You can take an average... turning the subjective metric "fun" into a normal metric... IF 8 people find a game "fun" and 2 dont... you can safely say the game is "fun" for most. Which is why "popularity" is the easiest way to get a accurate measurement of fun. The reason WoW has so many more subscribers than other games, is it is considered more "fun" than them. Does that make more sense?BloatedGuppy said:
Causes of Stagnation and Failing's of Current Generation MMO's
- Thread starter PerpetualGamer
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I think a big part of the problem is that WOW was the first MMO that people played. That set the standard in their minds about what a MMO should be. When they compare newer MMOs to WOW they find it lacking, not because the game is worse, in many cases the game is better than WOW, but they didn't get 'sucked in' into the game as much.
As gamers we more than likely know people that are or have been sucked in by WOW. I have talked with many of them there is a weird disconnect between fun and playing the game. They have a need to play the game even if it is enjoyable or not. That is what WOW has done that few MMOs have done since.
I don't think it is about quality of MMOs or even stagnation of MMOs. FPS have been around for a long time and they are a stagnate genre. Very few FPS games break the mold and when they do it is only a slight change. Then others copy the successful ones so game play is redundant and very similar. This is not a problem. Games are repetitive. EA releases a new Madden game every year and they sell very well. Football has not changed much in the years that EA has been making the game. Year after year people will buy the new version of the game to basically play the same game over again. When people talk about a game genre being stagnant, it seems to me as if they are just burning out on games in general. Too much of a good thing, thing.
As gamers we more than likely know people that are or have been sucked in by WOW. I have talked with many of them there is a weird disconnect between fun and playing the game. They have a need to play the game even if it is enjoyable or not. That is what WOW has done that few MMOs have done since.
I don't think it is about quality of MMOs or even stagnation of MMOs. FPS have been around for a long time and they are a stagnate genre. Very few FPS games break the mold and when they do it is only a slight change. Then others copy the successful ones so game play is redundant and very similar. This is not a problem. Games are repetitive. EA releases a new Madden game every year and they sell very well. Football has not changed much in the years that EA has been making the game. Year after year people will buy the new version of the game to basically play the same game over again. When people talk about a game genre being stagnant, it seems to me as if they are just burning out on games in general. Too much of a good thing, thing.
Well, they're certainly innovating in terms of their pricing model. Not too many MMOs have the cajones to charge a subscription fee AND put in an item shop to charge for micro-transactions. If there's a way to dip into your wallet, Funcom has innovated to find it.Metalhandkerchief said:
You can take an aggregate review score to get a sense of whether or not a game has quality, but you're not really determining that it's "more fun" than another game. I find Left 4 Dead more "fun" than Total War. Does it mean I think it's a better game? No. One reviewer might fall in love with the crafting in Everquest 2 and claim that it makes the game fun. For me, the crafting in Everquest 2 was the equivalent of being dragged by the scrotum across a field of broken glass. "Fun" is always a completely unreliable metric.PerpetualGamer said:
You also need to avoid falling into the trap of popularity = quality. Deer Hunter, at one point in time, was one of the highest selling titles on the PC. Did it mean it was one of the best? Halo significantly outsold Shadow of the Colossus. Is it a better title? There are a lot of reasons that WoW has dominated the marketplace so completely. You can argue that it's because it was a "better game", but there are far more measurable things you can use to explain its tremendous success (lack of competition, ease of use, strength of marketing, developer reputation, high profile collapse of earliest copycats, and so on).
You saw the part where I said "not many" and not "no other", right?Metalhandkerchief said:
That's good to know about the lower basic sub fee though, although I still think it's a pretty sketchy move for a fledgling MMO. The Secret World will go back on my radar. Thanks for the info.
