World Of Warcraft Crushing PC Game Industry? 397
simoniker writes "Age of Empires co-creator and Iron Lore co-founder Brian Sullivan has been discussing his studio's first game, Titan Quest, but along the way has openly wondered whether World Of Warcraft's success is part of the reason for the decline of the PC retail game market. Sullivan commented: 'For retail PC games, I think the biggest problem is World of Warcraft... It is such a compelling MMO game that it sucks up a lot of money and time that would normally be spent on other retail PC games.' Does WoW's growth actually mean that PC games in other non-MMO genres may sell fewer copies?"
Can we rephrase that? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, not.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Short Answer: Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
~Rebecca
Loads of Bad Games (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's face it. The video game market is flooded with terrible games that are the same thing over and over again. I mean, seriously, besides really little kids, who bought the Finding Nemo game? RPGs have always been better sellers than other titles because there is a strong market for them. It only makes sense that a game that also allows for social interaction AND is an RPG will sell out other video games.
Though, I personally dislike WoW. I'm all about Guild Wars.
How do people have time for this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not terribly torn up about the gaming industry going downhill, what with the only titles recently released being yearly updates to re-hashed sports titles or GTA variants, but I do wonder how the industry became profitable in the first place.
Almost nothing is geared towards a casual gamer any more. I maintain an Everquest subscription for old time's sake, and to have the option available if I want it, but I'm lucky if I log on two hours per week. Between my education, employment, volunteering, and interpersonal relationships, I have very little time left to put into something like that. At the endgame, where I've managed to get by plodding along an hour or two a week, it can take up to an hour to find a group of people to play with in the first place. All the other MMO games are the same, and even a lot of the non-multiplayer games involve a lot of grinding or gruntwork to actually get anywhere in them. The only good casual games out there are Nintendo platformers, and these are so devoid of maturity in any respect that I can't play most of them. (Exemptions given to Mario and Zelda games, because those are classics.)
I just wonder, how it is possible to participate in an MMO and still do anything with their lives?
I wager that, in fact, it isn't.
A friend of mine, meanwhile, neglects the first three and a good portion of the fourth items in my list of other activities there, in favor of playing videogames for the better part of 8 hours a day. He's capped out multiple characters in World of Warcraft, but in reality, has nothing to show for it aside from a hole in his bank account and a slightly bigger imaginary e-penis. Actually, on further inspection, it's not just one friend...it's all half-dozen friends I know who play that game, do it at the exclusion of other activities they previously found enjoyable and profitable such as jobs and friends.
China's three-hour-rule seems like a very, very good idea to be put in place on the server end, all around the world.
PC Developers Fleeing To Sony To Save Them (Score:1, Interesting)
EQ/WoW and other subscription pc games have just accelerated that decline. The result is pc developers are either going out of business or fleeing to Sony and the PS3 to save them. The pc gamedev companies going out of business are mostly the small ones that no one has ever heard about. But almost all of the big pc devhouses are looking now to Sony to bail them out.
So now you have thousands and thousands of developers who know nothing other than the x86 architecture and DirectX whining about all their code won't run on the PS3. Sucks to be them. It's not like the downtrend in the pc games sector was any big secret.
The pc game market won't completely die, there will always be shareware games. But pc developers are facing a harsh test, fade away into irrelevance or prove they have the skills to compete with the big boys in the massively lucrative console market. So far what pc developers are putting out for the PS3 it looks like they aren't up to the task of competing with console developers.
Similar article (Score:4, Interesting)
I was heavily involved in WoW at the time and know that it affected my game-purchase habits; I can only imagine how much impact it's had on the PC and console game industries as a whole. When you have dozens of days (and I was on the low end compared to my peers) invested in several characters, it sure seems hard to do anything else but to continue to play just. that game. After all, isn't that part of the hook? That if you stop, you're "throwing it all away"...?
Uhhh... (Score:2, Interesting)
Short answer: No (Score:3, Interesting)
1. The nasty, intrusive copy protection on Half-Life 2 where it took ten minutes saying "mother may I" to the servers every time I tried to start it up (and then the gameplay sucked.)
