I wish developers would ALSO consider alternatives OTHER than just F2P versus subscription-based at $15/month, as if those were the only two options available. They're not.
Two other major alternatives are (1) B2P and (2) games with lower subscription rates (say, $5 or $10/month). In my opinion, very VERY few games are worth $15/month, month after month after month, unless you happen to be a really dedicated player and gaming is your primary source of entertainment.
Games such as STO, LotRO, and SWTOR are perfectly fine games, but they are NOT worth $15/month. The former 2 wised up to that fact; I hope SWTOR/Bioware does, too. If not, the game is going to be devastated by the release of GW2, imo.
I do think that SWTOR would be financially viable if they switched to B2P or at least greatly lessened their monthly subscription fee. Most F2P schemes that I have seen are pretty nasty, imo, as they tend to nickel and dime you to pieces in a cash shop.
B2P, however, allows you to purchase the game, play it fully for as long as you want, and then pay for "big ticket items" such as extra character slots, character transfers/renames, mounts, DLC, new campaigns, etc. It is the type of business model I like best, in today's MMO market -- I much prefer it to F2P. I think most players wouldn't mind buying a game outright; it's the being "bled to death slowly" via MTs for essentials needed to play the game and/or high-priced monthly subs that drive people away from most MMOs.
The problem with SWTOR doing B2P or reduced subscription (or probably even F2P too) was the amount of money they invested into Developing it. They pretty much killed thier financial viability BEFORE the game ever got released by letting the Development budget so out of control and getting so little value in return for it.
Because the Development budget was SO MUCH HIGHER then any other MMO that has ever been built before, they needed So Much MORE revenue then any other MMO has ever made (with the possible exception of WoW) to justify that amount of investment. That pretty much pushed them to try for the Sub model (+ cash shop) route. Also, if they were being at all realistic about how much less what they produced was in comparison to the degree the game was hyped....it pretty much dictated that they push not just subscriptions purchases but multi-month subscription purchases or "Collectors Edition" purchases BEFORE the game was released in order to ride the hype wave and maximize thier return before the cold hard reality of what customers were actually getting for thier money hit home. Look at how many people purchased 60 or 90 days worth of game time for TOR, sight unseen....and then sat around not logging in and not playing with surplus time left on thier game cards. All that revenue would have been lost, had they opened up with F2P or B2P or reduced price subscriptions. It's only NOW, when the hype has been pierced and most buyers are going to be pretty well informed as to what they are actually getting for thier money that it starts making sense for them to consider other payment models, like limited f2P or reduced subscriptions.... and that's basicaly damage control at this point.
It's pretty callous, but given the train wreck that was Development (from what I've read)....they actualy structured pricing and release to maximize thier possible short term return from that....even if it's a pretty Orwellian way to treat the customer. It does completely trash the brand reputation for the future...but it's not like EA has much of a brand reputation to trash at this point anymore.
Amazing. A game released around half a year ago with one of the largest IPs as well as budget, managed to screw up big time and is now struggling to survive. I don't care about this game at all, but this is laughable.
James Ohlen has certainly established his 'legendary' status in the video game industry.
I would not play this game even if EA paid me $15/month. The highly-instanced design means you rarely see other players, and the lack of friendly features for groups, guilds, and raids makes this all the worse.
I do not understand the logic of this article and am concerned with the aggressiveness with which this site is promoting this buisness model.
Yup, although in reality it's not much different with the way periodicals in other verticals end up hyping and pushing whatever the "Hot Industry Buzzword of the Day" happens to be. I believe a year or two ago it was all about "Social Networking Games".... then that sorta started to fall out of vogue....next year I suspect we may be getting more about "mobile gaming" or "platform portability".
I see this with periodicals in my industry (Tech Sector) all the time as well. They'll hype to high heaven whatever buzzword happens to be in vogue that year. In the Tech sector it's been "Cloud Services", "Virtualization", "Mobility" and "Social Networking" for the past couple of years.
Typicaly (though not always) there IS a real kernel of truth behind each buzzword.... They are vaulable/usefull solutions for a specific problem, situation or business case.... but really ONLY those cases/scenerarios. What happens though is that they get pushed as a pancea for ALL business cases/scenerios, something which you MUST have and will magicaly solve all your problems, whatever they are.
What tends to happen (at least in my industry) is that there are ALOT of vendors pushing services built around those buzzwords... and they have ALOT of advertising dollars which directly/indirectly end up pushing the content of the periodicals, conferences, industry symposiums, etc.
