The Skaff Effect

by Jim Butler

December 11th, 2003

Some time ago, I talked about EverQuest and why I was leaving the game. (You can read all about that here.) Well, that’s been more then a year ago, and I thought it was a good time to discuss why I went back to the gamer’s Evil Empire.

EverQuest still has all of the same problems that made me leave the first time. It’s trade system is painful to advance in, their customer service is about the worst I’ve seen, the economy is badly broken (and getting worse each day), power-levelers and loot farmers make the game un-fun for everyone, and the best parts of the game aren’t available until you’ve reached 50^th level (and some would say even higher then that).

Sony learns from other products released into the marketplace, and they continue to watch new developments from new games and absorb the more innovative features. When Dark Age of Camelot added a compass to make it easier for new players to get around, EQ did the same thing within a few weeks. As more and more games came out that had casters sit and med for spells, Sony dropped the spell book that filled the screen (Staring at a screen that contains your spell book wasn’t much fun, especially when the orc would walk right up to you and smack you without you seeing him). The list goes on.

I still think that Gemstone IV is a better game on many levels (primarily immersion into a living world where your actions matter), but it’s harder to get today’s consumers interested in what is largely a text-based game. The only other game I’ve seen do as much with story and world development is Earth & Beyond.

Alas, all of the other game companies striving to take market share from Sony continue to fight a losing battle. The amount of innovation (and sheer content) required to upset Sony as the number 1 MMORPG is a huge barrier to taking loyal customers from EverQuest (not to mention the huge time and emotional commitments to their characters).

There more then 50 MMORPGs available or due out in the next year or so. There are 30+ more that are currently in development with no set release dates. The online gaming market is starting to look down the barrel of the same over-production gun that the d20 and traditional RPG marketplace has been sorting through this past year (though their retail and distribution chains seem stronger). While many of these games will launch before they’re ready (ultimately dooming their chances for long-term survival, but allowing Sony to see what innovative new features they posses), there’s always the chance that one of them will prove to offer a new feature or play set that can change the balance of power in the online realm.

The belief that one’s product is the innovative and ground-breaking Holy Grail of gaming is what drives many of these companies to produce these new games. Some feel that by making a ‘better’ EverQuest that they’ll strip Sony of its 500,000 paid subscriber base and live happily ever after. Thought like this has been driving the traditional games industry for years—“Hey, I can make a better version of D&D!”

Despite a number of very good games in the tabletop RPG marketplace, none of them have ever managed to topple D&D as the #1 game in the field. Skaff Elias (one of the guys behind the Magic revolution) hypothesized that any new game released into a marketplace dominated by one brand would only serve to drive more consumers to that brand. We called this phenomenon the Skaff Effect.

Boiled down, it means that any new CCG will help Magic: The Gathering; any new wargame will help Warhammer; any new RPG will help D&D. Feel free to extrapolate that to other genres as you see the need.

The Open Gaming License makes the Skaff Effect more pronounced in the gaming industry, since a majority of game publishers are working to keep gamers in the D&D fold. With all of the Open Content being produced, D&D is getting stronger all the time (there’s little reason for anyone to leave D&D, since everything one could imagine seems to be available these days). Wizards is failing to take advantage of this wealth of Open Content by not including any of it in their products (though a few releases on the horizon seem to be correcting this goal). If we weren’t working with Wizards, this might be a weakness.

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with the symbiotic model that we have now. Publishers just need to realize that our fates are tied together collectively. Where Wizards goes, so follows the industry—and that’s by design.

I'm back with EverQuest (off and on, anyway) because it's still the 'best' game with the most people playing. All of us are with D&D for much the same reason. As new games come out, we get invigorated briefly and then turn back to our old favorites. We can't escape the gravitational pull of the Skaff Effect. And perhaps that's how it should be...

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