Are MMOs DYING!?...or are we just expecting too much?

[Ath192]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9GAgXxf_AU



The MMO genre is an oligopoly with a few legacy games like WoW, FF14, ESO, having a stranglehold on the playerbase due to entrenched network effects and switching costs. There is little competition, and even the competition themselves consist of players switching from one oligopolistic firm to another.

Single player, non live-service games are designed to be fun, since their sales depend on the quality of the game. MMOs are designed to trap you within its network. As Josh Strife Hayes says, sometimes it even breeds a parasocial behavior in its players where its players treat the game as their personal identity.

What is ultimately so ironic is that we aren't getting better games in the MMO genre because ultimately the consumers have a preference for those networks. They want a second life. They want to treat the game as a social hub over making friends IRL. That's what creates this non-competitive oligopolistic equilibrium, and why these games don't care about innovating. They don't need to. They have trapped you here since you want to escape into a second life. They have found a group of players who are very easily exploited and are now defaulting to rent-seeking behavior. They have breeded a codependent, parasocial relationship with its customer base, which is the ultimate dream of every billion dollar company.

FF14 will never have the best gameplay CBU3 can pump out. It will never have the best story that its writers can write. It will never have the best, innovative content that its designers can make. Because its core playerbase will never quit no matter how bad this game gets. What is sad is that this also means the entire MMO genre will never allow for an innovative game to succeed because the playerbase want comfort over novel experiences, over quality gameplay, and over thought-provoking stories.

AI will reduce the cost of development of these types of games enough that someone will make a good one for those seeking challenge and gameplay, right now it costs millions but as AI advances and can produce HQ assets and such the teams developing these games will be able to get really lean to where enthusiast communities will be able to release games that fit their niche.

It will compose the music, sound effects and graphical assets, so really you will need few developers familiar with using a good engine to produce decent games.

For example this is an AI song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VJ-rYBC68Q

It's good enough for a game if you ask me, and its free to use. It will only get better from today.

In fact, as hated as the opinion may be CBUIII should use AI to design armor sets for those times where they don't have the time to manually build the sets themselves. Instead of gee... IDK, reusing the same assets over and over again with a different color.