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General: Free Zone: Free to Play in 2010
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com Free Zone Columist Richard Aihoshi explores the possibilities for the free to play business model in the coming year.
Except for anyone who is stuck in denial or a hermit, it was impossible to avoid seeing that 2009 was a positive year for the free to play space here in North America. Naturally, as we enter 2010, I'm eager to see what lies ahead over the next 12 months. In a similar vein, I'm also curious to learn what other people anticipate, especially those whose positions in development and publishing give them different perspectives from my own. While communications of this nature can often take place off the record, some members of the industry did agree to express their thoughts and expectations for public consumption.
Jeff Lujan is the CEO and founder of True Games Interactive, which currently has Warrior Epic in live service and Mytheon in preparation to begin closed beta, reportedly within the coming weeks. He believes the latter "will provide gamers the same quality experience that they find at retail," a goal that doesn't seem out of reach considering Petroglyph is an established western studio with a solid list of titles to its credit. Applying this focus on a broader scale, he also expects that several other offerings from various companies will contribute to raising the bar for F2P releases.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Initially, I love the idea of playing new F2P games from 'The Cloud'. I know there are a lot of games out there that my clunky old E-Machine just can't handle, and letting The Cloud handle the processing and send me the results in a browser is an appealing idea. However, I've heard on the other side of the argument that browsers just aren't built to handle things like full games inside their framework. So perhaps some of these companies can collaborate in building a specialized browser designed for Cloud computing?
F2P is a limited market in the West unless you are speaking of smaller games for hand helds or built to attract a niche age group that like the feel of the pay as you need something model.
As a side note, saying these games are "free-to-play" is a misnomer. The only actual free to play games out there are usually the cheap flash games. Anything that has an "item mall" or store attached is never free to play as you need to purchase things in order to advance or do half of what is needed.
Yes, there will be mid-major game developers, publishers or distributors that go this route to do exactly what this model is made for, milk small and large amounts of money from a lot of people for things that are absolutely required to do required elements within the game or compete on an even playing field. Case in point, Shot Online.
Why F2P will eventually fail not only in the West but also the East and Europe is going to come in the form of newer, stricter regulations concerning elements that so far have gone unchecked. Again use Shot Online as an example with the various boxes, tickets and other scams they run. It is a form of gambling that has been banned from certain countries, including the one OnNet is based out of, South Korea.
Another aspect of this system that will rear its head is the one of a customer purchasing a virtual item. There are no true laws or regulations governing these items at present but once enough money is spent and people begin to get shafted , there will be enough pressure for law makers to closely examine a multi-billion dollar/yen/whatever industry and then make and enforce new rules.
A virtual item is going to end up following suit of real world items. There is not any other way around it. Someone is specifically paying money for a certain item, they are not paying a subscription for the use of software, i.e. a game. If items get changed, nerf'd, removed, lost, stolen or deleted because a game developer does something are they going to offer refunds? Not likely. See where this leads?
F2P works in the Asian and parts of the Euro markets because of lax laws and regulations. It will work in the U.S. and other markets right up to the point it catches the eye of one law maker or attorney general that gets enough complaints or wants to make a name for themselves by being the one to tackle the game industry.
I think that the only way the F2P model is going to get any traction in the MMO industry is when development companies spend the amount of time and money is takes to produce a high quality MMO, from the ground up, with the full intention of it going to a F2P/item mall business model.
Right now what I see is that the F2P market is saturated with games that are exact replicas built off of pre-existing titles, using their engines, their graphics, their gameplay, etc only changing the name of the title and/or the classes, spells, abilities, & items. Players are looking for more than just rehashed games.
Take a look at Dungeons and Dragons Online. Now that it is a F2P title, populations have increased and the game has been voted by many as F2P title of the year for 2009. Why? Because it was build as a full subscription model MMO, only converting over to item mall/F2P after the unsuccessful sustainability of the game's subscription model.
I, for one, am very excited to hopefully see some of the bigger development and publishing companies in the MMO industry break into the F2P market. Not just because more competition is good for the industry. But because the F2P industry is hurting for some high quality titles that are backed by full-fledged budgets and staff; titles that offer uniqueness and are not rehashed and reused. Remember it is quality that makes money in the industry, not quantity.
Isn't GW 2 suppose to be a F2P? I thought it was going to be just as GW is.
I would love to see alot of the Older titles go F2P. Asheron's Call, Dark Age Of Chamelot, Everquest 1. I would be more than happy to return to these titles if they were F2P., But I wont pay sub for old games like those.
