Once upon a time, I had a co-worker that had 6 Everquest accounts. He was a dedicated fan, in love with every facet of the experience – the raids, the epic loot, etc, and he was continually trying to get the design team of the game I was working on to add more EQ-like aspects to the game I was working on.

Let’s just say that this would have been a significant design shift.

One day, I snapped, and matter of factly asked him, “How many times have you recommended EQ to someone you know in real life?”

He blinked. “In real life?”

I nodded. “IN REAL LIFE. Not an old guildmate from some other MMO. Someone who you have to face every day – a coworker, a wife, maybe a sibling or someone in your softball team. How many times?”

He thought about it, and realized that he never had. He knew how time intensive it was. He knew how many late nights he’d stayed up doing guild raids, and how many times he went to bed at 4 AM because someone had botched hours of work by cybering with the cleric at a crucial moment. He honestly felt he couldn’t DO that to his family and friends.

This was a game that he loved. And that he paid in excess of $60 bucks a month to love.

This anecdote came to mind as I look over this presentation by Frank Magid and associates (found via Reality Panic) which says, quite convincingly, that friends matter. 51% of all people factor in the opinions of friends when deciding whether or not to buy a game. 33% would never buy a PC game unless they’d heard good things from their friends about it. 25% said that Friends and Family were most likely to be how they first heard about a game they purchased. 27% of people use friends and family as their first follow-up bit of information.

40% responded “Friends or family members” when asked “Overall, which of the following had the most impact on your decision to buy, request or trade for (the game you most recently bought)?”

And yet, I still feel like most people in the MMO industry are making games they wouldn’t recommend to their wives.

That’s pretty interesting, considering the genre is fundamentally about other people.

Original comments thread is here.