Is there a market for "boutique" MMOs?

[Backov]

While trying to fall asleep last night, I had a great idea for a game (not gonna share) - today, that idea evolved into a cool MMO idea.

Now, I know there's stuff like Ryzom and whatever other little ones are out there.. But can the market really support them?

Is there any kind of SOE All-Access pass for these little MMOs? It seems to me that would be one of the best ways to drive sales.. Have a bunch of these little guys all under one roof.

Anyway, as long as you could keep dev costs down, it might actually work. I know Eve is still going strong after they got out of their publishers mitts. They have one server, and what, 20k subscribers? At 15-20$ per, they're making more than enough to keep the studio running and happy in Iceland. Since it used to be a "big name" MMO, I'd say 20k is large for your average boutique MMO. But really, with a small enough studio and infrastructure costs, 5k subs at 10$ would pay the bills.

Anyway, it's an interesting market. HRose and other pundits, I await your response. Especially if you've already predicted this post in your blog.

[Myth]

Is there any kind of SOE All-Access pass for these little MMOs? It seems to me that would be one of the best ways to drive sales.. Have a bunch of these little guys all under one roof.

There is Skotos :

http://www.skotos.net/

They run a version of Meridian 59 and Underlight (both these games also run independently) as well as some other online rpgs (text based) and stragegy games.

Neocron, which has a small yet loyal fanbase is still running (the cyber punk FPS style MMORPG), which I still re-up (just love the atmosphere). Not sure about the last subscriber numbers, but I am pretty sure that they are less than EVE has.

The Near Death Studios version of Meridian 59probably has well under 1000 subscribers, and seems to sustain itself. Psychochild, one of the original devs of the 3DO version (who bought it from 3DO) has said that they will have it up as long as people want to play it.

[HRose]

They have one server, and what, 20k subscribers?
64k and growing. Aiming to 75k by the end of the year.

[Marcus]

Its that many? The most I have ever seen online is like 12k ish.

[Pod]

Online and Subscribers are two different things ;)

First off all - there's people on the other side of the world, so probably double your immediate figure. Then there's accounts that people have abandoned..

[Marcus]

Well yeah I know that but still with 65k + you would think that at anytime there would be 15k+ online I dunno I thought 20k was more likely.

Like right now there are only 8700 online.

[Backov]

Ya that number surprises me too. That means they're well out of the sustainability range and into the "damn good profit" range. Good for them, it's a good game.

Skotos seems quite cool as well, that's almost precisely what I was thinking of. I wonder how they work it with their partners as far as money goes.

[Pod]

Maybe they're all Europeans? :)

I dunno. Still, what's a "boutique MMO" :O I can't figure it out....

[Backov]

Maybe they're all Europeans? :)

I dunno. Still, what's a "boutique MMO" :O I can't figure it out....

Simply a small, specialty MMO with a very small clientele. I'm not sure where I saw the term coined but it fits. A boutique MMO, like a boutique, doesn't need a large Walmart-sized clientele, it just needs a small group of loyal shoppers.

[Calistas]

www.urbandead.com - Come up with a good idea and people will come :)

I think for a niche mmorpg you need
- a strong meta-game (ie, there's stuff to think about and organise outside the game). This keeps people's minds off the crumy graphics
- players can look after themselves and don't need too much GM help (keep costs down).
- focused gameplay that doesn't have a million interacting systems to program.

...and so on :)

Peter

[HRose]

In general you take the peak of contemporary users and multiply them x 4.

14.000 x 4 = 56.000

Which is not so off.

[Xemu]

Man, if someone took a game concept like Urban Dead and did a "real" implementation of it (ie, not "get actions slowly over time" and most importantly not using a horrible web interface) I would be so addicted...

I guess I'll have to file that along with the Zombie RTS in my "games I really need to make someday but that I'll probably have to self-finance" drawer. :)

[Backov]

I'd totally do the XCom but with Zombies game if I could get a Silent Storm engine license. :)

[Calistas]

Same here. I'd love to see my medieval village idea play out, either fully-fledged or in a web version.

[Hump]

Neocron, which has a small yet loyal fanbase is still running (the cyber punk FPS style MMORPG), which I still re-up (just love the atmosphere). Not sure about the last subscriber numbers, but I am pretty sure that they are less than EVE has.


I re-joined a couple of months ago and for the few weeks I played I never saw more than 400-500 people playing at peak hours. Then again they only have a couple of guys maintaining the whole thing so the overhead isn't that high I imagine.

Endless Ages is quite good from what I've heard. Its similar to neocron but the learning curve is substantially less.

[VegasRobb]

Does something like "The Realm" count as a boutique MMO?

[Mark Asher]

It's an interesting idea. I think what you do though is make an MMO and make it with great editing tools ala NWN and then allow anyone to license it for cheap and take a royalty for every subscriber. Have the billing go through you but the CS go through the licensee.

There are a number of NWN persistent worlds. Had NWN been designed to support MMO-style games from the ground up and had BioWare been able to allow the fan community to make MMOs and charge for them, no telling what they would have come up with.

Then just imagine if BioWare had supported it with additional artwork. A steampunk art set, a post-nuclear war art set, a futuristic art set, etc.

[Dhruin]

There's definitely a market for boutique MMO's - and there's more than you can poke a stick at. Games like Eve Online are going from strength to strength with the right cost structure - and it beats getting squashed by WoW at the top end of the market.

[Luke]

We hope so! There's definitely a market there, but whereas success in the blockbuster market tends to be about how good your product is, success in a niche market is more about managing your costs. If you can do that however, then the return on your development budget will be orders of magnitude better than for just about any other sales model, which makes it a pretty attractive market for an independent developer. Occasionally you get a runaway hit (Runequest being the canonical example, but there are a few doing pretty well), in which case your model might change a bit, but for the most part it's titles that fill a need specific enough that it's unlikely you'll ever get a subscriber base in the six figures, no matter how well produced the game is.


Luke

[Dhruin]

Your model is pretty different to most, though (and rather brave :) ). Is there another product other than Guild Wars that works on initial sales + regular expansions, with no subs? I guess the expansions are designed to bring in that regular income to replace the subs?

[Luke]

Don't tell anyone, but regular expansions are just another form of subscription :)

Their benefit is that they don't create fear in the mind of the player, their drawback is that they require an active decision to purchase (ok, that was a . Whether those things balance out for a particular product is a pretty subjective decision. For us, we feel that making it as easy as possible for players to get into the game (we'd make the initial software free and downloadable if that didn't have such negative connotations in today's market) is more important than avoiding a regular repurchase decision. Particularly when, without a huge marketing budget, we're only going to be successful if we can offer good gameplay anyway.


Luke

[eliandi]

Then just imagine if BioWare had supported it with additional artwork. A steampunk art set, a post-nuclear war art set, a futuristic art set, etc.

The NWN community is already filling the gap. There is a d20 modern and a Firefly set out (both including graphics and gameplay changes). A Shadowrun set is in early beta, and Gamma World in development. None have PWs yet, but I know the person doing Shadowrun wants to do a PW, and another person is doing a "Attack of the Zombies" PW with the modern set.

The key question is if there was monthly $$ attached to playing the games, what would be the impact to the community? It totally changes the dynamics of people developing and running PWs from a volunteer hobby into a business. Successful PWs owners spend far too much time developing content, stomping bugs, DMing or working with DM teams, etc to justify the effort as a business.