DDO went free to play, not only did I go back to it, I was willing to sub for it.
DDO is less of a free to play game than most, it still has a strong subscription element to it. Besides, it wasn't very good as a subscription game, it still isn't very good as a free to play game, if anything it is worse because of the dumbing down of it over the years.
Looking at true micro transaction games, they are already very strong and profitable in the North American market, and for example I would point you towards Second Life and Project Entropia. They may not be true MMO games, but they are using the business model many here don't like.
As for real MMO games coming out in 2010, there are only two that are looking to show any real promise.
The first is Allod, developed by a Russian company and essentially taking many of the good qualities from World of Warcraft and implementing them in a free to play game, and ultimately it stands a very good chance of remaining free as at this time there is nothing in the shop that can adversely affect gameplay and therefore require you to purchase from it.
The second is Earth Eternal, developed by an American company it takes everything you love about traditional MMOs and squeezes it into the smallest client possible, whilst keeping it 3D. Sure it looks a little childish, but the game requires more thought and skill to play than WOW, WAR or LOTRO!
What concerns me though is that you have Facebook games that have tens of millions of users, I really hope that these games don't detract from real MMOs. I have nothing against them, but I'd hate for a developer to cancel an MMO and start working on some mindless Facebook application instead.
That seemed to be a very opinionated reply, Don't agree 100%.
Guild Wars has to be the Best F2P game I have seen. DDO may not have started as a F2P, but their version of F2P should set a standard. As far as it being good or bad, thats opinionated once again. I personaly think that the way its set up confuses some and drives them away befor they actualy tried it. As far as Devs leaving to make Facebook games, I have no Idea were that came from.
F2P with the Option of Sub, is the way it should go. Buy the content you wish to add. Subs get it for free. Great concept. don't need it to play the game or advance as high as any one else, but added content makes it more fun.
The Facebook part is because Playfish & EA were mentioned, also Ubisoft who are on a social networking drive at the moment, hence the reason they'll be the next big player to jump on the free to play bandwagon.
And yes, my opinion of DDO is very personal, I'm a huge DnD fan and it just isn't DnD.
I had this long post equating the F2P model to credit card companies. When I got to the end I realized it was too long for the average person who skims this site. I simply refuse to give a tl;dr version and as such, I'll just say that the MMO genre is going down the tubes. I will not play any game with an item shop attached or other F2P model.
Having said that, Ill go post what i originally wrote on several key MMO blogs that have communities that will read it.
And lastly, for shame MMORPG staff and admins. Every day this site pushes more of the F2P crap with hundreds of Ads and now we are getting whole articles based on it.
isnt freerealm. a first gen cloud mmo
This column that reads like a PR for F2P games (aka biased buzz-generators, when you hear the own game company making an announcement for their game, you obviously don't give out bad information, only good ones, the same can be said about a column based on a specific revenue model, especially when it has issues with stability, reason we haven't seen big companies into AAA item mall milking based MMOs) has been around for a while now.
Anyway, there will be an obvious increase in this market, more publishers will cheaply import Asian titles and more people will be milked dry. And eventually the laws will come, as mentioned by CastorHoS, which I believe is a reason the big boys still haven't tried a multi-million AAA item mall based MMO, the democracy in the West is considerably advanced to feature this, which can be called a considerable risk when you're based on this ground.
But I don't believe they are coming yet in 2010, unless it comes because of scamville or other browser playable games, which I have complete ignorance about, when I play F2P games I usually play true F2P games - flash games that survive solely on donations or prizes.
isnt freerealm. a first gen cloud mmo
No FreeRealm is not a first gen cloud MMO.
On a special note, I'd like to mention my frustration at Mr.Aihoshi's biased towards "Free-to-Play" games (which aren't really free by the way). I grow tired of his writings about the F2P market when it clearly has no grasp within the western market (or overall MMO market). Most, if not all, the "item Mall" F2P MMO's currently in developement are already being overlooked and not cared about as we speak (The Agency [SOE] as one such example has already said you will be able to "purchase" better weapons to advance with real $$$ but have no subscription. It is already doomed to fail).
In the end, the money tapping known as "Free to Play" will go by the wayside as a mere Eastern "fad" and will fade within the next five years when these developed F2P mmos fail, and I mean fail HARD. Stop underestimating the MMO player, we aren't all stupid Mr.Aihoshi, and I'm constantly reminded you are most likely being paid by said F2P companies for constantly trying to push their marketing agenda.
