@Poopy as I am not in the software business I really couldn't know and will defer to the more knowledgeable people on here, however your numbers seem... huge.
And no the users are not idiots, they are the common person and I bet 1/3 would defer the marshmallow as stanford experiement showed. What you didn't link was the number of criticisms the study showed, primarly that deferrered gratification was linked with age, and that there are number of factors that go into whether the child would defer, not the least of which was the trustworthiness of the presenter. But thats besides the point.
Your number seem huge.
Bioware only has 800 employees and SWTOR seems just fine.
Most games fail simply becuse there are 1. Bad -(not fun to the majority, or bad coding) or 2. The developers misjudged the market. It is not really more complicated than this.
Venge
edit - for your movie analogy. It's very flawed due to wages, Daniel Radcliff alone took over 50 million dollars for the deathly hallows making him the 5th highest paid star in hollywood. You can bet Rupert Grint, emma watson, alanrickman, helena bonham carter, john cleese... took many many many 10's of millions more. Not much compared to the 50-70,000 wage of coders.
Venge
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Despite the fact that everyone thinks they want another vanilla themepark, they really don't. The reason is because when you've seen one, you seen them all. The skin you put on it matters not. There simply isn't enough evolving depth to truly differentiate them. You also get the same crowd of combat-oriented people on the servers, instead of a diverse community.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
SWG failed because it had too many fingers in the pie and none of the copyrights wanted to take thier finger out to make it profitable. Hence, NGE to chop fingers out.
OP: You are right in how box sales are made, not in how to keep subs. Most games don't even try to keep subs any more.
STO: Huge IP that got gutted like a fish. They don't care either, it's all cake now. SW-TOR doesn't either. If it holds subs, fine if it doesn't, oh well, they will have made thier profit in boxes.
They "fail" because success has a new model and longevity isn't in the model.
Uhm....the OP's premise is false, or at least misleading. The vast majority of MMOs succeed -- and by succeed, I mean make enough money to stay in business.
I can count on one hand (perhaps two if I really think about it) the number of titles that have outright failed, whilst the number of MMOs still active is likely near 100. Look at this site's game list if you need to confirm this.
So the implication that very many MMOs fail is misleading at best.
They "fail" because success has a new model and longevity isn't in the model.
How do you figure? Subs may not bring in as much revenue as a retail box but are easy, steady income. On top of that, expansions can bring in more retail box sales that require a fraction of the developement time and cost required because all of the core systems on the game are in place.
Uhm....the OP's premise is false, or at least misleading. The vast majority of MMOs succeed -- and by succeed, I mean make enough money to stay in business.
An MMO has huge up-front costs - it can still fail to make back the cost of developing it, but be profitable to keep running once you've written off that initial loss.
Made up example: $20M to develop, $2M/year income, $1M/year to keep the servers running and patches flowing. It would take 20 years to turn a profit, but shutting it down doesn't get that $20M back so you might as well take in the $1M/year operating profit for as long as it lasts.
On top of "financial failure", there's also the question of "artistic failure", where a game only turns a profit because of successful marketting rather than satisfying customers. However, this is much harder to gauge and requires reading the tea leaves of player churn/retention.
Uhm....the OP's premise is false, or at least misleading. The vast majority of MMOs succeed -- and by succeed, I mean make enough money to stay in business.
An MMO has huge up-front costs - it can still fail to make back the cost of developing it, but be profitable to keep running once you've written off that initial loss.
Made up example: $20M to develop, $2M/year income, $1M/year to keep the servers running and patches flowing. It would take 20 years to turn a profit, but shutting it down doesn't get that $20M back so you might as well take in the $1M/year operating profit for as long as it lasts.
On top of "financial failure", there's also the question of "artistic failure", where a game only turns a profit because of successful marketting rather than satisfying customers. However, this is much harder to gauge and requires reading the tea leaves of player churn/retention.
Your hypothetical aside (I understand how the business works), my point stands. Vast majority of MMOs are still in business. Very few of them have failed. Again, look at the MMORPG.COM Game list. I haven't counted, but at a glance somewhere around 100 MMOs still active and in business.
