RELATIVELY SPEAKING, I MEAN.
I don't doubt that MMOs are expensive to make. They're huge. Require tons of assets, and costly servers. It's why a bunch of them still have sub fees. (That, and free money without the risk of losing an install base.)
So whenever somebody talks about the death of the MMO, one of the reasons stated is "Well, they're just too expensive to make". Initially, I just nod my head and agree without much thought. There's no doubt that modern MMOs from small, or even mid-size developers and publishers are pretty much guaranteed a short life-span. The appeal of an MMO is a breathing world with real people populating it, but if your MMO doesn't hook in a sizable audience, you simply can't maintain the cost of it.
But that's not what I'm talking about right now. I'm talking about AAA MMOS from big publishers. EA, Ubisoft, Activision, 2K, WB, etc.
Surely, MMOs are still a profitable and viable use of resources. Look at Destiny, The Division, and soon, Anthem.
While many will refute the "MMO Status" of these games, to me that's only a technicality and an issue of semantics. Fuctionally, they are more or less the same, or at least a sub-genre of the MMO super-genre. These games have an insane amount of assets and I would imagine digital archiving work put into them, just like any other online game.
Listed on the Wikipedia page of most expensive video games, of the top 10 most expensive games to make (Total), 2 of them can be described as "MMOs"
In terms exclusive to development costs, again, only 2 of these games are in the top 10. (Technically, 3, as Destiny is listed at the bottom of the sort, given it's "<140m" descriptor.
Though I haven't personally checked each individual source for these, I can't imagine things are super off here, at least given the public information that we know. (A lot of the Marketing Costs simply aren't displayed.)
Now, if we go by the Wikipedia numbers in good faith, this still ignores the fact that MMOs by nature have a high amount of server maintenance, and, well, servers in general. Though most of these games have or had a giant online component, a fair amount of them did not have an online population comparable to the mega-hits of today, and probably stored less player data than a typical MMO. We also have to recognize that SWTOR, Destiny, and Defiance all scored pretty high here, and are all fairly modern entries in the genre, granted. But I also think we should frame everything in the now highly GaaS driven industry of third parties and online games.
With hyper-scientifically-proven approaches to monetization of piecemeal content and microtransactions, these types of games have got to be some of the most profitable things we've ever seen in the industry, for better or for worse. While these micro-transactions can be applied to almost any genre, as we've seen over the past few years, it felt to me like this style of monetization in non-mobile gaming really got an early foothold in these MMO type games. Perhaps I'm blatantly wrong and the numbers tell me so, but I feel as though MMOs and MTX go hand in hand in a strange way, though that may just be because MMOs were some of the earliest, if not the absolute earliest GaaS titles. Just a thought, but not an argument point I'm willing to die on a hill for.
But compared to other AAA games, are MMOs from big name publishers really dramatically less financially viable for them to die out? Given the right marketing push, (The Division, Guild Wars 2), the right developer (Destiny), or the right IP (SWTOR, ESO, FFXIV), these games can coast on some associated reputation alone, at least for a little while, even if they do trend downwards over time, as most online games do. Obviously publishers need to research any and all market trends when releasing anything, but it's not like the days of old where the MMO genre is unproven and there are hundreds of competitors at any time. Nobody is rushing out to be the next WoW as soon as possible anymore. We have years and years of data and lessons learned to put something out with a relatively lower risk factor than before.
I don't know all the numbers, and I certainly don't work in the industry, so obviously I'm not educated to really make some declaration about it, but I do feel qualified enough to ask.
I don't doubt that MMOs are expensive to make. They're huge. Require tons of assets, and costly servers. It's why a bunch of them still have sub fees. (That, and free money without the risk of losing an install base.)
So whenever somebody talks about the death of the MMO, one of the reasons stated is "Well, they're just too expensive to make". Initially, I just nod my head and agree without much thought. There's no doubt that modern MMOs from small, or even mid-size developers and publishers are pretty much guaranteed a short life-span. The appeal of an MMO is a breathing world with real people populating it, but if your MMO doesn't hook in a sizable audience, you simply can't maintain the cost of it.
But that's not what I'm talking about right now. I'm talking about AAA MMOS from big publishers. EA, Ubisoft, Activision, 2K, WB, etc.
Surely, MMOs are still a profitable and viable use of resources. Look at Destiny, The Division, and soon, Anthem.
While many will refute the "MMO Status" of these games, to me that's only a technicality and an issue of semantics. Fuctionally, they are more or less the same, or at least a sub-genre of the MMO super-genre. These games have an insane amount of assets and I would imagine digital archiving work put into them, just like any other online game.
Listed on the Wikipedia page of most expensive video games, of the top 10 most expensive games to make (Total), 2 of them can be described as "MMOs"
In terms exclusive to development costs, again, only 2 of these games are in the top 10. (Technically, 3, as Destiny is listed at the bottom of the sort, given it's "<140m" descriptor.
Though I haven't personally checked each individual source for these, I can't imagine things are super off here, at least given the public information that we know. (A lot of the Marketing Costs simply aren't displayed.)
Now, if we go by the Wikipedia numbers in good faith, this still ignores the fact that MMOs by nature have a high amount of server maintenance, and, well, servers in general. Though most of these games have or had a giant online component, a fair amount of them did not have an online population comparable to the mega-hits of today, and probably stored less player data than a typical MMO. We also have to recognize that SWTOR, Destiny, and Defiance all scored pretty high here, and are all fairly modern entries in the genre, granted. But I also think we should frame everything in the now highly GaaS driven industry of third parties and online games.
With hyper-scientifically-proven approaches to monetization of piecemeal content and microtransactions, these types of games have got to be some of the most profitable things we've ever seen in the industry, for better or for worse. While these micro-transactions can be applied to almost any genre, as we've seen over the past few years, it felt to me like this style of monetization in non-mobile gaming really got an early foothold in these MMO type games. Perhaps I'm blatantly wrong and the numbers tell me so, but I feel as though MMOs and MTX go hand in hand in a strange way, though that may just be because MMOs were some of the earliest, if not the absolute earliest GaaS titles. Just a thought, but not an argument point I'm willing to die on a hill for.
But compared to other AAA games, are MMOs from big name publishers really dramatically less financially viable for them to die out? Given the right marketing push, (The Division, Guild Wars 2), the right developer (Destiny), or the right IP (SWTOR, ESO, FFXIV), these games can coast on some associated reputation alone, at least for a little while, even if they do trend downwards over time, as most online games do. Obviously publishers need to research any and all market trends when releasing anything, but it's not like the days of old where the MMO genre is unproven and there are hundreds of competitors at any time. Nobody is rushing out to be the next WoW as soon as possible anymore. We have years and years of data and lessons learned to put something out with a relatively lower risk factor than before.
I don't know all the numbers, and I certainly don't work in the industry, so obviously I'm not educated to really make some declaration about it, but I do feel qualified enough to ask.
