I had never really thought about it, but today it finally dawned on me. Korean companies, alot of them with no previous games, have ALOT of MMOs, and alot of those are free. If anyone here has any insight or knowledge of these companies and what they do: How do they get the money and experience to make MMOs with such small teams and so many of them? Some of them never make it out of beta, or take forever, such as Gunz Online, Silkroad Online, and Shaiya, while other games like Maplestory become huge hits and are very polished, how would the companies deal with the losses of such a failed game? Why is it that Americans can't/don't make games like this?

Maple Story remains free by exploiting a younger crowd than most American MMO's.. it survives from the online store, allowing players to customize their character's look one dollar at a time.

Quote: Original post by Insideac
I had never really thought about it, but today it finally dawned on me. Korean companies, alot of them with no previous games, have ALOT of MMOs, and alot of those are free. If anyone here has any insight or knowledge of these companies and what they do:

How do they get the money and experience to make MMOs with such small teams and so many of them?

Some of them never make it out of beta, or take forever, such as Gunz Online, Silkroad Online, and Shaiya, while other games like Maplestory become huge hits and are very polished, how would the companies deal with the losses of such a failed game?

Why is it that Americans can't/don't make games like this?

Maybe because...they're given away as free? There's not a lot of business incentive to spend time, money and effort to develop something and then just give it away. It's just unamerican!

Gunz isn't an mmo. The other games are it seems like. America currently hosts the largest mmo games and the most popular ones.

It already does make new ones. A bunch of companies have mmo games being made right now. Star Wars: The Old Republic and Stargate Worlds are two off the top of my head.

Also pay to play mmo games seem to be more popular in the US than Item Mall ones.

They are simply "cookie cutter" MMOs. The reasons they can crank out so many games is because most of them use the same family of game engines and just end up adding their own content and they have their game. I don't have my research anymore, but I've looked into a lot of F2P mmos and I've found plenty of underlying code that would support the theory. That and a lot of the games simply look the same is the obvious common sense reasoning.

Quote: How do they get the money and experience to make MMOs with such small teams and so many of them?

Two words: premium items

The single common recurring element to any F2P game is their Item Mall which sells premium game items. This is the main driver to success for a lot of them. Even if the game is horrible and not many people play it, as long as the sales are enough to keep the game running, then the game stays up.

Playing F2P games actually costs more than playing a P2P game. For example, Silkroad Online, it's easier to spend more money a month on that game and not even realize it compare to any other game you buy and have to pay a subscription for. Yet, people get addicted and end up spending a lot of money on the game whereas it would have been cheaper to play a game that costs in the first place!

Out of those games you mentioned, Silkroad Online is not in a beta stage really and it's far from a failed game. It's becoming a very polished game and could be considered a "huge hit", nothing like WOW, but for a F2P game, it has grown exponentially over the past couple of years. It does have a lot of serious problems though as most F2P MMO games do. It's also licensed out to 4 other countries and a 5th is being added soon, so it's an exception.

I don't know much about Shaiya and I've only heard a little about gunz myself, so I can't explain how those games stay up and running.

As for why American companies don't make games like these has to do with:
1. Cheap reusable technology (As I mentioned there are specific game engines used over there that a lot of games reuse)
2. Cheap large workforce (consider most gold farming for games originates in China, programmers and artists are decent paying jobs compared to alternatives)
3. Resources to pump out as many games as fast as possible hoping one becomes a hit (it's about quantity, not quality!)

East-Asian game play varies dramatically from western game play. Their game play focus on grinding and spending a lot of time and money investing into your character. That's why a lot of their MMOs don't make it over here and don't get as popular as say WoW, which a lot of Americans love but I don't think it's as popular as some of the home grown MMOs available over there.

The business practices and philosophy also vary greatly. A lot of MMOs over there aren't driven by cheating either. Most games you have to register with your SSN and there are serious anti-cheating mentality. Over here in the Western side of the world, it's not taken so seriously and most games have large cheating bases that drive the game. There are exceptions both ways, so I'm not trying to generalize too much, but that's what I've observed.

That's about it really. [smile]

Our company has been working on a F2P MMO for quite some time now, so it's definitely a business model that's starting to make its way over here. Plus it seems that everyone in the industry these days agrees that micro-transactions (as in games entirely supported by that model) are The Next Big Thing™ to sweep Western game development, even though it's been done overseas for years.

Battlefield Heroes, thought not a MMO, is a good example of the f2p model. I think they made it well enough so far because their item mall is purely esthetic. It's definitely growing around here :)

Yeah, the micro-transaction thing is really well-established in Korea. My wife is Korean, so I know about micro-transactions! They even have a facebook-like site (which was out years before facebook Wikipedia says it opened in 1999) called "cyworld" which also does the micro-transaction thing.

I think the biggest barrier is the playstyle. The korean games are extremely tedious and grindy, and unless you've got an amazing community most people just won't want to log on in the evenings to go slap 10'000 slime blobs to level up.

The f2p model really thrives on this, since the premium items often greatly reduce the monotony of grinding, either by giving xp gain boosts, or items to speed up the grind.

Long time ago I read an article how mmo games are hugely popular in Korea and some are even aired on television. With young gamer clans hanging around internet cafe's harrasing opposing clans in real life etc. :)