The second thing that happens (again in my industry) is that the writers for periodicals are just that, WRITERS....not usualy engineers, or developers or designers, etc. In other words thier expertiese is in interviewing people and WRITING about what people are talking about.....not usualy in actualy using, implimenting or building the tools/buzzwords that are the subject of discussion. Thus they have no DIRECT knowledge of the qualities of the thing under discussion themselves, all thier knowledge comes from listening to what others are saying..... AND usualy those others are NOT the engineers, developers, designers, etc, themselves who are actualy quietly doing thier work...but the MARKETERS, SALESPERSONS, PR Spokespersons, etc who are being PAID to hype the buzzword of the day, in order to boost sales for thier vendors. It creates an interesting little sound-chamber effect.
What gets even silier, is that at the upper management levels in many companies (especialy big ones).....alot of the upper level managers have not direct expertiese themselves in the fields they are managing. Alot of times they are sales or finance or marketing guys who are brought over due to thier "management skills", not thier knowledge of the discipline they are managing. If those people don't have enough trust in thier own subject experts, they hear all the hype about the buzzwords of the day from the industry sound-chambers, panic that they are missing out on something, and start putting out mandate's to thier internal teams that they MUST start incorporating those buzzwords into thier solutions, regardless of whether the buzzword does anything at all (or even is harmfull) to the specific set of circumstances the solution is being made to address. It's a weird little feedback loop.
I'm convinced that you could create a mythical product, called a "Bleemfarb", that did absolutely nothing and if you hyped it enough.... you'd have top level executives start demanding of thier internal teams that they incorporate "Bleemfarb" into thier designs. If the designers started asking questions like "What's Bleemfarb?, what specificaly will it do for us? and how does it fit into what we are trying to build?", the executive would answer "I don't know but EVERYBODY is using it, everyone is raving about it, it'll assure our success, we can't risk falling behind the competition...you MUST use it." At which point the designer slaps the "Bleemfarb" onto thier design somewhere, hopefully in a place that won't do too much damage and tells the executive that the mandate has been fullfilled. Now if the solution is successfull, the Executive will credit the "Bleemfarb"....it was THIER mandate, afterall...take credit for the success and rave to everyone about how awesome a "Bleemfarb" is and how it made thier product successfull..... and if the solution is a failure, the executive will blame the designer for not putting enough "Bleemfarb" into the project, ignoring thier mandate or not understanding how to properly impliment "Bleemfarb".... in either case, the "Bleemfarb" hype feedback loop continues
The subscription model paradigm is shifting to other modes of revenue generation. The subscription model is becoming outdated and the fact that many games are going free to play or launching that way, and staying successful, shows that this model is the current trend. While we may eventually see a resurgence in the future of the subscription model, they will never be dominant again.
It's basic business guys. Change you model to appeal to what the consumer's demands are. A small percentage of people willing to pay a sub ("Don't do what the majority wants!") doesn't mean a company is going to be profitable. In the end, businesses don't care about being trendy or serving their small, elite fanbase - they care about increasing revenue and expanding their market.
I could be way off-base but I don't think it's the PAYMENT model that is making many of todays MMO's unpopular......hint, it might actualy have something to do with the quality of the PRODUCT.
P.S. Basic business.... it's NOT the number of USERS you get but the number of SALES that determines your revenue. As a business, you are going to be more proffitable getting 100 users who are paying $15 per month each then you are getting 1000 users paying on average $1.25 per month.
This comment shows how much you underestimate how much people are willing to spend in the free to play market. I know many people that spent hundreds of dollars per week converting real cash into in game currancies by selling cash shop items.
That is one of the greatest misconceptions going, just because the game is free to play does not mean that the whole community is cheap, in many cases the cost of the game is not the issue.
Some people just have to have everything now. It does not matter to them how much it costs.
So many people generalize their point of view based solely on their opinion and perspective. The reality is that out of those 1000 players in a free to play game a large number of them might spend $1.25, some of them might spend $500 in a month and yet others at other various amounts. Often, the completely free players still contribute to the cash shop sales. They might not buy anything directly, but when they buy something from a cash shop seller such as enchanting scrolls or whatever, they are supporting the cash shop sales indirectly.
Not every free to play game allows cash shop items to be sold to other players, but most of them do from one degree or another. Companies like Areia Games or Perfect World Int. do well enough in the free to play market. Some of those games have thriving communities. Perfect World Int. releases new fully developed games every couple of years or so and they are getting better and better with every release. They are certainly not much worse than some of the sub based games we have seen lately.
