www.Tobold.com
Tobold@GMail.com
A blog with my thoughts regarding games I am playing and other stuff in life. Please read my Terms of Service
RSS Feed
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Billion dollar WoW killer
I got a few e-mails linking to various reports on the story that Activision boss Bobby Kotick claimed you couldn't make a viable competitor to WoW even if you invested up to 1 billion dollars. Yeah, I've seen that story, but wasn't originally going to comment on that obvious nonsense. While it is theoretically possible to make a bad game for 1 billion dollars, you'd need to spend that money very unwisely to do so. It is far more likely that you could spend $100 million for a MMORPG which gets 1 million subscribers and then makes $200 million *per year* of revenues. Mr. Kotick had two reasons for his outrageous claim: He needed to explain the Activision Blizzard merger, and he wanted to discourage investors from giving money to future competitors.
A bit later the same guy explained how the new company could make a Call of Duty MMO. Very convincing: First he says viable MMORPGs can't be done even for endless amounts of money, then he invests money in the next MMORPG. I don't know why Vivendi doesn't put a press ban on the guy, they just had to deny an earlier comment from Mr. Kotick announcing in-game ads for Starcraft II. I hope the guy is any good as manager, because he sure shouldn't try doing public relations or game design.
Blizzard is a company making very good games. But the idea that Blizzard somehow could have a monopoly on being the only company to make a successful MMORPG is laughable. And if you'd invest $100 million in a MMORPG *now*, World of Warcraft will be in full decline by the time your game gets out anyway. We haven't seen anything from Blizzard or any other MMORPG company which suggests that you could keep up your subscription numbers for 10 years. WoW will still be *alive* in 2014, but it won't have 10 million subscribers any more. Especially not if they continue with their current expanion model.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:01 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
<< Home
Newer› ‹Older
You're completely right in my opinion. Things might seem pretty bleak right now for MMO developers, but WoW is on a bit of a decline as it was close to TBC. If WotLK bombs, I could see WoW losing quite a few subscribers. And that leaves them wanting a new game.
Personally I hope Age of Conan will be that game, but judging by the state of its beta...we'll see.
Personally I hope Age of Conan will be that game, but judging by the state of its beta...we'll see.
# posted by 
: 11/3/08 03:07
: 11/3/08 03:07
I believe you are spot-on in your impression of Mr. Kotick and the dubious wisdom of chucking 1 billion dollars at any MMO. I'm not even sure Blizzard would know what to do with that kind of cash if asked to invest it in their next iteration of MMO exclusively. They certainly couldn't do much more with WoW other than spam us with new content (not that that is a bad thing).
But more importantly here is the bad business practice of any software publisher giving a developement house truckloads of cash and saying "we're tired of Blizzard getting most of this pie (not true in a world-wide sense), here's some money, code-monkeys. Make me a WoW-killer.
So maybe in that context, Mr. Kotick is right. There is no amount of money in the world that can create something from nothing. 1000 monkeys cannot REALLY write the great American novel. I can only guess that the greatest games started as the greatest ideas and the greatest passions. From there they developed and grew and we're sold or discovered and bejeweled with accolades and developement capital and eventually the idea of the idea was lost.
I hope for Activision's sake they have someone on the Call of Duty MMO team that has some great ideas and a solid vision for what fun actually is. Also that Activision has has the courage to recognize that talent and give the developer the room to develop and execute these ideas (ala-Blizzard). Otherwise he my be living the nightmare of his own words and those that said them before he did about other games.
Thanks for the excellent Blog Tobold and sorry for the long rant there. Happy Hunting.
But more importantly here is the bad business practice of any software publisher giving a developement house truckloads of cash and saying "we're tired of Blizzard getting most of this pie (not true in a world-wide sense), here's some money, code-monkeys. Make me a WoW-killer.
So maybe in that context, Mr. Kotick is right. There is no amount of money in the world that can create something from nothing. 1000 monkeys cannot REALLY write the great American novel. I can only guess that the greatest games started as the greatest ideas and the greatest passions. From there they developed and grew and we're sold or discovered and bejeweled with accolades and developement capital and eventually the idea of the idea was lost.
I hope for Activision's sake they have someone on the Call of Duty MMO team that has some great ideas and a solid vision for what fun actually is. Also that Activision has has the courage to recognize that talent and give the developer the room to develop and execute these ideas (ala-Blizzard). Otherwise he my be living the nightmare of his own words and those that said them before he did about other games.
