First, I would like to congratulate Mike for keeping his blog super interesting (in my opinion!). I would like to bring in a new perspective on Mike’s blog post on the success of League of Legends. I agree completely with Mike on his view – “By having a genuinely fantastic product and unparalleled customer service, Riot Games is able to run a free-to-play game while making incredible profit.” However, my concern is, can Riot Games maintain this success in the long run?
The MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games community has seen the rise and fall of many such games including RuneScape and Maple Story. If any of you keep up with these games (I highly doubt many of you still do, hence, my point!), you’ll see that Jagex (developers of RuneScape) and Nexon (Maple Story) continuously release updates with the aim to reignite the interest in their respective MMOs. As for maintaining their free-to-play status, Maple Story is pretty much as free-to-play as it gets. This makes me wonder, is a fantastic product really the key to maintaining a long-standing fan base in this industry? Or are the product life cycles of most MMOs naturally short ? If one looks at the ongoing trend, most developers release a new MMO every couple of years (Nexon released four MMOs after Maple Story to compensate for the fall of its first game). Hence, in my opinion, Riot Games shouldn’t limit its product range to just League of Legends. This complacent attitude can lead to fall in the company’s profits, a fate experienced by Jagex until it released other games as well. In fact, Riot Games should use the success of League of Legends as a tool to market any new games it releases in the future to ensure that it has a back-up when the era of League of Legends fades away..
Bibliography
Jagex Games Studio. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2014. <http://www.jagex.com/>.
Nexon. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2014. <http://www.nexon.net/>.