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Tech savvy European youngsters

February 15th, 2007 (Visited 2125 times) Tags:

OK, I must be getting old. I just called 18-24 year olds “youngsters.”

In any case, Media Life Magazine reports the following stats from a study:

75 to 80% using email or instant messenger
15% have ever created a blog
19% have played MMORPGs
25% use social networking sites

That figure is somehow both more and less than I expected for the MMO’s…

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Andrew Wooldridge said on February 15th, 2007 at 5:12 pm:
That’s interesting. Imagine an application which combined email with MMO’s but without the long delays. And I don’t mean the play by email type things or the collaborative storytelling - which are interesting in their own right, but come up with a game which allows you to control your online character via email commands or perhaps mobile phone texting…
Mike Rozak said on February 15th, 2007 at 6:23 pm:
Since social networking sites have vastly more users than MMORPGs, that means that while 19% have tried MMORPGs (vs. 25% for social networking), far fewer stick with MMORPGs (compared to social networking sites) => MMORPGs are niche and they need to be made more mass-market. ( MySpace has 154 million accounts according to Wikipedia, and Runescape 9 million uniques per month, according to an article I read a few days ago. )

It also explains runescape’s numbers. With 900K paying players, given typical shareware conversion rates of 1%-2%-4%, you’d need 90M-45M-25M people to download and try it… All but the 25M seem awfully high to me, but a 4% conversion rate would be stellar for shareware. But if 19% of 18-24 year-olds have tried MMORPGs, and presumably a similar amount of 12-18 year olds, such numbers might be possible.

Which means there’s potentially a really huge market for:
a) A virtual world that’s more fun to play/visit than a MMORPG, at least more fun for mass-market players.
b) Which is free to play.
c) Which is easy to download and install.
PJMRM said on February 16th, 2007 at 6:13 am:
Mike Rozak said on February 15th, 2007 at 6:23 pm:

a) A virtual world that’s more fun to play/visit than a MMORPG, at least more fun for mass-market players.

b) Which is free to play.

c) Which is easy to download and install.

‘b’ and ‘c’ I agree with, but ‘a’ I think comes down to the fact that society is made up of niches. Sure, you may get everyone to play video games or read books or use what ever medium you can think of, BUT! You will not get everyone to enjoy Madden Football nor the book Manufacturing Consent.

Yes I believe the “mass market” can be successfully introduced to MMORPGs, but I do not think one MMORPG can be the be all end all MMORPG that does it.

You should target your audiences like authors do, you should target a niche that has yet to be tapped. Trying to find this mystical norm, that will gain you the largest playerbase ever, is like searching for The Fountain of Youth: it just don’t exist.
Dotswarlock said on February 16th, 2007 at 6:22 am:
Something that’s interesting in my region: the Internet is slowly becoming as standard as phones to the point where not having it is uncommon to the point of being a social factor in discussions. There were quite a few interviews about older techless adults learning about the Internet, email and instant messaging in order not to be left behind and so that they could feel in the *in* crowd.
Adele said on February 16th, 2007 at 10:33 am:
I think the age of the average gamer is actually 26-35 or somewhere around there, so that leaves those kids out. It is those that grew up playing the games when they first came out that are still playing them as they grow older. Most kids these days are too worried about being cool and well hitting on each other on myspace:)

Although none of us will be playing games if Hillary gets her way!