Are World of Warcraft Movies Dying?
Today it is more difficult to find an audience for your WoW Machinima than it was just a few years ago despite that World of Warcraft has millions more subscribers. This blog will speculate why. If you’re a fan that’s been wondering where all your favorite WoW movie makers have gone then read on. If you’re a producer, maybe this will help you to understand how the environment has changed and what you can do to accommodate. To summarize, here are the three factors I’ll be discussing:
- The explosion of WoW Movies.
- Changes in discovery and trends such as social networking.
- The Greatest Tool for Success
To begin, WoW is finite. We all know it will eventually fall in popularity as new games and trends come about this decade. This of course is going to directly impact Warcraft Movies as we’ve already seen in recent years as a downward trend has been established. The charts below use Google search trends to help identify the popularity of certain phrases. It may not give a complete picture of what has been happening but it should provide some insight. First, lets compare “World of Warcraft” boom with “wow movies”.
Much more below the fold.
The Warcraft Movie Boom!
World of Warcraft exploded onto the scene in late 2004. You’ve probably all heard the press releases as WoW subscribers broke the 10 million mark in January 2008 and continued to rise for years after. I’m sure that Blizzard’s marketing team will tell you that the game is stronger with more subscribers than ever in 2011. My opinion is that WoW is like American Idle. It’s been running strong for a long time, has changed the rules, content, and gameplay to increase and sustain subscribers and will continue to live on for years to come despite that it has lost some steam. Remember that World of Warcraft is huge in comparison to other games and could lose 90% of its subscribers and still be relatively huge for an MMORPG. For this reason I think that there’s still a lot of demand for Warcraft fan movies and will be for years to come. Who knows, we might just be working with their new MMO in a few years.
What’s interesting about the chart above is that WoW movies during its boom formed more of an umbrella pattern while “World of Warcraft” peaked fast and then moved sideways for a number of years. This tells us something very important about how WoW subscribers traditionally discover fan content, and to this I propose that there has been a decline in the percentage of overall subscribers who are aware of WoW Machinima. Whether it was through big contests, frequent innovations, or just the desire for all things Warcraft, this was a period of time that players had an insatiable demand for Warcraft movies. As the years played out many of these subscribers grew up, got married, went to college, or just “retired” from the game leaving behind a post-boom generation of less exposed players. Contests have been less frequent and underexposed. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, have taken the place of small close knit communities. Producers have moved on with their lives, and a large percentage of viewers have left that used to follow them. Since the end of the boom I speculate that the percentage of total WoW subscribers that follow WoW Machinima has been declining and will likely move in tandem from here on out unless there are some big changes. Or maybe a really really big movie that energizes and brings new awareness to the community.
Expand on this with your own research
Try asking your friends in your guild or an your server if they’ve ever watched a WoW fan movie and keep a tally. Here are the questions to ask:
- Have you ever watched a Warcraft fan movie? (Not PVP/PVE/Gameplay)
- If so, what was it and how long ago?
- Did you start playing WoW before or after TBC?
In 2006, nearly 50% of players I asked had watched a fan movie. By 2007 it was less than 20%, and my last poll after WoTLK was released was less than 10%. I used to just shout in major cities that I’d pay a few gold for people to answer some questions for me.
Search Term Comparison
This next chart compares other popular search terms so we can better conclude the umbrella pattern described above is not exclusive to only one search phrase (WoW movies). Keep in mind that “Machinima” is the least used term when searching for Warcraft fan movies and has the least amount of data collected. This is because most of the general public still has no idea what Machinima is.
Very similar chart formation between search terms for warcraft movies.
Interesting! You might do some of your own searches on Google Trends and research this more.
Social Networking & Communities
There has been a large movement away from traditional communities since the explosion of social networking. The most successful Warcraft Movie producers have often survived by accumulating fans and got in early to build followers. There are always exceptions, but not many. It’s hard to have a successful site without having constant updates or publishing frequent new content in the age of the micro attention span. It’s now essential to focus on social networking, and not just Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.
The norm today is that unless your movie is shared on the big fan sites or you have an established fan base it is likely to go nowhere. If you haven’t reached out to others or they don’t like you or your movies you’re pretty much riding on the viral effect and quality of your content. With millions of videos being published online each month, even the greatest movies are frequently underexposed. Having a video go viral is more of a calculated marketing effort than a random event and given that WoW movie producers are not-for-profit there’s no way to pay or even justify the cost for that kind of publicity. To further complicate the “norm”, many WoW fan sites just don’t feature Machinima. I was told many times that “Illegal Danish” wouldn’t be of any interest. My response was always, “Why not let your visitors decide?” Another short example is when “Illegal Danish” (do not click unless you want to be pissed off) was added to wikipedia years ago. It was neat having that little bit of notoriety created by some of our fans. It was later deleted because the hierarchy said it was “non-notable” as well as Illegal Danish and Myndflame references that were removed from “machinima“. Being involved in Machinima can spark some pretty intense emotions, especially when you’re dealing with people that despise Warcraft. Think about all the WoW movie history that’s been lost, forgotten, or deleted as people and technology changed from the day WoW was launched in 2004.
