It's funny to see how a list of most anticipated games on an industry site still ignores free to play MMO, like they don't exist. Publishers do their best to make sure players will never hear about free games.

I think it has more to do with developers of free to play games not having enough resources to make themselves visible, let alone anticipated. Why don't you name one upcoming, free to play MMO and tell me why I should feel excited about it?

(also, there's a weekly roundup of indie releases, and most of the titles discussed are free to play; also also, there are other sites, such as Play This Thing!, that focus primarily on the subject).

After all these years and WoW sitll has no real new competition in the mmo arena

I'm waiting for Elemental: War of Magic, Civilization Network, and a usable version of ToME 3. And it's more hope than anticipation, but I'd like to see a DRM-free version of Silent Storm Gold released somewhere like gog.com this year.

For me, this is a pretty depressing list. I understand that it's clearly easier to anticipate a sequel since each one is most likely going to be like the previous installments - hence, if a prequel was great, it's hard not to look forward to the sequel. But really, surely there must be at least one new IP which is more interesting that churning out the same crap all over again?

Is the next decade going to simply be 'The noughties take two' for PC gaming?

Michael,

As you say, the most anticipated games tend to be the ones that are the most known quantities. Totally new things tend to catch people by surprise. But on this list, there's at least Brink, Rage, Elemental: War of Magic, The Secret World, and Blade & Soul in the new property department. And on the PC there always ends up being lots of new and inventive stuff; the indie community makes certain of that.

Oh yeah totally Chris, it's the same every year that some of the biggest games are a complete out-of-the-blue surprise. Yet at the same time, it says a lot for the direction in which the industry is headed when only 4 out of the 19 most anticipated PC games of the next year are actually completely new titles.

I wonder, is it that us, the consumers, tend to look more to safe ground, stuff we know, or that publishers are trying to stick to definite money-makers more than ever now?

@Michael:

I actually think it's a little from column A, a little from column B. With the economic slump, consumers are afraid to spend their cash on an unknown. Likewise, publishers always feel safer selling something they know has sold well in the past, and they're watching that bottom line more now than ever.

Jacek: this assumption is totally wrong.

F2P MMO game developers spend enormous marketing budgets to acquire players over internet. Do you know there are 100+ full-scale free to play mmo games launched in English? Dozens of them have millions of players. Browser-based and social game audiences have long exceeded WoW userbase. Ignoring that fact is amateurish.

Saying "f2p" isn't visible is like "i like firefox adblock and never saw a game ad in internetz".

2Tom: try mmogame.com

The economics are simple. Why invest in new unknown property that you cannot guarantee you will recoup your ROI on when you already have a successful franchise you can leverage. It makes absolutely no sense these days to invest in new IP if you cannnot guarantee the 2+million sales. It's classic sales. It's cheaper to upsell an existing customer rather than get a brand new customer. If a customer has bought a version of a game already they are more likely to buy the follow up. The lack of finance to business (credit crunch) also means banks will not finance unknown quantities. However if you show your bank manager that the previous title sold several million he'll lend the money to finance a follow up. And as mentioned above there is the slump where people are now making decisions on what to buy and passing some titles by. Unemployment is at record levels and now no one can use their credit card so they play safe when buying a game.

Anatoly: Firstly, we absolutely do cover social and free to play games on our sites and subsites - particularly, WorldsInMotion.biz is actually devoted to that exact subject. What we've tended to find is that, similarly to iPhone games, many F2P titles simply appear and then build up an (often massive!) userbase. That doesn't mean that we hate them or think they are unimportant, it's just that they fit less well into 'anticipated' as a category.

Natural Selection 2 is actually going to get finished? That game's been in development almost as long as Duke Nukem Forever was.

@Anatoly: spending enormous marketing budgets on banner advertising like Evony is not the same as engaging the journalists in one-on-one interviews. If one has a problem with journalists' coverage of one's game, the best solution is to approach them and give them info on previews, content updates, and other such direct-contact techniques. Let the journalists and their readers hype the game for you. That's how I learned about Maple Story, Dofus, Travian, Hello Kitty Online, and other FtP MMOs. It's the pre-release hype that builds anticipation. Post-release advertising does not build anticipation, since by definition, anticipation is the wait for something that's not out yet.

(Case in point: I would not have known about your work if I hadn't read your Gamasutra interview back in 2007.)

W00t! Natural Selection 2 made the list?! That's awesome!!

I can't wait to play that game. NS was an amazingly enjoyable mod and I know NS2 will be fantastic!

APB!

2Carl: Totally agree. Post-release & pre-release marketing, interviews and online marketing have different goals, strategies and target audiences. They are equally important. When a game reaches a certain point of popularity, it goes word-of-mouth and viral and it is the ultimate marketing campaign goal to create such buzz before the game is out. It heavily depends on the quality of the product and proper targeting if it meets expectations of gamers and if it's possible at all.

Thx for the 2007 mention. Long time since then - moved from casual/XBLA to online and last few years have been such a fun ride.

2Simon: I've been reading WiM for a few years. As you've said, the difference between F2P products and retail is the amount of pre-release buzz. Some products, like Runes of Magic, managed to achieve that and even reached as non-F2P friendly resources as possible, e.g. Kotaku/Joystiq was covering F2P on super-rare occasions before RoM.

What worries me... You've put F2P as alien to PC and MMO games. There's still a total separation of F2P and subscription MMO products and they are presented in different reports, while providing the same user-experience for players on the same platform in the same format and media. A lot of developers still are not aware of the fact there's more than hundred major games played by millions of players they have never heard before.

My anticipated games list currently looks like this: Settlers 7, Thief 4, Witcher 2, Disciples 3 - that's an average sequel index of 4.0 (!)
I attribute that to the conservatism of publishers through 2008-9. Or perhaps they're basing their conservatism on my willingness to buy sequels over unknown IPs?

Half-Life 2: Episode Three. Valve, pretty please?

My only question: will Crysis 2 use a new engine compatible with Direct X 11? Otherwise I don't think a single game on the list will drive the adoption of the next generation of 3d cards. As such, Nvidia may be of the right mindset advertising its next platform as a CUDA workhorse. I got a gtx275 instsead of a superior (in value) 4890 because of CUDA and don't really regret the decision.

Also do any of the games use Phys X the way Batman: Arkham Asylum did? The fact that there are so many console ports does not bode well for cutting-edge PC's being pushed to the limit.

Here's to hoping the PS4 or xbox 720 incorproate cutting-edge GPU's so we can see PC's pushed to their limit.

Still no Battlefield: Bad Company 2? Sad panda is sad...

Thomas,

Crysis 2 is based on the CryEngine 3, which does support DirectX 11. STALKER: Call of Pripyat also supports it, as does the already-released Dirt 2.

In addition to the various sequels I'd like to see in 2010 (Mass Effect 2, Crysis 2, Thief 4, Deus Ex 3?, Witcher 2, STALKER: Call of Pripyat), I'm also looking forward to Two Worlds II. Despite its quirks, I found the original to be quite satisfying.

As for Half-Life 2: Episode Three, does that generate a sequel index of five? or six? :D

Definitely also want to add Final Fantasy XIV to this list.

100% agree with all of Anatoly's comments. And to be honest most of free to play games press releases are simply ignored by the gaming press. I would know since with eRepublik we have had coverage from every single national newspaper in Europe and many in the USA, the big internet blogs such as TechCrunch etc and virtually nothing from the top game mags and sites. Actually the only time we got mentioned by some (including gama sutra) is when we raised money!

My most anticipated of 2010 that are not on the list: Civilization networks and the next version of eRepublik (figures :)