No, I don't underestimate how much some people may be willing to spend in some F2P games. Clearly, there ARE some cases where people are (on average) willing to pay enough to make the game proffitable. Else, you wouldn't have any F2P games running.
What I am trying to dispell is the notion (which seems to be getting pushed here) that F2P is some sort of "magic business pixie dust" that will automaticaly make unsuccessfull products successfull, unprofitable games profitable and is universaly a better payment model for a game/service REGARDLESS of the particulars of that games/service's situation.
That's the hype that is getting pushed here, but it's patently untrue. There are plenty of games/services that have made money with the F2P model, there are plenty which have also gone chapter 11. There are plenty of games/services that have made money with the subscription model, and plenty of which have failed. What payment model is best for a particular service really is going to depend upon the particulars of that individual service offering....there is no one correct, universal answer for all service offerings. One thing that IS universaly true, REGARDLESS of the particular payment model chosen is that the product/service HAS to provide enough value/interest to the customer in order for them to be willing to pay more for it then it costs you to provide to them. No payment model is going to get you around that basic axiom of business.
I'm also trying to get people to understand that they are looking at the WRONG metrics when evaluating the proffitability of the F2P model. People tend to focus on the raw number of USERS and the typical increase you see in those when switching to F2P. While the number of users might be a nice/exciting thing to brag or hype in a press release...they actualy mean NOTHING financialy. It's only in the subscription model, where there is a fixed minimum revenue per USER, that the number of users has some relevance financialy.
In the F2P model, the number of USERS is actualy a predictor of COSTS, not revenue (They are is the sub-model too, but there they ALSO measure revenue). It COSTS a certain amount on average per USER to support thier use of the service each month (bandwidth, CPU, RAM, Storage, customer service, etc). The more users, the HIGHER your monthly costs will be (unless you start cutting quality of service). In the F2P model, it's the amount of SALES generated each month that determines your revenue. A user that is not BUYING more each month then the cost you pay to support them is actualy a LOSS for you financialy.... they may have some other indirect value, but as far as counting the beans go, they are a LIABILTY. If, on average, your users are not spending more from you then you are paying to support them, then you are LOOSING money each month...and the more USERS you have, the quicker you get to chapter 11.
The F2P model ONLY provides an advantage (financialy) when 1 of 2 conditions are true...
1) Each USER, on average, is spending MORE money each month then they would if you had been charging them a subscription.
2) The number users you are attracting with the F2P model is SO MUCH more then with the subscription model that you are making up for the lower (on average) margin you are getting from each user by the increased volume.
Hypothetical example... each user costs you $5 to support. Subscription model generates $15 per user fixed revenue, F2P model generates (on average) $7.50 per User. Under the subscription model you are getting $10 net income per user and lets say you are able to generate 100 subscriptions per month (Net operating proffit = $1000 per month). Under the F2P model you are getting $2.50 net income per user. In order to break even proffitablity wise (assuming no costs incured to switch models) with the subscription model you need to be able to increase your users to 400 per month ( 400 x 2.5 = S1000 net proffit per month).... if you only get 350 per month instead, you are doing worse by going F2P, if you get 450 instead you are doing better.
Now it's certainly POSSIBLE that either condition above can occur in a given case, BUT IT IS NOT A GIVEN.
If people really want to understand the situation, then they need to stop using echo chamber hyperbole and understand the cold, hard math behind the situation. When a publisher is thinking about thier payment models...they are really placing BET's on whether they THINK thier product is going to meet one of the above conditions or not....but that's all it is, a BET....sometimes it'll pay-off, others not.
However, regardless of what PAYMENT model they opt for, if they are IGNORING the basics of producing an attractive product and being physicaly responsible about the budget used to produce that product, they are likely to LOSE regardless of the payment model they've bet on.
Yeah because playing games in which kids just steal their parents credit cards and buy items that should only be earned is a real fun way too play games....Get real any game that goes pay too win deserves to bomb. Stop trying to speak for everyone that games the majority dosnt want this type of platform of paying.
But the majority does want F2P. The majority are playing F2P. The majority have chosen F2P over the few remaining sub models.
He isn't speaking for everyone. There are those of us who still prefer sub models. But, we need to come to grips that we are no longer the majority.
An interesting example is my nephew. He is 19 and going to a jr. college with an associates degree in game design. He loves fantasy rpg. He asked me what games I played, and I rattled off a list of sub-based mmos that I have enjoyed over the years. He visibly grimaced at each and everyone and in very stereotypical teenage gamer form said, without fear of hurting my feelings, 'Those games all suck. They suck hard'.
