If eBay closed tomorrow, thousands of small businesses that use the auction site for their virtual storefronts would be devastated. eBay has long since stopped being primarily the world’s biggest yard sale, and now funnels an amazing number of gray market and handmade goods all over the world.
Similarly, as the nation’s game of record, World of Warcraft has long since stopped being “just” a game. There’s huge money in providing services to World of Warcraft players. We gamers have MONEY. We want to spend it on our game but Blizzard only lets us spend $15/mo, aside from the occasional BlizzCon.
Just knowing gamers can never know enough about WoW is enough for some businesses. WoW Insider, Warcry, Ten Ton Hammer, Massively and so many other gaming news websites depend upon WoW to drive traffic to their sites and keep their writers gainfully employed. Would MMO journalism even be a viable profession if not for WoW?
The market for WoW-related merchandise is huge.
FigurePrints will turn your character into an action figure. Azeroth Advisor is a newsletter that tells you where you need to go in your adventures. Jinx has *nine pages* of WoW-related shirts, pins, patches and other merch (and check out their Fall line!). Fantasy Flight sells Warcraft: the Board Game. Upper Deck sells the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game.
There are dozens of small businesses just like these that depend upon WoW’s success to stay profitable.
What happens when WoW fades away? How will these businesses survive if no other game is ever as popular as WoW?
Just might find hungry gamers camped outside the US Treasure building asking for a handful of gold to help out some unlucky adventurers in need of a helping hand.
And heck, Congress already gave $750,000,000,000 dollars (so far, they will be giving hundreds of billions more) to companies who bought high risk investment products for the huge profits, but couldn’t handle the actual risk and have now dragged down the economy of the entire world. Is it too much to ask that the government be ready to help out some gamers in need?
Blizzard would make a ton if they started microtransactions.
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Will do when I get home 🙂
Actually, while congress has set aside $700,000,000,000 to be distributed to financial institutions and apparently anyone else they think needs money, only a small amount of that money has been distributed so far (<$200,000,000,000 . . . god that’s a lot of zeroes). So while they will be distributing hundreds of billions more, it’s more than what they’ve distributed so far, not hundreds on top of the initial 700 billion. Of course, that’s only until the economy slips even further down the crapper and even more “capitalists” come running to the government for handouts.
Meh.