Analysis Of The Life Cycle Of MMORPG

With Chinese online game market’s booming development, more and more "virtual economies" which are parallel with real economy have been spawned. This paper is based on network externalities and customer perceived value and chooses the life cycle angle to study the main representative of "virtual economies"-----online game MMORPG. In this paper, the game life cycle is divided into five different periods that is closed beta period, open beta initial period, mature period, decline period and disappearing period according to perceived value playing different leading roles in different periods. Meanwhile, combined with the research of game network externalities, it is found that the game life cycle curve shows "M" type which is different from general life cycle curve. Then through creating models of the game life cycle curve and analyzing on consumes’behaviors and motivations, we can find that there are notable differences between the life cycle curves of competitive games and community games during open beta initial period, mature period and decline period although they both show "M" type. And in the last of this paper, on this basis we give different operation strategies in different periods of the life cycle to competitive games’ operators and community games’operators respectively.