So I asked him why. He replied (paraphrasing) "Cuz they all make you pay a sub fee. I'm never going to play a game that forces money from you without knowing you'll get something in return"
He was so certain, so assured with an attitude of 'everyone knows this'. He went as far as degrading WoW players for being gullible. And not because the game is simplified or cartoony or because of wellfare epics.....it was because he thought all WoW players were idiots for playing a game with a sub fee.
Now granted this is just one kid - I don't mean to cover all future developers in the same blanket. However, it was obvious to me that his opinion was cemented in place and he was obviously surrounded by a slew of other gamers who felt the same. He was comfortable that his opinion was the majority - he had never met someone like me; he was shocked and dissappointed in my gaming habits. I was speechless too, as I had never met anyone in real life with his opinion.
To further, I supervise a lot of guys in their twenties. Probably about 1/3 of them game. Most have had some experience with an mmo - but most don't consider themselves 'mmo'ers' but 'gamers'. One of them played WoW for awhile, but is now playing D3, prior he was a DOTA and Starcraft player after leaving WoW. I told him I'd give him a scroll of resurection if he wanted to play with me but he vehemently said no. Why? Because he felt duped by paying a sub fee for those 2 or 3 years - why do that when there is so much F2P stuff out there? Again, like my nephew, he said this with the conviction that he was in the majority opinion. With his attitude, and the attitude of other of my employees plus with my nephew, entering the dev buisiness, holding all virtually the same sour opinion of sub fees, I had to come to grips.
I thought sub-based games were what the majority wanted - I found out it was just my generation of gamers.
I'm in game design school as well, I also work for a company, and for you to say that tells me he is being taught wrong... The fact is F2P GAMES, if you want to get anything good, you need to spend more then 15 bucks a month those are facts and thats why games are going, free, they can suck you in with it being free and then you like the game and end up spending 10 bucks , oh another 10 or another, another and so on, and before you realize it , you spent more then 15 a month, Thats why they do this now a days, there is alot more games now a days.. ALso people at game design school are moving toward Iphone games because we can make more money and faster and with little experince, those are facts.
The reason most new Devs hate MMO's because you need to play them alot most of the time, they cost more to make and you really need a decent team with experince. So most new Devs stay away from MMo's..... Another reason is gamers today whine to darn much, so why should a new dev make a game for a bunch of whiners???? Thats another reason.. I could go on ...
Investors need to grow some balls and give people money to make something other then the typical EQ, WOW forumla's like we seen in SWTOR, TSW is trying something different but I know most gamers will shy away because gamers today whine and want there hands held, which drives me nuts this is why I play mainly indies, atleast they have a unique idea, and not teh same forumla we have been seeing for 20 years, its getting old.
I love asheron call, we need to see games like UO, and AC, more then EQ trash.
That whining is the sound of market demand. If you don't fill it, someone will.
The subscription model paradigm is shifting to other modes of revenue generation. The subscription model is becoming outdated and the fact that many games are going free to play or launching that way, and staying successful, shows that this model is the current trend. While we may eventually see a resurgence in the future of the subscription model, they will never be dominant again.
It's basic business guys. Change you model to appeal to what the consumer's demands are. A small percentage of people willing to pay a sub ("Don't do what the majority wants!") doesn't mean a company is going to be profitable. In the end, businesses don't care about being trendy or serving their small, elite fanbase - they care about increasing revenue and expanding their market.
I could be way off-base but I don't think it's the PAYMENT model that is making many of todays MMO's unpopular......hint, it might actualy have something to do with the quality of the PRODUCT.
P.S. Basic business.... it's NOT the number of USERS you get but the number of SALES that determines your revenue. As a business, you are going to be more proffitable getting 100 users who are paying $15 per month each then you are getting 1000 users paying on average $1.25 per month.
This comment shows how much you underestimate how much people are willing to spend in the free to play market. I know many people that spent hundreds of dollars per week converting real cash into in game currancies by selling cash shop items.
That is one of the greatest misconceptions going, just because the game is free to play does not mean that the whole community is cheap, in many cases the cost of the game is not the issue.
Some people just have to have everything now. It does not matter to them how much it costs.
So many people generalize their point of view based solely on their opinion and perspective. The reality is that out of those 1000 players in a free to play game a large number of them might spend $1.25, some of them might spend $500 in a month and yet others at other various amounts. Often, the completely free players still contribute to the cash shop sales. They might not buy anything directly, but when they buy something from a cash shop seller such as enchanting scrolls or whatever, they are supporting the cash shop sales indirectly.
