Yes, I know that’s a provocative title. Yes, we’re gonna talk about it with some nuance. It’s a topic inspired by a Reddit thread from several weeks ago in which the original poster railed against “MMO tourists,” who he claims hurt the genre more than they help when they treat MMOs as disposable, zipping between games one after another in an endless cycle, with the main victim being MMOs that improve over time when no one’s left to see it.
Of course, as the replies wisely point out, if gamers didn’t move between games, we’d all still be playing Ultima Online. You kinda have to try new games to find out whether they’re going to work for you, and the idea that we should be obligated to stay in everything we try on the hope that they someday improve is a bit absurd. Still, when folks knowingly treat MMOs as a string of vacations instead of shopping for a long-term home, it’s fair to argue that MMOs become tourist traps rather than the kind of cozy neighborhood anyone would want to live in.
I thought this would be an interesting topic for Massively Overthinking this week, a little bit different from the usual “content locusts” discussion. Do gaming “tourists” ruin MMOs? Is there a solution to this problem?
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): Ugh, I hate gatekeeping. Yeah, there are certainly tiers of fandom, but being technically higher on that list doesn’t necessarily make you better or more worthwhile. I also don’t think it necessarily makes someone more toxic, though.
Particularly for MMOs, you need those tourists. A game needs an audience, even if temporarily. World of Warcraft is a decent example of this. When there’s a nice big content update, people often come back, and those who are playing are often waiting in the wings, knowing the value of certain items will go up, their ability to recruit and at least temporarily boost guild rosters to help recruit long-termers will increase, and certain queue times will go down so they can grind more on alts or occasionally mains.
Let’s take Pokemon GO as a counter-point, though. Ignoring the fact that things have gone downhill since 2020’s COVID/QoL improvements followed by 2021’s nerfs, the game was slowly and steadily getting better most likely thanks to the One Tamriel-esque Gen 3 updates. It got a major boost from 2017, but not much better. Part of that, I think, is because Niantic also started doing “events” almost constantly. For people who constantly play the game, it can be kind of nice, but from an outsider’s perspective, it seems a bit busy. They constantly have to “catch up.” Those few events big enough to really bring back players are lost in the constant update noise. Apart from the COVID/QoL changes and Gen 3 update, other Generational updates just didn’t pack enough punch to attract the tourists.
So in short, no, I don’t think “tourists” ruin MMOs; they help reinvigorate them. Designing an MMO/online game that mostly centers on constantly hooking the main audience can work, and it can make day-to-day gameplay enjoyable, but as much as I hate to say it, the old-school Asheron’s Call style of monthly updates just isn’t really emulated well by anyone in the modern industry. POGO sadly comes the closest, somehow, but heavy monetization threatens the value and FOMO barely seems to keep people on board. Striking a balance is important: You need your game built sturdy enough that people will have something to do if they’re a daily player, but you also need those big spike events to bring in the tourists and help revitalize the population and economy. After all, what’s an MMO without a massive number of players?
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog):Â You can probably guess from the introduction that I don’t think tourists are a problem. Please, tour our game worlds. Visit all of them. Find the ones you like. This is how new MMO players are born, folks – when people from outside the genre give an MMO a try.
But I do think it’s a problem when games develop solely for tourists, or rather, I think there are good and bad ways to go about it. It’s smart that games like Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, and Elder Scrolls Online release content in small but steady bursts, anticipating players who return over and over to play for a month or two and then drift away, only to return again a few months later. I think this is frankly a healthy way to play MMOs too.
What I dislike is when new games are launched to make a quick buck and then are effectively abandoned, having scooped up all the genre “tourist” money, and then they basically give up. Temports, we call them here – designed and ported over as temporary from the get-go. That’s not world-building or community-building, and nobody would stay for it anyway.
If somebody’s really a “tourist,” he’ll eventually come back to the game he left anyway. But it’s not his responsibility to stick around in a bad game in the hopes that a studio will save it. Come back when it’s saved. It’s not a charity, and your time is precious.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): Ah, another old man yelling at a cloud. Look, worrying about devs making MMOs into destinations instead of homes has some kind of concern, but it also is just another way of claiming someone as a “true fan” who has “worked” to their position of vaunted grandeur. This post was probably the same kind of person who uses the term “welfare epics” unironically.
As for a solution? I mean, make sure your game makes a great first impression and entreats players to want to turn it into a home. But otherwise, let people play what they want to play, my guy.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog):Â What we’re kind of talking about here is a behind-the-scenes trend called “churn” — the constant process of the inflow and outflow of players from MMOs. MMOs hope that a player will land and stay for an extended amount of time, but barring that, having a player return over and over again is a nice consolation prize.
As a frequent tourist myself, I don’t see my dipping in and out of MMOs as hurting. If anything, it helps multiple titles as I contribute to the community, perhaps contribute to finance, and contribute to exposing the MMO to my friends and readers. MMORPGs already host players for much longer stretches of time than your average video game — it’s unrealistic to expect them to clutch on to a player indefinitely. We need variety and time away to recharge our interest.
Mia DeSanzo (@neschria): I do understand the point. It’s a little dispiriting to be there in a crowd when a game is released and then have everyone you were playing with disappear off to the next big thing. The people just passing through don’t do much for the people who are there to immerse themselves in a new virtual world or to form long term, active guilds.
On the other hand, I’d rather have a steady stream of tourists than a dead game. And sometimes today’s tourist is tomorrow’s tenant. Not everyone is looking for a world to live in. Sometimes people are just looking, and that’s fine too.
There are some games out there that have had staying power, with plenty of long-term players. The games that are around for 2.5 seconds probably deserve their fate. The tourists don’t take anything from the locals in a game that’s built for the long term. They provide life, color, and sometimes revenue for the game. And everyone is a tourist in the games that suck.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): I don’t think it’ll come as any surprise to hear me say that tourists are in our games, and they’re going to be here forever. If there is an award for touring too much, I’d be in the running.
There’s very little a company can do to stop it without flat-out limiting its potential customer base. Personally, I haven’t found any long-term games in a very long time. There’s just such a wealth of games for us to play that it’s tough to plant roots and stay firmly in only a couple.
One way games have attempted to keep players logging in is with constant updates. Obviously for us a living world is basically a requirement, so a stale game is going to see players move on. In some cases they try to slow progress or just make requirements to get “the shiny” extremely time consuming. That fits the bill for some players, and for others it encourages the touring.
I think where I’m at right now, I just want to constantly experience something new and fun. When we had far fewer options and they were subs to play, it made it hard to tour around. Nowadays, though, it’s just so easy, why not experience everything?
Tyler Edwards (blog):Â I think “tourist” implies a casual approach to a game. Someone who shows up, takes in the sights, and eventually leaves. I can’t see how that could ever be a problem for anyone.
I do think there’s an issue of a certain class of player who seize on new games, no-life them until they’ve burned through all the content in three weeks, rage-quit because the game didn’t fill the emptiness in their life, and then shout from the rooftops that the game doesn’t have enough content, but I’d consider that a separate phenomenon.
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!
