OK, I got enough of beating the dead horse of EVE to keep my blog on life support. Here is what I'll do. I'll collect the top 20 revenue games. Not subscribers (not usable for F2P), not journal rating (reflects nothing but the marketing spending of the publisher), but revenue dollars. If people spend their money on it, they think it's a good game. Every game is eligible regardless of genre, the only restrictions are online play and available on PC.
Out of the 20 games, I select one and will play that, will blog about that.
If I can't find a "good" game out of the top 20, I close my blog.
If you know of a game income toplist, please link it.
PS: this is the post Globby was talking about, stop asking!
31 comments:
Well I don't really know how you will find/make a list of the highest grossing online multiplayer games but...
MMO formula has changed for a long while in many aspects. Money is pretty useless in the two MMOs I play (FFXIV and GW2) for PvE. It's useful for gimmick flavor items in FFXIV (house) or legendary/ascended items in GW2, via crafting.
GW2 economy consisted of people running dailies every day for the 10g, and 3g per following run, of easymode dungeons. I'd like to see you play the market though. The PvP is skill based - there is no PvP gear farming. There are some options for a loadout, but they are available to everyone.
FFXIV you get 2Million Gil if you clear the story mode completely, which is fairly useless after. You can use it to grind professions, or waste it on useless gimmicks.
The story is nice, but it's pretty much a single player RPG, where you can "add" your friend to your story via grouping.
Tree of Savior is interesting, it's like Ragnarok Online, but I didn't play it very much. Lots of AoE grinding + potion chugging, a bit old school.
There is Elder Scrolls online, which I didn't play.
And I know that none of the above will interest you. In fact a game similar to Eve doesn't really exist. They used to build worlds, now they make themeparks.
Income toplist might be a bit harder to come across, but maybe you could use the steam 'time played over x period' reporting they have
I haven't seen any "top 20 grossing games" list for non-mobile.
This factsheet contains a lot of links to various game stat tracking sites, you might find something there: ukie.org.uk/sites/default/files/UK%20Games%20Industry%20Fact%20Sheet%2028%20June%202016.pdf
If you find out the top grossing game is eve online(yes i live in a comic book) I hope you come join my shitty corp.
With the exception of NCSoft, game companies don't list revenue or subscribers. So you are left with market research firms, who are in the business of selling that research for significant money.
Occasionally, you get some teaser infographics like SuperData does:
http://massivelyop.com/2016/06/09/superdata-wow-lineage-swtor-tera-and-blade-soul-top-april-p2p-online-games-revenues/
or
http://massivelyop.com/2016/01/27/superdata-says-league-of-legends-makes-more-money-than-any-other-game-you-play/
@maxim, anon: thanks for the links, will look into them
@Jafaar: I'm not looking for the highest grossing game, I will pick one out of the top 20
Well, do you still remember what drove the game market to the current crap state? Exactly the fact that paying audience expanded and now includes a lot of people who pay not for the game, but for winning in it. Since this is effective, your top 20 will be polluted by games targeted to such people. If a game is in such a list, it doesn't prove many people think it's good, it proves many people think it's fun to pwn "noobs" in it, or see "you-are-cool" popup in it. I won't be surprised if such a list contains Sims or something (who cares they are not online games, they have online achievements and shiny stuff).
I believe that while "there are no good games anymore" might be not yet true, and can be disproven, "majority of audience prefers bad games" is a fact which doesn't even need checking out top 20. Your best shot is to find a good game accepted by SIGNIFICANT and VISIBLE part of demographics (so, no top 20 but games with revenues bigger than some set threshold), but if you need a good game accepted by DOMINATING part of demographics - that's bad news for your readers.
Anyway as far as I know most of them don't disclose their revenues, so it's all useless talk. Unfortunately you're stuck with journal reviews and people's opinions (yes, we remember the saying). Or maybe you find something, good luck with that (hate to wish luck to people, but here you will need it).
The biggest game (100 million sales) is ... minecraft.
Try modpacks from ftb and atlauncher, or youtube videos of direwolf20.
Regards
So... you are going to let M&S decide what product is good or not now? Because that is essentially what your "picking from top 20" is going to achieve.
We're talking about consumer whores(Easy to prove: go to Steam Achievement pages, check the ones awarded for just progressing, and marvel at how small the % values are) and children whose thought process does not go beyond: I play game for few hours -> I am entertained -> good game worth $60, will now go on Internet telling everyone it's good game worth $60 and call everyone who disagrees names.
Would you find EVE - that you yourself admit is the best MMORPG sans the company making it - in that top 20? Would you find Ultima Online, the grandfather of MMORPGs, the "fantasy EVE"? Would you find Runescape? Original Lineage?
This would be even more apparent in non-MMORPG genre. Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Thief, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Brood War, Homeworld, Total Annihilation, Arcanum, etc. etc. you won't find any of these undoubtly great games in any top 20. Top 20 is for big budget AAA titles released no more than two years ago.
