General Discussion

I was looking at the drop-down lost of selectable games either in development or currently playable, and its a staggering number. So, it occurred to me, when I play games, i just don't see the kinds of crowds I used to see in UO back when it was the only one. As more and more games released, the population started to split up between the various new games.

Now here we are, more games then a person can shake a stick at, some of them even free. Now, the pool or gamers willing to play an mmorpg has gotten a lot bigger thanks to mmo developers making the games less complicated (and less intimidating) to the average gamer. However, there are still only so many of us. So, what we get, is less and less people playing each specific game.

Does it stand to reason  that, as each companies gets a smaller and smaller piece of the pie, they're gonna start asking for more cash...for the same amount of content, perhaps even less. Are we seeing an over-saturation of the genre? Do you see more games as a good thing, or a bad thing? Sound off!

-Ditto-

I don' think we're at the over saturation point yet. In fact I think we still have a ways to go. No doubt WoW opened the floodgates, but until we see viral MMOs that you can play on say your cell phone and games that can keep players interested for a very very long time the market will continue to grow. In fact I remember before WoW came out people where saying that the MMORPG market was saturated.

More improtant than the amount of games released is the quality of the games. For a while there it seemed like developers where releasing games in alpha stage and asking players to pick up the development costs to finish it. I understand that MMOs are supposed to keep evolving but there is a certain level of quality I expect from a game a paid $50 for. I definately think that the quality of games, both translated and developed in the US has gone up in the last 6 months or so. I'm crossing my fingers on AoC and WAR.

The more the better though as long as the market can support it. It creates competition and ultimately is better for the consumer, I think.

I'm completely convinced that this is the nature of all entertainment in the future. 10 million subscribers? That will be considered an indi hit in about 10 years.

Originally posted by spankybus

Does it stand to reason  that, as each companies gets a smaller and smaller piece of the pie, they're gonna start asking for more cash...for the same amount of content, perhaps even less. Are we seeing an over-saturation of the genre? Do you see more games as a good thing, or a bad thing? Sound off!

A good thing. More diversity means more to chose from. And in the end, the 'best' MMOs will get the most subscriptions anyway. Which means companies are forced to develop something decent, or they won't survive. So in theory, it should bring us better quality games in the end.

Dunno,

It's just a standard market movement, supply and demand... and it will find it's equilibrium so I don't think your theory holds true. What DOES happen is a shift in the type of MMO player. In the early days an MMO player was by definition a geeky nerd whereas now it's much more mainstream. As such the type of MMO's is changing, trying to reach the non-MMO freaks by giving short term, instant gratification goals (whereas the 'true' old style MMO player would probably opt for a more believable world and a more longterm approach).

Thus we end up with short attention span consumers who 'demand' to be able to play MMO's according to their ideas, and since they are in much greater numbers than us 'geeks' we end up with low expectation, easy to fulfill, non-effort MMO's. And THEN everybody (including the people which they're targeted at) start whining about how unimersive that new MMO is and will switch to another one, hoping to get their MMO fix. Funny thing is, everyone cries for innovative and fresh approach to games/MMO's but when such a game is made people refuse to play it because it doesn't have aspects and a game design they're used to... 

The solution is specialisation and niche marketing, EVE doesn't have that many subscribers but it's doing quite well financially and is a great MMO for it's playerbase, but it's not for everyone. And as long a they KEEP not being for everyone they will do just fine.