How Much is Too Much: A Look At The Saturation of the MMOG Market

style="background: transparent url('http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/75256') no-repeat scroll 100% 0%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;">

Few
trends in the gaming world have taken hold and dominated
quite like MMOGs have in the last ten years. In the next year or so we
will
begin to be flooded with articles and shows featuring recaps of the
decade and
while most will focus on sports franchises, personalities, celebrities
and
major events, those dedicated to video games will undoubtedly dub the
2000’s as
the decade of the MMOG. With World
of
Warcraft pushing the genre into
the mainstream like no game before it had,
the industry has seen an explosion of new players and with them a flood
of new
games.

While
the influx of players into the realm of online gaming
is great for the industry, have we begun to reach a point of market
saturation
that will ultimately kill it off? Has the rising popularity begun to
push our
beloved genre towards being a fad that will eventually jump the shark,
or are
there still more players just waiting for that perfect game to bring
them into
the fold as well?

 

Here
at Ten Ton Hammer, we have in excess of three hundred
games featured with more being added nearly every day. These games run
the
gambit, from old west shooters to space combat spreadsheets and
everything in
between, allowing almost unlimited opportunities for us to play what
ever style
or in whatever world we can imagine. As developers continue to tinker
with that
elusive formula that will catapult them to untold riches, gamers are
left to
weather the storm and often times play the part of guinea pig as they
shell out
money for unfinished games.

 

The
flipside to the gamer paradox of growing tired with the
games is the developers, and more to the point, the publishers, growing
tired
of a fickle market that is, as our editorial team pointed out recently,
growing
more competitive and more expensive with each new release. How long
will
corporate big wigs like Activision/Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who by
his own
admission wants to “take all the fun out of making video
games” and “have a
real culture of thrift” where they keep employees
“focused on the deep depression”
to instill an environment where profit is the ultimate goal, continue
to pour
money into what mostly amounts to a losing proposition?

 

Many
speculate that the underlying desire to make online
games by developers is fueled by the constant income stream that
account based
games require. Single player games are far too easily hacked and
distributed,
which has started to relegate many of them to console first development
with
only ports of the games brought to the PC market. As new distribution
streams
come to market there may be a large scale return to single player
gaming for
computer gamers, where top notch releases such as style="">Dragon Age: Origins become
the norm rather than the exception.

 

While
there may one day be a pendulum shift back to more man
vs. machine gaming, the highly addictive properties of MMOGs will
ensure that
they will continue to have a place in the market. Most gamers who
experience
the social interaction and large scale living feel of these worlds tend
to get
hooked and keep playing them for years, and even the least populated
games out
there tend to generate enough revenue to keep the servers going well
past the
games prime.

 

The
one market that will most likely fuel the next level of
MMOG popularity is that of gaming consoles. With many developers
professing
interest in console based MMOGs and CCP announcing style="">DUST 514,
it appears that this segment may once again see some life
that has been dormant since FFXI,
EQOA and
the Phantasy
Star games died out. As Ten Ton
Hammer’s own Martuk
discussed in his href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/75072">editorial
regarding consoles and MMOGS,
it’s a huge market waiting to be tapped:

 

style=""> style="font-size: 10pt;">At this year’s GDC
Austin, Turbine's Vice President of
product development, Craig Alexander, href="http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25349"> style=""> style="font-size: 10pt;">headed a
discussion about the potential importing of MMOGs to consoles style=""> style="font-size: 10pt;">. During the
discussion, pie-chart graphs were used to outline MMOG growth by 2011.
Projections have MMOGs making up over 40% of the PC gaming market by
that time
and over 15% of the console market, each providing over $2 billion in
revenue.
So the incentive for developers is certainly there for an almost
virtually
untapped market. However, that market won’t remain untapped
for very long.
Already a number of MMOGs are targeting a console release. style="">Age of Conan style=""> style="font-size: 10pt;">, Champions
Online,
Final Fantasy XIV style=""> style="font-size: 10pt;">, and style="">The Agency
are just some of the games that will be aiming to
make their debut on consoles.

 

Opening the door to the vast number of console players will
mean an even greater deluge of bad games and failures, but it only
takes one
mega hit to make it all worthwhile, just ask Blizzard.

 

While
there is no denying that the genre is oversaturated
and rife with copy cat titles that are little more than glorified ponzi
schemes, it appears there is still room to grow in MMOG land.
Innovations such
as streaming digital distribution, 3D browser based games, PC to
console
interoperability and enhanced RMT based offerings will continue to push
the
massively multiplayer universe forward for at least another decade.