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The Escapist – Boutique MMOGsDecember 24th, 2006 |
Allen Varney has a nice article at The Escapist on Boutique MMOGs. In it, he points out that in aggregate, several of the smaller MMOs he lists have populations larger than that of WoW.
But I think it’s valuable to point out that most of WoW’s subs are in Asia. If you compare the market share just in North America and Europe, a lot of these “under the radar” games actually have a larger market share than WoW does.
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[...] Finally, I’d like to point to a couple of articles outside the edutech blogging sphere. 3pointD examines a post by Raph Koster and an Escapist article by Allen Varney on the growth and potential of “boutique MMOGs.” The idea here is that much like niche Web sites (perhaps something like Slashdot) there is the potential for numerous virtual worlds which can be inexpensively produced and maintained and which unlike World of Warcraft do not require millions of subscribers to be a success. Interstingly, 3pointD also has another post relating the details of their first “Think Tank” event held in SL. I’m still working through the chat transcript but the list of items that they considered is impressive: standards and interoperability between platforms [...]
Varney put Gaia Online in the $3m budget cetegory? Hell, one person could throw that together in a month for $0m.
Yeah I know, nitpick.
Thanks for the plug, Raph. I also posted a companion blog entry on The Escapist Lounge, “Your Own MMOG?,” that briefly outlines the business and coding approaches needed for these low-budget games.
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