When we think of massively multiplayer online games or MMOs these days, we're often thinking about the classics. World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy XIV, and a few others dominate the space. But, NC America CEO Jeonghee Jin believes there's plenty of space for a new name to rise up and take a global audience by storm.
Speaking to Wccftech, Jin explained her optimism for the future of MMOs, in an age where it seems like the most successful multiplayer offerings are some form of live-service shooter. "There is a genuine chance. What we've been seeing is a cyclical pattern, and I believe we're at the bottom of the cycle...There are good periods and difficult ones, and the wave of layoffs, studio closures, and cancelled projects we've witnessed is largely connected to the post-pandemic correction. It was a period where there was enormous investment, a lot of experimentation, and not enough of it produced the right results. That doesn't mean the industry is broken; it means the cycle reset."
She continued: "I'm an optimistic person by nature, and when I saw all that difficult news over the past couple of years, my instinct was always that more good news was coming...And look at the data: a huge number of players are still spending significant time in games that are 10 or 15 years old. That tells you there's room. There's an audience that's loyal, that forms genuine communities, that makes games a part of their lives. That's exactly the audience MMORPGs speak to. People say it's an old genre, niche, built for an older generation. Maybe. But trends in any creative industry come back around."
NCSoft, the parent company of NC America, is working on a lot of multiplayer experiences, some of which are expansive MMOs. Cinder City, Time Takers, Aion 2, Horizon Steel Frontiers, all would love to benefit from the cycle being restored, but we'll have to see if they can capitalise on an audience that does seem to want something fresh. After all, it does seem like Jin's argument has plenty of value to it. People describe Crimson Desert as a single-player MMO, and it already sold millions of copies.