MMO – Page 6 – Ciaran Laval

March 21, 2014March 21, 2014

How Will Second Life Fare In The Face Of The Rise Of The Sandbox MMO?

Second Life has in many ways been way ahead of the pack. Their free to play model was controversial when launched but has proven to be the right model and now many MMO’s follow this model. Second Life introduced user generated content to 3D worlds and whereas some of that content has definitely been controversial, Second Life trailblazed as a platform of creativity.

In terms of empowering content creators, Second Life has once again trailblazed, by allowing content creators a means to make real money from their creations, Second Life tapped into a massively underestimated market. Second Life has therefore been quite ground breaking in terms of bringing together these concepts, but now others are starting to take note, they are starting to see the potential and they are hoping to get their share of the pie. The people who make content creation tools are also seeing the massive opportunity that is knocking louder and louder, they are making their products more accessible by offering different payment options and making their tools free or cheaper.

The likes of EverQuest Next Landmark are already attracting attention and will allow content creators to build and have the opportunity to make real money from their creations. Others will be watching with interest to see how this pans out. There is without doubt fear about user generated content but the window of opportunity is wide open.

Then there are the tools, yesterday the Unreal Engine 4 was launched with a very affordable licensing model for pretty much anybody. The full engine and source is $19.95 a month and then 5% of any game sales, in games sales and advertising. The previous Unreal Engine was not an option for indie developers, in an article on Gamautra they quote Epic’s Tim Sweeney as saying:

it’s typically cost millions of dollars… negotiating has involved teams of lawyers, looking at the shape of the industry now we realize it’s an outdated model, looking at the possibilities for the engine, we started out from scratch. We came up with an entirely new business model for the Unreal Engine which we are announcing today.

Now, absolutely anybody can gain access to Unreal Engine 4 by subscribing to the engine for 19 dollars a month — and you get access to everything” .

Now it dangles there as an affordable option and it’s not just game developers being wooed, they are also chasing content creators:

To help you get started, we’re shipping lots of ready-made content, samples, and game templates. You’ll find it in the Marketplace in the Unreal Editor. Right now, it simply hosts free stuff from Epic, but its resemblance to the App Store is no coincidence: It will grow into a complete ecosystem for sharing community-created content, paid and free, and open for everyone’s participation!

These platforms, games, development engines etc. are stepping on Second Life’s toes and more of them will be stepping on their toes, will Second Life prosper?

Continue reading “How Will Second Life Fare In The Face Of The Rise Of The Sandbox MMO?”

March 21, 2014

EverQuest Next Landmark Announces Closed Beta

EverQuest Next Landmark has announced that closed beta will start on March 26th. EverQuest Next Landmark, for those who don’t know, is a hotly anticipated online social building game linked to EverQuest Next. For example, from the blurb :

This is your chance to help build a game! Build alone or in groups to create Landmarks. Join massive construction contests and your creations could last forever. The best buildings players create will become permanent fixtures in the EverQuest Next world.

It’s a sandbox game, you can build with their tools and people have been happily building away during the Alpha process, now it’s getting close to Beta time.

There will also be opportunities for people to sell their wares for real cash via the Sony Online Entertainment Player Studio, although this will initially be restricted to those in the United States the plan is to extend this to other countries, it should also be noted that sales via the Player Studio will be for multiple games, so content creators may see plenty of opportunities.

There’s a rather epic forum post discussing the business of EverQuest Next Landmark, it’s a free to play title so selling items and encouraging people to purchase items and subscriptions will be important. The opening post, from an official bod, also discusses players selling items :

Phase 4: We launch Player Studio. At that point, all of our players can start submitting templates to the store and letting other players buy them. This should occur early during Closed Beta.

Hopefully that means people from outside the United States will be able to sell items. However it should be pointed out there’s a rather hefty commission fee for selling goods this way:

SOE will share 40% of the net amount it receives from the sale of the item with the player that created the item.

Plenty of content creators will baulk at that, but opportunity knocks for those who think it’s a reasonable trade off between reach and sales. Time will tell whether it’s a success but it’s encouraging to see other products offering content creators the option to sell their own wares.

There are a couple of ways of getting into closed beta, you can purchase a Founder’s Packs, which gives you unlimited access to the Landmark Closed Beta or you can apply to acquire a Time-Limited Closed Beta Key, which is a free method of getting into the Closed Beta, but is far more limited than the Founder’s Packs options.

Founder’s Packs come in three varieties, priced at $19.99, $59.99 and $99.99. All three varieties will allow you full closed beta access. The packs are:

Settler Pack – $19.99

Unlimited Closed Beta Access
Settler Flag ItemPlant your flag in EQ/EQII
Founder’s Pickaxe
Title: Founder
Forum Title: Founder

Continue reading “EverQuest Next Landmark Announces Closed Beta”

March 20, 2014

Judge Rules Against Worlds Inc. In Virtual World Patent Claims

Cristiano Midnight over at SLUniverse has posted news of a court ruling in favour of Activision in a patent case brought by Worlds Inc. This is an important case because Worlds Inc. have been challenging a lot of MMO’s and Virtual Worlds over alleged use of their patents.

