New Gamer Survey Data Helps Answer an Ongoing Mystery: Why Are There No Massively Popular Science Fiction-Themed MMOs?

Above: Star Galaxy, the MMO with a passionate if niche following

Nick Yee of game research firm Quantic Foundry has a fascinating new blog post which helps answer a mystery that's been bothering me for roughly 15 years: Why do we rarely see any science fiction-themed MMO/multiplayer game become a mass market hit?

It's true: Sci-fi MMOs like Eve Online and Star Citizen have passionate but very niche user bases, whereas fantasy-themed MMOs like World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online attract players in the tens of millions. Even MMOs based on super powerful sci-fi IP — i.e. Star Wars and Star Trek — have rarely (if ever) succeeded on that kind of level.

One key reason could be demographic. Summarizing findings from Quantic Foundry's survey data of 1.25 million+ gamers, Nick bluntly puts it this way: Sci-Fi is much more appealing to older gamers:

58% of Strategy genre fans rated Sci-Fi as a “very” or “extremely” appealing thematic setting for a Strategy game. Here among Strategy genre fans, we do find a strong gender difference in terms of the appeal of Sci-Fi. Male Strategy genre fans are about twice as likely to rate Sci-Fi as an “extremely” appealing thematic setting compared to female Strategy genre fans (31% vs. 15%).

[O]lder gamers (especially those 35+) are much more likely to rate Sci-Fi as an “extremely” appealing thematic setting for a Strategy game. This suggests that the Sci-Fi age trend is the more stable, cross-genre effect whereas gender differences depend on the specific genre.

This particular Quantic Foundry data set focuses on player preferences with shooter and strategy genre games, but, Nick tells me, we could potentially apply those results to MMOs:

"It's interesting in our data that Sci-Fi appeal doesn't correlate with the key mechanics of MMOs these days–Completion and Power or the Social elements like Competition and Community," as Nick tells me. "We didn't specifically ask about Sci-Fi setting in MMOs, so I'm extrapolating a bit from the data we have."

The key challenge is that MMOs tend to require much longer time commitments:

"Older people like Sci-Fi more, but likely have less time to play MMOs, especially the kind of time demands that MMOs place (contiguous uninterrupted play time)," Nick adds. In other words, the very nature of the MMO genre makes them less appealing to older gamers who often have just an hour or less of daily time to play after work, commuting, family demands, etc.

So for younger gamers with more time to play, MMOs with high fantasy themes (i.e. Tolkien-esque) are more appealing, partly because they're easier to "get":

"I've always wondered if it's also because High Fantasy is the most generically well-known alternate world with a variety of avatar options," as Nick speculates. "Everyone understands orcs and elves in a way that would take far more time to introduce new alien species."

I think that sounds right; in a similar way, the other most successful theme of multiplayer games tends to be realistic and modern day — think Grand Theft Auto Online and the various Call of Duty games.

In any case, anyone thinking of launching an MMO/metaverse platform that's heavy on the sci-fi should look at this data with caution. I had a lot of hopes around Dual Universe, for example, but despite its great ambition, it's failed to gain mass market traction.

Read it all here.