There was a time, many moons ago, that success for a game was based wholly on one statistic...number of boxes sold. The theory was, the game that sold the most boxes obviously brings in the most revenue, and therefore, has the greatest success. It seemed so easy then...a game that sold 2 million boxes at an average price of $50 per box meant that the particular title grossed more in sales than all other games. It also meant that more people bought and played that particular title than any other title. Well, times have changed, and now, success is not so easily measured. We begin this blog by taking a look at how success is defined, follow with applying the definition of success to several current game titles, and finally conclude the blog with a brief discussion of what would equal success for DCUO. Without further ado, let's take a look at what success really means in the contemporary gaming era.

suc⋅cess [suhk-ses]

–noun
1. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.
2. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.
3. a successful performance or achievement: The play was an instant success.
4. a person or thing that is successful: She was a great success on the talk show.

That definition is brought to you from www.dictionary.com and is a fair starting point for how we're going to define success for the purposes of this blog. Essentially, success can mean many different things to many different people, but ultimately, the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like is exactly the end goal of nearly every venture that one undertakes. A successful marriage may be defined by its longevity and the commitment between two individuals, success as a parent can mean anything from having a child who grows up to become a doctor or attorney (or game designer!), or a child who grows up and finds happiness through a great mate and having children. But for the gaming industry, success has meant many different things over the years. At its most basic level, game companies, whether they be development companies, publishers, or third party art/customer service type companies are concerned with one specific type of success, that success being "commercial success." To define commercial success, we look back definition number 2 from above, and remove a few words, leaving only these, "the attainment of wealth." That's what development studios and publishers are ultimately endeavoring to, and never think any different; their purpose is to generate wealth. Sure, everyone wants to create games that people actually like and want to play, and awards such as "best of show" or "game of the year" are nice feathers in the cap, but if you asked Electronic Arts which game they'd rather create sequels to, and give them the following options, "John Madden Football" or "Mirror's Edge" and I can guarantee that Madden is going to win out, even though the two games are rated nearly identically by most major video game publications. Why? Madden sells upwards of 5 million copies each and every year, while Mirror's Edge, while a a great game, flopped commercially. This is extremely important to note. Publishers and development studios are ultimately driven not by game review scores or niche market accolades, but by the one thing that allows them to continue making games...and that's money from sales. So, our working definition for success going forward will simply be "commercial success for video games is defined by how much profit the game attains."

Now that we have our working definition for success, let's take a look at how very differently the definition can be applied. Since I've already mentioned John Madden Football, we'll start with it. According to MTV Multiplayer (http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/01/20/the-real-top-5-selling-games-of-2008/), Madden was the second highest selling game title of the year here in the U.S., selling an amazing 5.25 million copies. At an average price of $45 (the number is arbitrary, Madden sales for $60 new on the PS3 and Xbox 360, for $50 on the Wii, and for between $30 and $40 on handheld platforms), last year Madden grossed approximately $236 million in sales ($45 times 5.25 million copies). That's quite a coup. On the other hand, Mirror's Edge, again, rated very similarly to Madden, sold (depending on what reports you believe) about a million copies, at an average price of $50 per, grossing about $50 million in sales. (It's important to note here that sales numbers indicate number of titles sold to stores, not to end consumers, and that the EA actually makes only a percentage of the gross sales indicated by the retail sales prices.) Again, you can see the varying degrees of success here based on our definition; one game is a perennial cash cow for EA, the other is generally considered to have underperformed based on our definition, even though both games are rated similarly by major media publications.

Let's now turn to the current MMORPG success champion, World of Warcraft. This game released back in November of 2004, and while it still sells well in a box format, it also has sold two boxed expansions over the last 5 years that also were best sellers. Since releasing in 2008, WoW's latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King has sold approximately 4.5 million boxes, at an average price of $40 per box, to a tune of $180 million in box sales. Additionally, because WoW is a subscription based game, and claims to have 11 million subscribers, even if we took 4 million subscribers away from them, and valued the cost of each subscription at only $10 per month, Blizzard still made, at the very minimum, an additional $70 million in 2008 based solely on subscribers. As if $250 million for the year 2008 wasn't enough, Blizzard also receives revenue from a huge number of tie in products, to include two board games (with their own expansions), a trading card game, and a miniature's game.

Finally, let's take a look at a game based on a unique revenue model, the game being Rock Band, and the revenue model being micro-transactions. Rock Band as a franchise (which includes both Rock Band, Rock Band 2, the assorted instruments, and tie ins) just hit 1 billion in total revenue. (http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/26/rock-band-ticks-off-40-million-tracks-sold-1-billion-in-revenu/) Obviously, a ton of this revenue has come from sales of the boxed product, but as the above article illustrates, Rock Band is making an absolute killing on micro-transactions. According to the above link, Rock Band has sold over 40 million songs in the micro-transaction format, which is proof positive that the format works. Micro-transactions have been around for some time (the social game/MMORPG called Second Life has an entire real world economy based on micro-transactions) and the method is picking up steam as game development companies begin to realize that gamers are far more willing to shell out 2 or 3 dollars here and there, as opposed to being asked to pay $15 a month to access a game the end-consumer has already paid for. Rock Band and Second Life have shown the way for an aggressive new vision of commercial success, and SOE has recently jumped on the micro-transaction ship with the introduction of Station Exchange.

So, we end this blog with a brief discussion of how we will be able to define success for DCUO. The definition is fixed, but the revenue model is not. One thing that is for certain is that the old model of revenue production championed by games like Madden Football (pure box sales) won't be the model utilized by SOE. That leaves us with the subscription model, the micro-transaction model, or a hybrid of the two models, such as what is currently being implemented in games like EverQuest 2. In my opinion, a game based on comic books, even when backed by a license as powerful as DC, will never translate to the kind of subscription success that WoW has had. I'm betting that instead of going with a pure subscription model, SOE is really going to maximize its potential revenue streams, to include subscriptions, micro-transactions, and especially tie-in revenue streams that they've had great success with, such as trading card games. To this point, we've always been able to point to purported subscription numbers for MMOs to determine their success, and while the number of subscriptions that determine success has shifted over time (at one point, not long ago, a half million subscribers was considered the king of the MMORPG hill), the success barometer was still tied closely to subscription number. With DCUO, a new formula will be necessary to determine its commercial success.

That seems only fitting by the way. After all, DCUO is essentially a hybrid of so many different game design theories, game types, and developers that it seems somehow poetic that an "out of the box" game will require an "out of the box" revenue model to determine its commercial success.

It has been a while since I last blogged, but as the "Dead Zone" comes to an end, I look forward to more blogging opportunities. Until next time...


Deathstryker