One…Gazillion Dollars!
The upside of the MMO business needs no introduction. It is personified in the multi-billion dollar form of the World of Warcraft franchise. While attempts to be the next WOW have not fared well thus far, it certainly hasn’t stopped folks from trying (Hellgate, Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa, Gods & Heroes, etc.). Gazillion would appear to be the latest contender for the crown and they are bringing the might of the Marvel universe with them. It is an ambitious play to be sure and, as a long-time Marvel comics collector, I hope Gazillion does well with the license. That said, it will be exceptionally expensive to find out if they’re the next Blizzard or the next Brash.
While few specifics of the Marvel-Gazillion licensing deal have been released, the multi-year nature of the arrangement reminds me of EA’s recent multi-year lock on the NFL license for Madden. In EA’s case, this makes vast amounts of sense as Madden is a proven franchise with known audience and revenue characteristics. While I can see Gazillion wanting the runway to build a long-term business, I think it is safe to assume that they’re paying for the privilege in the form of yearly minimum commitments. Marvel is white hot right now and not about to do a back-end only deal with a brand new company that has no track record. So, in addition to the multi-million dollar cost of developing a AAA MMO, Gazillion also has the licensing fee to contend with. Should their first product not be a hit, the company’s cost structure will begin to look rather scary depending on how much investor money they have in the tank. They are making a very large, very speculative bet.
There are some significant design and resourcing challenges in getting a hit right out of the gate using a media license as well. Adapting a beloved linear story and/or characters to an open, interactive environment is hard. Making it highly replayable - MMO grind fest style - is very hard. For example, players will want to be Spiderman, Iron Man, and The Hulk while nobody will want to be Ant Man. Some games resolve this issue by letting players create a new character within the license’s universe but not play as the characters they are familiar with – Godfather for example. Quest and mission design is exceptionally tricky in this case as the dreaded ‘kill ten rats’ approach is pretty much at odds with our preconceived ideas of a licensed story arc and characters - especially heroes. In other words, even a generic hero (let alone Wolverine or Doctor Strange) isn’t really supposed to be killing the same ten baddies over and over again. They’re supposed to be up to something more meaningful and grandiose than that - somthing more heroic.
Building out custom, low-replayability but gratifyingly heroic missions can get very expensive as the developer struggles to keep ahead of the content consumption curve of its player base. NCsoft’s recent innovation in this regard is an interesting solve to this problem as it leverages user generated content to scale mission content for a large MMO in much the same way that we at Three Rings use it scale content for our in-browser virtual world, virtual item shop, and Flash game catalog. If Gazillion were to manage to solve the resulting exploits, they might have a shot at creating a compelling enough arrangement to entice the player to come back again and again to level up their hero. Still…I wanna be Moon Knight and not some player-created approximation. Getting around the character fixation is going to be tough.
One of the other big licensed IP projects reportedly underway at Gazillion is Lego Universe. Legos - the original build your own story toy - are an excellent IP upon which to build on MMO in my opinion. Where the Marvel license contrains design choices and possibilities, Lego opens them up. The success the license has already had in being translated to game titles as diverse as the Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones hits to the very promising upcoming Lego Rock Band, speaks to its amazing adaptability. The modular nature of the blocks themselves also lends itself well to the long-term play that is the MMO life cycle. Lastly, the longevity of the beloved Lego brand could make for an extremely broad appeal depending on how tightly Gazillion aims the demographic focus beam.
Perhaps one day, years from now, Gazillion will stand toe to toe with Blizzard atop cash mountain. Until then however, it will be an interesting journey and company to watch.
-Shanti
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