Comments on: Everything Looks Better With A Chart

By: MattF

MattF — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:26:56 +0000

“I suppose I don’t really take the long view. In the end if an MMO makes enough back to pay the initial investment, keep everyone on salary and kick a bit back to the owners, oh, and is also, you know, a fun game, I consider it a success.”

This is my mantra. As long as the company in question has planned their game well and haven’t oversold, they can easily be “successful”. It’s all about management of time and resources.

By: Arthur_Parker

Arthur_Parker — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:02:39 +0000

Players track subscription numbers because of previous experiences with games like AC2.

By: J.E.

J.E. — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:04:34 +0000

MMO box prices (that don’t have “World of Warcraft” in front of them) tend to fall pretty quickly after their release dates, so this isn’t a surprising or unusual thing.

By: Anonmous

Anonmous — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 10:33:03 +0000

Looks like Amazon has Warhammer Online for $20. It’s dead, Jim!

By: Viz

Viz — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:22:38 +0000

There’s a huge difference between maintaining liquidity and letting your money just sit there because you don’t know what to do with it. Given that Microsoft announced large dividends a couple years back to get rid of some of this cash, I sincerely doubt that they needed it to ensure adequate cash flow.

By: Mario

Mario — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:48:24 +0000

“Microsoft had what, a hundred billion in cash, just sitting there? Because it didn’t pay dividends and its managers were able to at least partially restrain themselves from empire building. Does that sound like a good way to use your money? And it’s not even as bad as the (more common) alternative.”

Actually it likely saved the company from this financal crisis and ensured its position as a top power player for the next cycle. As they can now use all that liquidy to run their buissness (trust me, a lot of companies are in a daily battle just to find the daily cash to pay salary, inventory etc) B) buy up good companies that are now so cash straped they can’t pay the bills. (because they paided out all their cash in dividends expecting to always be able to borrow cash short term).

By: Chris F

Chris F — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:55:50 +0000

@Shiro: Then all you really need to know is that the game has 3000 players or more. I mean, that is the typical server cap, right? So hit 3000 subs and the server will always be full enough for you to play!

@D-One: Sadly the $15 is THE indicator if a MMO title is “of value” to play. Why do consumers do that? Here are two bottles of headache medicine. One is $5, the other is $10. Better buy the $10 one because it must be “better”. Consumers are programmed that more expensive means better, which normally isn’t true.

By: D-0ne

D-0ne — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:17:49 +0000

Considering the lack of price differential (free or $15/month) in MMRPGs, one would think that subscriber numbers for the $15/month games would be in indicator of quality of play.

For example if AoC had actually been a good game, they’d probably be competing with WoW numbers right now.

By: Shiro

Shiro — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:07:36 +0000

I’m a bit over my head with all the financial talk here. To me, all the subscription numbers tell me is that “Hey, I can play with more people on game X.”

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:43:32 +0000

Perpetual growth in a finite world is mathematically impossible. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always loathed the stock market and the investment economy. Crashes are inevitable, and those who engineer the crashes profit wildly from the suckers who gamble in the markets.

Publicly traded companies relying on growth to make numbers are simply setting themselves up to fail. It’s inevitable, and only a matter of when, not if.

If an MMO is stable and profitable (paying dividends, effectively) for the devs and maintenance crew, it’s successful. Perhaps paradoxically on the surface, an MMO relying on a perpetually expanding user base to meet payroll and shareholder demands will inevitably fail. It will be successful for a while, but cannot last. To some, that’s success, but to my mind, where one of the core concepts of an MMO is to provide a virtual persistent world, a persistent (sustainable, not growth-based) business model fits better than a churn and burn model.