Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Ten Ton Hammer: AGDC and the San Francisco GDC are pretty different, but at the same time the AGDC is obviously growing, do you expect we’ll start to see some bigger announcements coming out of this show in years to come? Are you planning any big announcements this year or is that something that’s going to be relegated to the bigger GDC?

Gordon Walton: Most of the announcements around developer shows have to do with developer stuff. It really has to do with product. Every now and then somebody will announce a product at the shows, which is good and in theme with the focus of the show. But I can’t think of very many products that were announced at GDC that were like game products. They may be coming out and maybe show something that they haven’t shown before, but I can’t think of any announcements. I expect that some people will announce MMOs or other online activity games at this show. I expect that will happen to some degree, but again, this is more of an industry focus show than a consumer focus show.

Ten Ton Hammer: The push for quality MMO gaming seems to be really high with consumers. What do you think is really keeping MMOs from taking off and exploding with popularity? WoW (World of Warcraft) has several million players in North America, but we know there are more MMO gamers out there than what’s in WoW. WoW seems to me that it must have a pretty high burn rate of people that it churns through, so where are all these MMO players going after they get done with WoW and how do other companies grab them up? 

Gordon Walton: There is a class of people that define themselves as MMO players, but most people are just players. They try a new experience and the endorphins stop coming and they stop doing it. They’re just looking for another experience that’s going to bring the endorphins to them. I think the universe of people that define themselves as MMO players are playing an MMO somewhere, but there’s a whole bunch of people who are just looking a great experience and when it doesn’t feel great anymore they’re going to move on.

Ten Ton Hammer: You don’t think any of the other MMOs out there really hit on that lasting endorphin release like WoW has?

Gordon Walton: Oh no, if you look at them I think there’s still a ton of MMOs that are perfectly viable and have an audience. And if you actually start looking more at the MMOs that aren’t boxed released and you start looking at the online only stuff, there’s a huge younger audience that are playing MMO-like games. There are more people playing those than there are playing WoW by at least a factor of four or five in the US. The players are out there. I think it’s somewhat arrogant on some level for us to think that eventually they’ll graduate up to the kind of games that we’re use to looking at and focusing on. Maybe WoW just isn’t the right thing for them.