it didnt get enough traction". I wonder why that is.
It is a Facebook/Myspace Online so to speak.
Did it not get enough Advertising/Exposure? Could it not compete with Facebook/Myspace? Was it ahead of its time? Was it because it was a Flash 2d program and was "behind the times"?
Thats why it didnt hook me. I dont play Farmville and Im not really that into Facebook/Myspace socializing. I like to socialize in a World, not some web page. Thats why I play Fallen Earth and SWG and other MMO's.
What I think of as the future of "Social MMO's" would be more of a SWG meets Facebook (3d interactive virtual world) instead of a Facebook meets UO (Browser based 2d web page)
SWG was a great Social Virtual World, but didnt have enough player content. Metaplace had alot of player content, but didnt feel like a real Virtual World.
Maybe you should re-work/re-do/re-build Metaplace into something really "Next Generation". Not just some slightly more advanced Facebook/Myspace or another copy of WO.oW.
I know you of all people can do it if anyone can.
I just want to say...that was one of the most epic writings I have seen on this website.
The marketshare has been increasing every year. What's that saying?
Despite the publishers best attempt to bore us to death with WoW clones, the market is still increasing.
DDO just announced a 500% revenue increase. The money is there. You just have to know how to get it. Creating WoW clones won't do it. You think creating Farmville clones will?
Hey, at least when this doesn't pan out the company won't be out millions of dollars. I'm kinda glad to see the WoW clone publishers moving on to the "next big thing".
This whole discussion is such a load of crap.
There are a multitude of markets out there for computer games, some of which have only recently been exploited, e.g. FarmVille. However, the audience for this type of game appears to be very different to traditional MMOs. Saying FarmVille will kill WOW is a bit like suggesting people would stop drinking wine when cola was invented. FarmVille simply expands the market for computer games; it doesn’t change the existing market. As long as there's someone who wants to play games like WOW, games like WOW will continue to exist.
I feel much of this controversy can be attributed to investors who've tried to make a fast buck with a WOW clone, found it was harder than they though and are looking elsewhere to invest. So here's their bright idea: I'll invest in a market with virtually no barriers to entry and masses of existing competition. The product I'm going to invest in will be cheap to make but may well have an extremely short lifecycle and may never generate much revenue even if it's a success. Good luck with that.
As for the traditional MMO market, developers are either going to need significant investment to turn out far more professional and diverse products or gamers will need to start accepting that games will be released as very much a work-in-progress. With investors looking to chase the social game dollar, I can see that later being more likely. Global Agenda very much fits this profile. It’s a professional and highly polished game, but it lacks a significant amount of content which players of older and bigger games (e.g. WOW) have come to expect. Instead the content is being delivered over time. It's almost as though the initial release allows investors to test the water and gauge whether the product will be a success, before more money is ploughed into developing the game to its full potential. What all developers needs to ensure they deliver is immersion, because this is where traditional MMOs 'should' excel. If FarmVille is a snack, WOW is a 3-course meal.
I also think the number of competitors in the MMO market needs to - and will - be reduced significantly. There are way too many MMOs out there at the moment, most of which are almost identical. Because of the commitment these games demand, originality is the key to success because offering more of the same just isn't going to convince some guy who's invested 500 hours in WOW to switch to your clone for less of the same. Most movies only require a commitment of about 2 hours of a person's time, yet there are only a few in the cinema at any one time. MMOs require hundreds of times this amount of commitment to be enjoyed to the full, yet there are dozens of them being release and all competing at once. I have to add, it personally saddens me to know that there are hundreds of hard-working game developers out there pouring their efforts into games which you, me and the cat know are 100% without question going to be a piece of crap and fail HARD. I'm sure most of these guys and gals know it too, but they need the money. I guess their work must just be the definition of unfulfilling.
Aryas
My basic take on all this is that MMO developers are wondering why games like Farmville can get 80 million players when they struggle for 1-5 million. Well, lets take a look at the history of MMOs and see what did what. For instance, EQ never surpassed 1 million players, but was considered a huge success until WoW came out and grabbed 13 million. So for starters, what did WoW do, that no other MMO before or after it did to aquire such an unusual amount of players. It's simple, WoW was made with the younger generation in mind. I'm not talking 13 and up, I'm talking about 7, 8 and 9 year olds play WoW as well as the older crowd. WoW is cartoony, which is what kids like. WoW has simple to use combat and UI and keeps basic concepts of achievement and rewards.
So, what did Farmville do that WoW didn't? It's simple, they made a game that anyone could enjoy, including people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. I'm 37 and my parents barely ever touched a computer, let alone play a game on one. However, theres probably more elderly people on Facebook for the mere fact of keeping in touch with family. What a perfect marketing tool Facebook is, no? EVERYONE uses it which means if you make a game that everyone can play, your going to have subscribers. However, I'm pretty sure not everyone plays Farmville, cause I sure as hell don't. I just know why so many people do, because it's about all their brain can handle. It's your basic achievement and reward system on an extremely fast and competitive platform.
I'm pretty sure that the concern isn't that virtual worlds are losing their users to Farmville, but that they're losing their investors. What happened when WoW released set a pretty clear precedent for that.
I'm confused. We are calling farmville, mafia wars and the light virtual worlds? These are more like glorified arcade games of days long past. Where people no longer compare high scores in very non-virtual games of pinball and asteroids but now we compare an array of statistics and some graphics. These are more like bejeweled or the myriad of other such products people play on their pc instead of solitare.
The only reason these games are so popular they run on EVERYTHING and take almost zero time to play.
Also, do we really care? Who cares how much money the main stream gets. Since when have MMO players really cared about such things? Being an MMO player has always been a niche thing (at least in the western world).
Sounds like a tin foil hat theory. Farmville targets a completely different audience then that of MMORPGs. Farmville might have more users then WoW but it's also a FREE game on the biggest online social network in the world, Facebook.
I had to laugh at this. It's funny, but sad. I feel the same way really. My wife is obsessed with all those stupid Facebook games, FarmVille, Cafe World, etc... etc... I played them for a few weeks when they first started appearing on Facebook, but as soon as they started with the half a dozen pop-ups advertising all the great crap you could buy to "enhance" your FarmVille experience, I stopped playing.
RMT's are a deal breaker for me with any game. As one of the earlier posters said, game companies and most companies as a whole (Automotive, electronics, cell phones) are just copying, stealing, cloning, whatever you want to call it, the last "hot" idea and trying to suck their 2 cents out of the world. There is no originality, games I played a decade ago, on my PS1 were as engaging (if graphically less stellar) as most things being produced today.
The first Resident Evil was a game that had myself and 2 of my friends skipping school for 2 days to play. Syphon Filter was a twist and turns challenging shooter game. Gran Tourismo was a groundbreaking racing game. Has anything since really pushed the envolope? Or is it the same crap with better graphics? The same can bee said for MMO's, EA Sports NHL, NBA, MLB, NFL series games... improvements, but rarely is anything pushing boundaries.
OK - first off, I would have loved to show up to Metaplace, except that the first I heard of it was it's closure announcement. :)
Now, as to the topic at hand. Investment dollars are by-and-large driven by idiots. The majority is always following behind the trend, investing in past success and generally riding the downward slope of a trend. Check out the average success of the average investor (even professionals) - it's dismal, and it's mostly because humans are genetically programmed to follow the herd not lead it.
I fully agree that the easy money may fall on the heads of "social game developers" for the next while, but it's hardly cause to claim the death of the MMO. No more than the advent of reality television heralded the death of complex scripted drama. It's trendy and popular right now, but it will all balance out in the end (otherwise we'd be buying stuff from Pets.com, playing with Neopets and watching bad John Hughes films).
Look at the movies. Avatar does very well, so now everyone is jumping on the 3D bandwagon. Most 3D movies will be crap, 3D TVs will be a footnote in history next to BetaMax, 3D channels will be stillborn and the world will keep turning.
I appreciate that it must be discouraging for folks like Raph to have been beating the VW drum for so long, only to see the money and success follow the diametrically opposite path, but the players are still out there. A straight up (functional :P ) clone of SWG (as an example) could easily pull the same numbers as EVE Online - which as far as anyone can tell is perfectly profitable for CCP.
I have faith, but then I still play flight sims - a genre that's been out of favour for 15 or 20 years now it seems.
You know, back in 1988 (or so) the Gameboy debuted with Tetris. Tetris smashed sales records and made the Gameboy a household product.
