Lots has been written about the Long Tail of certain media assets, but here's a quick summary of the theory and an application of it to the massively multiplayer genre.
Long after certain consumer products are popular, they continue to sell and can, over the long run, ring up sales volumes that rival the biggest blockbuster products. Music, for instance, sells well for years after that music topped the Billboard pop charts. Some games also have a long tail: witness Atari's launch of retro gaming systems this summer and last summer.
But the MMOG genre has no Long Tail. MMOGs just die. They have no Long Tail because they cost bucketloads of money to run. Servers must be hosted in secure facilities and they must be connected to the Internet via costly bandwidth contracts. Staff must be trained to maintain those servers. Customer service people need to answer emails and resolve customer disputes. So instead of just sitting around forever and earning a trickle of revenue for a very long time, MMOGs are the only games products that are truly shut down.
Genre-defining games like Everquest will eventually be shut down in much the same way that Asheron's Call 2 will be shut down later this year. Even so, we predict that at some point Moore's Law will revive these shut-down games. As hardware becomes increasingly powerful and bandwidth becomes increasingly cheap, companies will be able to revive and run their most successful MMOGs at a fraction of today's costs.
Which of us wouldn't love get our nostalgic kicks on in World of Warcraft's re-release in 2030, long after its current popularity has faded?
(Page 1) Reader Comments
I'd also comment that it seems like no one so far has put together a quality game and figured out how to keep it "new" for players over a period of years. Simply opening a new area is not enough to keep the interest of veteran players who have already burned out on the game. Until someone comes up with the right model, I think all MMOGS that run in persistent worlds will have this fate hanging over them.
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I don't really see what's short about the MMO tail here. MMOs that die are the exception rather than the rule. Which other shut-down games are you talking about that need to be revived?
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1997 to 2005: no big deal.
1997 to 2050: not gonna happen for MMOGs in the way that it is currently happening for Atari console games.
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Let's just say I'm more optimistic.
--Mark
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Worked for the FPS's, ya know?
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No, the long tail is simply what portion of the sales (or whatever you're measuring) fall under your amplitude threshold. The subscriber base for something like Puzzle Pirates falls below any reasonable popularity threshold, so any money derived from it would contribute to long tail.
Long tail is often used to refer to two different things: one, the sale of items below a certain threshold; two, the sale of a product after its initial high sales period. With conventional media, it's often okay to conflate the two meanings, but they're distinct.
The latter meaning-- money generated from a product after its initial high sales period-- seems artificial. It would mean that Puzzle Pirates could be considered long tail now if it used to be twice as popular, but if it's been steadily popular, it can't be. That data, though, has nothing to do with affordable server load and support.
The fact is, there is a point where an MMO can be profitable, but still dwarfed by blockbusters. This point is lower for a company that runs multiple MMOs, and can exploit economies of scale (SOE). Planetside is another that I'd consider long tail at this point.
Of course, in the current environment, short tail dwarfs long tail. That doesn't mean long tail doesn't exist, simply that it's small.
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