In my last post I discussed how The Elder Scrolls Online pricing model isn’t too expensive, but it faces a challenge in terms of longevity. However some experiences thrive with similar or more expensive pricing models, namely World Of Warcraft and Second Life. Both of these platforms thrive because they are both examples of where the people are and you should not underestimate the power of people power.
When people get bored of their latest MMO, or when World Of Warcraft releases an expansion pack, people go back to WoW. People go back there because there are people there, real people, although they may be dressed in funny gear on your monitor. One of the complaints you hear about MMO’s is that there aren’t enough people there, however that’s generally not the case in WoW. There are less people at different times of day, but there are people.
Second Life has the same claim, people visit Inworldz or Kitely or other virtual worlds and report back that there was hardly anybody there. However there are people in Second Life, plenty of them, although every sim is not packed to the rafters, there are people around. This of course isn’t to suggest that there is nobody in Inworldz or Kitely, there clearly are and many people have fun on those platforms, I’m a fan of both of them, but there simply aren’t as many people as you find in Second Life.
This social aspect is extremely important for the longevity of a product because people who are engaged, invest more time, energy and money in their avatars, be they in games or virtual worlds and this investment leads to people feeling at home in those places. People may roam, they may visit other worlds, but there’s no place like home. So this socially driven investment in many ways binds people’s avatars to their favourite virtual world and of course, the more the merrier.
This sort of social investment is not something that companies can buy. However it does prove that cost is not the only factor when it comes to deciding where to venture online. If price were the only factor Second Life would be as dead as a dodo and the other similar style virtual worlds would be where it’s at. Getting people to move on is a challenge, the human factor seems to be underestimated at times, possibly because people outside the virtual just see pixels. They don’t appreciate the social investment.
When you’ve got your massive Second Life inventory and then consider all the time and expense spent accumulating it, you’re going to be reluctant to leave it all behind and make a new virtual home. On top of that you’ve got your contacts, your favourite hangouts, your memories, these are all part of the social investment and it’s a powerful investment.
So how do new places get the social key of the door that keeps users locked in? Well in a large part, it’s luck. There is no one size fits all solution to this. Being in the right place at the right time is something that’s really hard to fathom, but Second Life was in the right place at the right time, so was WoW. This is the missing ingredient for other virtual experiences that try to woo those users. Obviously being in the right place at the right time is not the only key ingredient and the developers behind WoW and Second Life certainly deserve credit for their vision.
This is a magic potion that no amount of testing for the formula is going to reveal. The next big thing is likely to come out of the blue and then turn into a giant snowball, attracting new users and retaining them. Retention is a key ingredient of course.
The challenge of retention, even in an established platform such as Second Life, was exemplified by Inara Pey when she interviewed Rod Humble last year, Inara wrote:
Two long-term issues for the platform have been user sign-ups and user retention. When it came to sign-ups, Humble again quickly made his presence felt, overseeing a top-to-toe redesign of the account creation process. This resulted in a significant increase in the number of daily sign-ups, one which still sees some 400,000 new accounts created monthly. However user retention has remained elusive; only around 20% of new accounts are still active a month after signing-up.
Now when you consider that a decent portion of those sign-ups are likely to be alts of existing customers, it demonstrates just how difficult it is to attract and keep people, and that’s with an established virtual world. New virtual worlds have an even tougher challenge, because they not only need to attract sign-ups, they need to keep people interested enough to prevent them from going back to their previous virtual world, one where they are likely to have made that social and financial investment and can find more to do.
This advantage that established worlds have is a very large one, they are places people can revert to and know that there will be a welcome by the hillside and in a competitive marketplace, that’s one hell of a bonus boost.
New players can and will emerge in the virtual world space, some will become powerful players, but it is an extremely difficult nut to crack and you certainly need a decent supply of luck potions.