Social games like Facebook's Farmville are "the next big thing" to enter the gaming industry within the past few years; how much will they influence the way MMOs are developed?

But what does all this mean for the future of MMOs? The success of social and mobile gaming introduced an unsavory, yet inevitable, element into the market; fly-by-night development teams churning out garbage wrapped in shiny packaging, trying to make a fast buck from app sales or micro-transactions. By the time customers realize they've wasted a few dollars on junk, the developers have already released their next crap-tastic app or game, and the cycle continues.

It's similar to the emergence of all the dime-a-dozen MMOs released throughout the past few years when video game publishers realized their revenue potential. Popular MMO blogger Tobold tackled a similar issue in his latest post, "The perceived end of the hardcore game," in response to a reader's question about the future of MMO gaming:

"Do you think we are coming to the end of the era where game development studios are comprised of actual gaming enthusiasts, instead of "artists on a payroll"? I cant help but wonder if we're not close to seeing the death of the "hardcore" game developer who puts out games that are fun to play, and requires actual intellectual abilities beyond the mere "mouse-click fests" that we're seeing nowadays as repetition and questionable revenue generation schemes increasingly derive the bottom line." 

Tobold responded with a more optimistic view of the gaming industry, arguing that game developers wouldn't be able to stay in business if they only made games for the lowest common denominator; "If you want to attract the largest number of players, you need to make a game requiring average skill," he wrote. "But what is true is that if you are at the extreme hardcore end of the bell curve, an average game will already look rather simple to you. While the same game will look already rather complicated to somebody at the extreme casual end of the scale. I do know people who can't play World of Warcraft because it is far too hard for them."

To support this notion, Tobold pointed out the substantial difference in revenue between Zynga and Blizzard, comparing Zynga's gross revenue of $250 million in 2009 to Blizzard's $1.1 billion in 2007. "Not only is the average player more likely to be willing to spend money for a more complex game, he will also play it longer," Tobold wrote. "People have been playing World of Warcraft for over 5 years now, I doubt that there will be many people still playing Farmville in 2014. So the most profitable game is somewhat more complex than the game which would be most popular if all games were free."

Finally, Tobold summed up Facebook and iPhone gaming craze by quoting one of his fellow bloggers, Ravious of Kill Ten Rats; "if you applied the same reasoning to the gaming craze of 1996, you would have concluded that it is clear that the future of handheld gaming is Tamagotchi."

We might be hearing a lot about the "future of online gaming and MMOs" at expos like the recent GDC in San Francisco, and we're likely to hear even more during the upcoming expo season this fall. There's no doubt that social and mobile gaming is at the forefront of the industry's mind right now, because there's real money to be made by developers who stake their claims fast and early. But until that revenue consistently surpasses established gaming models that have withstood the test of time, the social gaming movement is more likely to enhance our favorite MMOs rather than replace them.