Why it's extraordinarily hard for indie MMOs to succeed

I love MMOs, whether they’re big-budget AAA MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV or smaller, indie games like Albion Online. In general, indie online games tend to suffer more than the larger games in the online space, and that’s unfortunate to see. There are certainly plenty of reasons why that could be. Some feel like these indie games just aren’t worth investing time into. On the other hand, it could simply be players not giving a game a chance because it lacks a “brand name”.

A good example is The Quinfall. While I haven’t spent time in that game, it’s presently struggling with about 3,000 players, according to the Steam Charts. It had some neat ideas but unfortunately launched into Early Access to Mostly Negative reviews on Steam. Once a game has that “bad game” label, it’s so hard to fix it. So what makes life so hard on these Indie MMOs?

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What makes life so hard for up-and-coming indie MMOs?

There are quite a few reasons that Indie MMOs will ultimately struggle, and one of the first is the tech side of things. It’s incredibly expensive to build and run an online game, not to mention the various live-service demands you must keep up with. Up-and-coming developers without financial backing are likely to have a bad time.

There are plenty of great projects out there still in development, like Project: Gorgon (Image via Elder Game, LLC)

That makes building an Indie MMO very challenging before you even get into the actual nuts and bolts of the game. However, that’s not the only problem they have. If your game doesn’t make a positive first impression, it is almost certainly doomed forever. There aren’t many cases of games making a major comeback. If a game launches in a broken state, that simply might be the end.

Of course, Final Fantasy XIV did, as did No Man’s Sky, but those are very special cases. By the time your big “A Realm Reborn” update drops as an Indie MMO, it’s very probable that people have just moved on. If you don’t communicate that you see the problem and are fixing it fast enough, the online game community could easily move right on to the next cool idea.

Let’s be honest, too — pretty much every game in this genre stumbles and does something unpopular at one point or another. I mean heck, World of Warcraft released the Shadowlands expansion, didn’t they? The difference is, there’s not much of a way to recover if your game does something unpopular. The online game space is very cutthroat and pretty oversaturated right now.

Sometimes, fans' expectations aren't met, or games simply release broken - it's not always the community's fault (Image via ADEPT Entertainment)

Another unfortunate part of this is that simply, many gamers won't give the little game a chance because it’s not a “proven brand” or developed by a big company that they’re especially fond of. If Blizzard launched another MMO tomorrow — say a Starcraft MMO — millions of people would almost certainly buy in.

The sad fact is that there are companies that just have a kind of fanbase or goodwill with gamers that they’ll try pretty much whatever is put out there. We only have so many hours in the day, and you should fill them with something you enjoy.

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When you put all of this together, these indie developers are at a pretty serious disadvantage. There are some terrific ones out there, and if you aren’t willing to give them a try because they’re “unknown”, you could miss out on one of your favorite games.