I was talking with a brilliant and rather delicious friend one day about making video games. A subject which I know nothing about, but about which he knows a TON. The very great advantage to having a few friends in the gaming industry is that when I can get them chatting about what they do, I learn a lot.
One thing that he mentioned that stood out in my mind and has been really making me think for several months now is how things have changed in the gaming industry since WoW hit it so big. Gaming talk has started to revolve around WoW and Blizzard and that model. No longer abstract and gamey, it's now all WoW this and WoW that.
The phenomenon that is WoW has taken over and seeped into every aspect of the gaming world.
This is a problem.
Not because WoW is a bad game or anything. For what it is, it's really great. It has its appeal and that's all good. It doesn't appeal to me, but that's just... ya know, me.
So why is it a problem? Because in their desperate race for power and glory, game designers have forgotten one thing. They forgot to hook up the doll. (2 points for getting the reference.) No really. The problem is that WoW has become the benchmark for so many people. It has become the standard by which success is measured.
Unfortunately this is an inaccurate and fallacious measurement. It's like the view that women who read a lot of romance novels develop about sex and relationships. It isn't normal. And it sets standards that are unattainable.
So what happens because of this? We end up with a lot of games that are clones of WoW. They're out there trying to make it WoW, but different in the hopes that they'll hit on that mystical combination of variables that gets them the nine million subscriptions.
Grimwell wrote a great bit about it in his blog with regards to venture capitalists and what they look for when investing in game ideas. I agree with him on a lot of points there. Since he was focusing on the business end of things though, he neglected to mention how this burning desire to hit the million sub mark is hurting the gaming industry in other ways.
That way is the players. We're being hurt by this WoW cloning machine. Games are getting a little cookie cutter and boring. All these new games coming out that should be good and fun to play because of the ideas behind them are losing. There isn't a lot of market for the same game over and over with a different paint job. Well, except for Madden... but that's another fluke.
Eventually there are going to be so many games out that are boring copy cats of WoW that people who play MMOs are going to lose interest entirely and look elsewhere.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The Blizzardification of the Gaming World
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21 comments:
I actually hate that any site i go to now with any kind of community has a WoW thread of some sort. People play it because its the known brand, its like wearing designer clothes to fit in and its totally the wrong way things should be going.
When i first thought about leaving SWG i went through lots of MMO's, guildwars, WoW, FF11 (or whatever it was) everquest 2, RF online and Matrix online.
EQ2 was actually my last choice, i avoided it because everquest had a stigma attached of being a completely geeky thing (which considering i came from a star wars game is kind of hypocritical but still) anyway all my friends went to play WoW or back to stick out SWG yet i got hooked i cant say why but i just liked the game better than all the others id played.
Most of my friends that played WoW have now quit due to sheer boredom most of my friends that stuck with SWG are still on SWG but i put that down to sheer pigheadedness. Im still on EQ2 with new friends and have no idea what id play in the future. I tried LOTR and it was so so, Star trek looks ok if they dont cock it up and stargate has possibilities but if they are all the same with a new front end whats the point?
That's exactly my point.
I'm seeing games with great premises and the potential for a truly unique gaming experience trying to jump on the WoW bandwagon in an effort to duplicate its success.
It's like Grimwell said, too many people are trying to be WoW killers and it just isn't the correct thing for which people should be shooting.
It's shafting gamers hardcore.
# Loksuin Says:
September 27th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Oh Coy,.. your site at my reply,… I’ll sum up for you,..
“wtf pie” HA! You always being me the best violence.
This guy is an asshat.
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Posted in saftey where Coyote cant edit :p
This was loks original post that made 0 sense.
hahahaha
thank you :) my confusion is all better.
* chuckles *
That's the freaking truth Kiara. I have already started down the path of MMO burnout. I have been playing them way too long and it all just seems the same to me now. I want to find the fascination I had when I first played EQ1 but it won't happen :(
Aye i'm the same T, i want that amazed/helplessly lost feeling i had when i first started but it isnt ever going to happen because they are all so similar.
LOL I remember popping up as a wood elf druid in greater faydark and my brother showed up with his level 30 (UBER!!!) and gave me a crystal shield (can't remember the name). I thought I was hot SH*^0! I played for a few hours and then threw up HAHAHAHA
yeah i remember my first few mins in game. surefall glade. couldn't see for poo. it was awesome.
Eeeep! Were you a half elf?
yeah. half elf ranger :D
I can't see you as anything but a dark elf!
BLASPHEMY!!
it was my first ever character :p
i learned very quickly that i was NOT meant to be a ranger. then i made my dark elf cleric and that's all i've been since :)
yeah, the wood elf was my first but I didn't go to the dark side for awhile but once I did that's ALMOST all I made.
I was a Halfling in EQ and then started that way in EQ2 only to become a Gnome. I really like Dwarves as well. My buddy says I have some sort of complex because here I am this big guy in real life and he looks on my monitor and I am the smallest guy there is. Must be my penis incarnate.
