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Analyst: SWTOR caused Dragon Age III delay

Justin Olivetti — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:30:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, MMO industry, Star Wars: The Old Republic

There's been a lot of discussion following the recent EA earnings report in which the company announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic has 1.3 million subscribers, down from its previous 1.7 million mark. We've heard from the fans, the critics, and the studio itself -- now it's time for the analysts to contribute their side of the conversation. According to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, EA's investment in SWTOR has caused a delay in other projects at BioWare, particularly in Dragon Age III's case.

The analyst noted that Dragon Age III's expected release window was delayed, and he says this is due to the enormous undertaking of SWTOR. "We believe that a significant portion of the BioWare team responsible for the game was reassigned to Star Wars in order to create content and fix bugs to keep the game's audience engaged," Pachter said.

Delay or no, Pachter is upbeat about EA's future, especially in light of the earnings report's news that the company turned a profit. He says that the company will continue to grow, make money, and be a good bet for investors.

Analyst: SWTOR caused Dragon Age III delay originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 08 May 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MMO subscription dollars in decline for the first time since 2002

Justin Olivetti — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:30:00 EST

Filed under: Economy, MMO industry, Miscellaneous

With all of the free-to-play MMOs coming onto the market and the F2P conversion of formerly subscription-only titles, it should come as no surprise that the subscription model is losing its grip on the industry. Eurogamer reports that starting in 2010, the money brought in from MMO subscriptions has actually gone into decline for the first time ever since analysts began tracking it in 2002.

2010's subscription revenue added up to $1.58 billion, a respectable amount but still 5% less than 2009. 2009 saw a 10% bump in subscriptions, and 2008 witnessed 21.6% growth. Connect the dots, and subscription revenue has most likely peaked and begun a downhill slide. Analysts predict that by 2015, revenue from subs will be as low as $1.33 billion. However, with the popularity of RIFT this year and the coming storm of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the subscription model may see a resurgence.

On the flip side, microtransactions from F2P models are rising exponentially, jumping 24% from 2009 to 2010 to account for $1.13 billion. With the two models combined, the industry saw a very modest 5% increase last year in revenue.

Screen Digest analyst Piers Harding-Rolls sees the writing on the wall: "The focus of many PC game operators has clearly shifted to micro-transaction‐based models -- in part due to competition in the subscription market especially in the high‐end MMOG segment, but also because of the flexibility micro-transactions offer operators in monetising gamers."

MMO subscription dollars in decline for the first time since 2002 originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Online sales will dominate the market by 2013

Justin Olivetti — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Business models, MMO industry, Miscellaneous

If you purchase your video games from a brick and mortar retailer, chances are you will be in the minority in just a couple of years.

GamesIndustry.biz cites a new report that predicts online game sales will become the dominant force in the market by 2013 through individual websites, retailers like Amazon.com, and video game distributors like Steam. A DFC Intelligence analyst noted that boxed game sales already peaked in 2008, and that as physical game sales slowly decline, online sales will pick up at a marked pace. DFC is a research and consulting firm that covers the field of video games.

Last year, online game retailers sold over $19.3 billion worth of digital merchandise -- a figure that's expected to rise to $37.9 billion by 2016. While real-world stores have much to worry about as the market shifts in the direction of online sales, the industry as a whole is expected to continue to substantially increase its growth over the next half-decade. One of the "key drivers" for that growth is PC games.

The analysts also predicted that in-game advertising will increase two-fold in the next few years as advertisers realize the potential for this blossoming market.

Online sales will dominate the market by 2013 originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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University deploys ninja tactics to research our MMO gameplay

Matt Daniel — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:30:00 EST

Filed under: MMO industry, News items, Miscellaneous

Welcome to 1984, MMO players! Researchers at the University of Minnesota have decided to launch Ninja Metrics, which is a software startup focusing on the analysis of data with the goal of "[identifying] key traits upon massive multiplayer online gaming communities." According to the researchers, this data will allow game developers to "identify each player's psycho-social motivations, and take action to help ensure enhanced user experience."