Your hypothetical aside (I understand how the business works), my point stands. Vast majority of MMOs are still in business. Very few of them have failed. Again, look at the MMORPG.COM Game list. I haven't counted, but at a glance somewhere around 100 MMOs still active and in business.
But this is my point - you can't judge whether a game has been financially successful overall by whether or not it is still worth keeping the servers on.
Your hypothetical aside (I understand how the business works), my point stands. Vast majority of MMOs are still in business. Very few of them have failed. Again, look at the MMORPG.COM Game list. I haven't counted, but at a glance somewhere around 100 MMOs still active and in business.
But this is my point - you can't judge whether a game has been financially successful overall by whether or not it is still worth keeping the servers on.
So some company, out of the goodness of their heart, is operating at a loss to keep the servers on?
Is World War II Online a success or failure? Is Vanguard a success or failure?
Bankruptcy isn't a definitive sign of failure either. Plenty of businesses go into bankruptcy and come back stronger and more successfully.
AC2 -- failure
Auto Assault (if i remember correctly) -- failure
a few more I'm sure. Point is, they went out of business because nobody played them. If a company can find enough subs/revenue to keep servers funded, I'd call that a success because somebody's niche gameplay is being fullfilled. The anomoly that I'm aware of is Earth and Beyond which was profitable, but EA canned it anyway because it wasn't profitable enough.
They "fail" because success has a new model and longevity isn't in the model.
How do you figure? Subs may not bring in as much revenue as a retail box but are easy, steady income. On top of that, expansions can bring in more retail box sales that require a fraction of the developement time and cost required because all of the core systems on the game are in place.
Because economies are based on bubbles. Proof is everywhere.
Oh, quote it all so you don;t look like you are nitpicking
Originally posted by free2play
Aion and Rift are DAoC clones, not WoW clones,
SWG failed because it had too many fingers in the pie and none of the copyrights wanted to take thier finger out to make it profitable. Hence, NGE to chop fingers out.
OP: You are right in how box sales are made, not in how to keep subs. Most games don't even try to keep subs any more.
STO: Huge IP that got gutted like a fish. They don't care either, it's all cake now. SW-TOR doesn't either. If it holds subs, fine if it doesn't, oh well, they will have made thier profit in boxes.
They "fail" because success has a new model and longevity isn't in the model.
Your hypothetical aside (I understand how the business works), my point stands. Vast majority of MMOs are still in business. Very few of them have failed. Again, look at the MMORPG.COM Game list. I haven't counted, but at a glance somewhere around 100 MMOs still active and in business.
The question is how many of those games that actually will have a surplus of money once the game finally closes down?
Because once you made a game it is usually finacial better to keep running it and get in what you can off it even if you never will get back all the money you invested in it.
Most of the games closed down were owned by small studios that went out of business. A large company will usually have their games up even if they know they will just get in half the cost they had on it.
And a game that when it closes down lost money is a failure in mine and most others books no matter how many years it was online.
Do you actually think games like WAR (who stated that they needed 500K players to turn profit even though it is less with all the cuts they made after launch) and Vanguard makes money? They are just losing less every month.
Comments
@Poopy as I am not in the software business I really couldn't know and will defer to the more knowledgeable people on here, however your numbers seem... huge.
And no the users are not idiots, they are the common person and I bet 1/3 would defer the marshmallow as stanford experiement showed. What you didn't link was the number of criticisms the study showed, primarly that deferrered gratification was linked with age, and that there are number of factors that go into whether the child would defer, not the least of which was the trustworthiness of the presenter. But thats besides the point.
Your number seem huge.
Bioware only has 800 employees and SWTOR seems just fine.
Most games fail simply becuse there are 1. Bad -(not fun to the majority, or bad coding) or 2. The developers misjudged the market. It is not really more complicated than this.
Venge
edit - for your movie analogy. It's very flawed due to wages, Daniel Radcliff alone took over 50 million dollars for the deathly hallows making him the 5th highest paid star in hollywood. You can bet Rupert Grint, emma watson, alanrickman, helena bonham carter, john cleese... took many many many 10's of millions more. Not much compared to the 50-70,000 wage of coders.