Not every free to play game allows cash shop items to be sold to other players, but most of them do from one degree or another. Companies like Areia Games or Perfect World Int. do well enough in the free to play market. Some of those games have thriving communities. Perfect World Int. releases new fully developed games every couple of years or so and they are getting better and better with every release. They are certainly not much worse than some of the sub based games we have seen lately.
No, I don't underestimate how much some people may be willing to spend in some F2P games. Clearly, there ARE some cases where people are (on average) willing to pay enough to make the game proffitable. Else, you wouldn't have any F2P games running.
What I am trying to dispell is the notion (which seems to be getting pushed here) that F2P is some sort of "magic business pixie dust" that will automaticaly make unsuccessfull products successfull, unprofitable games profitable and is universaly a better payment model for a game/service REGARDLESS of the particulars of that games/service's situation.
That's the hype that is getting pushed here, but it's patently untrue. There are plenty of games/services that have made money with the F2P model, there are plenty which have also gone chapter 11. There are plenty of games/services that have made money with the subscription model, and plenty of which have failed. What payment model is best for a particular service really is going to depend upon the particulars of that individual service offering....there is no one correct, universal answer for all service offerings. One thing that IS universaly true, REGARDLESS of the particular payment model chosen is that the product/service HAS to provide enough value/interest to the customer in order for them to be willing to pay more for it then it costs you to provide to them. No payment model is going to get you around that basic axiom of business.
I'm also trying to get people to understand that they are looking at the WRONG metrics when evaluating the proffitability of the F2P model. People tend to focus on the raw number of USERS and the typical increase you see in those when switching to F2P. While the number of users might be a nice/exciting thing to brag or hype in a press release...they actualy mean NOTHING financialy. It's only in the subscription model, where there is a fixed minimum revenue per USER, that the number of users has some relevance financialy.
In the F2P model, the number of USERS is actualy a predictor of COSTS, not revenue (They are is the sub-model too, but there they ALSO measure revenue). It COSTS a certain amount on average per USER to support thier use of the service each month (bandwidth, CPU, RAM, Storage, customer service, etc). The more users, the HIGHER your monthly costs will be (unless you start cutting quality of service). In the F2P model, it's the amount of SALES generated each month that determines your revenue. A user that is not BUYING more each month then the cost you pay to support them is actualy a LOSS for you financialy.... they may have some other indirect value, but as far as counting the beans go, they are a LIABILTY. If, on average, your users are not spending more from you then you are paying to support them, then you are LOOSING money each month...and the more USERS you have, the quicker you get to chapter 11.
The F2P model ONLY provides an advantage (financialy) when 1 of 2 conditions are true...
1) Each USER, on average, is spending MORE money each month then they would if you had been charging them a subscription.
2) The number users you are attracting with the F2P model is SO MUCH more then with the subscription model that you are making up for the lower (on average) margin you are getting from each user by the increased volume.
Hypothetical example... each user costs you $5 to support. Subscription model generates $15 per user fixed revenue, F2P model generates (on average) $7.50 per User. Under the subscription model you are getting $10 net income per user and lets say you are able to generate 100 subscriptions per month (Net operating proffit = $1000 per month). Under the F2P model you are getting $2.50 net income per user. In order to break even proffitablity wise (assuming no costs incured to switch models) with the subscription model you need to be able to increase your users to 400 per month ( 400 x 2.5 = S1000 net proffit per month).... if you only get 350 per month instead, you are doing worse by going F2P, if you get 450 instead you are doing better.
Now it's certainly POSSIBLE that either condition above can occur in a given case, BUT IT IS NOT A GIVEN.
If people really want to understand the situation, then they need to stop using echo chamber hyperbole and understand the cold, hard math behind the situation. When a publisher is thinking about thier payment models...they are really placing BET's on whether they THINK thier product is going to meet one of the above conditions or not....but that's all it is, a BET....sometimes it'll pay-off, others not.
However, regardless of what PAYMENT model they opt for, if they are IGNORING the basics of producing an attractive product and being physicaly responsible about the budget used to produce that product, they are likely to LOSE regardless of the payment model they've bet on.
Excellent point on the financials. But I believe most gamers are not concerned if a developer is making money, but more so if they are having fun and the time/money invested is of value. From my perspective, I like F2P simply because I dont have to justify my cost of playing. If SWTOR goes broke from moving to F2P I really have no feeling about that. I simply move on to the next game. Companies go in and out of business every single day.
Completely agree the real edge is creating a product people WANT to play.
