MMO episodes to mimic TV shows
Filed under: Business models, MMO industry, News items
Massively's recent ION Game Conference coverage featured an article on developing MMO's as if they were TV shows. This idea was introduced by FireSky's Joseph Ybarra, Senior VP of Strategic Operations. FireSky hopes to run with the concept of dishing up MMO content updates in episodes, with predictable development cycles of roughly six weeks. This marriage between MMO and TV production could also lead to developing 'pilot games,' which makes sense from a company perspective. After all, it involves smaller budgets and entails less risk. The developer can expend a small amount (by standard game development budgets) and gauge player interest. If that title proves to be popular, future iterations of the game could be developed with larger budgets, building upon the storyline of the previous episodes. Do you think that gamers would have more of a say in what the creators do with these stories than they do with TV shows, since an episodic MMO is an interactive medium? Would this be a welcome change in the MMO industry, as opposed to waiting for a few years for that next game?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ghen said on 5:23PM 5-29-2008
A month is too long for me.. 6 weeks is just ridiculous.
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DrNostalgia said on 5:50AM 5-30-2008
The idea of pilot games is frankly dangerous for MMOs, depending on the marketing setup. You pilot an MMO that takes only a week to explore the content. It's popular, it's innovative, funny, and has all the makings of the lofty golden WoW-killer, but meantime, you're done, and bored.
And that means one thing: you've moved on.
Development teams know that the balance needs to be struck between content depth, and start-up capital, and of course development time. The holy triangle of getting anything done, with quality, time, and money being each side. This triangle can never be isosceles, short of a grant from God, and so it is difficult to say... I look at this article as if it is asking, "What would you think of Sam & Max: the MMO?" with episodic content released about once a month.
I'm casual enough, I'd enjoy. But I also don't invest 20+ hours in a week on the same game, (different games sure).
Take it from the other side. What if you were to have not just one pilot episode to test it on the open audience, but an alpha episode, closed beta episode, and open beta episode? Would that process help TV anymore like it seems to work for video games?
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