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This just seems to be the strategy they teach at business school, and it never works. I remember in the 2000s, all these mmos were popping up saying they were

This just seems to be the strategy they teach at business school, and it never works. I remember in the 2000s, all these mmos were popping up saying they were the "WoW killer". Um, no, people who play WoW already play WoW, and you are really trying to convince everyone who doesn't want to play WoW to play a game that is designed to be very similar. It never made any sense. But I guess if you are a business exec, and you are risk averse, and lazy, you don't mind any of that. You just say "WoW makes money please make me one if those." That is not how creativity and innovation work though.

mtgx 3y ago
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dmix 3y ago
Big tech businesses always suffer from lack of creativity but most importantly they often lack a central product vision where someone can say “no”. What happens usually is some middle tier exec (or big name customer if B2B) will say, “hey did you see Snapchat new stories feature? We should do something like that” and then without careful customer research, or a product leader connecting it to an overarching vision, the devs just start work on it and it rolls out because it’s just there. Everyone needs something to do and everyone loves new features right? Blindly copying some other company’s new features or UI patterns, and pigeonholing it into an app without cohesive product-wide strategy (aka connecting it to what customers already like about your service but even better) is always the sign the company has entered mediocrity. Largely a talent issue and execs who don’t really care about long term product dev. People just looking at generic growth charts and hoping they go up and then buying other companies when their own teams can’t hack it, hoping they can seed some life, without fixing the root causes.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> Um, no, people who play WoW already play WoW, and you are really trying to convince everyone who doesn't want to play WoW to play a game that is designed to be very similar. Is that really the goal though? You can have a successful MMO without killing wow. Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. were all great games from the business perspective.
- hoorayimhelping 3y ago
  >Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. were all great games from the business perspective. OP said: >all these mmos were popping up saying they were the "WoW killer" Guild Wars and WHO weren't positioned as WoW killers. They were positioned as WoW alternatives that prioritized or PvP or had an endgame that revolved around PvP. Which is probably why they did well - they offered something that WoW wasn't good at instead of trying to eat WoW's lunch.
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    What's an example then of a game that fits the original argument?
    - Goronmon 3y ago
      Star Wars: The Old Republic is probably the biggest example. Edit: Rift is probably another good example, though less high-profile than SWTOR.
      - Macha 3y ago
        Lord of the Rings Online, Archeage, Tera, Wildstar, Kingdoms of Analur, City of Heroes, The Matrix Online are all from that era of every MMO trying to be the WoW killer and needing to supplant WoW for their business model to work. What's funny is WoW has declined so much but is still clearly a viable business, but I'm sure things like LOTRO, City of Heroes and Tera peaked at higher levels than current WoW. But the WoW of their time was on like 10-12million subs so that was a failure.
        Goronmon 3y ago
        Yeah, it's been so long since I thought about some of these that I honestly was blanking on many of them.
devnullbrain 3y ago
It's something that does work in other industries. If fantasy books are big you pay someone to write another fantasy book. If people start buying crossovers, you build a crossover. The difference is that these are replaceable, consumable or temporary. With 'platforms', it's not enough to make something similar to something that someone likes, you have to make something that displaces something someone likes. How someone spends their leisure time is a limited, valuable resource.
- philipov 3y ago
  In the case of social network platforms, you have to do more than than convince someone to switch one person at a time. Using one social network platform over another is a group decision and you have to convince an entire group to switch at the same time. It does me no good to switch platforms if the people who I interact with are still using the old one. This means you need more than just a better product; you need some inciting event that forces entire groups of people off the old product at the same time. Something like that product deciding to destroy the tools people use to access it...
Tangurena2 3y ago
Blizzard spent $100,000,000 building the first version of WoW. They captured most of the other MMO players. Every company that claimed to be the next "WoW killer" had a budget that was basically "3 bent paperclips and some bellybutton lint". No one was willing to make the content.

mtgx 3y ago

[dead]

dmix 3y ago

Big tech businesses always suffer from lack of creativity but most importantly they often lack a central product vision where someone can say “no”. What happens usually is some middle tier exec (or big name customer if B2B) will say, “hey did you see Snapchat new stories feature? We should do something like that” and then without careful customer research, or a product leader connecting it to an overarching vision, the devs just start work on it and it rolls out because it’s just there. Everyone needs something to do and everyone loves new features right? Blindly copying some other company’s new features or UI patterns, and pigeonholing it into an app without cohesive product-wide strategy (aka connecting it to what customers already like about your service but even better) is always the sign the company has entered mediocrity. Largely a talent issue and execs who don’t really care about long term product dev. People just looking at generic growth charts and hoping they go up and then buying other companies when their own teams can’t hack it, hoping they can seed some life, without fixing the root causes.

nonethewiser 3y ago

> Um, no, people who play WoW already play WoW, and you are really trying to convince everyone who doesn't want to play WoW to play a game that is designed to be very similar. Is that really the goal though? You can have a successful MMO without killing wow. Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. were all great games from the business perspective.

hoorayimhelping 3y ago
>Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. were all great games from the business perspective. OP said: >all these mmos were popping up saying they were the "WoW killer" Guild Wars and WHO weren't positioned as WoW killers. They were positioned as WoW alternatives that prioritized or PvP or had an endgame that revolved around PvP. Which is probably why they did well - they offered something that WoW wasn't good at instead of trying to eat WoW's lunch.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  What's an example then of a game that fits the original argument?
  - Goronmon 3y ago
    Star Wars: The Old Republic is probably the biggest example. Edit: Rift is probably another good example, though less high-profile than SWTOR.
    - Macha 3y ago
      Lord of the Rings Online, Archeage, Tera, Wildstar, Kingdoms of Analur, City of Heroes, The Matrix Online are all from that era of every MMO trying to be the WoW killer and needing to supplant WoW for their business model to work. What's funny is WoW has declined so much but is still clearly a viable business, but I'm sure things like LOTRO, City of Heroes and Tera peaked at higher levels than current WoW. But the WoW of their time was on like 10-12million subs so that was a failure.
      - Goronmon 3y ago
        Yeah, it's been so long since I thought about some of these that I honestly was blanking on many of them.

devnullbrain 3y ago

It's something that does work in other industries. If fantasy books are big you pay someone to write another fantasy book. If people start buying crossovers, you build a crossover. The difference is that these are replaceable, consumable or temporary. With 'platforms', it's not enough to make something similar to something that someone likes, you have to make something that displaces something someone likes. How someone spends their leisure time is a limited, valuable resource.

philipov 3y ago
In the case of social network platforms, you have to do more than than convince someone to switch one person at a time. Using one social network platform over another is a group decision and you have to convince an entire group to switch at the same time. It does me no good to switch platforms if the people who I interact with are still using the old one. This means you need more than just a better product; you need some inciting event that forces entire groups of people off the old product at the same time. Something like that product deciding to destroy the tools people use to access it...

Tangurena2 3y ago

Blizzard spent $100,000,000 building the first version of WoW. They captured most of the other MMO players. Every company that claimed to be the next "WoW killer" had a budget that was basically "3 bent paperclips and some bellybutton lint". No one was willing to make the content.