MMORPGs making money
Posted on August 13, 2002 @ 17:22 in Research
Once a destination for the fringe Dungeons & Dragons crowd, the online role-playing game [EverQuest] now has 433,000 paying customers who generate $5 million a month for the Japanese entertainment giant. Given the 40 percent gross-profit margins, and the fact that this world practically runs itself, the dragon-slaying business is looking pretty good these days.
Business2.0 has an article up about the big business virtual worlds are turning into. Not overreacting, the article also says that Sony makes a couple of times the money from a big movie hit that it is currently making from EverQuest. The point however is that online gaming has the potential of getting very big if the succes can be replicated in other games and other platforms: think consoles, with both Sony and Microsoft working hard to get their game consoles networked; later maybe pervasive or roaming gaming on your mobile or handheld, who knows.
Most importantly though, the article mentions that these online game spaces keep attracting players because they are social spaces. The article doesn't really go into the point, except for saying that people keep coming back because apart from the game goals, the game really is about playing together, or, put in more Business2.0-like economic terms:
The beauty of EverQuest... is that players effectively pay to entertain each other.
Currently there are a good deal of big MMORPGs in the pipeline, including StarWars Galaxies (also produced by Sony), which is said to become the next big thing in online gaming. I wonder though, if socializing is really such a big thing, could it be replicated beyond a game space, into a virtual social space of the size and quality of current games? I'm thinking Metaverse here: essentially a virtual corollary (using the term loosely) of the 'real' world; no direct game related goals, but a very realistic cause-and-effect system.
First thing though, for widespread acceptance: lose the MMORPG acronym. That's not going to bring in the big crowds. In the mean time, keep an eye on who's making the money and what kind of worlds they're crafting... do you really want them replicating our everyday social structures in the places you go to escape everyday reality?
Comments and Trackbacks
No comments or trackbacks for this entry yet.
Post a comment
Comments and trackbacks have been closed on this site. My apologies.
Since MT-Blacklist inexplicably stopped working I had no other recourse than close comments and trackbacks to stop the spam. I've been meaning to correct this for quite a while, but life got in the way... in a good way I should add.