-F
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Interesting how FTP generates such venom. Why worry about it? There is a market place, and it will control stuff. If people like it enough to pay that way, it will survive, if not, it won't. End of story.
Sorry if I repeat myself, but I read the same kinds of reaction in 1999/2000 about games that were offered on a subscription basis. Nobody will pay that, it can't sustain itself, it will die, etc.
It seems to me there are some good games and plenty of awful games. How is that different from the sub market? Runes of Magic, Grand Fantasia, (non exactly an MMO) Combat Arms look decent to me, just to name a couple.
As far as legal problems selling specific virtual items... probably lots of ways to handle that. For example, lots of FTP items are time limited. In many cases doesn't that solve the nerf problem? (These are micro subs, in a way.)
I would echo a previous opinion...I would like FTP games to offer a subscription alternative that covers everything. So if it actually is a decent game, you don't have to micro stuff. And so the company is actually trying to build the sub part of its player base.
---------------------------
Rose-lipped maidens,
Light-foot lads...
I think I need to expand upon my first post. Some folks are getting the gist of it while others are falling into the group of people that do not fully understand what people like Richard Aihoshi like to deem free-to-play.
Free-to-play, is just that, free to play for as long as you like or the game is there. No money required for support, updates and no need to purchase anything, ever. The model Richard Aihoshi has been writing on is in no way a free-to-play model. This is a misnomer. These games are designed specifically to gain revenue by micro-transactions. Instead of paying $15 a month on a subscription a person would pay $2 or $4 per item, set,etc.
here is the kicker. In many of these games the micro-transactions eventually add up to far more than the average subscription cost per month. Shot Online and a few other 'F2p" games in the U.S. right now cost more per month to play with things like gold membership, fitting tickets, etc than it would cost to run 4 full time accounts in every single subscription game out there.
Want to see a true F2P game(s), drop by EA's Pogo and play the games you do not need a membership for. There was a time before UO where most MUDs were F2P.
Someone brought up Second Life. There is a huge gap between the Asian 'F2P" model and Second Life or any transaction game like it. The Asian model only knows how to milk people out of money for every single thing they can find to make a cent off of. Second Life there is a way to recoup money spent by trading in Linden's for real life money and even working to earn Linden's to make money.
This is why people like Richard Aihoshi should be held as far away from the public as possible. The man does not have the ability to fully explain, in detail, what, when or how "F2P" really is and what a micro-transaction model is. It is lazy, cheap and misinformation to write articles like the last few he has done.
Go and find one, single game that would be based on the Asian micro-transaction model where you can play the game as is, without purchasing anything or using in game currency to buy something someone else has paid real life money for, that you can compete with the people who purchase items, have full access to everything without buying anything and never need to buy anything in order to do the first two things.
Just a helpful hint, YOU CAN NOT DO IT. There are no micro-transaction games that allow.
The end result for anyone with enough common sense to grasp this. The money spent on what Richard Aihoshi calls a "F2P" game and what you spend on a subscription is almost always less for the subscription than it is for the micro-transactions.
Be wary and spend time reading forums and looking at item malls before you start dumping money into one of these games. Then do a quick tally on what you need to spend money on to play the game. If you have to spend money on weapons, potions, armor, etc, etc, etc and then more to access certain areas or parts of the game, does it cost more than a subscription or three would for another game. By the way, also make sure you notice how long these items last. Most last 30 days or less and must either be purchased again or renewed.
I dont know why many people still claims that F2P games are not free. I have played Runes of Magic, DDO, Atlantica, Dekaron and never used any money in those games. Yes im a casual player so I dont need the stuff that makes me competetive. But I guess its not easy to get competetive in most P2P without spending a lot of time or real money besides the subscription fee.
Please also refer to this www.mmorpg.com/blogs/staffblog/122009/5494
isnt freerealm. a first gen cloud mmo
No FreeRealm is not a first gen cloud MMO.
On a special note, I'd like to mention my frustration at Mr.Aihoshi's biased towards "Free-to-Play" games (which aren't really free by the way). I grow tired of his writings about the F2P market when it clearly has no grasp within the western market (or overall MMO market). Most, if not all, the "item Mall" F2P MMO's currently in developement are already being overlooked and not cared about as we speak (The Agency [SOE] as one such example has already said you will be able to "purchase" better weapons to advance with real $$$ but have no subscription. It is already doomed to fail).
In the end, the money tapping known as "Free to Play" will go by the wayside as a mere Eastern "fad" and will fade within the next five years when these developed F2P mmos fail, and I mean fail HARD. Stop underestimating the MMO player, we aren't all stupid Mr.Aihoshi, and I'm constantly reminded you are most likely being paid by said F2P companies for constantly trying to push their marketing agenda.