Jaideep Srivastava, co-inventor and cofounder of the startup company, claims that Ninja Metrics will be able to use the data it gathers in order to "identify user trends, target key players, and predict when a player may cancel their account." That's right, Ninja Metrics may know when you'll get burnt out on a game before you do! The key to this new analytical technique, according to Srivastava, is identifying the social influences of consumer communities and determining their effects on said communities. Should the startup prove successful, game developers may have another tool at their disposal with which to ensure their players are getting the best gaming experience possible. Just remember, Big Brother is watching!

University deploys ninja tactics to research our MMO gameplay originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mythos Europe attracts 250,000 players in two weeks, throws double XP weekend

Justin Olivetti — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:30:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Classes, Events, in-game, News items, Mythos, Free-to-play, Races

It's only been 15 days since Mythos Europe launched, but the resurrected action MMO is already seeing impressive results. According to Frogster, over 250,000 players have jumped into the game for some hectic hack-n-slash fun.

The company also provided some revealing statistics as it monitored its quarter-million playerbase. Apparently, the most popular class is the Bloodletter (40% of players), followed by the Pyromancer (32%) and Gadgeteer (28%). A full third of the playerbase chose the human race, with 28% going over to the Gremlins, 27% to the Satyrs, and 15% to the Cyclops. Finally, 66% of the characters created are male. So if you want to be a rarity, rolling a female Cyclops Gadgeteer is the way to go!

To celebrate this auspicious milestone, Frogster is rewarding its enthusiastic players with double XP for quests and monster kills this weekend. You can catch all of Mythos' double XP action from now until Monday at 12:00 p.m. EDT.

Mythos Europe attracts 250,000 players in two weeks, throws double XP weekend originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 13 May 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The evolution of classes

Seraphina Brennan — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Classes, Culture, News items

Classes are one of those central components of our MMOs. From the early days of Dungeons & Dragons to the use of class based systems in MUDs, we've been relying on the concept of characters with unique sets of skills working together to get the job done.

Andrew Vanden Bossche over at Gamasutra has recently sat down and looked at everyone's favorite FPS, Team Fortress 2, to analyze how classes have gone beyond their original roleplaying roots. While the article isn't exactly MMO-focused, it certainly does have bearing on our genre as we too begin to branch out away from the sword-and-board fantasy and into FPS territory with games like Global Agenda and Darkfall.

So if you want to see how experience and bullets go together while making gameplay more social and fun, check out the full article at Gamasutra.

The evolution of classes originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Analysts praise free-to-play MMOs, casually insult MMO players

Michael Zenke — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: Business models

A thoughtful Reuters piece explores a concept that MMO players have themselves been talking about since the economy began to take a downturn. Free to play MMOs, which have been gaining in popularity in the US for years, may be one of the biggest winners of this depressed financial situation. The article explores the benefits and increasingly high quality of online titles that don't require a subscription fee. While South Korea and other Asian countries have long enjoyed a strong connection with inexpensive social online gaming, that message is only just reaching saturation here in the states.

What's troubling to this blogger is that amid this very common-sense analysis, one of the most well-known commentators on videogaming sees fit to take a cheap swipe at a cross-section of gamers. Said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan: "I don't think (online multiplayer games) get impacted at all, because people who play them are addicts ... Losing their jobs makes them more likely to play because they have more time to play." It's frustrating that one of the few business analysts out there in the business world that understands gaming could be so dismissive of the online gaming genre. We'd like to suggest he do a bit more research in the future on this subject before making snappy statements like that.

Analysts praise free-to-play MMOs, casually insult MMO players originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Failed MMOnogamy: An analysis of multi-gamers

Shawn Schuster — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, MMO industry, Academic, Education

GamerDNA is at it once again with what they do best: crunching numbers and making pretty graphs! Ok, so it's much more than that, but we've become accustomed to some interesting analysis of our favorite MMOs and why we play them. In their most recent article, Sanya Weathers takes a look at people who play multiple MMOs, and which ones they're playing.

The article explains the details of the research, as the sample set was taken from gamerDNA users who have Xfire turned on. Within this research, we learn that 76% of users only play one title. Not surprising, that one title is mostly either World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online. To be relatively fair to WAR's newness, this research was done later than one month after the game's launch.