I just believe F2P will (hopefully) allow other developers to create new MMO experiences.
F2P have destroyed (imo) quality as it attracts beggars to quality restaurants with good food. F2P lovers are "special" kind of players. For them there is no game in this world and never will be worth sub. Wondering their position if they would be owners.
About op, only on looming I would agree, rest is more or less bs. Produced by f2p addicted.
Oh please, that is such a load of bollox. F2P is the new format, people playing angry birds are they your "special" kind of players I dare say not. F2P is here to stay in all genres and I dare say the only way we might get real innovation in the more popular genres like FPS & MMO is through small studios making F2P games supported by microtransactions.
Or perhaps you prefer to be paying to play WoW / WoW clones for the next 10 years ? because that is where the MMO genre is stuck at the moment.
As for SWTOR ? Its not an MMO, its not Massively Multiplayer and was designed from the ground up around this major flaw. Its a single player RPG with some co-op and even then as a single player RPG there are far better titles amongst biowares back catalogue in terms of story. So why anyone would pay $15 a month to play a single player game with co-op is beyond me, go pickup NWN2 and explore loads of content & persistant worlds for $0 a month.
if all games go free to play here in the west then I will quit playing games. too many morons are in free to play games, im willing to pay just to cut out the morons.
Yes, clearly the choice to pay a set monthly fee weeds out the unintelligent...
/e logs into "any sub game" and listens to people call others idiots...
Someone or a couple of someone's messed up and made bad choices. SWTOR is a casual game, but casual and sub mixes as well as oil and water.
This should have been clear when the idea was first presented. Why didn't anyone stand up and say, "But if you make it easy to level and don't have much to keep players's interest outside of the personal story, how will we retain our subs?"
At this point someone/s must have said, "We know what's best, because with the star wars ip and Bioware we can't lose."
Every F2P-title outthere requires you to spend alot of money in the cashshop, if you're interested in PvP or raiding, so F2P is a total myth.
Actually that is not true. Speaking of such: Lord of the Rings online has a cash shop however as long as you play the game you can play it for free regardless. About the only thing they sell in that game is cosmetic stuff and different type of mounts. And that game has triple it revenue when it went from p2p to f2p.
So, from what I understand of this, AKA the TL;DR version:
Buzzword comes into existence as a result of a solution, but said solution only works in specific scenarios.
Writers make commentary about the buzzwords based on information given to them by people who have no idea what the meaning or the depth of said buzzword is.
Managers with little/no expertise of things outside of their profession hear said buzzword and make the people below them in the corporate hierarchy incorporate the buzzword even if said buzzword has little to no relevance to the game.
Game succeeds=Managers take the credit or give credit to aforementioned buzzword
Game fails=Managers blame designers for not putting enough of the buzzword into their product, even though it was their idea to begin with.
Comments
The problem with SWTOR doing B2P or reduced subscription (or probably even F2P too) was the amount of money they invested into Developing it. They pretty much killed thier financial viability BEFORE the game ever got released by letting the Development budget so out of control and getting so little value in return for it.
Because the Development budget was SO MUCH HIGHER then any other MMO that has ever been built before, they needed So Much MORE revenue then any other MMO has ever made (with the possible exception of WoW) to justify that amount of investment. That pretty much pushed them to try for the Sub model (+ cash shop) route. Also, if they were being at all realistic about how much less what they produced was in comparison to the degree the game was hyped....it pretty much dictated that they push not just subscriptions purchases but multi-month subscription purchases or "Collectors Edition" purchases BEFORE the game was released in order to ride the hype wave and maximize thier return before the cold hard reality of what customers were actually getting for thier money hit home. Look at how many people purchased 60 or 90 days worth of game time for TOR, sight unseen....and then sat around not logging in and not playing with surplus time left on thier game cards. All that revenue would have been lost, had they opened up with F2P or B2P or reduced price subscriptions. It's only NOW, when the hype has been pierced and most buyers are going to be pretty well informed as to what they are actually getting for thier money that it starts making sense for them to consider other payment models, like limited f2P or reduced subscriptions.... and that's basicaly damage control at this point.
It's pretty callous, but given the train wreck that was Development (from what I've read)....they actualy structured pricing and release to maximize thier possible short term return from that....even if it's a pretty Orwellian way to treat the customer. It does completely trash the brand reputation for the future...but it's not like EA has much of a brand reputation to trash at this point anymore.
James Ohlen has certainly established his 'legendary' status in the video game industry.
