This is a great article! While game publishers/distributors get a lot of flack for forcing games to come out early or buggy or both, players have to remember that their continued (monetary) support is the only way to make their favorite games better, no matter how bad they are "now" (e.g. Age of Conan, which has gotten much better now that all those pesky players have left).
In my opinion, much of the struggle that games developers have with their cash flow comes from the misguided community belief that "everything extra be free because I pay a monthly fee" or, much worse, "why should I buy items from the cash shop, this [free-to-play] game is buggy and has no end-game!" The bottom line is, the more money you pay to play a game, the more of that money will go into making the game better. Also, the more revenue that a game generates, the more likely it will be that the developer will be able to go back to their, or other, venture capitalists and get more money for development of future content.
Edited, Feb 23rd 2010 8:28pm by Maarg
What Will Less Money Mean For MMO Developers?
Venture Capitalists reduce in investments in games development.
Astute gamers may have already noticed smaller development / publisher companies that are moving towards social gaming as an attempt to raise capital to develop "real" MMORPGs. Funcom, the developer of Age of Conan, has already established a social and casual gaming subsidiary, called "Sweet Robot," and their next MMO is called "Pets vs. Monsters," a free-to-play casual MMO aimed towards children. As well, Nexon, the developers of the super popular MapleStory, have also made their venture in the social gaming industry, with their introduction of PopTag!, a bomberman style game where players blow each other up with water balloons. This falls right into Nexon's plans to rebrand itself as "BlockParty.com" in North America to focus more on social networking. Even Sony Online Entertainment has their critically acclaimed casual children's MMORPG Free Realms, although Free Realms is one of the few social MMOs to be so well developed.
Unfortunately, the problem that stems from the development of these social games is, obviously, that "real" MMO titles get delayed by months, or even years, as companies struggle to find investors. As well, when the industry gets focused on the few big companies that do have the time to devote to their MMOs, innovation tends to go downhill - truly unique ideas are considered dangerous, and most big companies tend to stick with "tried and tested" methods of development. Typically speaking, new forays into the MMORPG world are usually found in smaller companies, as a start-up development team tends to focus more on an idea rather than creating a multi-million dollar package. Just look at Darkfall Online's attempts at new and innovative gameplay (nobody said they had to be good!) versus NCsoft's highly-polished but very "middle-of-the-road" Aion, and you can see this concept at work.
Ultimately, as gamers move forward to 2010 and 2011, let's hope that, in addition to getting our favorite big-name MMORPGs, we may also see more support for smaller development teams, like Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's Stargate Worlds. Social gamers are fun and all (except you, Farmville!), but let's get some real substance onto the market!
Tags: Editorial