Okay, here's my final meme-blog on E-3 2003, now that the show is over and my ears have stopped ringing (at least somewhat). And as usual, my caveat to my game industry colleagues: I am not official press -- this is just my own stream of thought rambling, so please take anything I say with a grain of salt. (Part 1 of my E-3 report, btw, is here: http://www.memestreams.net/users/elonka/blogid2927350 )

First, to get it out of the way, here's some more name-dropping about other colleagues that I ran across over the last couple days. The famous, not-so-famous, or just plain cool: Dave Perry (Shiny/Matrix), Richard Garfield (Magic), Johnny Wilson, John de Margheriti (MicroForte Australia), Marc Mencher, Alexander Macris (Themis), Rob Nicholls (Cybiko), Liz Wakefield (IGDA), Christopher Allen (Skotos), Bridget Goldstein, Daniel Greenberg, Patricia Pizer (Ubi Soft), Michael Gartenberg (Jupiter), and Tim Innes (S2 Games).

Now, getting back to the show floor . . . In terms of the major MMORPGs, many of the ones that were touted as being "in development" last year, are now in the process of being released, or are at a state where they can at least be demoed at these shows. I saw demos of Star Wars: Galaxies (Sony), Second Life (Linden Labs), Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Square Enix), Mu Online (claiming to be the largest MMORPG in the world, with over 350,000 simultaneous players at peak), Myst Online, and several others. There was quite a bit of discussion about the difficulty of porting the hit games from one continent to another. For example, the Korean market has the largest games in the world in terms of Peak Simultaneous Users, but none of those games has yet caught on in the U.S. or European markets. Ditto with the U.S. games into the Asian markets. But one American game, Dark Age of Camelot, did manage to make the crossover from the U.S. to Europe, and is a big hit there, even reportedly being the #1 MMORPG in Europe. They're currently claiming 220,000 total subscribers (worldwide) with 60,000 PSU (Peak Simultaneous Users).

Factoid: Sony's EverQuest is stating that 16% of their userbase is female. In terms of gaining new users (of both genders), EQ says that 70% of their new customers are there because of a peer recommendation. They also said that at the EverQuest "Fan Faires", 80% of the attendees are players of the game.

A representative from EA had an interesting comment on their marketing focus. They said that they're finding they need to target the "game expert" in each community's circle of friends. In other words, that most game players around the country base their game-buying decisions not on marketing or even on magazine reviews, but on the recommendation of some member of their circle of friends (EA calls this person "Sydney") who's the guy or girl who plays nearly every game out there, and then recommends games to their friends. So if EA can successfully convince the "Sydneys" out there th... [ Read More (1.3k in body) ]