Joe Mad: MMO market "hasn't changed"

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 March, 2010

40K MMO dev notes "steady pattern".

The MMO market is still very similar to the days before World of Warcraft according to Vigil Games creative director Joe Madureira.

"A lot of people have entered the fray and failed miserably, but I don't think that core of the way MMOs play, or the business model in general - for the most successful ones - it really hasn't changed that much. At least not in the US," Madureira told our trade-only sister site GamesIndustry.biz.

Madureira's Vigil Games is currently working on a Warhammer 40,000 MMO for publisher THQ.

"There are a lot of different payment plans and things that people are testing out, and just social gaming in general is becoming really huge now, but I think for that core MMO audience - the guys that played [Everquest] and are now playing WOW - will be playing the next big game, whatever that is... probably 40K [smiles].

"It's a pretty steady pattern - it hasn't changed that much," he said.

Vigil's last game, Darksiders, did well with critics and Madureira and his colleague, Vigil general manager David Adams, were effusive in their praise for THQ's support.

"THQ went through a lot of pain and restructuring - they took a lot of bullets so we could continue to make our game, and that's a good indication of their faith in us, and their drive to make great-quality products," said Adams.

That faith was also such that, as Adams saw it, the decision to set Vigil to work on the Warhammer 40,000 MMO was an easy one for the publisher.

"I don't actually know the details. They had the licence, and Relic made a lot of 40K games which Games Workshop really liked because they actually took the IP seriously. At some point in the process THQ got the rights to the online game," said Adams.

"From my point of view, I really love 40K, so it was thrown out there casually at one point and I said: 'Hey, we'll make it!' It was literally that simple..."

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (7) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • SClaw #1 2 years ago

    Well that guy does not fill me with confidence. Will it be WoW with Space Marine skins? Probably.

  • DrDamn #2 2 years ago

    "but I think for that core MMO audience - the guys that played [Everquest] and are now playing WOW - will be playing the next big game"

    Two fairly important questions pop up from that ... if they are still playing WoW why didn't they move on to one of the other "next big games" we've had already? What about the millions upon millions of WoW players who didn't play EQ and never would have. Not going for them?

  • cnlfailure #3 2 years ago

    Planetside not WoW. That's all you need remember.

  • jellyhead #4 2 years ago

    It'll have to be good to get me to subscribe but as it's 40k my fanboi mind will probably overlook any minor flaws.
    As long as i'm not called a SPESH MEHREEN, it's all good :)

  • BigJonno #5 2 years ago

    It's a shame that they'll probably ignore all of the interesting detail in the setting and focus on appealing to people who know the main wargame and nothing else. That was one of the main failures of WAR, in my opinion.

  • pinchofsalt #6 2 years ago

    Hmmm, what an extremely ignorant view of the MMO market he is showing.
    Good luck, Joe.

  • makeamazing #7 2 years ago

    I think the MMO market has changed, mainly due to the fact that there are so many MMO's being released... in my day (man i feel old), there werent many MMO's and you selected the one that fit in with your type of game, and you would STICK with it for quite a while.

    Now, i think the market has changed because so many are being released, people jump in and then many of them only try it for a month before moving on. I am not saying that a few years ago there wasnt a turnover of players, but i would definately say since the regular release of MMOs this has definately become more prevalant.