Besides, if you just go by top 20 MMORPGs by revenue, you're going to end up with 20 Theme Parks. You're almost deliberately setting yourself up for a disappointment.
On a side note, did you know about http://mmo.plus/ ? It allows you to look up for a MMORPG based on tags like "sandbox" or "open PvP". Though of course you'll likely end up with a bunch of "pre-alpha" fodder.
This is not a direct measure of revenue but I imagine there is some correlation. Scroll down a little to see he list
http://store.steampowered.com/stats
I can
- go Hillary and call the game players "deplorables" and declare myself "too elite" and play some pre-alpha hardcore game that no one knows or cares about
- go academics, declare that even Hillary is deplorable and not play at all because it's so beneath me
- I can put my hands in the dirt and reach the people as they are and give them a "look if you aren't completely stupid grinders, you are progressing faster", just like I did with BDO. While others spend stupid amount of money and grinding time, I got to #1 wealth and awful lot of visitors
I don't have the power to choose what kind of crap the mankind is.
I do have the power to talk to them and convince some of them to stop being crap, as evidenced by the nearly 10M page visits on my blog.
You can start with this, and multiply by retail price minus some percentage.
I don't know if this is of any use, but simply googling for "top revenue online games" brought out this:
https://www.superdataresearch.com/us-digital-games-market/
I'm wondering if Star Citizen is enough of a game yet to sink your teeth into. I'd love to see a non-fan boy, sunk cost fallacy affected review of it.
How about you go on about creating the recipe for a perfect game? namely: take current Eve mechanics and twist them into perfection?
Eve as it is will not last too long, might as well have an idea for eve 2.0 for when it's needed. Then you just kickstart it and make gorillions of cash
Stawek
Star Citizen is not released, so I don't care about it. I won't get into dumb speculations about it's being vaporware or not.
EVE isn't bad because of its mechanics but because of its corrupted devs. The same game (same server and client without modification would have 2x more income in the hand of Blizzard)
EVE has some mechanics background that can't be evolved. For example the open world PvP creates N+1 combat, which pretty much precludes "fair fights". N+1 is good to some extent, as it allows the creation of empires, but it ruins the entertainment.
It is possible to leave N+1 on a global scale, while having actual battles resolved in reasonable numerical parity.
Another point: the prize for being good at combat and conquering Sov is.. ratting and mining rights.
Yet another: If good players win, how do we prevent them from joining together and dominating the entire game as one alliance? Naturally, the PlayToWin's will join together and own everyone, at which point they will have nobody left to fight. How to solve this problem and prevent blue donuts?
All of these and lots of others can be analyzed from game theory perspective, looks like an interesting project.
Stawek
I still love BDO and would love to see more BDO articles. I know you quit but I'm still gonna throw this out there.
I have a game its pretty neat you get to fight it out how you will in game but then you get to take it to reddit and shit post the winner was goblin. the question is does he have the balls to do it again as he gave away most of his isk can he special project not only his income (blog) but also how he eradicated the remnants of a fallen enemy?
I suspect not, instead of getting in fozzie's face and saying "dude you did your best for goon and mittens still lost" isn't your play style.
So I read a lot of your BS about corps in the RW and hands off. Let me explain to you the reality that you hate. Corp A does what you think they ignore their customers they just do their thing.... oh wait no Corp A engages its customers for one reason "brand loyalty".... oh wait Corp A wines and dines and gives party favors to locals to get their way..... oh wait Corp A works with the community sure it cost them a few percent but it does cock block Corp B from having any effect in the Corp A's territory. You see gobs your dream is silly it doesn't exist at any level. in fact I can count the number of countries that actually are metric based (Singapore claims to be one however if you look at their actual practices they don't even come close). I challenge you to show me one successful company or nation that ignores its customers and simply produces and profits.
In closing your ideal is joke you should come back to eve claim your victory and farm fozzie tears for ever.
@Provi Miner:
I suspect that is the crux of it, that having given his isk away, it is too much hassle to begin again from scratch. I know I certainly couldnt do that level of running around again.
As other commentors have said, going by top revenue may not be the best factor in regards wether it is an enjoyable game. Then again, you could see using this method as a way to test wether it actually is an accurate tool, as e.g. SynCaine hinted in times past.
That would probably lead you to things like StarCraft, CounterStrike, and LoL, as well as MineCraft, Marvel Heroes, and Star Wars MMORPG.
Alternatively you could go with 'persitance'. Lineage is still going strong, same with RuneScape (if it really does have over 4 million actual subs it might even be bigger than WoW is esp. in the West), and games like Tibia, DAoC, and Ultima are still around as well with no sign of stopping. Celtic Heroes is playable by PC but more of a Tablet MMO.