Venge
BECAUSE:
Despite the fact that everyone thinks they want another vanilla themepark, they really don't. The reason is because when you've seen one, you seen them all. The skin you put on it matters not. There simply isn't enough evolving depth to truly differentiate them. You also get the same crowd of combat-oriented people on the servers, instead of a diverse community.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Aion and Rift are DAoC clones, not WoW clones,
SWG failed because it had too many fingers in the pie and none of the copyrights wanted to take thier finger out to make it profitable. Hence, NGE to chop fingers out.
OP: You are right in how box sales are made, not in how to keep subs. Most games don't even try to keep subs any more.
STO: Huge IP that got gutted like a fish. They don't care either, it's all cake now. SW-TOR doesn't either. If it holds subs, fine if it doesn't, oh well, they will have made thier profit in boxes.
They "fail" because success has a new model and longevity isn't in the model.
Uhm....the OP's premise is false, or at least misleading. The vast majority of MMOs succeed -- and by succeed, I mean make enough money to stay in business.
I can count on one hand (perhaps two if I really think about it) the number of titles that have outright failed, whilst the number of MMOs still active is likely near 100. Look at this site's game list if you need to confirm this.
So the implication that very many MMOs fail is misleading at best.
How do you figure? Subs may not bring in as much revenue as a retail box but are easy, steady income. On top of that, expansions can bring in more retail box sales that require a fraction of the developement time and cost required because all of the core systems on the game are in place.
Porn has voice acting, who doesn't skip it?
Franchise alone is not enough - WAR , Matrix , SWG , AOC , DDO
All had huge franchises ...
Heck, DDO ... I buy anything with D&D brand.
Yet it failed (before going F2P)
An MMO has huge up-front costs - it can still fail to make back the cost of developing it, but be profitable to keep running once you've written off that initial loss.
Made up example: $20M to develop, $2M/year income, $1M/year to keep the servers running and patches flowing. It would take 20 years to turn a profit, but shutting it down doesn't get that $20M back so you might as well take in the $1M/year operating profit for as long as it lasts.
On top of "financial failure", there's also the question of "artistic failure", where a game only turns a profit because of successful marketting rather than satisfying customers. However, this is much harder to gauge and requires reading the tea leaves of player churn/retention.
Your hypothetical aside (I understand how the business works), my point stands. Vast majority of MMOs are still in business. Very few of them have failed. Again, look at the MMORPG.COM Game list. I haven't counted, but at a glance somewhere around 100 MMOs still active and in business.
But this is my point - you can't judge whether a game has been financially successful overall by whether or not it is still worth keeping the servers on.
So some company, out of the goodness of their heart, is operating at a loss to keep the servers on?
Is World War II Online a success or failure? Is Vanguard a success or failure?
Bankruptcy isn't a definitive sign of failure either. Plenty of businesses go into bankruptcy and come back stronger and more successfully.
AC2 -- failure
Auto Assault (if i remember correctly) -- failure
a few more I'm sure. Point is, they went out of business because nobody played them. If a company can find enough subs/revenue to keep servers funded, I'd call that a success because somebody's niche gameplay is being fullfilled. The anomoly that I'm aware of is Earth and Beyond which was profitable, but EA canned it anyway because it wasn't profitable enough.
Because economies are based on bubbles. Proof is everywhere.
Oh, quote it all so you don;t look like you are nitpicking
The question is how many of those games that actually will have a surplus of money once the game finally closes down?
Because once you made a game it is usually finacial better to keep running it and get in what you can off it even if you never will get back all the money you invested in it.
Most of the games closed down were owned by small studios that went out of business. A large company will usually have their games up even if they know they will just get in half the cost they had on it.
And a game that when it closes down lost money is a failure in mine and most others books no matter how many years it was online.
Do you actually think games like WAR (who stated that they needed 500K players to turn profit even though it is less with all the cuts they made after launch) and Vanguard makes money? They are just losing less every month.