GDC 08: Future Of MMOs
Holy crap, there are a lot of people who like MMOs. I kinda forgot about that until I slunk into "The Future of MMOs" panel discussion today and was shocked to find that there were not only no available chairs, but there was very little standing room, either.
As opposed to the last panel discussion, though, this one was incredibly well-run and featured a number of people who I felt were actually justified to be talking to us. Jack Emmert, Jon Wood, Mark Jacobs, Min Kim, Ray Muzyka, and Rob Pardo, who are all pretty good authorities on the topic of MMOs, if their respective games are anything to go by, were all in front of the crowd and did a great job of answering questions without hijacking the conversation at any point.
When I walked in, the topic of dealing with intellectual property was already being discussed. From what I heard, everyone seemed to agree that IPs are a bit of a double-edged sword. While they're not always necessary, such as is the case when you have something like a racing-based MMO or something, they're definitely helpful to already have around because it can save developers a lot of time and money by giving them a story to already work with. Rob Pardo cited the example of World of Warcraft as a perfect example of this: because his team already had the IP of Warcraft established through three prior games (and a couple of expansions), they didn't have to invent a whole backstory to establish who the Orcs were, etc.
The next question dealt with whether or not MMOs were going to be headed to consoles more often in the future. Everyone on the panel agreed that, yes, they definitely are, but no one's in a hurry to get there because PCs are still the largest open market available. However, with groups like Sony and Microsoft making an increased effort to get their consoles into as many homes as possible by making the systems capable of more and more functions, there will be an increased presence of MMO games becoming available.
After that, the rather large debate of microtransactions vs. subscription payments was discussed. Jack, of course, had a hysterical diatribe against the concept of microtransactions that left a lot of us laughing for a while, and then the first and only debate of the session reared its head. One one side there was Jack, who took the firm stance that almost no company should use microtransactions because they're too unreliable of a payment system. Almost everyone else was in the middle, because they thought it could be a viable payment structure but that it hadn't really caught on that well in North America yet. Min Kim was on the side of non-subscription payment plans because they actually work pretty well over in Asia and are starting to catch on here in the States, based on the success of MapleStory. Ultimately, it sounded like the subject boiled down to an East vs. West mentality and that subscriptions were going to probably be the established payment plan here in the USA.
The last question presented by the moderator was whether or not big-budget MMOs were the way to go anymore. Everyone agreed that, right now, big budget games in the genre are a bit of an unrealistic thing because publishers are generally terrified of competing with World of Warcraft. Instead, they all emphasized that having a small group of talented people working on innovative gameplay, and encouraged everyone who was working in the MMO community to keep on striving for excellence.
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to GDC on 21 February 2008
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