The so-called business gurus said that the success of the hand held game system proved that consol and PC games would be extinct within a couple of years.
Look at how that turned out.
Social Gaming is a hot, new trend, but it is not a threat to established gaming. If anything, the cross over generated from newly recruited Farmville players might actually bring more players and new blood into the industry as social gaming players start to seek more complex and in depth content.
What MMO's need to do now, is not rehash Farmville, but to make games with engaging content that hooks some of these "new fish."
OK - I'm back from checking on my crops in Farmville (grin!). Sorry - couldn't help that.
Yes - engaging content to pull in other people -- but I'd also like to add -- easy interface, easy to start, and no people who are mean.
I don't know how you do that., particularly the no people who are mean part. It's hard to explain, but one of the nice things about Facebook is yes, it's a public space (sort of) but you know the people in your network at least a little, and people in your network tend to be generally nice. It's a different sort of experience. Now of course people in MMOs can be nice, but often it takes some looking to find the people you click with, and we all know how it goes in the public space. It's, well, public, and often not in a good way. Some games have nicer people than others -- but you often get jerks, and gold sellers, because it's a public space. It's not even the public space of a big city, where people tend to ignore you. It's the public space of a world where people bug you and attempt to take what's yours.
If it was me, aside from stearing people to games their family and friends were playing, I'd probably steer them to an intanced game like Guild Wars, though there's the interface. The GW interface is not particularly difficult but if you've never done it -- it can be daunting.
This post really stuck out after reading the 8 pages here so far and the amazing thing about this post is that Farmville is a rip off of another facebook game called Farmtown which was actually first. I played it was a bit tougher (meaning more monotonous) graphics were not as pretty and then came Farmville a bit easier to farm, plant and harvest didn't need friends to help harvest fact you could not have friends come help harvest more solo friendly, sound familiar to anyone?
I was looking and reading all of the posts to see if someone had caught this already, hell maybe even the person writing the article I thought would have made mention that Farmville is a knockoff copy cat game.
I guess I can somewhat see why in today's industry it doesn't pay to be the innovator. It pays to make the best copy of what could have been a popular idea. Just by adding more colors, appealing to a bit broader audience and throw in a few cookies for good measure.
How is it overstated? I played WOW for a week, I did not like it. Yet I can not deny that 8 million players obviously do and in a world were 100k players seems to make money having 8 million is pretty dominant. Is there another subscription based MMO with close to that number?
Investors are not going to care which audience you attract, they care how big that audience might be. If Farmville has 80 million, investors might be more inclined to listen to them then say a company struggling to run a traditional MMO with 50 thousand people playing.
Free games are still making MONEY. Just because getting in is free does not mean they do not have ways of making money. Take a game like DDO it makes more money now as a F2P then it ever did with a traditional subscription based plan.
While Farmville and the like are not threats to steal players(you can do your Farmville for the day in 5 minutes) they are a threat to revenue streams. If you were going to invest or place an ad would you prefer 50k might see it or 80 million? It does not take a degree in marketing to know the answer there. There is a reason ads during the SuperBowl cost so much.
Recently there was an article here about making MMOs more accessible. My big question is: why can't a single virtual world cast it's net into the various markets?
Is it so hard to visualize a virtual world with more than a single entry point? Why not offer a free browser based "factoryville", where those players produce consumables and some of the raw materials for an MMO? This would be your free w/cash shop for various upgrades element.
OK, that covers the crappy "social" game part. Now we can talk about the "real" MMO. The only difference would be the economy would affect both the MMO and the "social" game. The MMO player would gain access to the larger world along with the "factoryville" portion, a very large advantage. The factory upgrades would be available in the world, along with markets not available to the "social" gamers.
This offers huge advantages to "traditional" models. For "real" gamers, we could play with our non-gaming friends. At the same time, our non-gaming friends would have a little taste of the MMO life. It's similar to the Warcraft effect on WoW subs, but stronger since the 2 games would be tightly tied together. The "social" game is both advertising and a pre-purchase time investment. Think of the crappy communities we tolerate because we are so time invested into a game before we realize how bad they really are.
I have hated Facebook since its inception. I continue to hate Facebook and all it's progeny with every fiber of my being. Words cannot accurately describe my vitriol.
I hate facebook as well, more than Myspace.
Your article missed a big point, the whole reason that a shit game like farmville can pull in such numbers is that traditional mmo's tend to be shit games that charge a $15.00 subscription to play. I do not forsee this changing anytime soon as long as developers can keep getting by with releasing bug infested trash and charging players a premuim to play it. I imagine that things will only get worse for the industry as a whole.
Developers need to see this as a wake up call
wow this came out of left field.
have you seen farmville ?
i really dont think its a threat to mmo's or fun games in any way shape or form.
the only reason it has such numbers is entire families get involved in it over face book.
and if you still see social gaming as a threat.
then you should make more MMO"s like SWG used to be. it was that happy middle between social gaming and hard core gaming and had something in it for every one. thats why people loved it. there was far more then just combat to do in that game. and the combat ,social sides had to rely on one and other and while the story was off the immersion factor was off the charts and its why they left in droves when they made the game the same as every other mmo.
thats what happen it wasnt just a bunch of whining players who couldn't handle small changes it was a close-nit community. that just had there unique and immerse game that held them together taken away from them and replaced with a more generic version of its self.
but company's are too quick to look at its very rocky history and say it was just a bad game and end up ignoring all that was good and unique about it. the aspects that were a true brilliant masterpiece of game design when it was in its prime. hell some of those aspects remain unmatched to this day.
i still to this day have yet to see a game that has such a good community in it as it ounce had.
you need to make more games like that and less pure combat games like what has bean coming out.
but again none of that will happen because im shore this is all flying over your head. because who am i to say whats wrong with the genera? im just a lowly git of a player who out side of gaming is good at making accurate observations. im not some marketing firm or focus group so why listen to me.
and if mmo's keep going the way they are going for the last 2 years generic and almost purely combat orented with no real meat or substance to the game.
then Raph Koster's (the designer of swg before the nge btw ) prediction is likely to be very accurate.
........ / BANG!!!!! had to kill the ranting side of my brain. lol :P
sorry about all that got carried away.
while my point stands.
and while i do speak about swg a lot i really feel the example applies hear.
but the fact remains that farmville would never be able to become a threat to any form of gaming its just that simple.
hell iv messed with farmville even go on it ounce a day for about 20 min its really not that impressive but makes for a good distraction.
o and sorry i didnt start with this but i still want to say it made for an interesting read. :D
If they're making so much money, why would they IPO? Make a quick buck and disappear before any "creative accounting" can be uncovered possibly?
I suspect it's actually difficult to monetise a casual game like Farmvile, it sounds easy, but folks will only tolerate so much RMT and/or adverts being shoved in their face. They may make a killing for a while, but once they cross that line (and someone is sure to cross it), the whole genre (browser games) will be marked with "that" taint. You know the taint I mean, the one that's starting to cling to Ubisoft and Activision, the one that was on EA and Sony for a long while (which they are only just now starting to come out from under....but still have a long way to go...gamers, especially MMO gamers, are quick to anger, slow to cool).
And I also expect that the people playing these simple little browser games will eventually start to look around for something different/more challenging and, thanks to the icebreaker effect of having played "online games", will be more ready to actually try something a bit more "hardcore" like Free Realms/WoW (hardcore for them I mean, not the typical denizen from MMORPG :)).
This will just expand the market, not divert folks from one to the other (though some of that will happen of course, especially if someone actually makes a browser game with, like, some actual content/gameplay that's actually worth paying for).
Maybe, but there are many other reasons.
Why do you see "cash flow" or other such "easy money" systems sold? I'd suspect it's for the same reason they are doing an IPO.
There are few entry barriers to the market they service and they know their market will soon be over saturated. A bloated market will mean more people splitting the RMT take and dropping the ad value. The IPO right now, when the Koolaid drinkers and headline chasers are all wet about the money they'll make is brilliant. They will never be worth more than they are right now. They are the recognizable name in their market, showing good/great returns in a still semi-exclusive market.
BTW: totally random but did anyone else get a Demetri Martin vibe from Jesse Schell's presentation?
All I know is, if I have to open a facebook/myspace account to play my now non-real time MMO's with people I'll quit doing MMO's and start playing single player games. If that stops I suppose I'll go for a walk. I'm just not moving to farmville.
