Not Quite a Guild

The MMO site MassivelyOP had a post by Justin "Syp" Olivetti* about an organization called Permateam whose goal is to reduce the toxic nature of random PvP matches in games such as Overwatch and League of Legends.

Before I could write a post that said "Yeah, good luck with that," I hit pause and let the article and my perusal of the Permateam website percolate in my head for a few days. And I have to admit, it has as good a chance at dealing with the player toxicity found in online PvP matches than anything else.

Permateam is somewhere in that hazy area that is not quite a guild and not quite a fansite. The idea is that you fill out info on what roles you like to play, when you like to play, and what games you play, and Permateam helps you out in selecting players to play Overwatch and League with from their own database. The entire point is that players who sign up with Permateam want to avoid the drama and toxicity by reducing the potential pool of players to the Permateam player lists. Sure, it's not perfect, and people can still be asshats, but how that is dealt with is kind of hazy right now.

Like I said, it's a lot broader in scope than your average guild, but still has a lot of common ground with an MMO player running battlegrounds and arenas with your guildies.

What I find most interesting are the comments, some of which have me scratching my head.

Some people seem to truly believe that if you don't allow purely random match selection, you're not truly opening yourself to the ability to meet people online and you're self selecting a group of players. But for me, I don't see it like that. If a game's toxic player base is so bad that you derive no enjoyment from the game itself, then why play the game at all? Isn't the toxic player base engaging in its own version of self selection, only in a more obnoxious manner?

I realize that some people think this encourages elitism, but I don't believe that what is there now is any different. The current environment in Overwatch or League or DOTA 2 is an elitist environment, because if a player thinks you're not playing well enough they hurl invective and abuse at you until you quit. If you join a guild or join Permateam to get away from the asshats and play with people who are friendly, it's a win-win for everybody; the original asshats get to group the old fashioned way without Permateam directly impacting their fun, the Permateam players get to play with people who share similar gaming values, and the game admins have less stress all the way around.

Do I think that Permateam will last? I believe that the jury is still out on Permateam, because well meaning organizations like this require dedication and support and active interest to keep going. There are plenty of MMO guilds out there that have fallen apart due to personality clashes and general disinterest. If Permateam is to succeed, the players and the management have to keep up their interest in the service.

Best of luck, Permateam. I hope you know what you're doing.





*Yes, the Syp of the BioBreak blog and of the Battle Bards podcast.

A Tale of Two Models

In the past week since I posted about the death of Joystiq and the sites Massively and WoW Insider, there's been a flurry of activity. Most notably, the "relaunch" of both Massively and WoW Insider as Massively Overpowered and Blizzard Watch.*

Both new sites have set up crowdfunding to help support the relaunches, with both garnering a lot of attention. Oh, not even in the same league as the attention paid to The Oatmeal's Exploding Kittens card game or Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick reprints, but they met (and exceeded) their respective goals very quickly.

And, to be honest, the selection of Massively OP's and Blizzard Watch's crowdfunding method is a perfect demonstration of "know your audience".

Massively OP went with Kickstarter to provide the seed money for the site and content, and will eventually use a combination of ad sales and Patreon funding to provide a steady revenue stream.** Given the prevalence of non-subscription based MMOs in the wider MMO landscape, this makes perfect sense to attract the diverse MMO player. When your audience prefers B2P and F2P games over the subscription based model, you go with a model that replicates the MMO online store as much as possible.

Blizzard Watch, however, decided to go straight up with a Patreon funding site to provide an (ostensibly) steady income. Again, this is perfect because of who they are hoping to attract: the WoW player who is used to plunking down $15/month to visit Azeroth. Sure, there will be online ads too, but creating --in effect-- a subscription based model of support demonstrates that they know their audience will not blink twice at another "subscription."

***

Now, I suppose the big question out there is whether both sites are sustainable in the long run.

I believe that both are sustainable, not only because there's enough interest out there in keeping both sites running, but because each economic model mirrors each site's potential audience.

The people who believe that the Patreon model may eventually bleed subscribers forget that we're talking about WoW here. Sure, the initial blast of subs may eventually go down, but there will always be the hard core to sustain the site. Just like the Castros in Cuba or WoW itself, people will come and go and predict the end of WoW (Insider) as we know it.

Massively OP's modus operandi, getting the seed money up front to get the operation running, works well because they can get everything running without having to worry about keeping subs right away. They realize that their core --those that will support Patreon-- is going to be smaller than a WoW based site, so a greater emphasis on initial startup and selling ad space alleviates those concerns.

***

What will I do?

Probably not much; I'm on a tight budget that is frequently beset by (seemingly) monthly emergencies such as car repairs and new clothes***. If some money frees up, I'll look into sending a few dollars the sites' way, but I'm also likely to look into Netflix or Hulu as a potential replacement for our satellite service.****

I wish both new sites the best of luck, and here's to hoping both succeed beyond their wildest dreams.





*Massively OP for short.

