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Massively Multiplayer Online Entertainment

This is a PAST event. See "Meeting Notes" section for audio, video, documents and other information.

Original event date/time: Friday March 23rd, 2007, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Stuart Compton will be joining us in March to talk about the future of massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds. Stuart was art director for Everquest 2, one of the most popular online games of all time. He's worked for all the big game companies, and is now starting his own, Idyllon. See Crazybull.com for more about Stuart. Stuart has deep knowledge and strong opinions about how multiplayer games should be done. He will tell us all about the problems he sees with online multiplayer games, and how he plans to fix them. He believes online multiplayer games have only lived up to a fraction of what they promise to deliver in the future. This promises to be an exciting discussion!

Abstract:

This is a past event.

Meeting Notes:

Some of the big surprises I learned at the meeting ...

• BIG Cultural differences. Asian online games are usually free, with payment for posessions within the game. The game company makes all the revenue it needs to survive on these game objects. In the US, this approach has failed completely. Even within Asia, there are substantial cultural differences, for example the Koreans like online games much more than the Japanese.

• The biggest misperception is demographics: everyone thinks kids play online games. In fact, the average age of an online game player is 35. That's the average -- so it means for every 30 year old you have a 40 year old. Players under 20 don't exist -- except when invited into the game by their dad. So online video games are really and truly for adults.

  (The stereotype of them all being male is, for the most part, true however).

• Massively-Multiplayer Online games (MMO's) have the most stable revenue model in the video game industry. Consoles, by contrast, are more risky. Consoles have a frozen hardware platform, and it's very hard to make it cutting-edge -- if the console becomes too expensive, it fails. The Wii has succeeded without the most powerful hardware.

• In Stuart's judgement, the online video game industry has focused on competition and neglected other forms of enjoyment, such as community, accomplishment, and creativity. People can become deeply personally invested in their online "house & garden", and virtual friends can become real-life friends and vice-versa.

• Griefers -- the term in the industry for players who get enjoyment by causing other players grief -- are a huge problem in the online game industry. A big part of getting an online game to work is getting a permission system that is just right -- and this is difficult.

• Second Life -- the virtual world everyone is raving about -- has horrible churn. 80% of the people who sign up on Second Life never go back.

I went to the Second Life meetup the day before. The contrast between that meeting and this one was striking. At the Second Life meetup, everyone thought Second Life was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But Stuart didn't think so. He thought Secord Life had considerable shortcomings, which he discussed at length. For example, most of the stuff you see in Second Life is built by only 5% of the people. Most of the decent stuff was made by less than 1%. And many people who want to use Second Life for business purposes, such as virtual conferences, or virtual classrooms, actually avoid it because of all the porn on the system. And what's the appeal of naked avatars? It doesn't even make sense.

The conclusion that I came to is that Second Life appeals to a particular type of person -- a person who enjoys making 3D models. Someone like Eric Hackathorn. And buying and selling 3D models, and so on. But Second Life doesn't really appeal to the "mass market".

Now, there's nothing wrong with appealing to a niche market, so this is perfectly fine. It's just important to keep this in mind when you hear people raving about the greatness of Second Life. Sure, it's great for them, just not necessarily for everybody. Or people saying Second Life represents the future of VR or the web. No way -- the door is wide open for someone else to come along and do something creative and different, with more mass appeal.

So what's next? Maybe Stuart's company! I for one hope he gets funded so we can see what happens when his ideas become reality. Idyllon http://www.idyllon.com/