A colleague took a technical call at work today from a regular customer who was having IP issues playing a facebook flash game. The lady and her son were playing on seperate laptops and couldn't trade each other due to system flagging them as having the same IP address. Suffice to say the issue was resolved by provisioning the modem for free additional IP addy, but not before the customer admitted that she spends roughly $300 a month on buying and selling virtual goods. Absolutely crazy, I couldn't believe it. Never played those facebook games but they seem to have got a mother and her son addicted in a big way. My colleague also stated she said the customers grandmother also plays. I can see her blowing her pension too now.
My point is the threat is when it all comes crashing down and the blame with be on the game. Then due to ignorance any online game will get the blame and lumped in together with the bad games, the cash farms and RMT done in a bad way.
I'm maybe a little of topic... But Jesse Schell's vision is one of the most scary things i have ever seen. And i do find it quite probable...
Its worse then Orwells 1984... Its a self inflicted tyranny with no real tyrant to fight... Ugh... I hope i'll die before that happens.
80 Million players my A$$. 80 Million people who clicked on the link because somebody on there friend list clicked the link which in turn advirtised it on everyballs wall. Its a bogus number. Its like McDonalds trying to say it has 10 billion served just because that many people have driven through one of thier parking lots.
There is nothing new in these changing trends. We have seen it in the game-publishing business over the last 35 years.
The wargamers of old lamented the end of the(ir) world when roleplaying started in the mid-70's. They did it again, when fantasy/scifi-themed wargames followed the roleplaying wave around 1980. They cried out again when the personal computer started running games in the mid 80´s. Next wave the great flood of tradedable cardgames in the 90's. Germangames, mmogs to some extent ....
So where is board-wargaming today? It flourishes with unseen numbers of publications as the internet made indie publishing possible. Today you design a wargame (but not yet developed and tested), show it to the various forums and people will preorder (or not). When it is clear, this will work, it will be finished and published. On top you get a much closer relation between the designers and their audience. Wargaming and its community is very different today then 35 years ago, but damn, it is quite good.
Norden
Mr Jennings has missed the similarity this movement has to the way console games grew at the expense of PC gaming. Consoles do not have the computing power of a PC and did not even originally require a monitor, a TV would do.
The graphical quality of games dropped and the control systems became easier and more limited. In addition to this the number of people playing games increased dramatically. You can see this same process at work in social gaming.
Since then console games have got graphically better but never reached the PC standard and the control systems are still simplistic. But along the way we lost genres of games and others became a minority interest. Adventure games, Flight Simulations, City Simulations and RPG’s come to mind; all genres which were nearly lost as gaming went console. The games were not initially selling less, but once we had consoles other gaming styles like FPS and Racing games were selling more. So gaming companies invested their time and money in those kinds of games. The genres I mentioned saw less investment, started to look second rate and because of that sold even less.
If companies can produce crap games and get millions to play them what need do they have for players like us who have such high demands? As an investor I know what I would be backing, and its not quality gaming unfortunately.
That's actually pretty much 100% true in Japan. Handheld gaming completely dominates console games (much less PC).
I thought you waste your time with flash games, but facebook games are a new low ^^ Still real gamers like us will never ever play those " games ". It just doesnt feel right ^^ Proud that I dont have facebook ^^
I'll just say the analysis by Koster linked in that article was a very well written one, despite being a tad overly gloomstruck. Nice focus on the core of what makes these games tick and a solid finger on the paradigm shift online gaming (and all popular gaming, for that matter) is going through.
Interesting times, really, all this is good stuff to think about - and reading an analysis like the one Koster wrote there makes nice food for thought.
very nice write up. what we are seeing is end of beginning. gaming has become full-fledged industry, same as movies. there is hollywood, bollywood, arty, underground. hopefully, plenty for everyone's taste. and if not, it will become increasingly easier to create your own vision of "proper" game. interesting times ahead.
I remember hearing about farmville. There was a news article about 3 months back about a lady on the Dr Phill show who lost her 3 kids to social services because she became hooked on the game and played it 24/7 lost her job her house and evrything. Then went on the Dr Phill show whining about it all, and while in the guest warmup room there was a laptop she logged in and they had to literally drag her to the stage, when asked about it she said she was worried she had not been able to log in for 3 months that her crops would have died. Worried about virtual crops and not her kids.
So it must be adictive.
So much handwringing over a fad. Anybody remember Creatures? The game that was supposed to revolutionize gaming with it's alife evolutionary DNA? It was a cute fuzzy fad with all the depth of Saran wrap. Remember tamagotchis? Pet rocks? It's all the same thing with more and more technology wrapped around it. These things work because people behave like herds of sheep when you get enough of them together, but like sheep these herds have the attention span of a gnat. The first versions make money because they're novel. The follow ups slink away to a well deserved obscurity.
Think about Push technology. When Microsoft was singing praises of it back in the mid-90s, most thought it was just a fahionable concept that was a non-starter in practice. Push-is-the-future people said: "You're not going to the info, it's coming to you! This is a total paradigm shift as far as online experience is concerned! This whole thing is going towards pro content and passive consumption once again! Essentially a personalized TV! Power to the corporations!"
Other people - admittedly including myself - thought it hadn't taken off even after a couple of years and that it'd never take off: ICQ and other highly-interactive communication tools were rather painting a picture of a more "pushy-pully" future.
In the end, yeah, the internet did not become just an "online TV"... but in hindsight, the Push concept *does* colour our whole online experience now. You can see it in RSS feeds, personalized channels you pick for websites that keep you informed, and even your Twitter and Facebook feeds. The concept did prove successful in the end - we're now being "fed" alright, it's just that we're also doing the feeding ourselves, contrary to what the "Pushers" (heh) envisioned.
Farmville itself *is* a fad as all games are, but the new angle on primate-brain-exploitation that it's based on (I'd say this is the core argument and it makes everything else look just petty) is here to stay. I don't see it as being the only thing, but I can see it colouring the whole gaming culture.
Some other time maybe we can even talk about how the brain works when it comes to effort, risk and reward and its intrinsic tit-for-tat mechanisms. It's quite surprising stuff, really, and says a lot about gaming.
Thats because us gaming nerds already had our networks established when facebook came along.
Norden
I disagree......
WOW has burried both old and new competition based off their "something for everyone (including casuals)" model.
I remember in the 2000 guiness book of world records that Ultima Online held the record for the largest online gameing subscriptions at somewhere around 200,000 subs.
4 years later WOW releases and its subs are stated to be over 8 million. People interested in traditional MMO gaming just didn't grow by 7.8 million. WOW brought in casual gamers from consoles and other computer generes like FPS & RTS to expand thier market past what was thought to be the original pool of potential customers.
As a result, MMO gaming development has changed.....leaving many traditional MMO gamers left wanting because of all the concesions made to please the new comers to the MMO market.
We are seeing a similar shift with these social games (or atleast the game companies are interpreting it that way). If the publishers chase the dollars and subs, they will expand what we consider "traditional gaming" to apease the SUPER CASUALs that pick up and get board with these cheap little games in under a month.
You say it doesn't effect you as a MMO gamer? When publishers start dropping MMO budgets to develop more short cycle gaming experiences to capitalize on the NEW and EMERGING gameing market, you might have a different tone then.
Investors must love this with the next-to-nothing startup costs and huge return-on-investment.
However, this is nothing but your typical trend-following for a quick buck. The immediate social trend was capitalized on, and will soon be saturated as the market floods. Those who determine the next social trend quickly are those who strike it rich.
True....but what has been the trend?
It seems that publishers & developers keep dumbing down the games to apeal to more people. The price of expanding the market to groups of people who aren't already interested in gaming is that it dilutes the content and experience for those people who do enjoy games.
Many traditional MMO gamers say that WOW cheapened the experience due to their efforts to reach gamers outside of the MMO genere.
The same can be said with publishers cheapening the gaming experience due to their effrots to reach people outside of traditional gaming.
yup yup- It started with text based MUD's (some of the most advanced games ever made but highly inaccesable) then went to graphical Muds, then the first MMORPG's like UO and Meriadian 59 and even (to a lesser degree) the original Everquest. This was gamings heyday as far as a good medium between complexity and playability.
The experience has been steadily cheapening as the "masses" are being catered to, games are being dumbed down and "casual" friendly- WOW really did kill the MMO.
BUT even WOW is going to look highly complex as games continue the downward trend to get every man, woman and child into MMO gaming. Cash Shops are going to be the rule of the day and things are going to forever change.
