The MMO market has long lain stagnant with hardly a breath of fresh air in the last few years. As far as the developers are concerned, the studios emulate the state of the Chinese economy. Namely, the rich get richer, while the poor die trying. Many titles lauding new, dynamic, feature-rich worlds and characters fall flat on their face soon after launch.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of all launching MMO’s are a rehash of everything we as gamers have already seen and experienced. If by some miracle a title does have a fresh artistic and functional spin on the long traditional genre, it is many times riddled with bugs and issues that detract from the product’s market feasibility. What changes are development studios left with to survive and attract the market share they need to survive? Like most gaming gripes, groans and grumbles, it all comes down to a matter of money.
Why do game studios keep imploding?
Dysfunction is baked into the video game production process, as it currently exists. The big-budget games industry is dominated by a few large companies, the publishers. Like book publishers, they are responsible for distributing and marketing games (much but not all of this is entirely digital now, but most of the publishers established themselves when game distribution meant getting physical discs and cartridges on retail store shelves). Games are actually made by studios, which are generally either owned directly by the publishers or independent. Making big-budget video games takes an enormous amount of highly specialized labor. It is possible for one person to make a game, and even for that game to be a hit, but the biggest, most profitable games released each year are nearly always made by enormous teams of people, working directly or indirectly for those publishers.
Create their own studio ala Activision but never forget where they came from ala Activision
Unions breed garbage product no matter what’s being made. Passion and drive to make awesome stuff goes out the window and it’s replaced by laziness, seniority over skill, office politics and all around horseshit. As a welder of 23 years, I’ve seen it first hand, over and over again.
I’d say there’s a time and a place for unions. If work conditions have gotten so bad because the company is run by tyrants, unions will help.
But, on the contrary, I work for one of those rare companies that is better for the employee than a union is. Family owned, we purchased a new facility in Jersey and the workers voted the union out based on the offer (pay, hours, benefits, etc). Now we have UNION scabs, hired by the union, to protest against us at various locations.
The 4-year investigation of video game developer 38 Studios comes to an anti-climatic conclusion.
The Rhode Island Attorney General announced today that it would not be filing charges against individuals involved in the failed 38 Studios loan in Rhode Island.
Great game, but I stopped playing due to a major glitch before a boss fight.
It was a fight inside a cave and I placed all my saves inside the cave...approaching the boss would start a cut scene but my game glitched and the scene never starter. I could not exit the cave too... :(
Was probably 3/4 done the game too.
We need a cheaper pricing model to give more potential consumers a reason to try new titles from new, un-proven studios.
Honestly MMO's should either be $50 to buy the game and Free to Play monthly. Or Free to download and a small $5 monthly fee. Something reasonable. Not $17 a month which is ridiculous.
The MMO genre has grown stagnant because every developer is not only trying to copy WoW's success, but WoW itself and they all fail.. those new MMOs offer "that new, dynamic, feature-rich worlds and characters" are simply put, WoW clones and poor WoW clones at that.
As my friend said.. "why bother playing SWTOR endgame when I can play WoW which offers exactly the same but much more better, polished and varied".
What I would like to see though is more companies take the Eve Online approach and create a deeper experience and focus on your own niche crowd. I'm sure almost all Eve players would happily agree they have no problem paying a premium monthly fee for an experience that feels tailored to them as opposed to the WoW/SWTOR approach of trying to lure in everyone.
I'll never pay $60 for a game and then pay $1X a month. What is the $60 for if I'm spending over a hundred bucks a year to play the game?
Try something that isn't WoW and make MMOs cheaper and with a more reasonable price model.