I would not play this game even if EA paid me $15/month. The highly-instanced design means you rarely see other players, and the lack of friendly features for groups, guilds, and raids makes this all the worse.
Not recommended - even free.
Yup, although in reality it's not much different with the way periodicals in other verticals end up hyping and pushing whatever the "Hot Industry Buzzword of the Day" happens to be. I believe a year or two ago it was all about "Social Networking Games".... then that sorta started to fall out of vogue....next year I suspect we may be getting more about "mobile gaming" or "platform portability".
I see this with periodicals in my industry (Tech Sector) all the time as well. They'll hype to high heaven whatever buzzword happens to be in vogue that year. In the Tech sector it's been "Cloud Services", "Virtualization", "Mobility" and "Social Networking" for the past couple of years.
Typicaly (though not always) there IS a real kernel of truth behind each buzzword.... They are vaulable/usefull solutions for a specific problem, situation or business case.... but really ONLY those cases/scenerarios. What happens though is that they get pushed as a pancea for ALL business cases/scenerios, something which you MUST have and will magicaly solve all your problems, whatever they are.
What tends to happen (at least in my industry) is that there are ALOT of vendors pushing services built around those buzzwords... and they have ALOT of advertising dollars which directly/indirectly end up pushing the content of the periodicals, conferences, industry symposiums, etc.
The second thing that happens (again in my industry) is that the writers for periodicals are just that, WRITERS....not usualy engineers, or developers or designers, etc. In other words thier expertiese is in interviewing people and WRITING about what people are talking about.....not usualy in actualy using, implimenting or building the tools/buzzwords that are the subject of discussion. Thus they have no DIRECT knowledge of the qualities of the thing under discussion themselves, all thier knowledge comes from listening to what others are saying..... AND usualy those others are NOT the engineers, developers, designers, etc, themselves who are actualy quietly doing thier work...but the MARKETERS, SALESPERSONS, PR Spokespersons, etc who are being PAID to hype the buzzword of the day, in order to boost sales for thier vendors. It creates an interesting little sound-chamber effect.
What gets even silier, is that at the upper management levels in many companies (especialy big ones).....alot of the upper level managers have not direct expertiese themselves in the fields they are managing. Alot of times they are sales or finance or marketing guys who are brought over due to thier "management skills", not thier knowledge of the discipline they are managing. If those people don't have enough trust in thier own subject experts, they hear all the hype about the buzzwords of the day from the industry sound-chambers, panic that they are missing out on something, and start putting out mandate's to thier internal teams that they MUST start incorporating those buzzwords into thier solutions, regardless of whether the buzzword does anything at all (or even is harmfull) to the specific set of circumstances the solution is being made to address. It's a weird little feedback loop.
I'm convinced that you could create a mythical product, called a "Bleemfarb", that did absolutely nothing and if you hyped it enough.... you'd have top level executives start demanding of thier internal teams that they incorporate "Bleemfarb" into thier designs. If the designers started asking questions like "What's Bleemfarb?, what specificaly will it do for us? and how does it fit into what we are trying to build?", the executive would answer "I don't know but EVERYBODY is using it, everyone is raving about it, it'll assure our success, we can't risk falling behind the competition...you MUST use it." At which point the designer slaps the "Bleemfarb" onto thier design somewhere, hopefully in a place that won't do too much damage and tells the executive that the mandate has been fullfilled. Now if the solution is successfull, the Executive will credit the "Bleemfarb"....it was THIER mandate, afterall...take credit for the success and rave to everyone about how awesome a "Bleemfarb" is and how it made thier product successfull..... and if the solution is a failure, the executive will blame the designer for not putting enough "Bleemfarb" into the project, ignoring thier mandate or not understanding how to properly impliment "Bleemfarb".... in either case, the "Bleemfarb" hype feedback loop continues
No, I don't underestimate how much some people may be willing to spend in some F2P games. Clearly, there ARE some cases where people are (on average) willing to pay enough to make the game proffitable. Else, you wouldn't have any F2P games running.
What I am trying to dispell is the notion (which seems to be getting pushed here) that F2P is some sort of "magic business pixie dust" that will automaticaly make unsuccessfull products successfull, unprofitable games profitable and is universaly a better payment model for a game/service REGARDLESS of the particulars of that games/service's situation.