Its a sad and horrible downward spiral- And not just with MMO's, this trend is happening with all forms of PC/Console gaming. =(
Is this the "vision" you are talking about?
fury.com/2010/02/jesse-shells-mindblowing-talk-on-the-future-of-games-dice-2010/
Great speech. Listen if you got 30min.
Wow.
Oh please. It takes me back when some so-called important peeps were saying "cassettes are going to kill the music industry" or "videoclips are going to kill the radio"
So what, Farmville has a huge player base. Yes it may attract some investors into producing clones. Though those games are all short lived, and may all disappear or move away should Facebook be replaced. This is Web, where it's all quick instant hype. Any giant may be born and die within months. Go back 10 years ago and see how different it was back then.
While the Web is a fast moving zone, videogames are more less the same than before, except there are a lot more customers and a lot more money. The videogame industry surpassed the movie industry quite some time ago. If a market/genre is under invested, a company somewhere will end up attacking it (though remember that the development of a game takes 2 to 5 years).
It's not because it's being brought in the news and your girlfriend is making you play that any other genre will drop from the surface. I used to play simcity waaay back. Maxis dropped its development a bit after it got bought by EA to focus on The Sims. I thought it was the end of the sequel, though another game company (Monte Cristo) decided to release its own clone to take over that market. (NOT saying it's perfect) This whole genre (city simulator) has been shadowed by any hype brought by any AAA titles, though it has seen a release every 2-3 years for the last 20 years and it keeps going on.
Farmville is not making, off it's 80 million players, what WoW is making off of its 11 mil subs. Nuff said. People play farmville in airports, at office meeting breaks. All you need is a free facebook account and a netbook. I'll wager some phones can play farmville as well. How many netbooks and phones can play full MMO's.
Also, farmville has facebooks social backbone. How many MMO's have a social networking site as good as facebook? Maybe it's time to look into a social site to go along with your MMO.
I disagree. Publishers want money. What happened when Diablo was a huge success? Everyone started making Diablo clones. What happened when WoW was a huge success? Everyone started to make WoW clones. Were those clones ever as good as the original? Not in my opinion. That doesn't change the fact that a lot of people made money off "the latest hype". Publishers are notorious for being momentum chasers, not momentum changers. Publishers see this new social gaming thing, and think its the net big thing. Do they understand it? I doubt it. They didn't understand why Diablo was fun, or why one couldn't copy WoW.
We will see a major slowdown in MMO development as everyone chases the social gaming revenue. I'd like to think this whole thing is a fad that only housewives, and people bored at work play. That's not going to change the fact publishers, you know the guys with the cash who make the decisions, will now be chasing this new fad for awhile. Clearly, trying to make a copy of WoW hasn't worked out so well for these guys. Right, Koster?
to a certain extent we get what we are given not what we want
To me this is mostly sour grapes -- let's see, a bunch of people play Farmville or other facebook games, and they enjoy them. But, since they aren't part of the supposed gaming tribe, they can't be "real" gamers and the games can't be real games. Why is that? I don't get it. The games have gameplay, goals, advancement, even a social factor. Yup, it's a game. It may not be your kind of game, but it's a game. Gaming extends to more people -- that's good. Do you want it all to yourself so you have bragging rights? That's just silly. You can still play the games you enjoy. Will everyone stop playing MMORPGs? I don't think so. I'm still seeing plenty of games on the market. Will other games also have a market share? Yes. Guess everyone will have to deal with it. Games are commercial venues and part of popular culture. Sometimes I happen to like something that is popular, sometimes what I like isn't all that popular. Sometimes what I like used to be popular, and becomes a niche product. I'd be more concerned if I thought that all MMORPGs are going to go away. I'm not seeing that -- though perhaps they won't hvae the dominant market share.
Maybe the Facebook gamers will move to other sorts of games (like that RTS strategy game on Facebook) -- maybe they won't. I think there's a huge market for a crossover game, for people who want something a little more involved. But, whether they move to other games or continue to play Facebook games, It doesn't matter. Now, can MMORPGs learn something from facebook games, aside from just being bitter about the whole thing -- which, again, is really funny. I think so. Games that play in a browser. Games that are easy to pick up. Games you can play with your friends. Games where you do something other than combat, though maybe combat could even work for the facebook games. Don't assume that all games playable through facebook will stay the same. There's a PvP game coming out - 3D too - Battle Punks. Check it out.
It's also not all or nothing. I know hard care gamers (even by the weird, in my opinion, definition around here) who also play Flash based games, the ones you see on Facebook. Are they real gamers when they are playing LOTRO or Mass Effect 2, and not real gamers when they are playing Mafia Wars on facebook?
As someone who has "played" (notice the quotes) Farmville for over a year I really think the industry is getting all in an uproar over nothing. It's mindless, easy diversion that doesn't take up a lot of time. I can do it over my morning coffee. 80 million players? Maybe... for about 10 minutes a day... the dedicated ones might play 10 min in the morning, another 10 in the afternoon and another 10 at night. It just plain doesn't take much time. Compare that to the hours people can and do play their favorite MMORPG... I'm sorry but trying to say something like Farmvile, Petville, Mafia Wars, etc... are real competition to MMORPG's is just silly.
seems to me that a mmo really would just have to make a free min game like this and just have it take 15-30 mins to play about 8 hours worth (check it in morning and evening) then have it report the points back to the real game with the points then spendable in some reasonable way.
With that in place they could then set it up where msging or intireaction between players give a minor point bonus and then make it compatable with the social network sites
So that way you expand into that network
Its all really simple it just would have to be done right both in game play of the mini game and the rewards
I suggest rewards that help others to increase social interaction
Interesting new blog from koster on this very subject:
What core gamers should know about social games
His major points were:
1.Yes, Farmville is a game.
2. Yes, social games truly are social.
3. Yes, it is arguably even an MMO.
4. Yes, social games make money.
5. Social games are not just a fad.
6. No, social games won’t turn into core games.
7. But there’s hope for core gamers nonetheless
I enjoy seeing new genres and gaming styles come to life but I in no way think social gaming killed virtual worlds, MMo's etc. Just different strokes for different folks.
This.
80 million players beats the WoW subscription base eightfold. You can bet Blizzard and every other game development company is paying attention to the kind of revenue stream Farmville is generating. And in every industry, where the money is tends to be where the development goes.
Understand something very critical.... 80 million USERS does NOT beat 8 million CUSTOMERS. The number of USERS something gets is irrelevent (actualy it's a COST center) UNLESS you can find some way to convert that traffic into revenue. Monitizing people who access your service for FREE is NOT as simple and straight-forward as many people assume. Actually it can be quite difficult. Many ventures have actualy failed to do so.
Now I have no doubt that Zynga and some other companies ARE making a decent chunk of change RIGHT NOW. Just like the first people cashing in on beanie babies and pet rocks and hoola hoops made a decent chunk of change in thier day. Right now it's a fad...and like ANY fad that hit's people are excited about it and curious and interested to see what is going on ( herd mentality). This is Natural....but it's also natural that when the novelity wears off...most fads fade away as quickly as they blossum. The few people riding the initial wave of the fad ARE going to cash in quite nicely.... but most of the followers on (as in most fads) won't...in fact many will loose thier shirts with dreams of getting rich quick. Often the backlash of failed investments and the inevitable crash that follows can even end up taking down some of the folks on the leading edge of the wave if they are not carefull as the market "reacts" to failed expectations. Smart companies and smart investors recognize this fact.
What remains to be seen is if social gaming has any "legs". I think it MAY have some....in that there is a certain appeal for some people in these sort of super-casual social experiences. I expect that you'll probably see a few companies like Zynga and a few social games sticking around and making a bit of cash in future..... but I would highly doubt that it will be anywhere near the number that are hyped...or the huge, lasting sea-change that is being proclaimed with trepidation. MOST of the people trying to cash in on this phenomenon... will NOT.
What I do expect is that for a couple years, the investors with more cash then good sense (and it always amazes me what an endless supply there seems to be of these) who HAVE been throwing thier money at gaming companies after salivating at the success of WOW and a few other products will start throwing that money at the next "hot thing".... "social gaming".
It WILL be probably a couple of particulary tough/dry years for more traditional gaming companies to get funding.... but in the LONG term it likely will be a bit of a blip on the radar...as the market corrects itself.... and ultimately probably end up being a GOOD thing for the gaming industry as a whole....just as the dot-com burst was ULTIMATELY a good thing for the Tech industry...regardless of how painfull it was in the short.