If you ad in Play-By-Email games you have strategy games like Planets Nu (turn-based space strategy game, has its own yearly PlanetsCon , running since the nineties) that may appeal to you.
Here is a sudden thought.
Goons were thriving in Eve, despite running it into the ground, because nobody could adequately measure their efficacy. In comes the goblin with his "dewhoring" calculations, exposing the weaknesses. The rest in history.
Let's assume that the modern gamedev "suit" are basically IRL goons, functioning with the same mechanics and intent. They are thriving in gamedev while (allegedly, ofc) running it into the ground and nobody is able to measure their efficacy, because the financial data is hidden.
I'd like to point out that killboard is not strictly financial data, though it is a good approximation of financial data. So it can be theorised that you don't actually need any direct financial data to measure the efficacy of a goon-like structure. You just need a good approximation.
Such approximations of IRL finances do exist. For example, there is an approximation known as SteamSpy that measures the amount of people that installed the game and the amount of hours they played it.
So... How about an IRL anti-suit blog project? Obviously, this won't be an itty-bitty 2 year project, seriously going against "the suit" would take decades. However, if "the suit" is indeed like the goons, then it is vulnerable in the same manner goons were.
Alternatively, "the suit" is closer to IWI, which has taken advantage of years of your work, but which you don't know how to beat.
@ProviMiner: Companies don't ignore customers, that would be silly.
The idea is that customers are great at identifying problems with your products. Either by vocal complaints or simply by not buying it. It does NOT follow, however, that the customers are good at solving said problems. In fact, customers' ideas are so biased and narrow sighted that they make terrible advice.
Example from Eve:
Supercapitals are a problem. Everybody agrees that they aren't in good position. But if you ask the customers they give wildly different answers. PL obviously wants supercaps stronger in larger numbers and more vulnerable to ganks (cause they have the biggest fleet and gank others). Smaller entities want supercaps somehow useful, but not entirely dominating. Renters don't care about supercaps power level, but want them less susceptible to ganks whilst ratting.
In the end, CCP listened to PL for capital rebalance (the focus group was led by RocketX: the renowned super hunter from PL). The result: supers absolutely dominate combat with their AOE shenanigans and HA weapons, but at the same time are extremely vulnerable when in smaller numbers.
CCP should instead acknowledge the problem and seek solutions on their own, without listening to anybody.
Customers provide feedback: good for identifying multiple problems.
Customers provide solutions: bad, cause they only solve their own particular problem, leaving or exacerbating the others.
Stawek
You will end up playing the top games for preteen bought by their parents. I'm not sure sales can be a gage for quality. Just a good example I can think of: No Man's Sky sold something like 42m worth of copies on steam, but it's a shit game (I have it, I had hope it would be good but I uninstalled after 2 dozen hours).
Hey Gevlon,
may I again suggest Ultima Online to you? Graphic is shit but the game is over 15 years old now and basically the grandfather of the term "sandbox". It is all about the economy and you can just go and play it for free on the various freeshards provided by hobbyists or play it on the original servers powered by Broadsword (former Mythic, the guys from DAOC).
Or if you feel especially adventurous, why not use that programming skill of yours, grab Sphereserver and set up your own Ultima Online Freeshard in the vision of your very own game. Or wait for Shards Online and than do it on better graphics. While this is much more of an effort than hopping on a game tailored for you, it would also be THE ultimate project for your blog.
Small addition: while this game about control over space started out as purely e-mail based back in the early nineties, since 2010 Planets NU has a web interface that may look familiar to you
Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msmWmkkNHd8 (has links to tutorials etc as well)
Not really ontopic but you could find it amusing as an absolute form of your sp farming post sometime ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/53c274/i_have_161_accounts_and_249_sp_farming_alts_im/
Anonymous Anonymous said...
@Provi Miner:
I suspect that is the crux of it, that having given his isk away, it is too much hassle to begin again from scratch. I know I certainly couldnt do that level of running around again.
18 September, 2016 09:43
How many people would part with a measly billion to help him get back up and running again? How many would it take?, a few dozen?, 50?, 100?
Is Chribba really so churlish as to begrudge helping Goblin with some of what Goblin gave him? That's doubtful.
The loyalty is there if he wants it. He just doesn't know how to reach out for it.
I will not play EVE while Falcon is employed there. He will sabotate everything I do.
Other devs will simply help IWI, PL and other groups where their mains are.
EVE would be a great game if the devs wouldn't be corrupted.
While I would be curious to see you take on Overwatch, I'm curious what would happen if you were to start Hearthstone. I get the feeling that you could be very good in arena.
Your strengths seem to focus on finding ways to maximize income return for time invested. This was evident in your WoW guides, mining information and other strategies for EVE, and such. Why not instead of picking one long term game, focus on a game a week where you outline initial strategies that could stop people from becoming what you term M&S's in those games?
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