GDC 2010 - First Look at City of Eternals and Ohai Games

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Updated Mon, Mar 15, 2010 by Medawky

Great ideas don’t always translate into a successful business model and the gaming world has seen its fair share of seemingly sure fire concepts crash and burn, but every once in a while something comes along that has so many pieces of the puzzle put together that success is virtually guaranteed. Susan Wu and her team of MMOG veterans at Ohai games believe they have found that magical formula so Ten Ton Hammer sat down with her at GDC 2010 to discuss Ohai, City of Eternals, and the future of MMOGs.

Susan was confident that the timing was right to “bridge the gap between MMO and social gaming” and that “most social games today are not that social”. By removing the barriers that keep the vast majority of players away from MMOGs, Ohai believes they can tap a much larger market than has previously been accessed, and be financially successful doing it. “Farmville has 100 million players that spend, on average, 1 to 2 dollars each per year on one end of the spectrum and then you have a game like World of Warcraft that is enormously successful in their own way with only approximately 12 million players but yet they still manage to make over a billion dollars a year. We think there is a huge opportunity in the market, there is a new efficient frontier so to speak, of MMOGs that target 20 to 30 million players and monetize at 20 dollars each per year.” Making an MMOG for “Your aunt who loves fashion wars, or your wife who doesn’t like MMOs” sounds like a great way to get the most out of that new frontier.

Check out the entire article here.