Interview: Alex St. John Talks Digital Distribution, Microtransacations, and the Future of Gaming, Part Two

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The MMO Gamer: Fair enough. We’re just about at the ten year mark of what most people would consider the beginning of the MMO era—Meridian 59 notwithstanding. So, having anticipated the genre’s birth, what do you believe the next ten years will bring to it?

Alex St. John: We’ve seen nothing yet. Modern MMOGs are primitive stone age contrivances based on extremely early and naive understandings of community, virtual economies, advertising, content delivery, etc.

We’re going to see a generation of MMOGs that are much lighter, are delivered online, are microcurrency and ad supported, and evolve more dynamically. I think the era of WOW like MMOGs will quickly be displaced by lighter, more versatile communities that don’t require vast server infrastructures.

The MMO Gamer: That statement could well be considered blasphemy by the dozen or so companies trying to create “WoW-like” games at this very moment.

What would you say to Mythic, or Funcom, or, for that matter, the people fronting them tens of millions of dollars to fund their development efforts? That they’re GM, producing muscle cars during the OPEC embargo?

Alex St. John: I’d say that they may be taking unnecessary risk with their endeavors and that the success of WoW proves that a much larger broader market for MMO game play may exist, not that there is a big opportunity for 5 or 6 more WoW-like RPG knock-offs.

The success and long-term revenue generation of an MMO is linked to the “network effect” associated with the communities they create. Making a better WoW with better graphics and better features won’t necessarily steal WoW’s players or create a larger MMO market. I think a smarter bet would be to ask if there is a market for MMO sports games, MMO strategy games, MMO FPS games, MMO puzzle games, etc.

The MMO Gamer: On that same note, we’ve already had an era of lighter, more versatile communities once before; the thousands of independent MUD servers, which went on to be almost entirely supplanted by MMOs with vast server infrastructures.

What’s going to be different about this new generation you foresee to keep history from repeating itself?

Alex St. John: Actually I think you make a good point, community gaming has always had huge potential, but the shape of the market has evolved very rapidly.

You make the point from your experience starting as a MUD gamer and progressing to being a WOW player. That’s not most of the worlds experience with MMOG gaming. WoW is the first MMOG most of the current generation of players has ever seen. Online gaming, period, is new to most of the world.

History will repeat itself in light MMOGs because they are new to everyone except us old veteran gamers. 20 years from now WOW will look like a text based MUD compared to games of that era and your kids may be asking the same question again about another NEW generation of gamers who will grow up thinking holodeck MMO gaming is the norm.

The MMO Gamer: I should hope that we’ll all still be alive to see holodeck gaming. I’ve always been bitter at William Gibson for leading me to believe I’d be able to hook my brain up to my 486 and render perfect reality in real-time by 1995.

From an engineering perspective, do you really think it’s going to take that long, the generation of our children’s children, before we reach the ability to render a convincing facsimile of reality in real-time?

Alex St. John: That’s always a fun question. It’s not easy, we can fool some of the senses some of the time, but we can’t fool all of the senses all of the time yet, and probably won’t be able to soon. I think this YouTube video is a great illustration of how far we’ve come at being able to control matter with energy in realtime [Video].