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Debate: Smaller Games vs. Big-Hit MMOs

Discussion in 'MMO Debates' started by ogreman, Aug 11, 2011.

Big vs. Small Games

  1. Big-Hit MMOs

    10 vote(s)
    41.7%
  2. Smaller Games

    15 vote(s)
    62.5%
  1. Admin Post
    ogreman

    ogreman Ogre In Charge Staff Member GameOgre Admin

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    This will be a one-on-one debate for the debate championship:). The topic is smaller online games versus big MMOs. The scheduled participants are Quinn and Lions. If possible, base your votes on the arguments of the debaters rather than personal preference.
     
  2. quinn

    quinn Starcatcher Ogre Veteran

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    I'll be taking 'smaller games'...my opening argument shall be up pretty soon, but:

    Thank you for that!
     
  3. Admin Post
    ogreman

    ogreman Ogre In Charge Staff Member GameOgre Admin

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    Ok, start your argument:).
     
  4. Kingsfield

    Kingsfield Taken a Room in the Pit The Pit

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    Isn't it better to wait with the poll till after the debate?
     
  5. Supernatural

    Supernatural LiveStreamer Ogre Veteran

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    Bigger game = more money = more people = better quality = more fun :)
     
  6. Kingsfield

    Kingsfield Taken a Room in the Pit The Pit

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    The argument is supposed to be between quinn and Lions ;o
     
  7. Supernatural

    Supernatural LiveStreamer Ogre Veteran

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    I just argue with myself :)
     
  8. Mordekaiser

    Mordekaiser Dealer of Death Ogre Veteran

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    i vote for big hit mmo
     
  9. quinn

    quinn Starcatcher Ogre Veteran

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    I am siding with Smaller MMOs. Smaller MMOs are better for plenty of reasons..first, the community in these games is much tighter and smaller, and the people generally get along more. There are usually active forums and chatrooms with people who love to help, as opposed to boatloads of users shouting 'OMG NOOB! GTFO!' whenever you play.

    Secondly, customer service is typically MUCH BETTER. Smaller games, I can talk to the owner directly about my issues, ideas, or problems. In large MMOs, owned by co-operations, the only goal is money, instead of making a great game. You end up talking to a mindless robot who has no care for the game at all.

    Third, smaller games are usually much more creative, as they don't have to fit into whatever mainstream ideas people want, or put pointless mechanics in to make money (GRINDING :O).

    Mainly, smaller games are more fun, as that is their goal. To be fun! (As opposed to...say, WoW, who's dev team just does whatever will make the game the biggest cash cow possible.)

    I'll leave my starting argument at that. What do you have to say about the large MMOs?
     
  10. Admin Post
    ogreman

    ogreman Ogre In Charge Staff Member GameOgre Admin

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    We are waiting on Lions to respond now.
     
  11. Lions

    Lions Clubbed for Drama

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    Let's make a note about that, as it's a key word. There are plenty of small MMO's which are completely dead, which completely defeats the purpose of the game being a Massive Multiplayer Online game. While the idea of wandering a giant world by yourself may appeal to many gamers, that certainly makes a poor MMO, albeit it could be a fantastic solo RPG.

    And besides, mainstream MMO's have plenty of great users as well. Will you get hiccup users that act like jerks? Sure. But anything that is so popular is bound to have some jerks thrown in there. I see jerks driving on the road every day, does that mean I'm going to start riding my bike everywhere I go so as not to join those "mainstream" automotive enthusiasts? And besides, what's to stop jerks from joining smaller MMO's?

    Let's do some math here. If 30 out of every 100 players of World of Warcraft are people that are not enjoyable to game with and 3 out of every 10 players of a smaller MMO are not enjoyable to game with, it's the same thing. You're still encountering the same amount of lousy players in ratio to enjoyable players.

    Customer service is also MUCH SLOWER on smaller games. Bigger company = more employees = faster support. Smaller company = less employee(s) = slower support. We can dance back and forth all day about which support is better, because it really all depends on which customer service employee you are speaking to. If it's a nice guy, you'll find it a pleasant experience, and vice-versa. You can get nice, or not so nice, customer service employees on big MMO's and small MMO's.

    Oh, and the grammar Nazi in me is screaming "corporations" right now.

    Plenty of smaller games have grinding too, it all depends on what you play. I don't know if you've noticed but World of Warcraft has removed much of it's grinding in favor of more adventuring, and players enjoy it. Sure games like RuneScape have lots of grinding.. but players know that coming in, and they still enjoy the game because sometimes grinding is what players are looking for. Believe it or not, some people actually enjoy it!

    And as far as creativity goes, smaller games are forced to be creative or no one would buy them. If they directly copied an existing big MMO it would be completely pointless. Besides, most small games borrow pre-existing ideas from big MMO's anyway. Smaller games do push new ideas into the gaming industry, yes. But big MMO's give new ones a standard that they are forced to live up to. The two need each other, therefore neither one of us can effectively argue this point.


    This is just ridiculous. Debating the "fun" of something is impossible as that is up to the player. The point of this is to debate with things that are concrete, not what you personally enjoy. But since you did rip on WoW, I will say this.. obviously the developers are not just making the biggest cash cow because 12,000,000 people feel that it is a great game.
     
  12. Admin Post
    ogreman

    ogreman Ogre In Charge Staff Member GameOgre Admin

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    Voting can now begin in earnest. The two debaters can also continue with the debate:).
     