Quite frankly MANY developers & projects HAVEN'T deserved the kind of investment money that has been so easly thrown at them the last few years. As much as they might like to gnash thier teeth about it....making the developers undergo a little bit better scrutiny before they get piles of cash....is actualy a GOOD thing for the industry as a whole...and certainly for it's consumers in the LONG TERM.
You beat me to posting about the blog! Oh well. :)
"The 21st century will be a war of attention," Schell said. "We have to choose sides." The world can either be controlled by the designers who only want to make money -- the "persuaders," as Schell labeled them -- or these games can be controlled by the humanitarians, and the artists, and the fulfillers. The persuaders can be beaten, Schell said, but only "if we wake the hell up."
And this is what Cryptic has become. Persuaders. It's so very sad that there are people out there who just can't see this fact.
As a follow up to my previous post. I want to point out something that MAY not be entirely obvious to some readers here. One of the ways that sites have traditionaly converted volume into revenue was through the mechanism of advertisement.... in one form or another.
What some people may not be aware of is that in recent years advertisement/sponsorship revenue has gotten ALOT harder to come by. In part, this is a natural result of the economic down-turn....as big corporations (the primary sources of ad revenue) natural pay alot more attention to how and WHY they spend money...especialy in areas that aren't mission critical to them. There IS and HAS been a growing trend for quite some time to actualy require measurable JUSTIFICATION for spending the dollars that they do.....particularly in advertising.
The reason for this is simple....the people controling the purse springs at those companies realized that just because you put in front of a pay of eye-balls didn't mean that those eye-balls were likely to spend ANY money on your company. CFO's slashed many high profile Ad/Marketing/Sponsorship's programs due to austerity budgets and often saw ZERO effect on thier bottom line. This was an eye opener for many.
Note this not to say that advertising is worthless/is die-ing or won't be around in future. However it is true that it is not NEARLY as easy to cash in on as it was previously...and this trend will continue. It used to be... "I'll write you a check based upon how many eye-balls saw my logo" ...... increasingly it's becoming "I'll write you a check based upon how many eye-balls bought a hammer from that you can PROVE did so based upon seeing my logo on your site". Ultimately this is a good thing for all of us (IMO).....but it DOES mean that companies whose business models depend simply on volume of traffic (as many "social" sites do) are going to have to spend some time/effort thinking on how they are going to be able to monetize that traffic....It is not going to be as simple/easy to do so as it has been in the past.
Sorry about that. it was a great read and I wanted to make sure it was injected into the discussion as fast as possible.
I played Farmvile for about a month or two before I just completely ignored it all together. For me, it isn't really an entertainment option, just a toy that I played with a little bit because I got Spammed with it a lot on that site.
Farmville has some Pros and Cons over more traditional MMO platform games.
a) Farmville requires no time commitment.
Unlike Most MMO's where you need at least half a hour even to do something meaningful, Farmville requires about 5 to 10 minutes a day. Log in, click all your crops, lay down your tractor and seeder, walk away for two days. Come back. It rewards by inaction. You can set it up to do things in a quicker fashion, but there is no 'credit' reward for doing so. You're return on your crops is marginally the same no matter if you plant long term or short term. Set up an animal farm/tree farm, and you can change your commitment time to once a week.
This short commitment time allows players to log in from Work and resolve their turn during a coffee break, and then get back to work. This is the major factor of why the game is popular.
b) Farmvile Depends On Networking To Succeed
Farmville, for the most part, is a Solo game. You never need to see another player, and other players direct interaction never happens. The best that a friend can do for you is to enhance your level gaining ability, and to give you junk.
It's the Junk that becomes desirable. Due to Facebook's interface (And that is the key to it's success), it is constantly bombarding friends and strangers with items, and begging that you give everyone on your list one back. It completely floods your inbox with messages over and over again, and because it demands so much attention, if you don't block it, you'll end up playing it.
c) Farmville offers neat stuff for those that Pay
Farmville works of the Vanity Model of F2P games. The Vanity Model simpy is "If you want stuff that looks good, you pay for it". Unfortunatly, most of the items in Vanity line aren't very attractive, or not more so then what you can get for free, anyway. Zynga probably makes more money using Farmville as a Gateway to their Texas Poker game, then on the actual products in Farmville. However, like most Vanity F2P games, most people will not consider dropping 10 dollars every few months into a game a huge investment.
d) Farmville Offers no ties to players.
Farmville is a great time waster. It will sit there and eat your time if you want it to, but it will not allow you to build friendships. It won't let you really contact with people. It will encorage you to create fake friend networks so you can take advantage of items being exchanged, but it won't actually turn those into anything. It is a 'social-less' social game, and in that way, it's horribly disappointing. Puzzle Pirates offers more to the casual player then Farmville does.
e) Farmville is a poor Economic Simulator
Farmville offers very little in way of Game. It is a busy body activity set, where you go in, set up your farm, and then wait. The return for crops will always yeild enough money to buy new crops. You can't trade crops with other players, the market never changes, and the money, ultimately, becomes even LESS meaningful then your typical trade coin in more traditional MMO's, as it can't be used to buy 'rare' goods from other players. With the removal of any economics, there is very little to do in Farmville outside of sim management, and there just is no point to that. Animals will be happy no matter where they are, nothing needs watering, and trees will happily sprout fruit given time.
f) The Kawaii wears off
Farmville is a cute game, that has an appeal to players who do not like conflicts, do not like direct interaction, and like to manipulate images into 'pretty' enviroments. The game succeeds because it allows this all to take place with no time commitment. The longer one plays the game, however, the more the graphics tire, and once players realize that there is no real game play to be had, the desire to play lessens.
Personal Conclusion
Farmville will have it's die hard fans, but the play style is doomed to self-termination. Farmville will exist only as long as they can keep adding new features to it, and to invent new mini-collection games to it, which is dangerous because with the bloat of the engine, the more likely it will start taking too long to load, and the longer the load time, the less of the advantage it is to people to play. When it takes longer to load the game then it does to play, that is when you will see the end of Farmville, and the rise of the next "Casual Spam Game".
Zynga has invented an interesting model, but like many management games on Facebook, they are doomed to lose their players.
My take for the gaming industry as a whole is make games that work as relliably as Farmville and others like it do, I am a gamer first and an mmo vet second so I hold reliability in a much higher place than most mmo players seem to and maybe the devs need to think about this as opposed to all this abstract drivel.
The bottom line is WOW outside of it's vast popularity worked as reliably as most console games did but the rest of the industry doesn't have this to fall back on I don't know if it's due to laziness or incompitence but either way this is the one factor I don't see these devs discuss, why is it that they constantly release games with advertised features that don't work at the time of release and more importantly why is it they think that an excuse like "well we ordered the box art before the game was finished" makes any kind of difference? Gaming is business like music movies etc. and I don't see how so many devs expect us to believe when they have so many examples of how to address this part of there business that they can't get this part right, hell many of these same companies have been releasing offline/console games for years and aren't forced to lie to the player base.
Put it like this AOC,DF,WAR are all games that we are expected to PAY money for then pay a monthly fee on top of that and every one of those games arguably released missing features that some will say had no reason to not be included or should not have been talked about if they aren't in and Farmville, Mafia wars are free and guess what? They may not do much but what they are supposed to do they actually do.
Farmville didn't kill gaming, the industries reaction to the success of WoW killed gaming in the MMO sense of the word. All of these damn wow clones which take no risks, and change nothing but skin colors are the problem. If you want to skip over the whole farmville era before it even starts ... INNOVATE.
For example, why hasn't a game been released with voice chat? Imagine a world where you could hear everything people say up to 5 feet from you. Sure .. there are times that would suck, and maybe that isn't the best idea overall, but something that truly innovates beyond having slightly different class names instead of priest and warrior, or slightly different combat mechanics are never going to change much and if things remain as stale as they have since wow .. something else is bound to come along and give people something more compelling to do.
We haven't even had a proper sandbox mmo since UO. Every time a new game pops up around here I go take a look at the classes, and generally I'm done reading after that because all of them are warrior, priest, mage, rogue. This genre above all others has the ability to really take the idea of sandbox style gaming to another level, but the closest we have come are hacked up multi class systems which basically just end up extending the total classes from 6 to 18 or something. I want to develop my character into a mage that also does awesome melee dps.
Anyway, the point is don't blame farmville. Blame Lucas/Bioware for only being able to come up with "full voice-over" as an innovation.