2. "Starforce" copy protection (which can wreck your CD/DVD drive) being used by game companies.
If the game companies aren't going to make it pleasant to use their product, they have only themselves to blame.
Felt guilty not playing WoW (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Works for me (Score:3, Interesting)
WoW is honestly popular because it's the most common simple and pretty looking MMORPG there is. It's not original or even that note worthy, it just took everything and gave it a Blizzard spin (aka made it glossy) and that's it. People assume the best will win, but the games market is full of fanboys, so the best will very rarely truely win, where as peer pressure in MMORPGs almost always will.
Time + money = ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Along came WoW
Suddenly, in addition to $50 USD - usually my bi-monthly game budget for games - I spent on the copy of the game, I found myself spending ~$15/month (roughly my monthly budget) on WoW subscription. In addition, since woW is quite a time-intensive game (don't get me started on log in - spend 45 min forming a raid - start a raid - disband a raid 45 min later routine) I found myself spending 95% of my gaming time slots playing WoW. And so it went for, well, over a year.
Now, I'm happily 'off the WoW' for over half a year. Since then, I picked up a reasonable number of games that seemed interesting (Dawn of War, Sid meier's Pirates, Morrowind etc - 8 in total) - and I would've gotten more, if I didn't waste some time on auto Assault and D&D Online Betas. Thus, I have to definitely agree with TFA - WoW does seem to be harming other game markets, although I'd dare to expand / elaborate : MMOs are hurting the game market for less 'massively-teamplay' games. It's not solely WoW's fault - merely its popular content and quality (let's not start a Blizzard flamewar here, please) compared to other MMOs that's causing proportionately more market disturbance.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Of course it does (Score:5, Interesting)
If one game stifles a whole industry resulting in lowered sales of other games and this consequently results in:
1. A bunch of copycat games trying to steal market share from the leader
2. Game development being cancelled on games that don't fit the business leader's model
3. Less diversity of choice for gamers - a flood of me too MMOs and lack of games in other genres
Well that would be a bad thing.
I don't really feel this is the case. I think MMOs will have a permanent impact on PC gaming, just as online FPS games did. Although Doom may have ushered in the LAN party, games like Quake and Unreal Tournament pretty much made online multiplayer a required feature of any PC FPS (yes there are exceptions such as Max Payne). It didn't kill the market, it just changed it.
MMOs are taking players away from single player gaming experiences. Since I started playing MMOs I have played (and purchased) a lot fewer single player games BUT I still play some.
WoW isn't going to be the #1 game for all of eternity. The market will change again and who knows what the next big thing will be.
The Titan Quest developer's biggest problem may be simply that people aren't interested in another Diablo style clicky action RPG. I was kind of surprised that Dungeon Siege 2 did as well as it did. I literally fell asleep playing the first one. And I'm a gamer who spent hundreds of hours playing the Diablo series - I guess I just burnt out on that play style. At least until someone does something really innovative with it.
Re:Wrong argument? (Score:3, Interesting)
You can also add that WoW, or other MMO, requires much more money than any other game in the market. The basic cost + the monthly fees.
It's simply less money to spend on other games made by other companies. All that money goes into the same company. Meaning future releases in gaming will require bigger and bigger companies to be able to rival those kind of assets.
More money required = less "risk", less "innovation", less number of "games", "higher price" and more monthly fees...
We lose in the end.
So the lesser the number of WoW players, the better games we'll have.
TFA basically says something i was scared of the first time i heard of the original EverQuest and it's "monthly fees" and MMO and popularity a few years back...
Re:Of course it does (Score:3, Interesting)
No game is going to appeal to that many people, and only idiots *expect* people to buy any number of games. Why not just make a market analysis, some people go to Denny's and if everyone went there, there would be less people to go to other restaurants. You will never have everyone going to Denny's so the statement is stupid and irrelevant. The WoW causing doom and gloom for games relies on 3 flawed premises. One, people who play WoW NEVER buy anything else while they play it. Two, if they didn't play WoW they would buy games at the same rate as before, and three, just about every gamer plays WoW. None of which are true.
