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Close this windowFar from the Madden Crowd: Sports and MMO Gaming
February will be a big month for sports. And not just in the United States, where much attention has been focused on Super Bowl XLIV. Next weekend, the Vancouver Olympics will draw the attention of the world for two weeks of the fastest, highest, strongest, and (in the case of curling) quirkiest. That being the case, we at Ten Ton Hammer thought it might be a good time to see what progress sports have made in MMO gaming.
Sports and MMO gaming might seem like a paradox, but more than a few noted professional athletes have bridged the geekdom gap in recent years. And none moreso than future Hall of Fame pitcher Kurt Schilling, who liked MMOGs so much he founded a game development company. Other athletes, like Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe and former New York Jets lineman Nick Smith, have entered the WoW fold. So if athletes like MMOGs and we have an international love affair with sports, why the dearth of MMO sports titles?
The Box Score
To set the stage, here's a little something for the football widows and sports haters among you. In 2007, video game revenue in the US alone was $21.3 billion (about $6.6B coming from the MMOG sector).
That's just a shade under the $21.7 billion in combined revenues from Major League Baseball ($6.1B), the National Football League ($6.7B), the National Basketball Association ($3.4B), the English Premier League ($3.15B), and the National Hockey League ($2.3B). 2007 is the last year for which we have solid numbers, since many 2007 sports seasons end in 2008 and are reported in 2009. And for novelty's sake (and because I love winning this argument with my movie buffs), we'll note that Hollywood raked in less than half of total video game revenues at $9.6 billion.
Given those fat figures, maybe the question we should be asking is why aren't sports making more use of the video game and MMO medium rather than the other way around. The answer might have more to do with eyeballs than dollar signs. Sticking with 2007 numbers, the NFL playoffs drew 33 million fans to the tube, for example. And just to up the ante I'll note that NBC expects 200 million folks to tune into some part of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic games.
But to really knock your athletic socks off, take soccer, or un-American football if you prefer. We all know soccer has a much broader audience, but I was surprised to find out how broad exactly. International soccer's governing body, FIFA, is currently made up of 205 member associations with over 300,000 clubs and 240 million registered players worldwide. That's more than 2/3 the population of the United States playing the game in a member organization, let alone the fans spectating.
And what a fanbase it is: the FIFA website reports that over 715.1 million tuned in for the 2005 World Cup final, which is about 10% of the earth's total population*. So you get the picture: lots and lots of people like sports, especially soccer, and no doubt lots of those people are avid enough fans to want to see their sports made into games. But we're back to the starting point - why haven't we seen a breakthrough sports MMOG?
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Nobody Beats the Neowiz
As it turns out, we have. Sort of. And by "we," I mean the human race, not necessarily its North American or European quotient. Korean games developer Neowiz, and its frighteningly huge 1,000 employee Seoul studios, has had a hand in a number of MMO sports titles. The one with the most brand familiarity is FIFA Online 2, which was co-developed with EA Singapore and saw its Korean launch in 2006.
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FIFA Online 2 |
While an English language version of FIFA Online 2 exists, the game hasn't been published outside a select number of Pacific Rim territories, neither are there plans to do so. As for reasons why, some speculate that EA didn't want to put the game's recently updated but fairly weak 2007 graphics engine up against the kind of cutting edge graphics Western gamers associate with (fundamentally console based) sports titles. Toss in some rumblings from players about the state of the game's economy, and it seems EA decided to enter the Western market with FIFA Online 2's sequel, confusingly named FIFA Online, in June 2010.