The simple reality is that almost my entire family plays FARMVILLE. This includes my mom and her senior citizen friends. Most of my Facebook friends play it. It's a simplified level and grind game. It's a market open to anybody. Games like WoW or WAR, etc etc only attract certain types. Farmville as lame as a game as it is attracts just about anybody. It's competitive. They have simple ongoing events all the time.. Best part is people play it for free. People actually socialize on FB in game and out. After all who would pay to play a Flash based laggy game.
I challenge game developers to give me an interesting gaming experience. Until then i'm mindlessly waste time on simplistic games like FV and others.
True enough, and yet the lesson hasn't been learned. How many PS3/Xbox games are working out of the box?
Why did people avoid these consoles (ignoring that the PS3 was built mostly to win a format war- BluRay)? Because you bought a box that contained a game you had to install, patch and deal with the same DRM as the PC world. IIRC the average production costs have tripled since 2003 with no comparable increase in unit price or units sold. (Abort rant about graphics)
Something has to give. We're either going to have to pay more or expect less. Developers will have to build or embrace technology/methodology to drive their costs down. (Damn it I want to rant about graphics again) To me the focus has for too long been about pushing prettier pixels, to the point that they have far surpassed the point of diminishing returns on the current tools (ie it's why production costs skyrocket even as game shrink in playtime/content). I look to the "gimmicks", new control/input types and at the old concepts used before the graphic capacity of the machines was virtually "unlimited".
Make no mistake, I don't like thinking about games as business models or in terms of economics. But to understand where we are and to divine the future you have to.
Koster was saying that social games will not become hardcore but a game with a combined offering would be interesting. A P2P mmo where there would be a F2P interface for NPC activities. When the farm/restrauntville players produce things they can sell at in an auction house to players in the P2P game interface. All those gray items you find, instead of selling them to an NPC, you sell them to a player in the other interface who is playing recycleville or something.
You could set it up to where either interface could function on its own but there would be bonus for players in each interface to interact. The best weapons in the P2P interface could created by grandma playing factoryville in the F2P interface, and the ville player could receive auction prices for their stuff instead of a set amount.
Maybe the idea is overly complicated but you could even use the dual interfaces to create meaningful RvR in the P2P interface. A faction controlling an area has access to F2P players producing different things needed in the P2P interface.
A lot of players did not ever play any other game beside Farmville. ( Almost all of my friends that play Farmville are girls and do not like any other games)
As I write this post, I am a bit torn, but I have understanding as I speak. As someone who has played Zynga's Vampires and many mmos I can see what works and what doesn't work in both aspects. I thought I'd clarify the pros and cons of it, something like guild wars, and the new game I've been playing Mabinogi.
~Vampires~
Pros
Cons
Sum Up - Vampires, Restaurant City, Farmville, and many others seem like they might be the next possible future. Honestly though they don't hold people's attention. It's fun to click when you're bored in the morning and before bed but it quickly loses it's appeal. Not only that, but given that people don't really 'play' it means succeeding is left to those with money to burn.
~Guild Wars~
Pros
Cons
Sum Up - Guild Wars is your traditional MMO. They do some things right but honestly they're too pre-occupied with Aion and GW2 to give it the attention in needs. That could be said for many MMO companies though. They really don't care about the players, just grinding to buy time till the next expansion. I don't blame the developers, but it's hard to play when things are bad and they'd rather work on something else. Especially if you're not lucky.
~Mabinogi~
Pros
Cons
Sum Up: When I first started playing this I was overwhelmed. Not just from learning a new game, but because many of the things I've been asking for in MMOs were here. Granted they don't have dungeon creation, dancing, or lots of mini-games but the sheer amount of options in staggering. I sat there and said to myself, that if half the features in Mabinogi were in any other MMO it'd be considered an ubergame. World of Warcraft has many of them, but it's not user friendly in my opinion.
~Conclusion~
The difference between the games really? It all comes down to the care and attention, the number of options that developers give their players. I don't care if a game developer is the Pulitzer prize winner, I want to be able to create as much of the world that is important to me. This I believe is the future of gaming. Customization and options. Developers honestly though are lazy and don't care about players (well for the most part).
So game developers that came along and cared even less got lots of money and current game developers are calling Foul? Hmmm, I don't think it works that way. If the game developers were to start hiring, and actually doing real significant work for the products that they currently have rather then new projects, I believe it'd be the MMO glory days again. They aren't going to though, so yeah it's probably going to mostly die.
I'm not sure that it would be too complicated, but I doubt it would work.
Part of the appeal in "social" games is knowing/associating with the people you know in real life. An RvR system for "contact" control would be a massive detriment for the F2P players. Cool as it might be as a mechanic for P2P, it would IMO sabotage the F2P side considerably. Really I'd rather the P2P game respect what works in F2P space, treating it more as viral marketing +potential revenue stream.
That is you'd have first pick of your F2P only friend's stuff. Pretty much messaging them with buy orders, and sending them various equipment upgrades/supplies (either as gifts or as payment). They would still have an NPC broker for stuff if you are dramatically undercutting the market (the broker would pay some % less so you would have some room for profit) or for stuff you aren't interested in.
In a way, I very much disagree with Mr Koster. Not in a disrespectful way, but I do think he's a bit trapped into the "all or nothing" thinking that permeates the web. I'd have to look back to see if he has addressed the two pronged approach I'm advocating, which is a very limited version of the crazy idea I have for a "grand unification" within a virtual world. Instead of a single game, make many but connect them all to and within a single virtual world. Imagine an MMOFPS played in Simcity with Factoryville. 3 different games working together, from 3 different clients creating a game world we've never seen.
All the sudden Richard Garriot's Portalarium thing that he is doing with some other ex-Origin people does not seem like a bad idea at all. If he could make a social game with the accessibility of Farmville but have the fantasy trappings plus some of the cool features of UO, he could have a huge hit.
Haha, thanks Scott for this writeup, before your own conclusion I started to believe that this time you'd heavily disappoint me by following this pithy and shallow drama queen thing. (Sorry no I found Scheels talk to be just that and nothing else.)
Just as a side note: I'm playing farmville since a looong time, pretty much since it came out - and fishville, the aquarium style clone too. It did not draw me from EQ2, it did not make me pay money, I just play the free stuff every so often. And I realize how annoying (and clever) it is to offer a stables frame for free, the pieces to make it whole you can only get from friends as free gifts ... but one type at least is only showing up one day as one or you need to pay cash for it ...
Basically it is nothing else then a new spin to the old f2p games with item shop. You don't need it or it will take long time to get it (you recieve one farmville cash coin per level you make) - or you pay real world money. I like the creativity people develop when it comes to money revenue, would be nice to see that applied to game functions instead of screaming WAR! (pun intended)
Something else I missed in Scheels apocalypse talk: I know people who generate second facebook profiles with fake names to play the games with thousands of "friends" who are just players for the give-me-a-free-gift machinery they base on. And another "real" FB profile for real life friends, topics etc. Talk about truth of metrics ...
Edit: By the way a lot of FV player I know are a) not active but got dragged in by friends who play and need higher neighbour counts. My list of those is long too, they just create a farm, accept neighbourhood and never enter again. And quite some never play computer games ever except FV.
When game publishers decide that several cheap & short cycle social network games (that any 2 year old can master) are a better financial bet than the next up and comming sandbox MMO.....then you should care.
MMOs are expensive, HIGHLY competitive, VERY unpredictable, and have a long development cycle. "Cheap"ville games are incredibly cheap to make, HIGHLY accessable via social networking sites, and have very short development cycles. So what if Farmville burns out in 6 months....they have the next one queued and ready to go.
I'm not suggesting that those games will take all the current MMO player base away.......I'm just suggesting that the pool of dollars thats available to fund new MMOs might get considerably smaller due to the success of these new HYPER casual games that reach out to non traditional gamers.
There are a lot of parallels you can draw from what WOW did to the MMO industry to what these social games are doing to the gaming industry.
I think this divide in gamers is artificial. It's a continuum. You may be a "core" gamer, who would never touch Farmville, but I know core gamers who play core games and also play Facebook games. I also know people who only play Facebook games, and people who don't generally play any games. I know a few people who work for game companies (the big ones), and some independent game developers. Some of the people I knwo also play social games through facebook. I know someone who worked for several "traditional" game publishers, and now they are working for a social game publisher. And, as I said before, a cousin of mine, after having played facebook games, is now playing a RTS. It's a continuum.