  13. Kingsfield

    Kingsfield Taken a Room in the Pit The Pit

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    First I want Lions to give arguments for Big-Hit MMO's, I've only seen him disproving quinn's arguments. So Lions, could you that for me? :) And then quinn can try and disprove these arguments again. I wanna see a Debate :evil:
     
  14. quinn

    quinn Starcatcher Ogre Veteran

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    I'm here, can't a guy go offline for 24-hours? :p

    I said there are more players who are helpful. I would assume that that would mean in proportion to the game. As the games have smaller communities, they tend to stick together more, and get along better. The community and communication therefore becomes a large part of the game. I'm not denying that other MMOs may have good players, as well, but they tend to get hidden among all of the rude people that float around everywhere. Many games that target to the 'mainstream' users get just that, mainstream users. And the majority of those users seems to be...12 year olds with no self-control or respect for others.

    And the smaller MMOs will still become popular if they are worth playing. They also may have less servers/instances than the large MMOs to make up for it. 1000 players playing on one instance of the game is the same experience as far as people in-world as 10,000 players playing on ten separate game instances.

    Customer service has been about the same speed for my own experiences, as far as speed. In a smaller MMO, however, I can typically end up talking to actual mods or even the owner/developers...in the large MMOs, you almost ALWAYS end up speaking to a devoted tech support team that has no actual input or care for the game.

    As for the forced to be creative part...how is that a bad thing? It means that a game is not just another cookie-cutter, grindy MMO that too many of already exist. Blind company fanboi's do not a good game make.

    Even if games do not have 'grinding' in the traditional sense, they mostly still have many superfluous tasks to do to make people keep playing/paying for the cash shop. Hence my argument that MANY smaller MMOs operate on a donation based system, and it WORKS. Players will pay for a game that they like.

    I did not say anything about my personal tastes nor how fun either game is. I simply said that the goal of the two different types of games is vastly different.
     
  15. Webber

    Webber Ogre King Ogre Veteran

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    Smaller games are leading so far:D.
     
  16. Admin Post
    ogreman

    ogreman Ogre In Charge Staff Member GameOgre Admin

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    Lions can now respond:).
     
  17. Lions

    Lions Clubbed for Drama

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    I don't know where you've been but most big MMO's have communities that are just fine. Sure you've got the occasional riff-raff but let me tell you something; if someone you is paying $10-15 a month to play a game, you better believe that they are going to want to get along with other people during it. And there are plenty of mature gamers out there, I just really don't see where you're going with this one. There are more "bad" gamers in big hit MMO's. But at the same time there are more "good" gamers in big hit MMO's. It's all proportional and we can dance back and forth here but neither of us will win as we can both agree that there will always be some annoying players in small or big games. What can I say.. some people are annoying.. and some annoying people like to play video games.

    So then they will become poorly made games that are just trying to produce the biggest cash cow, right? Since the structure of your argument appears to be "small games care more about the games not the money".. then it would appear by your own logic that small games just want to become successful so it can then be all about the money. Oh and that's another thing I wanted to mention; server space. It's insanely frustrating to have servers that are constantly full and you are unable to play on. Seriously, don't you hate being unable to play Minecraft multiplayer? But on big hit MMO's there is no such thing problem because there are dozens upon dozens of servers and each can hold millions of players. Big hit MMO's have more money, and they find rewarding ways to put it to use.


    Well then your "smaller games" may not be as small as you think. Let's be honest, if one person is developing a game as a hobby they are not going to get back to nearly as fast as a company like Blizzard or Jagex where they have employees there around the clock who specific job it is is help you. Obviously they can suck at their jobs.. but hey, they can also be good at them. In theory though, this does work. Whereas in a smaller game the core developer may leave a huge bug open and then go away for the weekend. Guess there's nothing anyone can do since the whole concept of the game revolves around that one person. This also brings me to another point I wanted to make earlier. You say that big hit MMO's are out of touch with the players, but I disagree. In fact, it is much easier for larger companies to be in touch with the gamers because they have the money and power to truly connect with them. They can offer incentives for players to complete surveys, they can hold focus groups where new ideas are suggested and eventually implemented. This allows them to create a feel for what the majority of the players want in a way that small games cannot do. It's much more challenging when your trying to please 100 million people as opposed to 10,000, however, gamers keep on coming back to RuneScape, WoW, etc. There's a good reason why..
     
  18. quinn

    quinn Starcatcher Ogre Veteran

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    No time to write a long post right now, but I'll say a couple things.

    Sure, there may be plenty of mature gamers...but it only takes a few people to absolutely ruin an experience. And the majority of MMOs these days are NOT subscription based, instead having a cash shop, ect. Even with subscription based games, many of the players can still be younger, having their parents/other people pay for the subscriptions. It takes far less trolls to ruin a game than it takes awesome people to make it good.

    And larger MMOs, although they may have people working around the clock, have a magnitude more requests, and the people answering do NOT actually care about the game, as they are not involved in the development, and probably don't even play it.

    Now that's just silly. The people who created/develop the game is still not a large group of people, and having MANY customers does not in any way help this one group of developers/producers connect with the users.

    But we already said that the smaller games have tighter communities, and are likely people who care about the game and its development. These kind of people will answer surveys, suggest ideas, ect. without necessary incentive. Besides, if incentive was needed, some interesting items could be made up in-game. I can get proof of this tomorrow.

    Why would they have a huge bug and leave for the weekend? If you're in charge of your own game, you'll likely be around more often and check to make sure your game works when you update it..you set your own schedule to work on it, you're not restricted to work on it during the weekdays only, or stopped from working overtime so you aren't payed too much.
     
  19. Joker

    Joker Ogre Hall of Fame Ogre Veteran

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    Awesome debate!
     
  20. Admin Post
    ogreman

    ogreman Ogre In Charge Staff Member GameOgre Admin

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    Voting is currently tied.
     

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