Looking For The Holy Grail In Online Gaming

from the limited-appeal dept

For all the talk about all of these new online worlds that companies have been rushing out, none have really been living up to a few of the early success like EverQuest. Even then, while there is a strong EverQuest community, it hasn't been as big of a success as some traditional offline video games. While many companies quickly jumped into the space, they're now realizing that they may have hit a wall in growing the market. While new games are trying to appeal to a different market, none have been that successful so far. The problem with most online games is that they're community based and, as such, the community needs to keep playing. That makes it difficult for the "casual" gamer to take part. If they don't login for a few days, they're way behind everyone they were playing with. Meanwhile, there's still the stigma attached to online games of it basically being the online version of nerd camp - taking the old ideas of Dungeons and Dragons and placing them online. This isn't particularly appealing to the less-nerdy set - even in times when being considered a geek isn't quite so bad as it once was. Some are hoping that online sports games may change things - especially since it will involve more time specific games. Sports games have a start and an end, and the world doesn't continue moving all of the time. The games that are simulating a real world have the problem that, just like the real world, they never seem to stop. At this point, it's still quite early to write off the entire space. Someone will come out of nowhere with an online game that doesn't fit into any of these categories and catches on like wildfire. Just like "reality TV" caught on out of nowhere in the TV realm, we'll suddenly have hundreds of online games that no one expected.