MMO Release Dates: Timing the Market
In this new editorial, Garrett Fuller talks about the way MMORPGs are launched.
Editorial By on November 16, 2006
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MMO Release Dates: Timing the Market
Editorial by Garrett Fuller
Readers on this site often have a lot to say about games and how they are played. I've written many editorials on that very topic. What I wanted to discuss here this week is games and how they are launched. If you are a member on this website and check updates weekly chances are you know the pulse of the MMO world. Also if you are a gamer, you check out other websites for console game news and features on what games are coming out when. The way the market is moving it seems like every video game development company in the world right now is thinking of an MMO as one of their games. Somewhere on the drawing boards of game studios are the next MMOs waiting to be launched. MMORPG.com is currently tracking over seventy five games for launch in the next few years. Those are the ones we know about. Many have yet to be announced, and some major companies such as Green Monster Games and Bioware have yet to show us what is on their drawing boards. Needless to say the MMO world is growing fast and we're all caught up in it. Now, I was not a marketing major in college, but I want to try to talk about the MMO market that we're in and why games come out when they do. It is November, holiday time, shopping time. How many MMOs are coming out before the end of the year? Has anyone seen ads for them? Why don't companies plan their game launches to fit into this popular time frame. Is it because of the Wii and PS3? Sure lots of kids and adults will be getting those big items as gifts, as well as games to go with those items. Still, PC gamers have little on the horizon over the next few weeks and it is a prime time for selling games. Not just because of the holidays, but because of the winter season. Most players in the North half of the world are stuck in doors during the months of December, January, and February. There is little to do each night at 5 pm when it gets dark. My feeling on this is to light up those screens!! Get the games in the hands of the players so those dark hours of the winter don't go unused. I know some games are released during the summer and have success in that area too due to the lack of school. Still, people go outside over the summer. Will your player base be strong during those months? I don't think it will be as strong as the winter when players want to stay inside. Enough about the seasons and trying to time the holiday market, my next question to publishing companies is how are you planning your release in terms of the game market? Major film companies compete for summer weekends to launch big films. How do games plan to launch against each other? Or do they? I don't know the strategy of marketing firms who represent games, but I would like to know if MMOs held back this season knowing the WoW expansion was coming out. More importantly how many game companies have designed their products to be the great WoW killer? Is that really a plan to go with for better gaming? I don't think so. It is like any other industry, once the business side steps in and money starts changing hands; there is a whole new compromise that must be made with the product. Soon you have market research firms telling you when you should launch your game. What do they know about gamers and what we want? There are plenty of examples in video games that show players will always go back to fun games. I certainly don't speak for everyone but I know that most gamers I am friends with always enjoy exploring new worlds and building new characters. Role-playing can cover vast areas of genre, theme, and even learning. Whether you are carrying a sword or a laser gun, you still want to somehow grow by playing a game. Whether it's through role playing, questing, raiding or pvping, you hope to get something back for your time. I guess my point is if the game is fun people will play it. If the game continues to grow and you grow with it, then it will sell to gamers regardless of the market competition. The other big question deals with the life of an MMO and what is considered successful. Most MMOs launch and have a leveling curve to get to a certain end game. This being somewhat of a norm in the industry begs the question when has a game reached its peak? WoW continues to add accounts and grow. The majority of those may be coming from parts of the world that have yet to play Warcraft. After two years of the game are players bored with WoW? Has it lost its peak? Will the Burning Crusade add the boost it needs? I am not sure; I only know that games as old as Ultima Online and Meridian 59 are still out there and being played. Funcom hopes that Age of Conan will go on for a decade. Is that an unreasonable goal? EvE Online is another great example that a game can start small and grow vastly over its lifespan so that we're not sure it has reached its full potential even after three years. From what I have seen people play MMOs in bursts. At launch they level and enjoy the content (some rush to get to the end game) and maybe take a break after a few days, weeks, or months depending on your threshold. After being away for a time, you go back to it and pick it up again. Many gamers I know like to try new things or take breaks from games that can be very intense. After months of pvping in Dark Age of Camelot it was nice to take a break and play Zelda for a few weeks. I was still having fun in the video game world, but I was not in competition with other people, I could play in my own time. I think gamers are looking for an experience. No matter what it is we enjoy trying to accomplish something. Whether that something is logging in for a half hour to get in a quick pvp game or following an epic quest for months to further your character's goals it still is allowing you to grow as a player. It is fun to walk into work the next day and have someone ask "hey did you watch -insert random boring TV sitcom here- last night?" Only to reply, "No, but I got a kick ass helmet on a raid and was still able to get 200 kills in the arena before going to bed!" I believe the life of an MMO should be measured in its ability to give players a reason to play and more importantly grow. There is one very important issue that I am not covering here and that is development and beta testing. Those two pieces do play a part in launching a game, but really I wanted to focus on the MMO market as a whole in this editorial. Development and Beta testing will get their own articles in the time to come. Most of all I guess there is a part of me that would like to see game companies launch good games at the right time of year for players to get the most out of them. If you are a kid and the game you've been dying to have come out launches in June, just before your month long trip to Grandma's where the TV is from 1971 and there is no computer. It can be a real bummer. My hope is that MMOs will get better at launching their games so players can start to grow when there is time to do so. As gamers this is the best place to tell developers how you feel about games you play, are looking forward to, or have gone back to because they were fun. Instead of discussing how games are developed, what are your thoughts on how and when games are launched?
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Well, some companies still think that online sells isn't a viable solution for a game, so the idea to release a MMO is not on every board!
Most successfull MMOs also have a strong selling and advertising with a box, in stores.
Can't wait for BioWare's MMO, it will change our lives, nothing less!