-F
Dude you really need to stop whining and moaning about F2P games. Your post shows your ignorance. The F2P market is huge and you are just in denial.
You have to let go of your views on F2P games since they are getting better in quality as more and more people start to play them, Allods online is a striking example.
DDO has an awesome F2P model and I think Turbine has done a great favor to the MMO industry by introducing this business model.
You say F2P is crap, please explain how are they 'crap'? I love Guild Wars and DDO and both of them are much much better than Champions Online which sucks donkey balls.
I really like the Guild Wars business model as well.
Allod will die out fast. Gpotatoe has a stigma as being one of the worst F2P publishers out there.
I think there will be a major shift in the F2P market. Many games subscription based games that are becoming unprofitable with a subscription model will probably be turned over to the F2P market. I would suspect that many of the publishers that we see now will disappear in the future or change their current strategy over to producing a quality game.
First a twillight lunatic, and now, another one praising the free to play mmorpg.... Cant wait for 2012....
/puke
-------------------------------------
Before: developers loved games and made money.
Now: developers love money and make games.
I would like to point out one of the possibly underlooked sections of this website, the Game List, for further discussion. Have it open on another tab? Link here: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm
Good, now scroll down through the entire listing, paying special attention to the ratings off to the right and the fee columns. Are you beginning to notice a fairly obvious trend, minus 1-2 exceptions? All of the games that do not have a rating yet are free/item mall games. Why?
Could it be that they are so generic, dull, or not worth the time that members just don't try them out? Or could it be that the majority of members on this site find them distasteful or uninteresting? I cannot pretend to have the answers. However, I would think that with the sheer number of F2P/item mall games not even rated by this site's members, that perhaps article time could be spent on the topics that a majority of the site's members do find interesting.
It is true, to echo what was previously mentioned in the thread, that in North America, the F2P/item mall model has a lot of disdain and venom towards it. I cannot pretend to understand exactly why others feel somewhat distrusting of the game type. However, for myself I have always been concerned about the games being artificially handicapped to essentially require players to pay in order to progress or succeed. Sure there needs to be a difference between those who play for free and those who pay. But how far is too far and how far is not far enough?
There will always be those players who want the best for free and will whine until the end of time to try and prove that they deserve the best a game has to offer, and to not pay for it. Sure, we all like free stuff. But nobody wants another hand-knitted pair of socks from grandma again...free isn't always free (or wanted) by all.
The problem with the F2P model versus the P2P model seems pretty obvious to me. Pay to play games attract players through marketing, charge you a sub fee, and then develop content specifically aimed to keep players happy/progressing/paying. IMO this is a win/win situation. The F2P model however revolves around the idea of developing the game to encourage future MTs and not necessarily with the players interests in mind. Even if a F2P model game became very successful eventually it is going to peak in numbers and the game developers have to devise enough ways to milk those same customers to pay the bills every month whereas P2P devs are just trying to figure out what you are actually going to want to do within their game and creating that content to the best of their abilities.
This is the reason that there is a western stigma against F2P games. Remember, you get what you pay for; in the case of these games you get very little of a gaming experience for free (and IMO not much more for paying).
Games like Guild Wars and Diablo 2 are not free to play games BTW, they are buy to play games. You purchase the game and get unlimited playing time. Those games become profitable by selling you the initial box and future expansions, not trying to milk you through an item mall for necessary items (though GW does offer some MTs nowadays as well). And frankly even for a B2P game I felt pretty disappointed by GW: 2.5d world, very little meaningful character progression, very little meaningful endgame content. Frankly if you didn't just purely enjoy living out the GW story over and over or you didn't PvP 100% of the time then I can't imagine how anyone could play more than a couple of weeks of that game, though I suppose the masses are out there title farming. /rantaboutGWoff
I think the vast majority the existing western MMO market echoes my sentiments, if you don't believe me look up some of the MT threads on the SWTOR forums. 95% of the posters say they wouldn't even try the game (or any subsequent Bioware releases rofl) if it went with a non-sub MT model. Maybe peoples minds will open more to the F2P model when the gaming industry stops spewing out trash WoW-clones that execute every aspect of development and managment worse than Blizzard and would probably cost you more than the $15 a month Blizz charges for you to actually enjoy the game.
Yes this article just looks like meaningless propaganda. Every add on this site is from one of these scrub F2P companies, god it almost looks like a porno site for hopeless development companies, but they have to make a living too eh?
