Moorgard points out in this post an analogy between growing up and away from Sesame Street to getting bored with and growing away from <<insert favorite long-term MMO here>>.

All in all, a masterful revelation if you’ve never considered it before, but herein lies the rub…

Since we’re not talking about the youngest crowd who have commonly known interest in colorful happy things, but instead of an older.. more complex market consisting of pre-teens, teenagers, young adults, up to middle-age (with occasional jumps beyond)… it cannot be said that any one MMO that is able to gain the interest of one market at any one point in time, will be able to gain the interest of the same market in another point in time. There are plenty of other factors, some of them technical, some of them social, that could effect the outcome.

Of course, the main point of Moorgard’s post was to point out that leaving a game for another is OK, and while you might have lost interest in the game, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the game itself is inherently flawed… so long as it still has a market it’s actively serving who is happy with the experience that’s being provided to them.

It’s just hard to take that information as anything more than a reminder to fully understand who you’re targeting for your MMO game and to focus on that experience. If you want to keep your MMO successful for many years, you have to continue to focus on the experience of that market, keeping it fresh, even if veteran gamers have left your game due to lost interest.

A good point if you ask me!