Yeah I am playing WoW at the moment just because I don't really have anything else to play but I am looking for a world to lose myself in and not a game. That is just me. it killed me when they made the SWG change because there was a comment that no one wanted to be an Uncle Owen farmer they all want to be an iconic hero. I think everyone I knew that left wanted to be a farmer or just military recruit.
The thing is even the MMOs I am looking at mostly are still going to feel like a game but hopefully still something I can be involved in.
Wow was a fluke and may have opened the gate for more MMO players but building the same game is not going to make people change, they need to just make a game that they want to make and stick to their guns. I personally still see 200k as a big hit in MMOs myself and I understand the want of money and fame but really making WoW2 is not going to be what gets it for you.
I never could play a halfling, before PoK. Kith scared the pee out of me and still does lol
Hasn't Raph been railing against the WoWification of games since, well, the first big press release that said "WoW is the best thing since sliced bread and pwns the world.." or words to that effect?
As an outsider to the industry, ie, just a humble player, it sometimes seems to me that the spreadsheet munching beancounting ba...ndits in management look at WoW and think that it's success is down to a) how it looks b) the game play c) it being a men in tights game. COmpletely ignoring the fact taht it plays on piss poor machines, allwing places like Video Bang's and back shop bet cafe's to install multiple copies of the game on their scabrous machines and sell game cards to the bored masses. According to Blizzard themselves, each game card counts as a subscription... Cue masses of 'players'.
Feed that back into the hype and the sheeple just have to lay because it's what 8m other sheeple seem to be doing.
So along come the management clones and they think that if they can reinvent WoW they too will be uber. But they are setting themselves a near vertical ascent if they think that's going to happen. Far better to find a niche and market yourself as THE game that exploits that particular niche.
Or, like EQII, do what you do, do it well and do it often. Learn *from* WoW (and for that matter SWG) but don't try to *be* them.
I'm still on SWG, but taht's mostly pigheadnedness, and hanging out at Yivvits and Mr Bubbles parties on Valcyn every so often. LoTRO was good but, like post NGE SWG, suffered from a linearity that, while there were side quests, meant you inevitibly end up back doing exactly the same stuff as everyone else.
There's a debate to be had about the merits of a 'long, thin' gaming experience and a 'broad, slow' experience. But I can feel the double entendres rushing towards us as I type ;)
@Kallarn: "I actually hate that any site i go to now with any kind of community has a WoW thread of some sort." I'm going to let my anti-WoW prejudice hang out for all to see here...
One thing that really pissed me off about WoW, a solidly made, good looking, robust game, was the 'typical' WoW player. All that shouting across whole zones or servers instead of using the right chat channels. The endless leet speak, teabag, jool me nubnub spamfests that go on in any starter area...
On their own most WoWites I know are fine. Even better when you get tehm into another game. But as a group? Ugh...
And then my game of choice decided to make itself more 'accessible' and tried drawing in the WoWies.. and what did we get? Mos Eisley full to bursting with leet speak, teabag, jool me nubnub spamfests. And AH spammers!! Outside every freaking starport!
I blame WoW the game for a lot of the ills of the MMO world, but I really blame it's putrid spawn of sweaty palmed, acne infested, permaprepubescent squeakers (of all ages and genders) that now seem to infest the world.
Just my 2cr worth ;)
wow alma... i'm all kinds of turned on.
Two things to consider:
1. While I personally feel it's a mistake to set out with "Remake WoW!" as a business plan, WoW is not the devil. Its just the wrong thing to try to clone IMO.
2. Burnout is very real. Everyone feels it from time to time, don't let it get you all emo. :) The best solution is to step away and try things that aren't at all like the game that has you down. Try some crazy Asian games that haven't been localized, play non-MMO's, brave the day star.
After a break, the burnout will be gone. I like playing MMO's. It's just who I am. I've burned out before, which just meant "Time for a holiday mate." Taking that holiday got me to try a bunch of games I'd have never considered, and I am happier with what I play for it.
Oh totally! When I find myself getting burned out (usually after spending FAR too much time in a beta or on some Test Centre or other trying to break stuff) I go off and do other stuff.
The worst thing (imho) to do when you've got a bit of Game Fatigue(tm) is to hit the forums and find yourself going head to head with the semi-professional trolls that live there. You just end up even more p'd off and wondering why on earth you do this to yourself.
There are some bonkers mad but fun games out there. Bang! Howdy for one, Puzzle Pirates, all those random titles that lurk on the Station launcher... *plenty* to do before even thinking of venturing out into the big blue box where they keep the daystar.
Heh alma how is spammers in eisley now different to the old spammers in eisley selling buffs and pets n stuff?
But yeah i burned out on SWG and stepped away, still run my guilds forums and even a forum for the RP community on my old server but i just get too annoyed if i go back. Nice to chat to old people i know though.
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