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

Nonetheless, FIFA Online 2 quickly and quietly set a benchmark by which other sports MMOGs would judge themselves, and Neowiz followed up with Slugger, a heavily stylized yet fully featured baseball MMO that, according to Neowiz, is "on par" with a FO2-sized playerbase. Despite baseball's still-growing popularity in Asia, bringing Slugger to North America only made sense, and Neowiz partnered with GamesCampus for the task. GamesCampus, a California-based publisher that in early 2009 boasted an audience of two million players who play roughly 25 million game sessions a year, had previously published the online golf game Shot Online carved out an agreement with Major League Baseball Advanced Media to use player likenesses, team logos, ballpark images, and more licensed assets in November 2008. Their North American adaptation of the game, dubbed MLB Dugout Heroes, was launched to critical approbation in April 2009.

MLB Dugout Heroes

Franchise Tags

GamesCampus Executive VP of Marketing and Business Development David Chang noted that the licensing process hasn't been all sunshine and home runs, but paid dividends: "Dealing with Major League Baseball and the Players Association has been challenging at times, but ultimately very rewarding. MLB and the Players Association are very involved with how the league and their players are portrayed and they look after their rights aggressively. You need to have a first-class title and organization as both parties will do their homework because, as a business partner, you are also representing their brand and players."

The decision to license asssets from a major sports league is perhaps the toughest decision a sports games publisher has to make. There are precedents to a highly successful unlicensed sports game , but without the annual hype-fest of league authorized sports games a la Madden, unlicensed titles like Tecmo Bowl and Double Dribble were one-hit wonders and now belong to the NES's dusty past. However, the concept is by no means lost; the preeminent browser-based online football titles - Goal Line Blitz and Quick Hit Football - are two examples of low budget online titles that have found a compelling niche without the steep cost of a license, and many football fans anxiously await Backbreaker, a license-less, tech-driven footballer due in May.

A middling step is to do individual licensing deals with players rather than with professional leagues. Chang noted that GamesCampus felt this was the right approach for their premier title, which according to GC boasts 2 million players worldwide. "In Shot Online, historically people have created their own characters, but we have recently signed Anthony Kim, Camilo Villegas, and Y.E. Yang to be playable in the game as well, giving players a choice." That choice will come later this month, when the PGA players are introduced into the game, complete with individual movements and gear.

Camillo Villegas in Shot Online

The Game Outside the Game

But licenses and endorsements only go so far. Says Chang: "You need to get [the players] to connect with the content pretty quickly or you will lose their attention. Having professional players or licensed leagues help, but after the hundredth game, even hardcore players are looking to do something more with the content." That more is one of the biggest challenges of the sports MMOG, since sports fans are accustomed to enjoying their games especially at a remove, what with the trades, the deals, the second-guessing on radio and TV talk shows, the highlight reels, etc.

Nowhere is this more apparent in the US than with fantasy football, and depending on your definition of massively multiplayer, it could easily be the largest browser-based free-to-play / freemium MMOG in North America. Last year, ESPN claimed that 27 million take part in the online game of roster guessing game, and Yahoo! reported revenues of over $1 billion from its 13-15 million players in 2009. More than a few game developers and publishers have oggled those numbers, but the dependence of fantasy sports on verifiable, real-life statistics delivered in real time that likely prevents its beyond its current saturation.

While sports games, especially those that offer sideline modes such as Football Manager, MLB Front Office Manger, and the "franchise mode" of the Madden series, have a lot of simulation depth, online sports games have typically kept players heavily involved from play to play. Even if a game session lasts about 30 minutes, what's the secret to filling out a player's experience and making the game feel like a world rather than a series of matches? "Team and player training is an obvious answer," Chang answers, "but it’s not the final one. You need to keep people engaged in the content and game, and that means creating an all encompassing experience around the actual match that is being played."

Online sports games try to build up the social experience and metagame in different ways. Most have graphical lobby / chatroom areas, or particular note are the Paris and London city environments of Empire of Sports or the pub crawls and post-game paparazzi shoots of Football Superstars. But for MLB Dugout Heroes and many if not all sports MMOGs, that "all encompassing experience" goes hand-in-hand with the game's business model. Virtual items and skill-ups are microtransaction-based, that is, available for purchase with real currency (or for puchase with tokens bought with real money or, in some cases, earned). In MLB Dugout Heroes, for example, players can purchase cards that allow players to be drafted from many different baseball eras, as well as uniforms, bats, pitches, and more.

MLB Dugout Heroes

Given that so much of the play experience is bound up in the selection and worth of items, (plus the simple fact that the sports audience isn't used to the idea of a subscription beyond fees for magazines and cable), players are not likely to see a sports MMOG with a monthly subscription anytime soon. Chang notes that the seasonality of pro sports (and their popularity) is another issue. "Subscriptions present a unique problem with sports MMOs because professional sports are seasonal - so you have to account for that. What do you do in the off-season? Of course, people still play during the off-season, however, a significant portion take a break. Do you grant people a grace period? Just charge them anyway? That doesn't seem fair. It seems more logical to pay-as-you-go, and that is in essence the item-based, microtransaction model."