Thanks for the excellent Blog Tobold and sorry for the long rant there. Happy Hunting.
Something makes it really hard for companies which do game development to manage big productions. I am guessing this is based on the relative youth of the industry and the speed of growth any company needs to have to be able to put hundreds of millions of dollars to good use over a short time.
When budgets get this large most studios appear to put on the stupid hat and burn money on the wrong things. This is where the main problem lies, its not with the budgets being too small but rather with inefficient production techniques and lack of velocity (scrum term for development progress) when building value.
You also have the problem where most studios which are older than a few years have the CEO acting as Lead Designer, which is rarely a role which one person can maintain proper responsibility over without being able to compromize heavily when informed that his ideas are questionable. Few emploees will directly question the CEO and go ahead with their "vision" until the roof comes down.
Investors with a great lot of money are betting this investments on one of the animal in the pit. Most get their investments ripped appart from general nature of the pit. Blizzard is one of the few developers which has a reputation as not living in this pit, they have carved out a special niche which will yield almost guaranteed ROI as long as you got the ability to keep on funding them until they finish.
When budgets get this large most studios appear to put on the stupid hat and burn money on the wrong things. This is where the main problem lies, its not with the budgets being too small but rather with inefficient production techniques and lack of velocity (scrum term for development progress) when building value.
You also have the problem where most studios which are older than a few years have the CEO acting as Lead Designer, which is rarely a role which one person can maintain proper responsibility over without being able to compromize heavily when informed that his ideas are questionable. Few emploees will directly question the CEO and go ahead with their "vision" until the roof comes down.
Investors with a great lot of money are betting this investments on one of the animal in the pit. Most get their investments ripped appart from general nature of the pit. Blizzard is one of the few developers which has a reputation as not living in this pit, they have carved out a special niche which will yield almost guaranteed ROI as long as you got the ability to keep on funding them until they finish.
# posted by : 11/3/08 10:33
: 11/3/08 10:33
I'm not even sure that there needs to be a WoW killer. Because I think that with the increase in emphasis in WoW on casual content, a lot of players would be happy to have more than one active sub, if the second game was sufficiently different.
I know a lot of my friends are planning to play both WAR and WoW, for a few months at least.
If Blizzard plays its cards right here, they may benefit the whole market (I actually think they already have).
I know a lot of my friends are planning to play both WAR and WoW, for a few months at least.
If Blizzard plays its cards right here, they may benefit the whole market (I actually think they already have).
# posted by : 11/3/08 13:54
: 11/3/08 13:54
I dont know about WoW being more casual now. If anything, it sucks more time from more people.
There is alot of complaining about WoW going "casual", but thats in reference to Blizzard making quality rewards available to everyone, not the time investment involved. It still takes alot of time to get anything but arenas done.
Anyway, I think Blizzard knows that WoW will be showing its age in a few years. They are already making a "next-gen MMO". They obviously wouldnt release that with WoW still doing rediculously well.
I will be interested to see how long WoW takes before it starts to lose significant numbers. No western MMO has seen 10 million subscribers, and no one still expected the game to be growing after several years even after already having more subscribers than were thought to be in the market in the first place.
There is alot of complaining about WoW going "casual", but thats in reference to Blizzard making quality rewards available to everyone, not the time investment involved. It still takes alot of time to get anything but arenas done.
Anyway, I think Blizzard knows that WoW will be showing its age in a few years. They are already making a "next-gen MMO". They obviously wouldnt release that with WoW still doing rediculously well.
I will be interested to see how long WoW takes before it starts to lose significant numbers. No western MMO has seen 10 million subscribers, and no one still expected the game to be growing after several years even after already having more subscribers than were thought to be in the market in the first place.
# posted by : 11/3/08 15:02
: 11/3/08 15:02
I will be interested to see how long WoW takes before it starts to lose significant numbers. No western MMO has seen 10 million subscribers, and no one still expected the game to be growing after several years even after already having more subscribers than were thought to be in the market in the first place.
well the only thing I've seen proved is it's growing in china. I'd love to see actual proven numbers that verify whether the game is growing, stagnating or slipping in number in the west.
Post a Comment
well the only thing I've seen proved is it's growing in china. I'd love to see actual proven numbers that verify whether the game is growing, stagnating or slipping in number in the west.
<< Home
