Exactly why are mmo's making more money than the rest of the video game industry?
Well, the monthly fee has a lot to do with that, but I meant why are people sticking around in those game for longer than a month or two?
Now, some of you are going to reach for the grind or content argument and in some ways that's a good one, however I think that is only part of the answer. The largest part, or rather parts, fo the success of MMO's are the persistence and community.
As we get older and we take on more responsibilities we have less and less time for our hobbies and entertainment. I'll give you an example- my brother in law and I have been friends for longer than we've known our wives (our wives are sisters). When we were young we would play pnp RPG's for hours and days on end. Our weekends would be full of dungeon crawls and extensive battlemaps filled with warmachines and troop movements. We would stay up until dawn, only to wake up a few hours later to continue the war against whatever we felt like.
Now?
Now we have to get the lawn mowed, and my wife really wants to build bookshelves into the walls in our two other bedrooms, and, yeah there's that project I wanted to get a head start on for work, and...the list never ends. We have no time to do the things we enjoyed most as kids- play games. As a result, we meet up online every Sunday night to play Lord of the Rings Online for 4 hours before we have to go to bed to get up for work. Of course we both have side characters that we play when the other is not in the game. Ones that we play a little bit here and a little bit there. The characters we play with other people who also only have a little bit of time before they have to run off to whatever day job.
And, it's that persistence, the game is always there day or night ready to go when you are, and that community, it is filled with other solo gamers that have a limited amount of time to play like I do.
Like for example, I get home on Wednesday's pretty early and it's my wifes late night, so,I hop on the game for a few hours. It's always there, and it's always filled with people who want to play too. I never have to worry about finding someone to team with, or even if I can't I can certainly solo through vast portions of the game as well. The persistence of the MMO along with the constantly rotating player base ensure that there is always something to do with someone when you've got the time available.
Well, the monthly fee has a lot to do with that, but I meant why are people sticking around in those game for longer than a month or two?
Now, some of you are going to reach for the grind or content argument and in some ways that's a good one, however I think that is only part of the answer. The largest part, or rather parts, fo the success of MMO's are the persistence and community.
As we get older and we take on more responsibilities we have less and less time for our hobbies and entertainment. I'll give you an example- my brother in law and I have been friends for longer than we've known our wives (our wives are sisters). When we were young we would play pnp RPG's for hours and days on end. Our weekends would be full of dungeon crawls and extensive battlemaps filled with warmachines and troop movements. We would stay up until dawn, only to wake up a few hours later to continue the war against whatever we felt like.
Now?
Now we have to get the lawn mowed, and my wife really wants to build bookshelves into the walls in our two other bedrooms, and, yeah there's that project I wanted to get a head start on for work, and...the list never ends. We have no time to do the things we enjoyed most as kids- play games. As a result, we meet up online every Sunday night to play Lord of the Rings Online for 4 hours before we have to go to bed to get up for work. Of course we both have side characters that we play when the other is not in the game. Ones that we play a little bit here and a little bit there. The characters we play with other people who also only have a little bit of time before they have to run off to whatever day job.
And, it's that persistence, the game is always there day or night ready to go when you are, and that community, it is filled with other solo gamers that have a limited amount of time to play like I do.
Like for example, I get home on Wednesday's pretty early and it's my wifes late night, so,I hop on the game for a few hours. It's always there, and it's always filled with people who want to play too. I never have to worry about finding someone to team with, or even if I can't I can certainly solo through vast portions of the game as well. The persistence of the MMO along with the constantly rotating player base ensure that there is always something to do with someone when you've got the time available.
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