[...] Is the shift to online a fad? [...]

[...] There has been a move/desire in the gaming industry to replace traditional CD/DVD "brick and mortar" store sold games with online only games (no CD’s you pay to play). If I recall correctly, Smed spoke about moving that direction in the future. I’ll see if I can find the article. Found Raph’s take on the shift – http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/02/12/is-the-shift-to-online-a-fad/ [...]

[...] Recently, Raph Koster has been talking a lot about the “shift to multiplayer”. His most recent article about that is here. Usually, I’d just stick my commentary in his comments section, but his blog’s popularity has at last caught up to his actual popularity, so his comments section is officially too crowded for a post of this length.Raph is right about this. There’s a lot of different kinds of multiplayer, and the basic truth is that games are going to involve a lot more people. Sure, they’ll always be a sluggish niche in the back for people who like to play alone, but even those people will find they have a community around their game, whether it is FFXIX or Solitaire of the Future.We’re not talking about being forced to participate, here. We’re simply talking about the capability. It’s going to become universal. Why?Free content.Now, some people don’t consider forum chatter “content”. I do. If it takes your player’s time up and interests them, it is content – at least, for somebody. Whether you’re Morrowind or World of Warcraft, the main thing your community does is create content!Having a community linked to the game is saying, “My artists spent eight hundred hours to make eighty hours of content by creating levels five through nine. My programmers spent eighty hours making eight hundred hours of content by letting all our fans talk to each other.” Which is more efficient? A 10-1 ratio, or a 1-10 ratio?Of course, I’m just making the numbers up, here. They are really much more in favor of player content and communities, since creating an eighty hour game in eight hundred hours is not likely. Seriously, communities – or player content of any kind – is dramatically more efficient and versatile than developer content!People are starting to pick up on this, including Raph. He gives his vision of the future. I don’t think it’s strong enough. Take everything he says, and give it a twist to take it two steps forward and a step to the side.For example, “store retailers in trouble” is a dramatic understatement. Oh, wow, is it an understatement. The early adopters have already abandoned store retailers for anything other than used games and games they’ve got to have right now. Look at a retailer’s selling cycle: game comes out. It gets bought for a week. After that, nobody else buys it much (and it’s getting worse). Do you really think that everyone who wanted the game got it in that first week? Isn’t it slightly more likely that they’re just stealing it?Aside from the GameCube, even the console games are frequently stolen! With computer games, it’s even worse.MMORPGs are great because even if they are stolen, the thief still has to pay the monthly fee. The same with STEAM, for all its other faults. These are the systems of the future. And these systems write out store distribution altogether (or will, in a few years).Another example, “playing single player games in multiplayer space” is also true, and also a misstatement. Because those single-player games are going to be, by and large, made by people in the multiplayer game. They might be devs, or paid level designers… but they’re also probably volunteers and fans. The “game” you “buy” from the “developers” is really a multiplayer world you lease from tool programmers. Inside that game, you’ll probably find games you have to buy from developers.I could go on for pages… I have gone on for pages. Anyhow: yeah, multiplayer. It’s gonna be everywhere. Haven’t you noticed that it’s more fun to play a game when you and your friends can chat about it? [...]

[...] Is the shift to online a fad? [...]

[...] For those of you interested in videogames, virtual worlds, content distribution and prognostications, check out Raph Koster’s recent entry, “Is the shift to online a fad?” (Link), – an excellent follow-up to some other follow-ups to a talk he gave recently. [...]

The idea that online distribution and subsequently having to log in online to play doesn’t make your games any less exposed to hacking than if you put it on a CD and ship it in a box. Your content is always exposed, your gameplay concepts are fundamentally exposed by being what they are.

The idea that someone could ‘rip off’ a game mechanic and put it into their own game is flattery, not stealing. If not, then an awful lot of current game developers are stealing every day.

Today we are trained to be materialists – to value tangible things. Yet a generation of pre-teens and teenagers are growing up with music on mp3, owning the right to listen to the data without buying the CD that goes with it. e-books are doing a thriving enough business to stay in business. The idea that data needs to be represented in our lives by a tangible, material thing is not a sustainable concept.

It is cheaper and easier to distribute online than to distribute through hard-copy retail. If you’re distributing online, it stands to reason your audience is online so it’s a small step to introduce online community aspects into your games for your connected audience. Xbox Live! shows this nicely, and Live! Arcade is the next logical step.

All in all, online gives the games industry something it’s needed for a while – alternate distribution channels, space for the longtail and a broader sense of community.

Physical distribution isn’t going to vanish overnight because there are enough of us old fogeys around who remember when the internet wasn’t quite so popular and remember floppy discs. But to people who have grown up on broadband internet the significance is probably lost.

http://www.costik.com/weblog/2006_02_01_blogchive.html#113978080938999614

Yeah, I’ve read that. EA’s profits are always all over the place. Costikyan ends with: “In general, the benchmark numbers of the industry were up 6% 05 over 06″. Different companies are up and down all the time, but there is still a lot of money being made. Yes, I think EA is being challenged and will have to adapt. I don’t see evidence that this this will do anything to blockbuster games. I said it’s publishers who push blockbusters but I should have said publishers AND consumers. The “core” gamer audience may not be as big as the audience for King Kong, but it is still quite large and very interested in how many polygons are used in the latest games, etc. Just look at the hype and interest in the XBox 360 despite it launching with almost no good games. Yes, people are buying Geometry Wars on it, which is cool, but what they are really interested in and what they bought the system for is the hype and the next Madden, the next Halo, etc.