Continue reading Failed MMOnogamy: An analysis of multi-gamers

Failed MMOnogamy: An analysis of multi-gamers originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New Huxley gameplay video with analysis

Akela Talamasca — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Sci-fi, Video, Huxley, Game mechanics, New titles, Previews, PvP, News items, PvE, Opinion, Machinima, MMOFPS

Good things come to those who wait. In our earlier coverage of Webzen's upcoming MMO Huxley, we lamented the state of the in-game videos we saw -- a lot of running, nice scenery, but little else. Huxley-evolved.com has finally given us what we wanted with two videos available on blip.tv. At the time of this post, huxley-evolved.com's site was unavailable, so we're linking to the separate videos.

What does the first video tell us? Well, it's an FPS, which is a relative rarity in the MMO scene, and just behind that in little-seen-in-MMOs, it's Science Fiction. The traditionals are all here -- jumping, strafing, etc. Neither this, nor the following video feature any melée weaponry. We do notice that there's no HUD in this video, however, which some will like and some won't, but the second video does have one, so apparently it's toggleable. It also seems to take an extraordinarily long time to die, with hit after hit being scored before the opponent finally lays down. On death, a voice speaking Korean recites what we'll guess is a countdown. If our Korean-speaking audience members would care to drop a comment enlightening us, we'd appreciate it.

Continue reading New Huxley gameplay video with analysis

New Huxley gameplay video with analysis originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to beat WAR

Mike Schramm — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:02:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, MMO industry, New titles, PvP, Warhammer Online, Opinion

Darren over at CSG really has one prediction for 2008: Warhammer Online is going to be the game to beat in terms of PvP. He lays out what most of the other major MMOs will have to do to confront EA and Mythic at the PvP game when it comes out. And what exactly can they do? If WAR is really as good as Mythic claims it's going to be, nothing, really-- his best advice is for Age of Conan to dodge the blow, and he says that Pirates and Tabula Rasa still have too many factors at this point to figure out how they can compete with a game that hasn't been released into beta yet.

But my question is this: who says PvP matters in the first place. Look at the two MMOs this year that trumpeted their PvP: Vanguard and Fury. They're suffering, and it's not just because they couldn't provide a great PvP experience-- it's because they couldn't provide a great experience overall. PvP isn't the only thing WAR (or any other MMO trying to become top dog) will have to do right to succeed-- what it'll have to do is make sure that there's a core gameplay experience there (be it PvE or PvP) that will push people to stay with the game. Endgame PvP means nothing if no one wants to play enough to get that far.

Now, Warhammer does look like it has some excellent incentive to play-- even if the core gameplay suffers, players may fight through it just to see the RvR stuff (and if the Warhammer devs are smart and talented enough to make RvR the core gameplay, all the better). But it's not just about comparing one game's PvP to another-- the way a game becomes popular is that the core gameplay itself (whatever it consists of) stands on its own.

How to beat WAR originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Putting "non-MMO" gameplay into an MMO game

Mike Schramm — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion, Casual

Massively's own Michael Zenke just doesn't seem to quit thinking about MMOs-- not only is he writing for us here, but he's also posting very intelligent stuff on other sites about MMOs, and even over the Christmas holiday, on his own blog, he's turning out insight about MMO design. His latest post is about a game I love, Viva Pinata for the Xbox 360, and how developers can use the lessons learned in both casual and more complicated "empire-building" or "garden growing" games like that to inform MMO gameplay.

The thing that Viva Pinata does best, in my opinion, is that it creates a living breathing world easily and with a relatively transparent interface. Create some worms (sorry, "whirlms"), give them a house, and all of a sudden you get birds. House the birds, and more animals appear-- there's the sense that you're not so much playing as interacting with a real world around you. And that is something that is very easily translatable to MMOs-- I feel like I keep bringing it up, but Pirates' concept of "stored labor" gives me that same sense of "waiting to push the button" that Zenke talks about. And he also mentions the achievements and the gift system that extend VP's gameplay, and it's definitely true that those kinds of things can push MMOs forward as well.

