The Dangers of Monogamey
No, I’m not talking about the hazards of being true to only one partner. I’m talking about the phenomenon that is currently sweeping the globe thanks to an insidious piece of software which has many gamers playing only one game - ‘Monogameous’.
There are gamers all around the world that once bought a swathe of games every year but now they buy very few if any. Why? Because they are playing World of Warcraft (WoW). Sure there maybe some other attracive titles that hit the shelves occasionally but who’s got the time to play them. Why play other games when you could be ‘raiding’ with your mates or leveling that ‘alt’. Highend instances take weeks to play and huge amounts of time and organization sunk into them just to complete them for the first time. Not only that, these same instances have to be completed over and over again if you have any hope of getting that rare drop or quest item that your character needs in order excel on the next run through or on the battlefield in PvP. In my opinion it’s a dastardly device that has huge numbers of the otherwise significant contributors to gaming retail coffers keeping their wallets in their pants or only opening them to pay their monthly subscription fee.
Some might claim that World of Warcraft is growing the market by bringing in large numbers of new gamers that may not have otherwise bought video games previously. I contend that the only thing growing is Blizzard and Vivendi’s bank balances because these new gamers are under the same spell as the rest and are only playing World of Warcraft.
Far be it from me to disparage a quality game like WoW. Let’s face it, the game is popular because it rocks. World of Warcraft is debatably the best MMORPG experience to date. The question I’m putting forward is whether the success of WoW and the nature of it’s genre is having a negative impact on the gaming industry?
Is it just a co-incidence that a number of the largest and most successful publishers such as EA, Activision and Atari are publicly talking about lay offs and downsizing as we speak. Today I also saw an article linked off Blues News talking about Microsoft’s interest in reviving the waning PC gaming market quoting a 14% drop in PC sales last year. Add this to the fact that World of Warcraft has surpassed 5.5 million active accounts and you have to wonder how many gamers out there are left to buy other products. It certainly appears to me that Blizzard have monopolized the spending habits of a large segment of the gaming market. If these people don’t buy any other games or buy much less than they once did you would have to say that there’s enough of them that some kind of downturn in sales is a no brainer.
Of course I don’t have a huge amount evidence pointing to WoW as a direct influence on flagging PC or Games sales in general but I only need to look around me to get a little bit of an idea of the actual impact the game is having. Many of my co-workers and friends are gamers and I see a vast majority of them playing World of Warcraft, some to the point of nothing else. These are people who would normally buy and play many different types of games every year. I’m not saying all of them play nothing but WoW but certainly many of them play far fewer games overall than they did before WoW hit the shelves. This kind of thing isn’t knew and probably happened for other hit titles in the past such as Myst or Diablo. But those games had a finite amount of content and many people stopped playing those very successful games once they had completed them. WoW on the other hand constantly evolves and new content is being added all the time which means many people have been playing WoW from it’s beginning more than a year ago and are still as committed to it today, if not more so. And, so far WoW show’s little sign of deminishing in popularity.
In addition, MMOs in general and WoW is no exception have time sinks. That is, much of the best content/items etc are only available with a certain amount of time invested in the game, sometimes many hours, days or weeks of play. After all, the longer you spend in the game the more monthly fees you have to pay right. Of course some argue that this is a necessity to slow down power gamers which makes sense. Again, I’m not saying time sinks are bad in principal, after all much of the content that is set up in this manner is hugely fun to play so what’s wrong with paying for it. I’m simply trying to demonstrate that the nature of an MMO and in particular WoW encourage long and exclusive periods of play for users.
I guess this could be considered a rant but I’d prefer to think of it as an observation that possibly deserves further investigation or at the very least discussion. Could a game be so successful and so addictive that it ties up a big enough segment of the potential game buying public to negatively impact the gaming industry as a whole?
posted by rob · at 5:16 pm · filed under News, Editorials, Games Industry
very true… and actually one of the reasons I’m considering dropping my WoW subscription when the expansion pack comes out. I’m finding I have less time for everything not just playing other games.
The expansion pack is a decision point where I know that if I buy it I’ll spend another year glued to this game, so that seems like a good a time as any to put it down. Almost makes me want to quit now rather than spend time getting items that will be useless before too much longer :)