The curse of sucessfull blockbusters

I recently read a really interesting editorial over at 1up. The premise of the article is that video games are falling into a trap that has already affected the movie industry and the music industry. The audience for video games is larger now then it has ever been, and the willingness of that audience to try new products is lower than it has ever been. For the most part, gamers are only buying the same games that everyone else is buying like the newest iteration of Call of Duty, Halo, or Madden. It's because humans want to be able to participate in shared conversations. As a consequence, the more socially connected we are (as a society) over the net the more monolithic our tastes become.

This really favors big publishers like EA and Activision that can put out games with production values that appeal to the masses, and still afford the advertising blitz or IPs (say Batman or Star Wars) that will attract the attention of the masses. Mid level publishers like THQ are being pushed out, they just don't have the budgets needed to compete at that scale. What we will soon be left with is a few big publishers selling safe bets with high production values to the masses (think summer blockbuster movies) and indie titles with low production values and miniscule budgets.

To me this seems to be a pretty accurate description of what is happening in console game space. I like to think of myself as an independent minded gamer. However, the games I have played in the last few years on my X-box 360 are generally ones you have heard of and likely ones you have played (e.g., Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect 2, Halo Reach, Half Life 2, Fallout 3). The only things I could find in my disk collection that weren't connected to wildly popular IPs or from studios that have legions of fans (e.g., Bioware, Bethesda, Valve) were Crackdown and Borderlands. The more obscure games I have played were all downloads from small publishers.

And now we come to the point of the post, which you likely suspected all along. Is this going to happen to MMOs as a genre? I think a lot of the angst currently being directed at Star Wars the Old Republic has to do with this issue. The formula for a summer blockbuster movie seems to be: (1) rehash at least part of the story arc that Campbell outlines in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, (2) glam it the hell up with fancy special effects, a high profile IP, and/ or a huge ass advertising budget. The future that I feel a lot commentators are dreading in MMO space is the following formula for MMO blockbusters: (1) borrow a lot of mechanics and game design elements from World of Warcraft, (2) glam it the hell up with fancy graphics, a high profile IP, and/ or a huge ass advertising budget. This is very much the formula that SWTOR (and LoTRO and Rift for that matter) followed in the eyes of many MMO enthusiasts.

From there it follows that if SWTOR succeeds the formula for an MMO blockbuster will have been established. The financial success of SWTOR would be the first step down a path that inevitably leads to the place video games in general seem headed: all we will have available are predictable blockbusters or (more innovative) indie projects with lower production values.

So how do I feel about all this? I really like SWTOR. I also go out and watch all the Super Hero themed blockbusters in the Spring/ Summer with glee. I also recently bought Arkham Asylum (I won't pay $60 for a console game, I wait for them to go down), and I'm really looking forward to it. At the same time, I think Myst Online is a great MMO if you can get past the clunky controls (it must have at least ten players), I watch a lot of indie and foreign movies through Netflix (recently I watched "Super" and "The Girl who Lept Through Time" and enjoyed them both), and I really enjoyed Braid on my X-box.

I can't say that everyone panicking at the possibility that SWTOR does well is wrong. We may well be entering an era where all big budget MMOs are Diku style. I also can't decide whether I really care. The small guys will still innovate, just like they do in the music and movie industries. Let the giants spit out their predictable fluff, enjoy it for what it is if you can, and support the little guys with your time and your wallet when they make something you like. Hardly sounds like the apocalypse to me.

Six weeks in: SWTOR is obviously doomed

EA has announced that as of Feb 1 SWTOR only has 1.7 million active subs, which amounts to a mere 85% player retention rate. Obviously most of the folks that have tried SWTOR can't stand it. After the first six weeks, it seems that Star Wars the Old Republic is an abject failure.

In all seriousness, I'm really glad to see that SWTOR is off to such a good start. It remains to be seen whether the game can maintain this level of success in the long term. But it's also obvious that the great bulk of players didn't rush to the cap and cancel their subs in the first month, as some have been predicting.

I personally have hit the ripe old age of 40 on my main, after playing nearly every night in January. I don't know that I'll be taking 8 characters to the cap to see all the storylines. But I'll certainly play up at least one Republic character after I finish playing the Empire side (they get a completely different storyline and a few planets that the Sith don't). That will get Bioware at least a few more months of sub time out of me whether they manage to iron out a decent endgame or not.

Thoughts on the latest SWTOR news

The latest SWTOR patch apparently contained some serious cluster fornication for PvP players. Level 50 players are now looking at crazy ques to get into the regular battlegrounds due to faction imbalance and the general lack of level 50 players on most servers. Meanwhile, in SWTOR's open world PvP area Republic players are getting stomped on most servers. Unverified reports put Empire / Republic ratios at 2.5 to 1 or worse on most servers. An error in the latest patch that allows players to camp the opposing faction's respawn points is salt on the wound. Things are so bad that Bioware is urging players to avoid Ilum altogether until they can get things fixed. Finally, for a few hours today some players magically lost the ability to unsubscribe days before the first round of automatic sub-renewals is set to go through. Ouch!

While this isn't exactly Bioware's shining moment, I think it's a bit early to start dancing on SWTOR's grave. A lot of bloggers have been predicting doom for the game for months based on development costs that EA has already stated are bogus. 500K subs, even if you need them for a solid year to turn a profit, does not get you very far north of a development cost of 100 millon. I also kind of doubt that most players care a whole lot about the PvP situation at level 50. If a most of the players that wanted to do PvP had hit 50 already, the long que times for PvP battlegrounds that players are complaining of on the forums would not be happening. Personally, my highest 'toon so far is level 32 and I have yet to set foot in a battle ground.

The strength of SWTOR compared to most MMOs is compelling narratives. There are at least two completely non-overlapping story lines, the Sith quests and the Republic quests, and I personally plan to see them both at least once. If I wanted to rush to the cap and do PvP or go raiding, there are clearly better games on the market for that. If I didn't find the narratives I'm experiencing compelling, well again there are other games with much deeper mechanics I could be playing. I predict that players who "get" the storylines and RP aspects of the game are the ones who are going to stick around. Those that were mainly hoping for a new shiny MMO endgame to grind in will likely be gone by this time next month. Only time will tell if the players left are enough to make the game a solid success.