You can say what you want about my stupidity sometimes, but I find the above to actually explain some stuff for me. I see where your coming from, and it even makes sense in my mind.BloatedGuppy said:
That being said, popularity for sure does not = quality... EX. Halo. However popularity could be a determination of "success" in a genre that is supposed to rely upon player interaction. More players, more interactions, better fulfilling of the title? Does that make sense? Am I wrong in that assumption as well?
I am being legitimate in my looking for insight...
No, you're right, popularity is a good indicator of "success", depending on how you define success. To use television as an analogy..."The Sopranos" never had as many viewers as "Two and a Half Men", but as a critically acclaimed show it helped HBO drive up their subscription rate. So you've got a few ways of defining "success".PerpetualGamer said:
1. Player base and profit. Easiest to measure, it's right there in the numbers. By this standard, WoW was a HUGE success. An unprecedented success, that is unlikely to be rivaled in terms of the enormous market share they devoured.
2. Critical acclamation. A game like "Psychonauts" could be viewed as a title that enjoyed very little financial success but has lived on as a beloved retro classic because of its high quality and critical acclaim.
3. Cult classics. A game like Dwarf Fortress would fit this category. Never really achieved wide acclaim, and is not widely embraced by the gaming community due to high barriers to entry, but is nonetheless beloved and viewed as peerless in terms of its profound niche appeal.
In order to call a game a failure, it would need to be financially ruinous (not make any kind of profit whatsoever), and not be embraced either critically or by a small but fervent fan base that keeps it alive in perpetuity. I can't think of too many MMOs that fit those criteria. Almost all of them have been robust financial successes, if not on the scale of WoW. That's why people keep making them. It's actually an extremely lucrative genre.
Makes perfect sense to me, thanks for your view on this topic. So then as far as failure goes, would you say that there hasn't been much "failure"? On the flipside, what are your views on stagnation? Do you feel that the genre is facing a time of stagnation? If so why?BloatedGuppy said:
Incase you haven't figured it out, I already expressed my views on the subject, at this point im gathering information so that I can rebuild my opinion with a stronger more diverse range of views. That and I value your opinion, and you seem well spoken on the subject.
Pfft. I bet you say that to all the Bloated Guppies.PerpetualGamer said:
Yes, the genre is experiencing a significant period of stagnation, but it's not unusual for the industry as a whole. First person shooters, real time strategy games, brawlers...name a genre, and you can map a pretty clear course of extremely tepid evolution.
What's interesting is how necessarily how MMO's aren't getting any better (they are), or more popular (they clearly are), but rather how it came to pass that MMO's came to be so rigidly defined. Even if you cut away the dearth of MMO FPS games, or MMO RTS games, and just focus on the MMORPG genre, it's just Everquest clones across the board, with the occasional outlier like EVE Online as the exception that proves the rule. This made a certain amount of sense when everyone was chasing the EQ money, and then later the WoW money. Emulating success is a habit the gaming industry is never going to break. But WoW is going on 7 years old now, and none of its many clones have come anywhere close to capturing the zeitgeist the way WoW did. Single player RPGs don't have this issue. Dragon Age is a fundamentally different experience than, say, Oblivion. Yet MMORPGs are all in lockstep with one another, jostling for the scraps from Blizzard's table. Even "revolutionary" titles like Guild Wars 2 bear more than a passing resemblance to the hoary old EQ model we've been playing for a decade now.
But I digress. Yes, it's stagnant, but I couldn't tell you why. The most likely explanation is every MMO that gets green-lit has to go past the bean counters, and the bean counters look at the profit margins on WoW, and say "Is our game like that? How can we make our game more like that?". In order for the stagnation to break you're going to need a sandbox or PvP focused or some other niche genre of MMORPG to hit big enough to inspire imitation. WoW's shadow over the genre being what it is, though, that's unlikely to happen any time soon, and when it does we're likely in for a wave of Titan clones. In a lot of ways, WoW's unexpected landslide popularity did tremendous damage to creativity and innovation in the genre even while bootstrapping it into mainstream attention. WoW was good for MMORPGs, but it kinda throttled them , too.