If 1.5 million Americans made up so large a portion of the gaming public that them spending time with WoW is such a horrible thing the gaming industry would not be as large as it is. WoW being a single cause of not selling games ignores the more probable situation where most games currently being released are absolute shit.
I do no play WoW. I do not buy bad games. I have not bought a game in some time because there has been nothing to really appeal to me. Look at that, a reason for not being a consumer whore that doesn't blame WoW.
Re:Wrong argument? (Score:2, Interesting)
World of Warcraft is terrible for the industry.
A couple of points (Score:3, Interesting)
a) The MMORPG space. This is a given, and there isn't really a whole lot other people in this space can do about it, IMHO. WoW is the single most mature implementation of the MMORPG genre that I've ever seen, and that possibly includes the offline RPG space as well. Blizzard have learned from the mistakes of UO in particular, and have created something which has taken the RPG out of the autistic/various other underground subcultures and genuinely into the mainstream. You don't need to be the stereotypical unemployed, socially/neurologically handicapped virgin (who have traditionally been the MMORPG's target audience) in order to appreciate WoW. This is finally an RPG which entirely normal people can find accessible.
b) The FPS space. This is a possibly even more difficult lock which Blizzard have established for the rest of the market to overcome. For probably a decade after Doom, PC gaming was almost exclusively about the first person shooter. The Sims was perhaps the first large scale title to reverse that trend somewhat, but it is still very prominent.
Having played capture the flag in the Warsong Gulch battleground, I find it virtually impossible to believe that Blizzard have not realised the historical importance of the FPS market, and intentionally tried (and very largely succeeded) to lure probably 80%-90% of the traditional FPS audience into a genre which, before WoW, said audience would not have dreamed of going anywhere near.
The real challenge that WoW presents to the rest of the industry IMHO is in its' versatility. WoW represents a large number of different types of games in one package. On the pure Diablo-like side, there is both an extremely flexible questing system, and instancing. For people more inclined to it, there is also an auction house which can actually provide a mini-game in itself, in that you can study trends and play the market in a similar way to real-world markets. Then there are the professions, as well as another mini-game associated with the fishing skill. On top of that, you have the roleplaying aspect, in which players can develop backstories and dramatic elements of their characters, and integrate that with the political situations which exist between the various nations in the overall backstory.
On the PvP side, you not only have Battlegrounds such as the aforementioned Warsong Gulch, but player-run scenarios where various settlements held by each faction will need to defend themselves against assaults by the opposing faction. The Battlegrounds are themselves another demonstration of Blizzard's brilliance in being able to avoid the kind of end-game boredom experienced in such games as Ultima Online, in the sense that they mark a point where the game transforms from a more traditional RPG into a limited, but large-scale clone of Unreal Tournament. This last element is what has allowed Blizzard to steal the FPS market.
So...what can the rest of the industry do? My own thoughts would be to move away from the elements Blizzard are already delivering...and as usual, it seems to be Will Wright who is leading the charge in that area. Spore promises to be about as different from anything within WoW as you can imagine, although in a lot of ways, is arguably going to be Wright's magnum opus, in that it will really incorporate all of the elements which up until now he has been putting into seperate games. (Sim Earth, Sim City, the Sims, etc)
I've said before what I believe the real problem with the gaming industry is...it's not WoW. It's the managerial staff of companies such as Electronic Arts, who quite aside from being open to innovation, are actually enormously averse to it. The one thing companies like EA want more than anything else are generic staple games which they can sell and rely on economically in the same manner as cereal boxes, year in and year out. We're talking about the sort of people I've described before as l
What about those of who DON'T play? (Score:3, Interesting)
How about instead of chasing the 60% of the market, cater to the rest of us who do play games that don't neccessarily require Alienware or some juiced-up PC game station (although Dreamfall [wikipedia.org] did require some serious 3D hardware). It doesn't take much to please me; nice looking relatively static graphics (e.g., background paintings) and a good story. I know it can't be costing that much to make my favorite adventure games because they are typically half the cost of the average thumb-twitcher PC game, and with the smaller sales volume, it's gotta be cheaper than the multi-million dollar budgets of WoW or they couldn't keep putting out these games.