This reminds me of the old debate about The Sims. For years, there were people who said that The Sims wasn't a real game -- no combat, I guess. Thankfully, that's over. I figure this "tempest in a teapot" will be next. More people will end up playing all kinds of games. I think it's great for the industry, and for personal choice. I'm not worried about MMORPGs going away -- looking at the numbers (however imperfect) of people playing -- doesn't seem likely.
On a different topic, I think it's funny people will try to "cheat" Farmville -- have a fake account. I find farmville to be relaxing -- meditative even -- I can't imaging trying to rush it along, it's not that kind of game. I also think it's weird if people try to bug their friends to play it. On my facebook friends, most don't play, some do. Just like in any social situation, it's not good to bug your friends.
I'm still hoping this initiates more crossover games, Ralph Koster not withstanding. I think all the different game genres can learn from each other.
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The WoW thing is interesting. I read that all the time, in game forums, that after WoW, MMORPGs aren't as interesting. I always wonder -- to who? I'd think the people who play WoW enjoy it, and the people who play other MMORPGs -- I'm assuming they enjoy they too, or they wouldn't play. Are there not MMOs out there with your preferred playing style, even it if it's not the most popular?
Couple of things....
One of the key characteristics of MMORPGs that seperates itself apart from other game types is that it requires much more time and investment to actualize "fun" and experience the content on a pace that the developers deem reasonable.
Time is the nature of the beast when offering very deep and meaningful content. (One of the primary reasons I jumped from console gaming to MMORPGs back in 2000) Prior to WOW, the equation for customer retention was to create content that gave benefit from spending more time in game. The more time and effort you have invested in the game, presumably, the harder it will be to abandon it. You become "pot commited" so to speak.
If the current expectation is that people will be giving up MORE of their MMO time to sample the many social networking gaming alternatives hitting the scene.......wont game developers have to start designing experiences within MMORPGs based on a much shorter time scale?
Instead of it requiring the typical gamer 4-5 months to reach level cap, it will now only have to take 2-3 months to retain the customers attention?
Instead of it requiring the typical dungeon run 40 minutes, will it now be shortened to 10-20?
I think thats what some of the industry guys are concerned about. If the intention of the publishers is to start marketing games to audiences that previously had little interest in video games, how many consessions will the "core" games have to make to compete in this new expanded market?
Where are the core gamers left to go?
Ask Darkfall how hard it is to get funding for a niche game. What will happen when MMOs (even a casual WOW type) become a niche market among the huge groups of non-traditional gamers that the industry now considers part of the "gameing market".
--------------------------------------
Edit: It wasn't that long ago when the MMO market was only 500,000 - 1,000,000 (Ultima Online, EverQuest).
Blizzard had WOW in mind to market to gamers outside of the traditional MMO market and made concessions to the MMO experience to cater to casual gamers (FPSers, Console gamers)......which Blizzard now claims to have 8,000,000 - 11,000,000 subscribers.
Anything resembling Ultima or EQ is now considered "niche" and is near impossible to get funding for (ask Darkfall).
If the developers are now aiming at an even MORE casual market (people who aren't gamers at all), will the casual WOW standard then become a niche market among the 100s of millions playing all types of games? Will WOW standard MMOs have a hard time getting funding the, considering the HUGE costs and maintenance associated with MMORPGs?
Maybe all this will cause MMO developers to just wake the hell up! I don't mean find ways to copy elements of these Facebook games into their designs, either. I mean, get out of the frakin rut they all seem to be in and make fun games people want to play!
It's funny that from the article you can take away that the thing that the MMO developers despise the most about this new breed of games is that they are "metric driven". IMO, the almost universal arrogance of MMO developers, in which they want you to "play their game, their way", even if the design shows all the signs of going right down the tubes, is the biggest problem in the genre.
I don't want my MMOs morphing in form and function from day to day, but it wouldn't hurt if they were designed in ways that made some responsiveness to the wants/needs of the player base quick, cheap and easy to address.
Too many MMO developers have this God Complex that prevents them from ever acknowledging that their design could have flaws, or that their view of what makes a great MMORPG isn't something that can universally be applied to the tastes of the player base. Once an MMORPG is "out in the wild", it's a given that all the flaws, big and small, will quickly be uncovered as the players play. The need to make adjustments efficiently and effectively should be addressed as part of the design of the project.
(Don't even get me started on Raph Koster, that guy can turn MMO Gold into bricks of dried cow manure just by looking at it)!
Good post....
To add to the "metric driven" topic.......I think the developers are worried about the publishers using metrics to kill what creative liberties the developers still have.
Metrics are just statistics.....which many of us know can either be a good or bad thing (depending on the interpreter)
The MMO community is purely a different breed of gamer, and an entirely separate market.
I was getting 20 gift requests a day from friends on Facebook, and I hadn't even touched the game. One day my mother called and asked me to join and accept her neighbor request so she could expand her farm. Soon I find out that a lot of people who gave me crap for my past gaming indulgence were now actively playing Farmville.
I played around with it for a while; planting 2 day crops, spending 20 minutes every other day, and then I needed more neighbors to expand my farm. I head to the Zynga forums per advice from a friend and recruited 10 people. Wow what an eye opener. Some of these people are just as addicted to Farmville as you'd find a person being addicted to any MMO. They spend 12 hours or more a day spamming collections, and commenting about "stalking the feed"; ie. refreshing the Facebook feed over and over for hours to get clickie rewards from their 300+ random person neighbors they are constantly adding.
My theory.. when people disconnected from Myspace in favor of Facebook, they lost a lot of self expression. Farmville is all about vanity, and is one of the rare places on Facebook where you can have a visual identity. Go read the Zynga forums for a while and you'll find people claiming to spend $100 a week on junk that they delete two weeks later. Others 'play to win', and be better than their friends. The whole thing fascinated me from a gaming standpoint .
Truth.. these social gamers are not constantly searching for a better gaming experience outside of social networks. I once thought that Farmville was a gateway MMO, but I retract that idea. These are real people, and they want to remain real people. Their motives for gaming are completely different than the standard MMO gamer, but Farmville found the right combination of loot and rewards.. much the same, huh?
The article was a fine read. Maybe not the best piece ever, but exceptional by mmo journalism standards. So Zynga gets to kick the indie slackers around in the ratings? Good for them and good for us. I consider more competition a very good thing.
And it's true, Farmville is different from you run of the mill mmo. For one thing, in Farmville you get showered with gifts from your fellow players, as opposed being showered with gank squads and insults, which is the norm in all too many contemporary mmos. There are no 6+ hour raids with 20+ mouth breathing troglodytes on Teamspeak. No competition worth mentioning. You're in that game for the fun of it.
The fact that something as rudimentary gameplay wise as Farmville attracts numbers that easily beat most mmos by two magnitudes on the decimal scale just goes to prove that either a) mmos are a niche market or b) mmo developers are doing a bloody rotten job. Take your pick.
Life isn't static. Sorry you feel like it should be but the facts are things can and do change. I have been a gamer since the early 70's and believe me many changes have come about in gaming. Learn to adapt.
I've been against F2P games since they first showed their ugly faces and this only hardens my heart towards them. I love P2P games becuase you get a solid game. Sure I pay more but I have a WAY better time.
In my opinion what we're seeing isn't the death of P2P games but rather a mainstream switch. F2P is pulling in numbers because it attracts cheapminded people. However there will always be those people who will want to spend more for a better game. F2P is becoming your average Honda/Ford of gaming, P2P will become your Lexus/Jaguar of gaming. In the end those that want to pay for Luxury will and those that don't wont.
To be honest..
If there was a new good finished game that has been released in the past 4 years right now that I am not burnt out on (EQ2, WoW, EvE) I might pay a script.
As it stands, Free games like the brower based ones are the way to go.
I have been burnt by the last few years of releases and will not sub anymore,
Hrica (aka, Tessie, aka Vlatava, aka Voila) has retired from pay to play MMOs for lack of .....well a decent, finsihed product.
Suprize me EA, Square Soft, bring this old man out of retirment.
The marketshare has been increasing every year. What's that saying?
Despite the publishers best attempt to bore us to death with WoW clones, the market is still increasing.
DDO just announced a 500% revenue increase. The money is there. You just have to know how to get it. Creating WoW clones won't do it. You think creating Farmville clones will?
