Both Darniaq and Ubiq wrote some thoughts after an interview with the Garriott’s bothers and I think they bit a poisoned leaf (Darniaq thinks aloud but doesn’t seem to arrive at a conclusion).

I find those marketing strategies fundamentally flawed and I expect there will be a backlash sooner or later. It’s true that there’s a group of casual mmorpg players with ADD that jump from game to game, but I see this as a periphery of larger consolidations of players. I wouldn’t base any business on a completely unreliable target. It’s foolish.

Darniaq summarizes that strategy in two points:
– Portfolios are good. Why offer one title when you can offer many?
– Retention in a game is good. Retention in your portfolio, better.

The scenario doesn’t look so well, from my point of view. A miriad of mediocre games that could have a potential, but that are destined to have a forgettable and brief life.

I can imagine some players trying a new game as it launches, but I really cannot imagine that, in a year, players bored with Dungeon Runners will go buy Auto Assault. Come on. This strategy could work while we are still in a mmorpg frenzy phase where everything is undecided. In the longer term I think the dust will settle and the purchases will be more driven by the confidence the players have in a product and a company.

My point of view here is somewhat rigged because I don’t see the “churn” as a feature. But as a standard of quality. A solid playerbase means that the game has a value, so it’s a general definition of “worth”. Trying to embrace it would mean embracing a mediocrity. Favoring volatile, forgettable experiences. Swarming the market with a bunch of products to disorient a noob customer.

It could work till the market is chaotic and immature, but I don’t see this as a good strategy in the longer term. I’m from a completely different school: do one thing, invest everything you can on it so that it can be the best possible. This is the only way I see to hope in a growth. Betting on the quality of what you can do, your dedication and commitment to offer the best service you can.

NCSoft strategy looks instead more like a market speculation, at some point they’ll need a magistral exit strategy.

I also don’t understand how their ideas apply to the single company. It may make sense for NCSoft to have “casual subscribers”, but how can the single games survive without imploding? Chasing the mediocrity grounds the quality, it doesn’t improve it. Things go progressively worse, not progressively better.

I don’t know. I really cannot understand how it can be better to disperse the resources on multiple projects that will be short-lived and with no future, compared to instead *consolidate* the resources to do something right. And when you got something right you can work to build on top of what you achieved. This is the only way I know to hope in a growth. Working toward a goal, reinvesting. Adding bricks to a solid house instead of building a bunch of shacks that will be blown off by a weak wind.

I always wonder what could have happened if SOE used and reinvested all its resources in one game instead of spawning multiple ones. Every time I hear about a new mmorpg in development I roll my eyes: do we really need another?

I’m a wannabe designer, but I’d never try to start from zero in a brand new company even if I had the possibility. That’s a recipe for failure and this industry needs a consolidation of resources and talents. Not more fragmentation and more unfinished, amateurish projects with no future. We had enough already of those. “Bring together”, join the efforts. Every single game world has a huge potential, it just need ideas, resources and a good execution. Not a wipe and a restart every two steps.

Building things so that they can last. So that they can be solid. If we are two groups with similar goals it makes sense to work together so that the house can be more solid. It’s part of the cooperation.

I hope that in the future won’t get swarmed by a bunch of mediocre titles competing over a tiny group of players. Instead I hope there will be more aggregation. This is how I think the market should be tackled.

Even from the perspective of the development good results only come from well-oiled teams that learnt to work together and perfectioned what they can do. Blizzard came out of that. An high churn is never good. It isn’t good for the communities as it isn’t good for the developers.

It’s true that “communities are portable”, but seconding this concept never brought to good results. When SOE built EQ2 the former EQ players didn’t move to it. They moved to WoW. I think communities try to choose an home with a roof that appears solid and doesn’t drip. There are of course swarms of players that float around these consolidations, but I wouldn’t found a market on them. You are trying to survive of the breadcrumbs of passing players.

It would be interesting to map the migratory fluxes between games if we had precise, disclosed data. But I suspect that the major ones would be unidirectional. Because the core point is this one: how many come back? I still think that these players are more on a research driven by a dissatisfaction. As the market matures I think we’ll see the opposite of what Ubiq says. The players will know better what they are looking for and will become less incline to move. Harder to seduce with inconsistent hype.

I also don’t think that the companies that NCSoft “hosts” will like to be used as disposable fuel.

This is how I would rewrite those two rules:
– Better do one good thing to which you commit and dedicate than a bunch of mediocre ones.
– Retention is an health measure, even (and in particular) in a competitive market.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Nor it was made of paper. (!?)