In a conversation with the founders of CipSoft, the topic of World of Warcraft also came up. As a major, overpowering competitor, the Tibia team did not perceive the dominant Blizzard MMORPG as a threat. There was a much greater danger for the entire genre of online role-playing games …
What kind of talk is this? For our large Grindfest theme week, our chief editor Leya Jankowski had the opportunity to speak with CipSoft managing directors Benjamin Zuckerer and Stephan Vogler about the beginnings of the studio and the creation story of their MMORPG Tibia.
It was not only about the exciting origin story of one of the most successful German studios and games of all time, but also about the development of the MMORPG and several challenges the team had to overcome over the years.
Exciting: When World of Warcraft set out in 2004/2005 to bring the entire genre into the mainstream and influenced the entire industry with its historical success, the Tibia developers looked positively at the all-dominating genre king.
We said back then that it’s cool and will rather open up the market and make it broader, bringing more people into the genre than before. It is so different from Tibia that there is no great concern […]. The communities that enjoy these games do not mix too much.
Benjamin Zuckerer in a talk with MeinMMO
Another development from the 2000s caused them much greater headaches …
You can actually watch the nearly 70-minute talk below – enjoy!
Small screens, big impact
What was the major danger for MMORPGs? Short and sweet: the smartphone, which gradually established itself throughout the 2000s – among other things, through the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.
Until then, MMORPGs with their chats, forums, and character interactions were something like the early social media channels, or at least covered their function. A kind of enhanced chat rooms, where you could not only meet people but also have a vast world full of content, an avatar into which a lot of time has flowed, and social structures.
Many fans of the genre didn’t just log into WoW and Co. daily to play, but to spend time with their friends and guild colleagues, to write, to meet in voice chats – and naturally also to do quests and more (or hop around in Orgrimmar or Stormwind for hours).
The smartphone brought with its apps a new alternative for exactly that kind of social interaction, which could be taken anywhere – which, according to the two developers, noticeably affected the player numbers of all MMORPGs.
The games had certainly reached their peak at some point. That was around 2008, 2009. At that time, all MMORPGs had the most players, and since then, the player numbers have declined. This is true for World of Warcraft, and it is no different for Tibia.
And when you think about what this is related to, what the reason behind it is, then it is rather the smartphone […].
This was the time when all of a sudden the entire PC platform had to step back behind more consumer time on smartphones […]. This development has, for many, many years, starting from 2008, taken more and more time from users, into apps and social media offerings.
Stephan Vogler in a talk with MeinMMO
According to Vogler, over the years, there have been more and more offerings for social interaction through smartphones that could cover certain things simply more effectively, and from the pocket. The once-thriving genre of MMORPGs took a significant hit because of this.
What does it look like today? The competition for people’s limited leisure time is intensifying. Service games that aim to retain players for years can now be found across almost all genres. Moreover, every year, more and more games are released because it becomes increasingly easier to develop a game.
Additionally, there are countless streaming services like Netflix, numerous social media platforms, and of course, very old-school, analog leisure activities. There simply isn’t enough time left to consume everything one desires. A few direct impacts of this:
- Many gaming fans focus on a few games like FIFA, Call of Duty, Roblox, Fortnite, and Co., playing these over many years. Just 5 games capture nearly 30 percent of the total gaming time.
- Many service games flop because they can’t generate enough hype and traction to stand out from the massive competition.
- Many players jump from hype game to hype game, but don’t stick around for any game for long, which causes even service games that were successful at launch to complain about rapidly declining player numbers.
- Regarding MMORPGs: The development of online role-playing games is so expensive, labor-intensive, and risky that there have hardly been any studios and publishers willing to release a new, ambitious MMORPG for a decade.
Which online role-playing games the communities of GameStar, Gamepro, and MeinMMO are looking forward to the most in the future can be found out in this special from the Grindfest theme week: The Lord of the Rings is such a strong brand that even Amazon Games cannot harm it – These MMORPGs are what you are looking forward to the most
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