There's purportedly an old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times". Well these are definitely interesting times, for computers, for games, and for MMOs.
HARDWARE REVOLUTION
Perhaps the biggest single change in these "interesting times" on the hardware side is the move to mobile. The growth in the utility and utilization of phones and tablets for historically PC-centric functions is changing the way people use and view computing in fundamental ways.
The PC is still hands down the best tool for almost any kind of content creation, but the mobile phone, and especially the pad, are often as good or better for "consuming" content. Now the word "consuming" often carries a connotation of a passive, slack-jawed, glassy-eyed person sitting motionless in front of a TV set. But consuming in this context is simply doing everything you do on a PC that doesn't actually require a PC to do it.
Web-browsing, gaming, e-mail, maps, books, and so on. And as the usage of mobile devices has exploded, the growth of usage of the standard, desktop PC has slowed if not stopped. The desktop isn't dead, but the days of its total primacy are done for sure.
And the best evidence of this comes from the company that defined themselves through the PC, Microsoft. And as usual with Microsoft, they understand the grand change and utterly miss out on the nuance.
For the better part of a generation, Microsoft lived by a single idea..."Windows everywhere!" By which they meant they wanted Windows to run on everything, no matter how much Windows was unsuited for the task. Windows on phones, Windows on tablets, Windows on kitchen appliances (I wish I was making that last one up, here's a link that shows their "Windows-enabled" coffee-maker http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/2009/jan09/01-09cesfugoo.aspx ).
Every internal attempt at making a device-appropriate environment for something other than a PC got killed because it didn't fit the "Windows everywhere" mantra. Google "Microsoft courier" to see how the history of pads might be different if a Microsoft pad didn't have to run Windows.
So with release of the iPhone, the cell-phone market changed in an instant and Windows on phones became instantly irrelevant. Their market share dwindled away because those inside Microsoft who tried to make a phone-centric interface got defenestrated.
Then the iPad came out, instantly creating a huge market for devices that everyone else seemed to think were niche. And the people at Microsoft who worked on the courier project said "See? We told you!"
And finally, the signal reached the dinosaur's brain and Microsoft reacted. They brought out a completely re-done phone OS with a new tile-based UI. While I find it ugly and clunky-looking, I am definitely in the minority as it has gotten pretty-much universal praise as a solid, functional, competitive offering. Competitive everywhere but in the marketplace where it has pretty much sputtered. It's good, but not compelling in today's market.
But in classic Microsoft style, they are making the same ol' mistake, but this time in reverse.
Having spent countless man-years and dollars following the "Windows everywhere" mantra by hammering the (very) square peg of Windows into every round hole they could find, they have now changed their mind and are starting to hammer the round peg of their mobile-based UI in Windows 8 into every square whole they can find, like the desktop PC.
How wrong-headed is this? Gabe Newell of Valve described it as a "catastrophe". Rob Pardo of Blizzard agreed. They think this development is bad, particularly for game companies like theirs.
Oh but it's not just "interesting times" for the PC on your desktop...the console hooked up to your TV is at it too!
There has been, historically, a certain reliable timeline for releasing new console hardware. And two of the biggest heavy hitters are two years late. In fact, the theoretical PS4 and Xbox 720 are so late that game companies are blaming the lack of new hardware for the sluggishness in the industry as a whole.
So where are the new consoles? Well the manufacturers there are facing many questions with the same origin as those I detailed above...the mobile space, especially the iPad, has them deeply concerned.
Why concerned about the iPad? Well John Carmack, game legend, noted that "The iPad 2 has about half the performance power". He's speaking of the current generation of consoles, the PS3 and the Xbox 360. Half the power on some thing that looks like a prop from Star Trek: The Next Generation. And once Sony and Microsoft get around to announcing their Consoles: The Next Generation it'll be another generation or two of iPads.
Now if your iPad can do almost as much as a console, can screen mirror to a TV set, is portable, can do almost everything a full PC can do, has an available library of thousands of games and applications, most at very low prices...how do you market your console and its $60 games against that?
And with EA's announcement of $70 as a standard price point for PC games going forward (at launch), how can the desktop PC compete in the future?
As people get used to the convenience and price advantage they get with a platform like an iPad, as a gamer...how can consoles and the desktop PC compete?
"GAMES ARE BIG, IT'S THE PICTURES THAT GOT SMALL"
And what impact will this have on games in general and our beloved MMOs in particular? Going forward, a lot I expect.
This has been a terrible year for big MMOs. First SW:TOR launched well and then plopped. While it's probably too harsh to call it a failure, it's probably too kind to call it a disappointment. And after burning through $100M-plus, 38 Studios spectacularly explodes in an unmatched display of hubris.
While I have no doubt that Guild Wars 2 and PlanetSide 2 cost a pretty penny, there is a huge difference between those games (which are looking quite promising) and the previous two...
ArenaNet and SOE both have successful MMOs in their repetoire already (yes, GW wasn't a true MMO [although exactly what is an MMO is getting less clear all the time], but most of the differences were, in design terms, minimal). What this means is that it's very unlikely that any AAA, big-money MMOs will be coming out of any Western game company that doesn't already have success in the genre. Nobody is going to chance $100-200M on a maybe.
So if we're going to see a vanishingly small number of big-money MMOs, what are we going to see?
Think mobile.
It's easy to poo-poo things like browser-based games and phone games, but when an iPad can disply something like Epic Games "Infinity Blade" driven by the Unreal 3 engine...poo-poo no longer my friend!
Check out the browser-based Unity engine and the kind of 3d you can get out of Firefox or Chrome.
Here's a question...if you can get 90% of the graphical performance out of a web-base client that you can out of a .exe file, why would you limit yourself? OK...what about 80%? 50%?
The only argument here is where you draw that line. But as the engines get more powerful, even if you don't like it until it's 90%, it's getting closer all the time.
Now don't get me wrong...I LOVE the big-money, AAA MMOs. I want Guild Wars 2 yesterday and PlanetSide 2 tomorrow! I want someone to swoop in to the bankruptcy proceedings for 38 Studios, gobble up all the assets and finish the goddamned game! I want to know wtf Blizzard is up to with "Titan". I want all these and more...
But as much as I like the big, I understand the importance, the allure, the future of the small. The lines between game types are blurring. Many MMOs are gravitating toward the casual gamer. MMOs are going micro-transaction based for their revenue.
So if you were designing an MMO, and it didn't require the huge investment of a AAA development team...why wouldn't you make a great game that could be played on a PC and a tablet. Or a phone. Or even a browser. What parts of your game design couldn't be redesigned so they don't need to run in a .exe?
If you could get essentially the same game play experience on a pad as a PC, what would you do?
You'd go small.
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