Cristiano’s post links to a Gigaom article from last week : World of Warcraft beats trolls in fight over 1996 “virtual worlds” patent . One of Worlds Inc.’s patents is US Patent 7,181,690 which makes a claim of :

A method for enabling a first user to interact with other users in a virtual space, wherein the first user and the other users each have an avatar and a client process associated therewith, and wherein each client process is in communication with a server process.

There’s more in the link, but that would cover a lot of MMO’s and virtual worlds were Worlds Inc. to win a case. However in the Activision case Gigaom are quoted as saying :

U.S. District Judge Denise Casper wrote that patents belonging to Worlds Inc. appear invalid because the inventions they describe already appeared in public before the patents were filed.

Worlds Inc. have in the past said that they may also look to see if Second Life is violating their patents, although a Massively article on the same issue claims:

This isn’t Worlds’ first attempt to sue an MMO studio over these allegations, as it went after (and lost to) NCsoft and Linden Lab several years ago.

Continue reading “Judge Rules Against Worlds Inc. In Virtual World Patent Claims”

March 6, 2014

Price Comparisons For SL Go Are Difficult, But Please Leave Coffee Out Of It

Often when people are debating costs of online services, such as MMO’s or SL Go, the coffee argument will be trotted out. On the face of it the coffee argument is a good one, the cost can be compared to buying a few cups of coffee a month, which is true. The problem with the coffee comparison is that coffee is a consumable product, with little investment opportunity. I mean you may get a coffee loyalty card which can earn you free coffee, but you know that each cup is going to be disposed of in one form or another.

People who spend time in MMO’s and virtual worlds such as Second Life are investing in their avatar, there are various different ways of doing this but people generally don’t think of this avatar investment as a disposable product. They see it as an ongoing cost in developing said avatar.

That avatar investment is extremely important for developers of MMO’s and virtual worlds, it’s the hook, it’s why people are prepared to keep logging on, there’s progression. This is why in MMO’s a hardcore mode where you lose everything if your character is killed is not the norm, some have it as an option, but it’s not the norm because if that were the norm, people would see their character as disposable, like coffee.

Coffee is not a good comparison, nor is Pizza or even a trip to the pictures. This of course leaves one in the awkward position of trying to find a good comparison. In terms of something like The Elder Scrolls Online, it’s other MMO’s, and there are plenty of them with different pricing structures.

In terms of SL Go, it’s a lot trickier because there’s nothing really like it. Lumiya is a mobile client for Second Life, but it doesn’t deliver its service in the same way as SL Go and it won’t provide the same levels of performance. However Lumiya will provide a means of logging into Second Life on a mobile device.

Continue reading “Price Comparisons For SL Go Are Difficult, But Please Leave Coffee Out Of It”

March 5, 2014

The Trouble With Pricing Models

No matter what price a company puts on a product, there are going to be people who complain about it. There are umpteen examples of this, a glaring one for Second Life users is tier pricing. The tier is too damn high for many potential use cases of Second Life, but it is what it is. However there are ways and means of introducing pricing structures that can help to attract more customers.

The Elder Scrolls Online will be out soon, with an upfront fee and a USD$15 a month subscription fee, and there have been plenty of complaints about it. The price itself is not outrageously expensive but the pricing models for MMO’s has for some time been moving away from a subscription only model. Indeed Second Life is a glaring example of a product that moved from a subscription only model, to a choice of payment model and undoubtedly prospered.

I’ll be amazed if The Elder Scrolls Online does not change its pricing model within a year or two of release. I’ve seen this before with Star Wars The Old Republic, Age Of Conan, Star Trek Online yadda yadda yadda. The MMO market has moved on in the main from the subscription only model. There are at least two whopping examples of pretty much subscription fee only models, World Of Warcraft and Eve-Online. WoW has the people, that’s something you simply can’t buy. Eve-Online is far more niche, that’s a good advantage, but in the main the subscription only model is heading into extinction. The thing to note is that many a free to play MMO model offers a subscription option.

Now the new SL Go is getting criticised for its pricing model and I personally think this is a bridge that the concept won’t be able to cross. The technology really is brilliant in terms of delivery, the pricing model is quite heinous and there is a virtual world precedent here, Kitely.

Kitely had a pay per minute plan, it was not quite the same as the Onlive SL Go model, but it was a pay for your time model. On January 1st Kitely changed their model quite substantially, announcing in a blog post:

Until now, users had a certain number of Minutes that they could spend in-world; this was similar to the Minutes in a cellphone plan. Unfortunately, using Minutes had some downsides.

The biggest problem was that using Minutes caused anxiety among casual users: they had to count their Minutes and “spend them wisely”. But starting now, visitors never pay for visiting a world. It’s possible that a user won’t be able to visit a particular world due to the access settings chosen by the world owner, but if they can visit the world then it’s completely free for them.

Whereas paid time has not been completely removed from Kitely, the onus now falls on a sim owner to pay the bill for visitor’s time, but Kitely has a range of other options that mean sim owners can avoid such fees and it’s this sort of range of choice that helps end users.

Continue reading “The Trouble With Pricing Models”