With so many WoW players there shouldn’t be a lack of fans for those creating entertaining content but it doesn’t always come easily. I predict that it will become even more difficult, especially considering how things have changed so far. It’s time to think ahead. If you know you’ve created something great then take the time to work on a marketing strategy and get it out there. The best reward for your effort is just knowing other people enjoy it. Plus, having a video with a million views is a real conversation starter and looks great on your resume as a project manager! Well, unless you’re applying at Disney and you forget to remove this video.
Word of Mouth is still the Greatest Tool for Success
The greatest tool for success has always been word of mouth. Talk about your favorite WoW movies with your friends and your guildies. Post links on your guild blog, WoW forums, Facebook page, Twitter and other social sites. Most of the people creating these movies have no knowledge of marketing and few connections that can provide much exposure leaving plenty of incredible movies out there that have been released in the last few years that haven’t got much attention, share them! E-mail links to fansites and ask them to feature it. E-mail Blizzard and ask them to feature it! Post comments, subscribe to your favorite Machinima feeds, blogs, and invite your friends to do the same. Now is always a good time to get started.
So what do you think? Are Warcraft movies in a death spiral or staging for a big comeback?
Wow, this is really long. Thanks for reading!
Clint
4 Comments
Feb 21, 2011 @ 18:36:28
The soundtrack to Underworld inspired a machinima story back when I was playing Star Wars Galaxies, but the Update of Stupidity ruined everything up to and including the chickentanks. I moved on to WoW. The music of the new Doctor Who series did much the same, albeit more a direct parody of the show, but my interest in the game has been waning of late. I might write the stories, but I doubt I’ll ever make them into machinima.
I’ll always remember the Rise of the Living Dead and Tales of the Past trilogies, which started as voiceless ingame-only films and ended up as truly entertaining features. I don’t think I have the patience for the learning curve they demonstrated.
I think machinima in general is evolving, in large part due to WoW. I’ve yet to see another MMO that allows use of a model or map viewer, but Warden’s Fall proved the Dragon Age toolset could be put to effective use for the task.
MMOs give you entire worlds to film in, but those worlds are set. Lionhead Studios tried The Movies, and there’s software out there like Moviestorm. With the advent of video sharing, I can’t help thinking it’s only a matter of time before someone makes a truly user-friendly product that most people can make machinima with… assuming you’d still call it machinima.
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Feb 27, 2011 @ 18:42:47
The last chart really interested me, as it confirmed a strong theory of mine. You see, one of the main reasons why I think machinima (in general, not just Warcraft) is losing audiences and support is the kids of today are trained to not enjoy unique films. Lets face it, the majority of our fanbase are students of high school, maybe late middle school and early college. But with the rise of Machinima.com, in my honest opinion, are RUINING the word machinima as PvP/Lets Plays/Commentaries/Achievement Hunters/guides-only video clips. ‘Gamers’ nowadays are expected by others and by these sites to watch videos about the game mechanics instead of freeform art.
Why? Because gaming nowadays is the cliche dull mainstream. Back in the day, I remember as a younger kid, video games were for a lack of a better word, a ‘nerd/geek’ pasttime. So of course people who played games were people who REALLY liked playing and making things with the game. Nowadays, people look at a game and only see it’s playable value of it because they’re not deeply into it, or do it to be with the crowd. The little bit of imagination is gone as they can’t see a video game being used any other way except as a rocket whore-noob-pwner device.
Even game companies are noticing the mainstream of video games. $60 dollars for a video game? Inflation hasn’t even gone up that high in the last four years. Creating short games to sell DLC after DLC in the long-run? These companies know people will pour money into gaming for gaming-purposes since that’s the mainstream. Creating machinima or even role-playing is unthinkable. It’s weird.
Until you show them a masterpiece. Then they know. Then they see the value. Unfortunately, with the ease of video sharing everybody and their mom can make a video. And since the majority of gamers are, after all, high schoolers, its not going to be the most well-thought out piece of film. So it’s hard to find a good machinima to watch nowadays. Not to mention, most people will just copy Machinima.com and make PvP videos, or frag or Lets plays and stuff.
We weren’t fighting the mainstream back then. Now we are.
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Mar 15, 2011 @ 15:22:24
I followed the link to the AfD nomination and was immediately reminded about how much I loathe some of the Wikipedia community. Ah yes, despite having a semi-decent argument as to why it should have not been deleted, it had no weight as it was my second ever contribution to Wikipedia.
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Jul 03, 2011 @ 06:56:29
I have to agree that the term “Machinima” has been going downhill for a while now. All you see are a crappy montage of videos pertaining little and next to nothing to the true spirit of machinima. I personally love true machinima. I remember seeing Zinwrath or Chronicles of the Annoying Quest. Things that i could watch that i truly though were entertainment in itself, and pass on to friends for them to enjoy too. A couple friends of mine have been messing about with the machinima scene and have been working on trying to make a machinima film. Though we lack the resources and knowledge of how to productively work on it. I hope it can be made to sort of bring back the spirit of classic machinimating like the great forefathers of machinima from so long ago.
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