Six Years Later: Groundwork for OWE v 2.0

It's hard to believe that for myself, its been six years since I started down the road that I follow now. It was my first year of undergrad, and I wrote the OWE as a way to help comprehend concepts in my Macroecoomic course. It was during my time working with stratics as an editorialist, so I took the extra step in polishing it into a paper-style presentation for others to view. It was very well recieved and it did get a few references here and there, which surprised me. It also grabbed the interest of my economic professors, who convinced me to change majors into Econ.

And now, with a lot more education under my belt on the subjects, I look back and realize that the OWE is very basic and simplistic, and that it needs an overhaul, a second version. At the same time, the groundwork is solid. Concepts may have gotten glitzed up and polished over the past 6 years, but the mechanics still have the same roots.

But, it still needs an update. As a blog series, I'll cover the different sections of the original OWE, and point out some changes, thoughts , etc. on the paper, in an effort to lay groundwork for a V 2.0.

I suggest, if you haven't yet, to read the original paper linked to the left.

First up:

Changes in the General Analysis:


The Online World Population:

Populations have grown over the years. Ultima Online and EQ measured itself in hundreds of thousands. World of Warcraft shattered everything before it, measuring over 10 million subscriptions now. But there is two sides to the extreme. Smaller niche games tend to have a hundred thousand or less. Virtual worlds inside communities (such as facebook) tend to fluctuate. There is more choices out there for virtual worlds than ever before, and more people who play them as well.

But the mechanics still remain the same. Most MMO's tend to follow the Combat/Crafting/Gathering trifecta of activities and abilities for bothe NPCs and PCs. A fourth can be argued as a minimal group of PCs, that of Profiteers. With the addition of Auction house-style areas, there are some players who tend to manipulate markets in order to make a profit. These players tend to fall into one of three subcategories:

1) Arbitrageurs - Players who skim markets for below average cost items to resell for profit at the higher, average price listings
2) Mass Marketers - Exert Market force over a facet of the economy by selling items en masse, and either undercutting competition, or buying out cheaper product in order to maintain price levels.
3) Value Added Crafters- Partially a crafting ability, but it requires the use of the auctions. Players tend to use abilities to change cheaper items on the market into higher value items through construction or deconstruction. Much of the items are easily attainable through a network of friends and thier abilities, but the ease and availability of the auctions drives the price up (as the alternative is to spend time collecting and finding people to create the items).


The Player Characters:

The type of players most MMOs attract hasn't changed much over the years. Most of the players are attracted to a growth based system of conflict, whether that be economical or warfare. The tools in which such players gather have altered somewhat. Combat tends to be more socially orientated than it ever was. Many dungeons, or PvP encounters group people together in teams to achieve goals. "Raids" consisting of a large group of players have become a staple of many MMOs as one way to play out endgame scenarios, and the increased availability of high-speed internet has allowed for much larger encounters, more sophisticated ways of communicating, and increased populations to compete against for ranks amongst all abilities (Best crafter, Best raid, Best business, etc).

It isn't surprising then, that Bartle's player types still stand up strong. While things have gotten bigger and subdivisions are more profound, the players are still the same people as they always were. Theres just more of them, which allows to divide further ("Pro" Gamers, PvP Tounament players, Raiders, Auction-house players, etc come to mind and new types).

What's interesting to note is when games tend to exploit this subdivision, much in a way that politics plays voters. My home country of Canada is a great example to pitch, as theres multiple political parties. Most voters tend to go and vote in a two party system. One party is slightly left wing of the centre, and the other is just right of the central poltical line (Liberal and Conservative respectively), but there's always "fringe" parties that cater to those further away from the central politics. By being focused on certain groups, they tend to draw voters away from the central parties, mainly those nearer to thier view than that of the center. Its not a majority, but its enough to keep them alive and running. And the beleif is, if they last long enough, the median that is central politics shifts in thier favor, and more voters sign on to thier ideals (NDP are a prime example in Canada).

Niche games work the same way. A Tale in the Desert, Puzzle Priates, and other various games tend to focus on a particular player style, and while being profitable, the aim is to sway the median in thier direction as well. Economically, this is a form of Hotelling's Law in a theoretical game. The bigger the population of the distribution, the more effective niche markets become, as more identifiable player-types become apparent.

Given the population of Warcraft, it can be assumed that this is the median player now. If you take Bartle's player types, you develop not a linear Hotelling model, but a plane of interests, which is also included in the paper found here:

                                   ACTING
                 Killers            |                  Achievers
                                    |
                                    |
                                    |
                                    |
                                    |
         PLAYERS -----------------WoW------------------- WORLD
                                    |
                                    |
                                    |
                                    |
                                    |
                 Socialisers        |                  Explorers
                               INTERACTING

Now, if Wow is the median, try and imagine different online games and how far away they deviate in any direction. I won't do it here for lack of using technology correctly to place games, but I bet if you do it yourself, you'll notice that those games closest to the center mark tend to have more subscribers, while further out garner less. Also, any games close to one another will tend to fight over the same market, and reduce thier user base. Thus, prime markets for games tend to be in areas of the map where there is the least like games (while still being near the median as possible), or at the median and try to exert dominance.

In this article I mentioned the other day, it talks about new MMOs facing population declines after gamers switch back to WoW. This mainly shows that the games near the median haven't swayed the general populace enough to become the median, but still attempt the takeover. I tend to disagree with the fact that making WoW-like games isn't the best idea, you just need confidence in the ability to capture and keep the market. Once the tides turn, so to speak, a critical mass effect can occur, and a new game can become the median, and the new population topper. But because of the large gamble with big-budget MMOs and the potential downfall, becoming fringe may actually be more profitable. And enough fringe companies take on the big WoW Machine,it may chip away at its dominance.

Hostile takeover may not work, but divide and conquer could at this point.