A MMO has 2 advantages a non-MMO doesn't have. 1- Someone who experience a MMO in the past usually prefer a MMO over a similar non-MMO alternative (some would even be rude and jerk about even comparing it...). 2- Monthly fees. MMOs are addictives, but it is easier to break free from such addiction then any real addictive product.
A MMO also has many flaws: 1- Timing release and publicity are vitals, 2- Massive games with lot of work, we ain't talking of just making a game, we are talking about making a game that can entertain a player for at least 300 hours, if not a LOT more. 3- Franchises often clash with what been's a MMO is, and only competent devs can work around this...just look at the last DDO banner advertising PvP...that is the best example I could provide for this point. Most companies can't afford to make such a heavy game or the "timing release/publicity"...or both...and to respect a franchise legacy, just look at Turbines and you know that not everyone can.
As more companies make engines and code to be used in mmo's, its likely the devs will be able to hold tighter to when they went to go live. Games like lotro will be able to come out while the moives are still being made.
As the previous poster said its better the game be stable at release than delivered at a particular time.
Its probably better to miss the silly season when all the other games come out and release a few months later when those games have been played and relegated to the shelves.
And since playing the game requires monthly payment (for most) its better to land the games when people finances have had a chance to recover from the silly season.
Correct. I think a lot of MMORPG developers lose sight of that important fact and release their games well before the time they're ready to go live. The best time to capture your market share of the gaming public is at your game's release; first impressions do make all the difference between holding onto your customers and losing them through disillusion.
However, this editorial mainly does just that: ask question, open a topic, put the table on for a discussion. Now, if you guys at MMORPG.com were able to pull a few people from the industry out their office and in here to have them give their insight on it, that would be huge !
Maybe someone as Raph Koster, who's not now in a position with an soon-to-be-launched MMO ?
Totally agree. Some are learning, others are stagnant as a result of the corporate culture that births games.
I have noticed a couple of things regarding MMO releases: 1) The games that seem to be aiming for a certain release date, rather than "when it's ready" are often released in a very buggy state. 2) The games that are released when they are truly ready don't often conform to the "best" marketing dates. The driving force behind both of these scenarios is of course money. Games get rushed because funds are running low, and are pushed to consumers in a desperate attempt to start bringing in funds for further development. Games that are released when they are ready, rather than waiting a few months for the prime marketing opportunities, also do this to bring in funds as soon as possible. There really is no wrong time to release a MMORPG, if you are ready to scale up the number of servers based on demand. It would be difficult to predict a perfect time to release a MMOG, since an individual's readiness would be based not only on freetime or seasons, but also the number of other games the person is trying to complete, hobbies, necessary computer upgrades, etc.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on how games are developed and released.
That was a great article....It seems to me that companies are trying to put games out as fast as they can instead of waiting patiently and putting out a finished polished product during a specific set time to optimize market potential.
WE ARE WILLING TO WAIT FOR A BETTER PRODUCT!!!!!
I hate buggy games that need patches....nothing more anoying than having a game that doesn't run properly so I end up having to wait anyways...which is more frustrating because I can't play a game that is in my possession. It is a heck of a lot easier to have to wait on a game that I have not yet touched.
Sure...but ain't I waiting since I join this site basically? (3 years and 4516 messages later, still waiting)
I can wait for BioWare to do stuff rights, but I wouldn't mind trying something cool in the meanwhile, if such a MMO happen.
As he mentioned, Garrett did not cover the beta process. Regardless of all the hype, most developers fail to realize that a lot of their initial income comes from the beta testers. Many do not understand that if the beta testers are not satisfied with what they see they will not subscribe.
Although I have not tested a huge number of MMO's I have tested enough to be turned off by a common failing of almost every developer at beta. That is LAG! Many of my acquaintances have quit testing games because of the lag. If they cannot play properly, and are continually killed due to lag they either quit reporting bugs or quit the game entirely and do not come back at retail.
If developers cannot or will not provide the necessary hardware or software fixes to cure the lag during beta it sends a message to the players that they are really not serious about their product. I do realize that in some cases, particularly where smaller companies are involved, the resources both financial and human are simply not available at beta. In many cases such companies are on ther verge of bankruptcy at this time and are despartate to get the game to retail and begin to generate some cash. However, in the case of the larger institutions, I find their reluctance to adequately support their game both during beta and at launch very perplexing. It amazes me that after 3 or more years of work they deliberately shoot themselves in the foot.
Exampls of games scheduled for this christmas season include:
WoW - The burning crusade - slipped
Everquest 2 - Echoes of Feydwer - released
The Chronicles of Spellborn - slipped
Phanstasy Star Universe - released
As you can see - things are pretty hit and miss.
As to advertising and the like, thats a touchy subject for me personally. Game companies and publishers rarely know the current state of development, nor do they care. They overly hype games as being innovative, they tout features that rarely make it in by launch (sometime launch features end up being an expansion that they charge for, SWG and space flight anyone?) and are NEVER held accoutable. / rant on There are laws concerning truth in advertising but where mmo's are concerned the publishers constantly break those laws and are never held to task for the blatant lies and deceptions that they spew out of their evil mouths. Most mmo's seem to rely on the gaming community and websites like this one for all of their advertising. Not just mmorpg.com but every gaming website seems to be on the payroll of publishers because they hype certain features and treat every interview with kit gloves. Why should a publisher pay the money for an advertising campaign like microsoft's Gears of War campaign (fecking phenomenal commercial btw) when there are "reporters" for gamesites salivating for a "scoop"? When they will not be asked the tough questions, and when the sites dont report specifically on the issues that they come across in the game. /rant off.