It's probably true that the next big MMO won't draw their influence from an MMO at all-- it'll be the kind of game that brings not only hacking and slashing to the massively multiplayer table, but these other kinds of deeper gameplay as well.

Putting "non-MMO" gameplay into an MMO game originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to make RMT obsolete rather than legit

Mike Schramm — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:30:00 EST

Filed under: Economy, Game mechanics, Leveling, Making money, Opinion

Raph Koster was nice enough to come by and read our post about Live Gamer and their attempts to make RMT legit, and responds that while I suggested RMT was cheating and reading strategy guides was not, many older gamers actually do consider sites like Thottbot and EVE-db cheating. Just as the spirit of gaming evolved to consider outside help legitimate, so, Raph argues, will designers give up to market and player pressure, and make RMT viable and "legal."

Which is probably true-- it's easy to see a future where a game like Dungeon Runners becomes a big hit, and 90% of the people play the game for free (or close to it), and the other 10% of the audience pays for the game by using only the highest level items and gear, and shelling out money for both. But personally, I'd rather go for Raph's other idea-- that smart designers will find ways around integrating RMT solutions by coming up with ways to make RMT unnecessary. I've written and talked about this before-- when it's impossible and/or inconvenient to obtain ingame items with real money, players just won't do it. And no players means no market.

And let's not forget, either, that these are just games we're talking about-- RMT can buy you all the items you want, but it can't buy you great gameplay, and that's the reason we're all here in the first place. If designers emphasize gameplay over simple epic item collection in the first place, there's no reason for RMT at all. Companies like Live Gamer smell money in the air around virtual items, but hopefully (and this is what Raph doubted in his first post) there is still more money to be made with a successful widespread game than just selling the items inside of it.

How to make RMT obsolete rather than legit originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Expansion release schedule versus quality

Mike Schramm — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: EverQuest II, Expansions, Launches, Patches, Opinion

Relmstein has posted a great analysis of how to do expansions right-- he looks at the history of major MMO expansion releases, and grades their qualities on three criteria: timing of release, cost at retail, and quality of content. In essence, he sets up a quick continuum that proves the old theory: "Good, fast, or cheap. Choose two."

A game like World of Warcraft has released one terriffic quality expansion, but as Relmstein says, it was a long time coming. And Star Wars Galaxies released huge updates one after another, but we all know how well that worked out. Relmstein lists Everquest 2 as the best of all worlds-- they've released expansions fairly often (every 12 months regualrly), at fairly cheap prices (the fact that the original game content comes with every expansion doesn't hurt), and the quality has been done fairly well.

It's an interesting balance. Of course expansion packs aren't an MMO-only phenomenon, but the idea of constantly pushing out new game content is something that lends itself very well to a persistent massively multiplayer world. You'd think that there has to be some rate out there at which players are getting their content too fast, but according to Relmstein, we haven't even reached the ideal rate yet-- it's still taking developers too long to cook up polished expansion content for hungry players.

Expansion release schedule versus quality originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Analyst talks World of Warcraft's churn rate

Michael Zenke — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:02:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Business models, Economy, MMO industry

Analyst Mike Hickey from Janco Partners has taken a closer look at Blizzard's business, and has come away with some fascinating figures. Gamasutra reports that Hickey's investigations have shown that World of Warcraft's churn numbers are a surprisingly low 4-5% per month, while monthly revenues are in 'the low teens' per subscriber when averaged across the globe. (They're averaged that way due to the disparity in payment between US/EU subscribers and those in China.)

With only 4 years in the market, World Of Warcraft continues to attract subscribers at an amazing rate ... WoW controlled 5.6 and 8.1 million subscribers in '05 and '06 respectively, up 45%. Through 09/30/07, WoW controlled 9.3 million subscribers, up a respectable 15% before the seasonally hot Q4 period.

It should be noted that 1.) it's impossible to determine whether the churn rates are accurate and 2.) the average churn rate across the industry isn't a known statistic, so it's hard to say how 'off the norm' these rates are. I'm going to wager a guess it's usually more than 5%, though.

Analyst talks World of Warcraft's churn rate originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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