More and more game companies are combining sports with MMOs and most of these games are free-to-play. Richard Aihoshi digs deeper in this edition of The Free Zone, his weekly column published here each Monday.
David Chang of GamesCampus brought up another issue, the lack of market information. When looking at the possibilities for MLB Dugout Heroes, his company had to generalize from the data available for sports games in general. Nonetheless, he sees lots of potential for the category. "It's just a matter of time before the online sports genre really takes off in the west," he states. "All the other necessary elements are there."
He continues by saying his biggest challenge is educating people used to thinking about fantasy sports or manager-style sims. He says many just aren't aware of the fully playable team titles available online that incorporate live action matches and MMOG elements such as leveling to provide what he calls "an all-encompassing sports experience".
Read it all here.
