Turning your franchise MMO

Franchises have a limited sale life. Very rarely does a series of books or films - or indeed video games – last so long that the userbase they are made for begin to get tired of them. For every long running series like Super Mario, there’s an Alex Kidd that just couldn’t make it through those long, hard years. So what can a developer do when they find their characters aren’t having the influence on popular culture that they once did? How can you overcome a tired storyline and bring back that sparkle to your creation, your world that once entertained the masses? You can turn your franchise MMO.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t suit every series. An Alex Kidd MMO would be an interesting way to bring back SEGA’s other, more forgotten mascot, but realistically it just didn’t have the world to support it. However, for some video games, for book and film series, for comic books and table top RPGs, new life can be found by taking your universe online and letting people explore to their hearts content. Whether it’s meeting and greeting with famous people, scaling well-known mountain ranges or checking out landmarks, exploration of a world can never be as fully realized without giving the end user a level of freedom that the MMO genre is famous for.

Famous MMOs are spin-offs from popular series

In fact, some of the most famous MMOs ever have been spin-offs from already popular series. That crazy, unexpected Panda expansion for World of Warcraft was far from unexpected to long-time fans of the series, some of whom might have been disappointed that the race didn’t make it into the game at launch. Apparently Blizzard were worried about offending Chinese users with Panda-based stereotypes and removed reference to them, but the characters appeared in Warcraft long before it went MMO. It’s not the first time that a major World of Warcraft reveal has been pre-empted by people who know the lore almost as well as the developers.

Final Fantasy is known for changing its worlds, linking its characters by only the vaguest of plot lines (Shinra from FFX-2, for instance) and a few famous creatures. Being able to ride a Chocobo and play as a Moogle might be a dream come true for some, but Square Enix’s attention to graphical fidelity and depth of world is unparalleled and that came across in Final Fantasy XII and, depending who you ask, Final Fantasy XIV. One of the biggest players in the MMO jungle happened to be a spin-off from a hugely successful single player franchise; the developers took what worked and made it much, much bigger.

Already successful games into MMOs

In fact, looking back over the history of the MMO, as we did last year, it’s easy to see that a time came when copyright holders couldn’t stop themselves from licencing MMOs based around their properties; The Sims, Warhammer, Champions Online, Hello Kitty, Phantasy Star, LEGO, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ragnarok, Star Trek, Star Wars and a more, far too man to list here. In short: the MMO genre, like gaming as a whole, is tied into what’s popular and what can be built around an already successful franchise. If there’s already a user-base, there’s already people interested in your game.

The first wildly successful MMO, the game that started many an obsession, was Ultima Online and even that was a spin-off. The series was no less than twelve years old when it went online but that was perhaps what it’ll be remembered for. It managed to help spawn a genre and that’s nothing to sniff at, especially when you consider people began to play it despite not entirely knowing the history of the world. The developers proved that if you can get a group of people who DO know every inch of the lore behind your game, other people will come just for the good gameplay, unique offerings and social opportunities.

The risks of turning to MMO

Turning your franchise MMO has its risks as well. The list of MMOs is long and there are some games that are best left forgotten, the list of unsuccessful spin-offs isn’t much shorter. Some have gone free-to-play in an effort to get more users in, for some that has been successful, for others it just seems desperate. Some of these spin-offs have been shut down completely, lost to memory (good and bad) and fan sites. As somebody who enjoyed the Matrix movies, I can’t just dig out an old console and play the Matrix Online, that game is gone for good, along with all the time and effort the developers put in.

It’s not story-heavy games that are getting the push online now. Take a look at things like Dynasty Warriors, Need For Speed or Battlefield Heroes, all popular games on Aeria. Not one of those franchises are known for their deep stories or their epic lore (although, for fans of that first series, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is well worth a read). Instead, they’re just fun titles that happen to have a huge following. That huge following wouldn’t mind being able to play online together, this was especially important before it became obvious just how big online play was going to be this generation.

As easy as turning on a console

Sure, now it’s as easy as turning on a console if you want to play Battlefield online, Dynasty Warriors comes loaded with multiplayer and Need For Speed has become a different beast altogether, but being able to play with a whole host of other players from your PC, with a simple download and a focus on the online. When you look at these spin-offs from major series, even if they’re terrible, you know that there’s been a lot of effort put into transferring that spirit across to a wider audience. Dynasty Warriors has you killing hundreds of enemies to heavy rock music, Need for Speed has you driving fast, pretty cars and Battlefield has you shooting big guns.

People dig what's familiar

Ultimately, people go for what’s familiar. Unless something is really badly received, people will put up with a few minor bugs if it means they can meet NPC characters that they recognise and discuss their favourite parts of a franchise with people almost guaranteed to have a similarly passionate interest. That’s not to say that original games have no chance of performing well, but if history has shown anything it’s that it’ll be a much harder uphill struggle. With more people making the jump onto developing MMOs, it’s only a matter of time before we begin to see more and more big games going MMO, and for the most part that won’t be a bad thing at all.

2012 - DevilsMMO.com
by M. Growcott