Will Sony really reinvent the MMO?

I caught SOE CEO John Smedley's keynote at this years ION conference in Seattle last week and got to sit through over an hour long keynotercial about the two upcoming MMO's they plan to release, Free Realms, and The Agency.

Targeting two completely different audiences, the aim of these new games is, as Smedley claims to 'Reinvent the MMO'.

First of all, to reinvent anything, you'd need to start out by actually inventing it. Sony didn't do this. The first MMO's came out before the Internet even emerged with great games like Air Warrior on GEnie, GemStone (which still exists today) and Neverwinter Nights, the first MMO to include graphics.

Are there problems in the MMO space today? Sure, but in this humble writers opinion, a lot of them have been caused and/or perpetuated by SOE. For one thing, I happen to know a little about the history of the development of Everquest and it's not without its shady side.

But lets get onto the point of this entry, which is SOE's shot at making good on this claim. After all, many have tried, and right now only one is truly successful.

So exactly what are the recipes for reinvention Sony is bringing us? Young girls, apparently and Rated M shooters with edgy content.

SOE says Free Realms will be going after the under 14 market, and trying to bring young girls back in the market. Also, the MMO shooter market which Smedley claims is 'basically untouched'. If by untouched you mean that the last few of them released were 'untouched by subscribers', you might be talking about titles like Planetside, wait...isn't that by Sony? At it's peak that gem had 40k subscribers, and that was in 2004.

That's fine. Perhaps Sony feels that this time, somehow, they can get it right.

So to accomplish this goal Sony would need to count on a few things things;

1. Online players from the shooter demographic which is 75% Male 18-24, and,

2. Online gamers from the Female 6-14 demo.

Only a couple ways to get them, either find new players (really tough), or, wait for attrition from other games that have the same demographics. The latter is not as tough but still difficult because even if you do pick up drop off players from other games still you have to deal with the fact that you start out with low loyalty players.

But I can get behind all this, maybe. But lets see if there are any scientific indicators to back this up. For this next trick, I'll need a volunteer from the MMO audience. "You sir, there in the back, with the shirt that says 'Demographic audience attrition for WoW over a YtY 2007, 08?" Yes could you please step forward.

Lets take a look at something I like to call gaming audience 'spill' which is a measurement of demographic loss for a game over a year by age and gender.

For instance, between April 2007 and April 2008 World of Warcraft player base declined world wide the most in two primary groups. I know, your on the edge of your seat aren't you? Am I going to say males 18-24 and Females 6-14?

Well, I am going to say 18-24 but they are females and WoW lost 23% of them versus the total WoW audience last year. But there are males too! Buuut, they are 12-17 just a skosh outside the primary target demos for a game like this.

I'll have more to say about all of this very soon.