Whats up with MMO's today?

I got a lot of uh, feedback at ION for some of my views on the state of MMO's. Largely, the mixture of games out there seems to consist of either under-funded or under-thought games that are destined for failure.

I think the industry overall has lost perspective on why MMO's became popular to begin with, focusing too heavily on attracting a slice of Blizzard's 18-24 Male pie, and this demographic isn't completely accurate anyway. And accuracy about understanding the MMO audiences is probably 90% of the reasons why MMO's fail. Well, that and releasing end-game content to beta players right before releasing your game. Whoops, did I say that? Regardless, do please understand your audience, don't release end game content until...well...end game.

In April of this year, 10.8 million unique players played World of Warcraft. For those of you interested, this is 1.3% of the global internet audience. On average, nearly 4.5 million people on planet Earth take on the daily role of Horde or Alliance.

Of these, The audience is almost overwhelmingly male, and this reinforces the tongue and cheek understanding that yes, that really hawt Blood Elf is probably a male between the ages of 15 and 24. Ew.

Unless of course they are between 35 and 44. In this particular demographic, it is very nearly a 50/50 split with Female players edging out males by about 59k players. In fact, any guy below the age of 35 who has any notion of finding a girlfriend in this game should seriously reconsider. Actually, any guy of any age looking for a girlfriend in a fantasy MMO, well, you get the point.

The news isn't all bad. Even though the audience 'tilt' is overwhelmingly a younger audience, leaning male, comparing the 'over the hill' crowd versus the 'under the hill' crowd reveals a fairly promising market to be had for developers willing to 'risk it all' on older audiences.

Underneath all this is the fact that there are 3.4 million WoW players out there (1.5 female/1.9 male) who might be looking for a richer, more immersive MMO experience that they are not currently getting anywhere but in WoW.

Name one thing that nearly 3.5 million men & women 35 or over like to do alongside of 7.4 million youngsters, 4.9 million of which are below the age of 25.

So why is WoW so tough to beat? Is it because they create content so fantastically attractive across all demographics? Is it because the rich storyline and quality of roleplay create impossible barriers to entry?

Maybe, maybe not. It might just be that publishers aren't interested in niche markets. It might be that developers have stopped creating visions, and are now focusing on 'effective and proven strategies to win share from WoW', instead of innovating and creating IP that may (or may not) attract an audience.

Quite possibly its the formula by which MMO's are created that caused a failure to attract the right age demographics and the proper male/female ratios. Again, it goes back to targeting. You cannot say, "I'm going to go after MMO players who like fantasy!" I've said it before, its like selling cars to 'humans'.