Has the time of the MMO come and gone?

Rock, Paper Shotgun writer Richard Cobbett believes that the MMO's time has passed. Easy though it may be to dismiss his claims, it's also true that numbers are declining across the board for MMOs, and the genre as a whole has gotten so desperate to retain users that many MMOs have gone free-to-play or pay-once-to-play.

Cobbett essentially argues that the MMO was a more important genre in the early days of the internet, before we were all able to spend time with one another on social media and such. That the "magic" of the MMO has been lost in these times of constant always-on internet, with its proliferation of Facebook friends and online multiplayer games becoming the default.

Personally, I think there is still room for MMOs, although I think they may end up taking their place alongside other gaming genres (like first-person shooters or platform/puzzlers). Down from the juggernaut they once were, to "just another video game." And nothing wrong with that!

Image courtesy Flickr/Alain-Christian