Another post brought to you by my chatters, this time even first time chatter, even though it did happen before, but it didn’t form into big thought yet then. Really appreciate my chat always bringing up interesting thoughts, discussions, and giving me an inspiration to write these posts.
Playing Stars Reach today there was a question in my chat from freshly joined chatter if game is populated enough, because with such seemingly big maps there should be a lot of players there. Since the release I already had a couple of new people asking if I think game is worth it or for how long I think the game will survive. Then I was playing SpiritVale later today and there was a guy in the game’s global chat, who was saying, that they are leaving the game with their whole guild, because they are tired of bots. All that reminded me of endless previous chat messages, forum posts, reddit threads, talks with friends and personal thoughts.
Gamers in general are quite an audience, even though I guess you can apply it to many fandoms, especially nowadays, but gamers are probably the most integrated and most present online. In the information wars we have easy access to all the ammunition, biggest battlefield and most targets to aim at, probably most camps to join too. Steam reviews, videos, livestreams, social media, gaming journalists – lots of info to decide if you want to pick up a game. Can also monitor SteamDB to claim some game is dead based on player numbers, quite a popular activity too.
MMO players are elite version of a regular gamer. MMO journalism can easily go past just reviewing, it goes into lots of detail and keeps track of many things and statements companies had over years. Always impresses me how people manage to find so much information about games that aren’t even remotely close to releasing and how some follow projects for over a decade easily, being up to date with everything happening. MMO player thinking about starting one won’t just go through one source, they will check them all and more, not just checking how it looks on stream, but watching streams for days before deciding. Not just watching, but asking content creators, legit after years of streaming MMOs probably had the most questions about the game and if it’s worth picking up compared to any other game I played (and that’s A LOT of games). MMO Discords are some of the most active ones way before the game even releases too. I think some people have easier time getting into relationships than MMO player getting into a new MMO. And obviously it gets proportionally worse if they are playing some other MMO, amount of time they invested in that older MMO is a multiplier to how thorough they are researching new MMO to pick. It’s not just looking at SteamDB number, it’s trying to predict that number 6 months, 1 year, 2 years etc from now. Not just looking at the current state of the game, but where it will go with updates, how often will it be updated and of course will devs be able to keep the game alive and for how long.
Speaking from experience btw, been in that spot myself and I still am in a way, but I’m not invested in any old MMO and accepted that I probably won’t be playing one for long, so it’s easier for me. Streaming helps too, because some games you get review access too, even though with MMOs it’s worse, because I’m not a dedicated MMO creator + usually they aren’t sending review keys, but rather get content creators to join their creator programs. That’s a bit of a commitment usually and I can’t sign up to that before I even tried the game. Sometimes it’s a bit more lax and then I don’t mind joining, like with Stars Reach, besides it did sound interesting to try the game from the dev angle, since it’s quite unique.
Now after much contemplation gamer finally decides – opens the door to new MMO. Yay! Now everything is great during the honeymoon stage, but as soon as it comes to an end gamer enters the cautious mode, if there is an issue in the game, or some unpopular patch they start thinking and contemplating again. Random message in global chat about someone quitting the game for <insert reason here> gets them to think “man, everything is going to hell, maybe I should quit too”. Sometimes this will pass next day, sometimes another patch fixes this mood, but sometimes they do quit. MMO gamers again are more powerful than regular gamers and when they quit that power level can also manifest in many different ways. Long negative review essays on Steam from players with thousands of hours are just the beginning. That’s when you see people in game’s Discord going “oh, why are you guys still playing this garbage, I already left”, trashtalking the game inside the game itself, commenting on every update post or Steam announcement mentioning how they quit and so on.
Another big problem is that sunken cost is pretty strong and common in MMOs, so whenever someone is trying some new MMO, there is a big chance that they have that massive 20 year heavy anchor dropped in an older MMO. So talking trash about other MMOs sometimes is getting reinforced by competition – I rather bury this other game in negativity so my 20 years investment doesn’t lose relevancy. And also convincing themselves that returning to the old game again is justified not because they are just attached to the time investment, but because new one is not perfect. After years I figured out that none of them are perfect, including those that I invested a lot of time in back in a day and there will never be a perfect one.
Don’t want to generalize, also it’s more self reflection than some calling out. I do think that doing a good research before getting games is a good thing in general. Door slamming is bad though, just witnessed some today and it’s just petty, when you leave – you leave, don’t talk about it, let others enjoy their stay. And sunken cost – better try to get rid of it, even though it’s nice to have a “home MMO”, don’t let it affect your “travels” to other MMOs.