I just saw a bunch of shitty companies and cash grab games listed.
Richard when are you going to start taking these companies to task for their horrible track records on customer service and the almost criminal activity that goes on with these companies. You used to be more critical of them but recently you are giving them a free pass on almost everything.
This reminds me of the big fights I used to have with Nexon over the handling of my account. I was told that Nexon Korea is not used to this, that they are used to their players taking whatever happens and not protesting and all these other differences between the Asian and Western player. The bottom line is you want to do business in the US, you need to conform to our comapny standards and what we expect from a company as consumers in a free market society. I don't know what they story is in Asia, but I won't sit quiet and take it up the ass while the game goes to shit and all the company is worried about is squeezing a bit more water from the stone. It's a common trend after the first year or so to see a content patch sandwiched in between 8-10 cash shop updates. How many more fucking pixel clothes and advantages do we need, I just want to do a goddman quest.
My wish for 2010 is Richard gets back to calling these guys on their shit and not these half-advertisements we see now. It won't be much longer before you could just dig up Leni Riefenstahl and makes F2P propaganda pieces and passion plays. Just cause you say it's good 10,000 times doesn't make it good, just because 30 million people play doesn't make the game shit or the model flawed. I mean 30 million people bought Vanilla Ice and N'Sync albums too. I'm not saying to totally write off the impact that F2P has had on the MMO industry, but lets not pretend that many of these things are anything more than upjumped cash grabs used to buy more liecenses while they playerbase suffers in a subpar expereince both gamewise and customer service wise.
I can make three predictions with near absolute confidence for 2010:
1. Richard will continue to churn out F2P industry puff pieces that read more like they were written by the ad-flacks for the F2P company in question than by anyone actually seriously commenting on the industry. Nothing short of a sudden attack of carpal tunnel will save us from this.
2. MMORPG.COM will continue to find new and ever more annoying ways to shovel F2P ads, banners, columns and assorted junk at us until no one bothers to read here anymore.
3. Some small number of currently active, older P2P games which are on life support will be "re-cycled" using the F2P/"freemium" model of D&D Online. Likely candidates include SWG and PotBS, among others.
This is called bleeding the well dry. Get everything you can out of it while you can. I can not fault companies that try this as DDO and Turdbine have managed to do it better than i thought they would.
People have hit on, around and pretty much nailed it why a micro-transaction model fails for anything beyond the junk be shoved out of Asia and parts of Europe right now. It fails to deliver quality, support and growth that subscription models do.
Again I will use Shot Online as an example. They rake money in hand over fist from Europe and North America yet fail to be able to add any quality content to the game. How hard is it to put out three or four courses a year?
Now go pull up that list someone said to pull up and look at the developers for any of the 'F2P" games. Notice anything about them? Ok, go do a little research on them, where they come from and where the heads of these companies come from. See anything yet?
South Korea has an interesting program for people who want to get into the game industry. The government sponsors a school dedicated to teaching game development and management. Most of the games off that list are done by people from that school. That is where the problem for the "F2P" model comes in.
A micro-transaction model is not horrible by concept, it is horrible by the use companies follow through with. For the most part these games are a small step above vapor ware.
Actually im starting to think you trolls game to deal with long term preexhisting mental disorders and self medicate with these games. Theres plenty of free games that are good and plenty of p2p that are good. Conan started horrible, its picking up pace. War is close in comparison to wow to me. and not all f2p games are clones. Dream lords was a very good f2p, atlantica is very good and guild wars is pretty good, perfect world is slight bit of cloning but it has its great aspects as well. To be so negative just means you need to remove yourself from this community because theyre not aiding it in any way, a critics good but not an absolute biased troll. Also eve is p2p and f2p and its also very good, what companies really need to do is find a way to market properly and mixed the two attributes. Also Though wow has been a huge success its rather bland as well, but it also has its own aspects for what it is and it used a heavy marketing ploy. Lack of money does not mean lack of creativity just means it is slightly inhibitted.
Every single game you just ran off about has failed with the exception of GW and Eve.
Warhammer lost close to a million subscribers in less than a year. How else to get numbers than to offer people a f2p format of some kind.
And what games are you comparing some of these to? Other games like Silkroad? Go out and spend $15 a month on EQ2 or any other game that has been on the market for over 3 years. Many of the long standing games still have a respectable community and player base. The only thing going as a community or player base for the games you mentioned are the kids whose parents refuse to pay for game or adults without the money or desire to spend $15 a month on a subscription.