4 ms·

Depends on what you mean by that -- The Halo & Call of Duty franchises have been getting by on great social multiplayer experiences. (Halo also has a great camp

Depends on what you mean by that -- The Halo & Call of Duty franchises have been getting by on great social multiplayer experiences. (Halo also has a great campaign, but I digress...) The great experiment & test of your theory would be to see something like Titanfall only last a year or so, since it's ALL a social/multiplier experience. In theory I think social gaming has strong networking effects that have to potential to cement a game, especially in crowds that aren't maybe hardcore gamers. For example, I thought one of the best things to come out of the Zynga era was the fact that middle aged mothers were the core gaming segment. Why is this awesome? Because as a life-long gamer I thought it was awesome that more than teenage boys were welcome into the community, regardless if the niche/genre was not my style. Yes, there are a few problems that no one has quite figured out yet in regards to hyper-social, and solutions have been kind of lazy at best, but there's a big market opp here for somone who DOES figure it out.

bane 13y ago
Well remember, for every successful social game, there's a Star Wars Galaxies or Age of Conan. Or if successful, try to play Mario Kart Wii or Mario Kart DS. Suddenly tens of millions of gamers get $0 of value out of their purchase because a company has decided it's time for gamers to move on and make their next purchase. The problem of course is that most companies don't go the way of Quake3 and let people run their own servers. Because that's hard to monetize after the initial purchase. Valve has found a way to make it work, but outside of some very rare exceptions (WoW, 2nd Life), the age of the short-lived social game is here. It's hard to imagine, but FarmVille isn't even 5 years old.
- mycousinvinny 13y ago
  How can you cite 2nd Life as an example when they have barely kept 50,000 concurrent users online at their peak? How can you forget to cite the father of modern day MMO's, EverQuest, which is on expansion 20? The best MMO ever created (vanilla through velious). The only damn reason WoW is around is because of the greatness of EQ.

bane 13y ago

Well remember, for every successful social game, there's a Star Wars Galaxies or Age of Conan. Or if successful, try to play Mario Kart Wii or Mario Kart DS. Suddenly tens of millions of gamers get $0 of value out of their purchase because a company has decided it's time for gamers to move on and make their next purchase. The problem of course is that most companies don't go the way of Quake3 and let people run their own servers. Because that's hard to monetize after the initial purchase. Valve has found a way to make it work, but outside of some very rare exceptions (WoW, 2nd Life), the age of the short-lived social game is here. It's hard to imagine, but FarmVille isn't even 5 years old.

mycousinvinny 13y ago
How can you cite 2nd Life as an example when they have barely kept 50,000 concurrent users online at their peak? How can you forget to cite the father of modern day MMO's, EverQuest, which is on expansion 20? The best MMO ever created (vanilla through velious). The only damn reason WoW is around is because of the greatness of EQ.