Nice spin... (Score:3, Interesting)
The way the articles been presented, and a good chunk of the posts here, makes it sound like hes some resentful whining failure. When actually he sounds fairly positive and eager to try claim back some of the market.
So let me get this straight.... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no story, TQ is yet another Diablo rip off, and from what I've read it's not even a particularly good one. None of these games ever do well because everything they do Blizzard already did, but better.
As to his general argument, I play WoW, and I buy a lot fewer games, but I buy a lot fewer games because they cost $100 here and a very large percentage of them are crap. For me, it's much more cost effective to pay $20/month to play a game I know I'm going to enjoy, and which I can play at pretty much any time for however long I want to play it, than to pay $100 every 3 months trying to find a game which isn't a crappy console rip off, unoriginal, poorly coded, or in some other way unsatisfactory. I get more value for money out of WoW than I would out of buying more regular games, so I play WoW.
Re:WoW can be played casually (Score:3, Interesting)
Two nights?
One night for MC, one night for ZG, one night for AQ20, one night for BWL, one night for AQ40, one night for Naxx (ok, 2 nights for Naxx).
If pushed, we could probably do MC and BWL in one night - around 4-5 hours total, and do AQ20 and Ony in a night.
A couple of things turn me off on current games (Score:2, Interesting)
Second, I don't care much for MMORPGs, though I do play City of Heroes/Villains (love them supers!). If I'm spending $50 on a game, I want to be able to play it on my laptop when I'm traveling, I don't want to have to be tied to a data circuit to use the game.
And I'll do a general bitch about the price of MMORPGs. I don't mind the $15/month, but I think it is ridiculous that we have to spend $50 for the game, plus the $15/month, to play the blasted thing. Yes, if you're careful you can catch sales or lower prices, I'm just stating the $50 as a general retail price.
As for me and WoW, I'm not a huge fantasy fan. I'm also not in to "crafting" games, the concept of spending a few hours online fishing just doesn't do anything, I want to log on and beat up bad guys. Thus, CoH/V is a great game for me. Now if they'd only do a Mac version... (yes, dual boot a Macintel and you're good, I have friends with older G4/G5 Macs who want to play without buying new systems).
ermm.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Myself, I don't own/play WOW (I play Eve online a bit instead), but that's how I see it.
The only difference between WOW and traditional games is the long-term playability from the online aspect.
However, I can confirm that Diablo 1/2 had exactly the same effect for me (bought fewer games) - in fact I just fired up Diablo2 again last weekend :D
Re:Wrong argument? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, my point is, unlimited gameplay isn't a new phenomenon. Massive amounts of content is new, but, if you think about it, fighting tougher monsters who have the exact same combat tactics and just do more damage is something like fighting space invaders who have the exact same movement patterns but move much faster.
too many games as is (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong Game To Blame! (Score:2, Interesting)
They should've blamed Runescape, which userbase has topped 9 Millions [gamedaily.com] and has an ever growing title awareness between people [google.com].
All these consideration demonstrates that WOW doesn't kill anything, it's just people that are influenced by marketing and media education or that, more probably, Brian Sullivan\Gamasutra\Game Developer were tipped by Blizzard PR & Marketing to say so. Netx time I hope they will see a more suitable period to launch a long & compelling game: not MMOG addicted people get out in the sun on Summer, with or without anything to blame, sales would be low anyway. That was that way since 90s. Only titles that cannot compete for a place in the audience are launched during the summer.
They should have concentrated more to make a real RPG Killer Application, instead of weeping for lost opportunities without any clue.
Re:Wrong argument? (Score:2, Interesting)
Portal Info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_(Valve_Softwa
Portal Preview - http://pc.ign.com/articles/718/718911p1.html [ign.com]
Spore Info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(video_game) [wikipedia.org]
Spore Preview - http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3138792&did