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Date Posted: Wed, Feb 25 2004, 05:57pm
In reply to:
Darkstone News
's message, "News : Rumors of UO & UXO Projects Relocating to California" on Tue, Feb 24 2004, 08:28pm
Is The Industry Waking Up?
By Ryan James "RJO" O'Sullivan
Mythica fans last week were faced with a pre-release MMO fan’s worst nightmare, project cancellation. This is the third major project to be cancelled since Ultima Online 2 and I am sure in the coming weeks the uproar in the community will be very similar. But there is need for concern, not only for Mythica fans, but for any follower of the genre.
The simple fact of the matter is that within just over five years this industry has experienced hyper-growth on levels that far out-flank any other sector of online computer entertainment. The major players in the industry post huge revenues on subscriptions every single year and all of a sudden the hobby based MUD community has become the corporate playing field of the Massively Multiplayer game.
With the entrance of corporate dollars comes the corporate control over the big titles. The titles that are three years away but have a following of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of loyal fans. There are many titles in the works, encompassing millions of dollars in potential income - and the companies know this. But there is a dark realization that is now being considered, just when does it end? When does the genre hit the ceiling and all that ends up happening is companies resort to passing around subscriptions with no real growth. This is a question that is haunting corporations who have potential products laid before senior management, just how long can it continue? When does the opportunity cost grow larger than any potential earning?
Cost vs. Earning
Electronic Arts was the first to realize this. Ultima Online 2 was not the first project to get the chop from upper management. There were also titles like Wing Commander Online, and Richard Garriot’s secretive Tabula Rasa. Electronic Art’s management realized that the industry can only go so far, and for the millions of dollars it now takes to design these projects (Ultima Online started with a budget of just over 200k, and ended up spending millions, next generation titles are now well into the 10’s of millions of dollars) the cost of producing these titles would not be worth it.
It is safe to assume that a major factor in the dissolving of the Ultima Online 2 project, a project with a massive following and potential for earnings, was made with great care and research. Why then did Electronic Arts take the step and cancel a project that frankly would have paid for itself? It is simple. EA discovered what they feared most, the genre had a cap, and there was not room for Ultima Online and its sequel, Ultima Online 2. There must have been some research that indicated that UO2 would have created an equal split and only fragment the “online Ultima community”. The operational costs of running both UO and UO2 as two separate entities would simply be too much and lead to the demise of one or the other as they competed over the exact same market share.
Since the cancellation of Ultima Online 2 Electronic Arts has seen several online investments blow up in their face. Motor City online has just this past August closed its doors. The Sims Online was supposed to be a product with a subscriber base in the millions; it now lurks around the 100k mark on a good month. Earth and Beyond was expected by Electronic Arts to be on the level of Ultima Online while in reality it never broke the 50k mark.
Not only did Electronic Arts take this to heart, but the entire industry was watching, and a new sort of caution has entered the management offices in the industry.
Caution
So now Microsoft has decided to abandon ship, they’ve decided that they themselves do not want to be in the business of design studio for massively multiplayer titles. Microsoft will do what they do best; tag along as a partner in the industry as they have done with Turbine in the past. They are publishing for Sigil Games and that is what they see as a safe bet. No real risk for them, they will front the publishing bill in return for a cut of the profits. A much safer investment then running server infrastructure (remember, they just sold the Asheron Call titles to Turbine, meaning their infrastructure there is no longer needed), worrying about subscription retention, and most importantly of all, fronting the risky bill for developing the title in house.
So then, with all this risk where do the other current titles stand?
After reading this you might ask where does Ultima X: Odyssey fit within the grand scheme of things after the lessons Electronic Arts has learned. The main thing with UXO is that EA Games (now that Origin Systems Inc. has been dissolved into EA Games, and the old “OSI” has more or less become “EA Games Austin”) has gone out of its way to make it NOT like Ultima Online. At a press event for promoting UXO in August it was found odd and questioned at the time why there was no housing, no crafting and no free form world feel that previous Ultima titles have strived to achieve. The answer to this is very simple. If the game becomes too much like Ultima Online it will only hurt Ultima Online. So EA Games has gone out of their way to create a new style of game. What you see with UXO is not really a MMORPG it is more like an action/adventure game of the old days, ala Sierra’s titles of the early 90s. What you have is a Massively Multiplayer Online Adventure Game. Twitch combat, skills that evolve as you move along on specific paths, private battlefields, all changes in direction from the free form style of Ultima Online. They don’t want Ultima Online 2, they want a game that can run along side Ultima Online. It is simple, they don’t want to share market share with Ultima Online, and they want to cut into someone else’s market share.
Then one must turn to Sony and wonder just what the heck they are doing with Everquest 2. It is simple, where as EA is trying to not make Ultima Online 2, Sony is. You look at the key features of Everquest 2 and things like “player owned real estate” and “dedicated trade skill classes” pop up right away. With EQ2 Sony is moving away from the rich quest and raid based world of Everquest Classic and into the freeform world of Ultima Online. Sony is so confident in their strategy that they are going as far as giving Everquest a new graphics engine supporting DirectX 9 and bringing it on par with next generation titles in the genre in the coming months. Sony is not worried about their own market share (in terms of EQ1) as EQ1 has a solid following of almost half a million people in a game with hundreds of zones, ten of thousand of items and well over 2500 quests. They know that Everquest Classic will keep on marching because Everquest 2 poses no direct threat to it.
Community Perception
One of the most important things in this industry is community perception. If you talk to an EQ player you can see where Sony has done this right. They have made it clear they are sticking by EQ Classic (there are new expansions on the way, the new engine, the list goes on). If you check the headlines of Ultima Online Stratics you will see that the last week has been full of EA employees having to pacify the community and tell them UXO is not the end of UO. Electronic Arts is doing their best, but their past performance of waffling on major genre specific decisions has got people worried.
So with several of the big players revving up to go at each other in the next few year or so we are sure to see some interesting twists and turns of events both for released and pre-released titles. Where will EA take Ultima Online to ensure its place in the social/open landscape niche of the industry? What will Everquest do to ward off the potential threat of UXO and FFXI? What effect will NC Soft’s cache of titles have - raise overall demand, or simply further inflate the supply?
There is a war brewing in the industry, and companies like Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts, and NC Soft are setting their pieces on the table. 2004 just might be the most interesting year this industry has seen yet.
- Ryan James "RJO" O'Sullivan
Ryan James “RJO” O’Sullivan is Chief Operations Officer of RyNet Inc and Managing Editor of Planetside Stratics. Ryan has consulted on several projects in the gaming industry and enjoys being a vocal observer of the industry. Ryan has written commentary for Stratics, IGN, and several fan sites within the gaming industry. Ryan lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with his wife Tammy.
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Stratics Editorial : Is The Industry Waking Up?