Hey, at least when this doesn't pan out the company won't be out millions of dollars. I'm kinda glad to see the WoW clone publishers moving on to the "next big thing".
Oh yes, getting rid of the clonemakers and every other bad MMO company would be an extremely positive thing for the industry. Maybe SOE will go make Starville where you can space farm mynocks for milk or something.
Then in my dream they sell off all of their MMO properties to smaller developers that bring real care and concern for the playerbase to the properties, starting with the removal of the RMTs, then rolling back SWG and Planetside to their heyday versions.
Wow, just wow, and I don't mean world of warcraft! Those people with the fear of facebook games make me laugh so hard I almost had another heart attack, and I've had a lot! I just recently got into the facebook games, like 2 weeks ago, and you can literally spend about 1 minute on each game, sometimes less sometimes more. What got me into them is the fact that many of them are nothing more than the old MUD's we used to play with graphics, thats it! Nothing new or original, its been around since before anyone knew what a MMO was. And the majority of people playing these games are not shelling out their money, they are playing them cause 1. It's free, 2. it's quick and can do multiple ones and not get bored with just the same ole thing of one game, 3. it's social where the likes of old MMO's forced you to be social as well unlike the solitary lifestyle games now a days are shoving down our throats, 4. it also shows that the majority doesn't give a damn about the best super graphics eva crap. Seriously when the hell are these developers going to wake up, the people that scream on the forums about better graphics this, better engine that do not make up but the smallest percentage of the millions out there that would gladly pay a monthly subscription if they just concentrated on a game that would draw you in, and make you keep playing over and over and over...etc
When developers get a clue, that is when I will stand up and notice, not when they panic because everything they thought about gaming is WRONG!
MMO: " Browser based social games took our jobs!!!...THEYTOOKAAARJAAABBBS!!"
That was funny, and so true!
Good article Mr. Jennings.
Many of the points of your article I have been thinking about myself for the past year or so.
As pessimistic as it sounds, I forsee no new "great" MMOs being released ever again. I believe this because great MMOs were created when Developers, Artists, and Players controlled MMO Gaming. These people no longer do.
Investors, Accountants, and marketing Suits control MMOs now, and they wouldn't know a MMO if it hit them broadside, nor would they care what it was if it didn't make them a tremedous profit. MMOs are an Art form, not a get rich quick scheme.... and the MMO Industry is now run by and paid for by the Suits that only care about short term profit.
MMOs are all about long term. Until the suits figure this out MMO gaming will NOT be MMO gaming, even if they call it that. The problem is this... once the love of money infects an Art form, that Art form dies, or is critically wounded. Only after decades, sometimes centuries does that Art form once again gain the respect and attention it deserves. This pattern in human behavior has been repeated countless times in history. I seriously doubt the human race is going to finally get past this shortcoming now at this precise moment.
Thank you for your article, at least you Sir have attempted to inform the Players about the changes to MMO Gaming. I have known this is the case for months now, at least someone that can publish articles is now admitting it as well.
Thank you to those Developers, Artists, and Players that are fighting this trend in the MMO Industry world itself, at the Conventions, and on the internet. I hope you win the fight.
This is a basically an enviromental niche thing. Farmville, and iphone apps (very in vogue with my family) occupy a certain niche. I very much doubt that MMO players will stop playing LoTR, WAR, WoW etc to play Farmville; although we are all un-doubtable doing something game realated at work - even if it is posting :)
Having got a taste for certain online games, will there be a cross over to traditional MMO? Well hopefully, but the trick would be to create games that exist on multiple platforms. Eve is currently doing this (and if they are cute, they will have the whole game out in a browser before long); clearly subs would go through the roof when they do that.
Consider a new game, you can play the basic parts (in low rez) free via a browers, but the full monty game is via a PC/Console. All those noobs running around just waiting to be pwned by gamer with paid for clients - fresh meat boys :)
I totally agree with Scott's conlusion on his article. FarmVille and other social games won't kill the market of MMOs, cause they hit a completely different crowd.
Sure money will be a very importend factor and prolly draw many developers towards farmville style games.
But im convinced there will always be enough game developers who wanne make a real game and not only for money.
Maybe this even result in getting back to old days and with less money, but some developers make games with real innovation and fun, and not been influenced by publishers who pay there bills.
Also posible that many famrville players in few years want more and gonne look for real games and millions more starting to play hopefully game like Darkfall:P
I had written about it before in my topic "There's a war out there."
It got locked and I got issued a warning.
In my thread I had descripted a future analog to the french revolution, in wich developers/publishers would exploit the consumers "lack of awareness" to the limit. Everyone wants a piece of the pie and each one discretelly grabs a bigger piece noticing no repercussions the next time they go for a bigger piece, eventually they are rushing for it, indiscriminatelly, no rules, no moral, or ethics.
Its like ZT Online on east and Farmville here on west. It takes someone greedy enough to go for such a big piece of the pie that everyone else think "ok, thats enough, it was all fine when we all got our share, but, this way is not manageable anymore, this way we will self destruct".
Do we want something that is interesting enough to attract us?
or
Do we want to be given an out of game incentive to play?
Real world issues will always have some impact on what we play. The money a game costs can be an important factor in which we choose out of the bunch especially for adults who are practiced in constantly monitoring their expenditure and managing the budgets.
But, what this article is saying to me is much deeper than this. Games are a non-essential purchase. They are not food or clothing or something that we must have in order to live.
Thus, money is important but our personal interest level is much more important simply because we choose to play games rather than have to. So out-of-game incentives to play, whether real or artificial, are nowhere near as important as a game being good in its own right.
In the dark ages of computer gaming, games like JetSet Willy, Jet Pack, Lemmings all broke the mould cast by Pong, the ubiquitous tennis game at the start.
MUD thru EverQuest thru WoW to today's MMO have extended that sort of ground breaking expansion from simple to intriguing & complex by introducing the most dynamic factor of all .. People!
Every time games have evolved, they have not become simpler, they have become more complex. Sure, yes: better graphics, nicer sound, more helpful & easier to use clients. But the actual evolution has always been along the lines of deeper, more profound, more puzzling, more intriguing, more immersive gameplay.
We play games .. all games, in one way or another, for whatever particular aspect we personally prefer, to stimulate out minds.
The real problem with intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic (which stupid jargon I rephrased with my post title) is whether or not the game developers will recognise that ..
We have a need for games that is motivated by our desire to learn!
"Intrinsic versus Extrinsic?" is, at the base of it, the question of the short sighted accountant focussing only on the profit line. You have to pay attention to that profit line or your game will fail financially.
The problem is, that if you focus on money forgetting the real issue, that a game must satisfy our real desire for interesting games to play, then eventually you will lose your customer because you will lose their attention.
This is what has been happening in the MMO market for the last 5 to 10 years. Developers, admittedly forced to pay heed to the real concern of making a financially viable game, have been losing sight of our, the players', need to have variety, depth, puzzle and innovation in the games we play.
With the success of WoW, the plaguiaristic copy cat of the MMO world, game developers have seem to have lost their motivation to design and write interesting, exciting and evolving games.
The game industry has stuck to the standard formulae and is boring us to death.
What? You are not bored of your game yet? Well .. you will be.
Sooner or later you will want a different game to play, or a better game to play.
Sooner or later, the same game with different graphics will not be enough for you!
i dont play farmville, i shouldn't be posting here. most of my friends play..hmm...maybe i should try it out now to see what so great about it..
I've never enjoyed Farmville, or any game in that same vein. I find them boring and repetative at best. Sure, there are things in "world-y" MMOs, that some people could say the same thing about. However, I think the differentiating element here is that a "true" MMO provides you with a more encapsilating experience. That is that you are part of a larger world, and going even further into the hardcore/sandbox genre, you can infludence it. This is escapism, what I believe most MMO fans are seeking, and that is something that Farmville and it's ilk will never be able to do.
TJKazmar in the first page of this thread stated, "...these player-watchers may come to want more than games like Farmville have to offer. They may seek out the world that we know and love, and it will be the task of developers to model games that bring the 'new' generation of gamers up to par with what we are used to."
However, I would add that if developers, in seeking new revenues from these "player-watchers" dumb down the MMOs we've all come to play and love it could damage this entire genre of gaming for quite some time, if not all gaming.
Personally, I think a person should be able to play whatever game they want, but I also believe that Farmville and "World-y" MMOs can never be combined into something that both sides will enjoy. I think they cater to two completely different groups of people, and trying to combine them into one wholistic model is folly.