**A (very) reduced version of the economic plan from the Massively OP Kickstarter page.

***Overheard at our house: "Really, you need new pants AGAIN? Just exactly what are you eating, kid, Miracle Gro plant food?"

****We get our internet connection through our local phone company, which is expanding a Fioptics network. If there were a way to get college basketball --my big sports weakness-- without needing a cable/satellite/FiOS package, I'd jump on board. For that reason, I'm watching Sling TV with a great deal of interest.


EtA: Fixed grammar bugs.

Changes

As the years went by, we drifted apart
When I heard that you were gone
I felt a shadow cross my heart
--from Nobody's Hero by Rush


Today, I had the duty of moving the links to Massively, WoW Insider, and the WoW Insider podcast to the Blogs in Mothballs section.

I wanted to make sure I grabbed this for posterity's sake. I still
regret not having done this for Righteous Orbs or The Pink Pigtail Inn.

The owner of Joystiq, AOL, has decided to get out of that end of content creation and is shutting down the domain. Collateral damage to that decision is that Massively and WoW Insider are forced to shut down as well.

According to Syp over at Bio Break (and Massively), Massively and WoW Insider were making money, but AOL decided not to be in the enthusiast gaming blog business.  By extension, it's likely that AOL would have been fine with that aspect of the business if they were making even more money.

This isn't exactly the first time a major corporation has decided to shut down and/or sell a division because it wasn't making "enough" money.* IBM got rid of their PC division to Lenovo. P&G sold Folgers and Jif. 3M sold off their boardgames division --which included Acquire and Facts in Five-- to Avalon Hill. The disappointing thing about all of this is that it smacks of a decision borne entirely from the finance department. I'm of the opinion that a little goodwill goes a long way, and the money saved by jettisoning Joystiq probably isn't enough to make more than a minor blip on the balance sheet.

Or this.

What Joystiq's shutdown is not, however, is a comment on video gaming in general. I'm 100% confident in saying this had nothing to do with Gamergate, the "MMOs are passe" trend, or anything resulting from a boycott (real or threatened). Last I checked, video games still command more dollars than movies or other forms of entertainment media, so if enthusiast sites like Joystiq are shut down, it isn't for a lack of broad popularity.

Because AOL shut down Joystiq with such a short lead-in time (and according to Syp there was originally supposed to be NO lead-in time, just termination notices), there was almost no time to get a successor site up and running. It is also likely that AOL will retain the rights to the names "Massively" and "WoW Insider", so any replacement site that the writers might want set up will have to come with a different name.**

***

It sucks to be in this situation, to be terminated so suddenly. I can really empathize with the writers since I've been in their situation, having been fired from a sales job back in the early 90s right after my college years. There's always the self recriminations that you hear when you're lying awake at night, wondering if you'd have done something differently this wouldn't have come to pass. Even when you tell yourself you did nothing wrong, and that is often quite likely the case, you can't keep that inner critic quiet. It nags at you, picking at the scab of your humiliation, and it won't. leave. you. alone. EVER.

At the same time, I make no bones about the fact that I stopped reading WoW Insider long before I gave up WoW itself. The first nail in the coffin was the shutting down of The Daily Quest, which I used to find interesting new blogs to read. When Chas and Tam from Righteous Orbs and Larisa from The Pink Pigtail Inn shut down their blogs there became precious few clearing houses for new WoW blogs, and TDQ filled that void for a while until it simply stopped being written.***

Next, there was the shutting down of the class bloggers. While I wasn't so hardcore about the game and the raiding emphasis that a lot of the bloggers took, I appreciated their expertise. And I would be lying if I didn't say I was thrilled to see Vidyala --someone I actually KNEW both in and out of game-- as the mage blogger. I'd read her blogs from the beginning --courtesy of Tam from Righteous Orbs-- and I was insanely proud of her to get the mage gig. But cutbacks being what they were, her time at WoW Insider was far too shortlived.

Finally, there was my decline in interest in the game throughout 2014, culminating in allowing my subscription to lapse. I'd poke around the site once in a great while, but the "all WoW all the time" nature of W:I really didn't hold the interest of someone who had moved away from the game.

***

I wasn't about to forget Massively either.

In the end, I suppose that this sort of change will lead to something new. No, I'm not sure what, but I can't imagine that the creativity that Massively and W:I had will simply vanish into the ether. The writers still play games, and they have that burning need to share things with others.

So it's not "goodbye." Not really, anyway. It's more "until we meet again".





*If Joystiq were making more money, AOL would have likely sold it to some potential buyer instead of simply shutting it down. My guess is that AOL felt that the process of selling was a money loser for them, so killing it was more cost effective. [You can insert whatever your thoughts are about corporate bean counters here.]

**AOL might even retain the rights to some of the column names, too. I've not seen the ownership agreements, so YMMV.

***I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that PC had been highlighted a few times on TDQ. Each time it happened I found out about it due to the sudden spike in readership, from the traditional 50-100 people reading the blog to a few thousand. I've discovered that when THAT happens, you suddenly don't need coffee that morning.


EtA: relapse:lapse.  tomato:tomahto.  Sheesh.