That's the hype that is getting pushed here, but it's patently untrue. There are plenty of games/services that have made money with the F2P model, there are plenty which have also gone chapter 11. There are plenty of games/services that have made money with the subscription model, and plenty of which have failed. What payment model is best for a particular service really is going to depend upon the particulars of that individual service offering....there is no one correct, universal answer for all service offerings. One thing that IS universaly true, REGARDLESS of the particular payment model chosen is that the product/service HAS to provide enough value/interest to the customer in order for them to be willing to pay more for it then it costs you to provide to them. No payment model is going to get you around that basic axiom of business.
I'm also trying to get people to understand that they are looking at the WRONG metrics when evaluating the proffitability of the F2P model. People tend to focus on the raw number of USERS and the typical increase you see in those when switching to F2P. While the number of users might be a nice/exciting thing to brag or hype in a press release...they actualy mean NOTHING financialy. It's only in the subscription model, where there is a fixed minimum revenue per USER, that the number of users has some relevance financialy.
In the F2P model, the number of USERS is actualy a predictor of COSTS, not revenue (They are is the sub-model too, but there they ALSO measure revenue). It COSTS a certain amount on average per USER to support thier use of the service each month (bandwidth, CPU, RAM, Storage, customer service, etc). The more users, the HIGHER your monthly costs will be (unless you start cutting quality of service). In the F2P model, it's the amount of SALES generated each month that determines your revenue. A user that is not BUYING more each month then the cost you pay to support them is actualy a LOSS for you financialy.... they may have some other indirect value, but as far as counting the beans go, they are a LIABILTY. If, on average, your users are not spending more from you then you are paying to support them, then you are LOOSING money each month...and the more USERS you have, the quicker you get to chapter 11.
The F2P model ONLY provides an advantage (financialy) when 1 of 2 conditions are true...
1) Each USER, on average, is spending MORE money each month then they would if you had been charging them a subscription.
2) The number users you are attracting with the F2P model is SO MUCH more then with the subscription model that you are making up for the lower (on average) margin you are getting from each user by the increased volume.
Hypothetical example... each user costs you $5 to support. Subscription model generates $15 per user fixed revenue, F2P model generates (on average) $7.50 per User. Under the subscription model you are getting $10 net income per user and lets say you are able to generate 100 subscriptions per month (Net operating proffit = $1000 per month). Under the F2P model you are getting $2.50 net income per user. In order to break even proffitablity wise (assuming no costs incured to switch models) with the subscription model you need to be able to increase your users to 400 per month ( 400 x 2.5 = S1000 net proffit per month).... if you only get 350 per month instead, you are doing worse by going F2P, if you get 450 instead you are doing better.
Now it's certainly POSSIBLE that either condition above can occur in a given case, BUT IT IS NOT A GIVEN.
If people really want to understand the situation, then they need to stop using echo chamber hyperbole and understand the cold, hard math behind the situation. When a publisher is thinking about thier payment models...they are really placing BET's on whether they THINK thier product is going to meet one of the above conditions or not....but that's all it is, a BET....sometimes it'll pay-off, others not.
However, regardless of what PAYMENT model they opt for, if they are IGNORING the basics of producing an attractive product and being physicaly responsible about the budget used to produce that product, they are likely to LOSE regardless of the payment model they've bet on.
That whining is the sound of market demand. If you don't fill it, someone will.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Excellent point on the financials. But I believe most gamers are not concerned if a developer is making money, but more so if they are having fun and the time/money invested is of value. From my perspective, I like F2P simply because I dont have to justify my cost of playing. If SWTOR goes broke from moving to F2P I really have no feeling about that. I simply move on to the next game. Companies go in and out of business every single day.
Completely agree the real edge is creating a product people WANT to play.
I just believe F2P will (hopefully) allow other developers to create new MMO experiences.
I'd much rather spend 15 bucks a month on an MMO than say cable TV. If you stop having fun, stop playing. Easy as that.
Oh please, that is such a load of bollox. F2P is the new format, people playing angry birds are they your "special" kind of players I dare say not. F2P is here to stay in all genres and I dare say the only way we might get real innovation in the more popular genres like FPS & MMO is through small studios making F2P games supported by microtransactions.
Or perhaps you prefer to be paying to play WoW / WoW clones for the next 10 years ? because that is where the MMO genre is stuck at the moment.
As for SWTOR ? Its not an MMO, its not Massively Multiplayer and was designed from the ground up around this major flaw. Its a single player RPG with some co-op and even then as a single player RPG there are far better titles amongst biowares back catalogue in terms of story. So why anyone would pay $15 a month to play a single player game with co-op is beyond me, go pickup NWN2 and explore loads of content & persistant worlds for $0 a month.
Yes, clearly the choice to pay a set monthly fee weeds out the unintelligent...
/e logs into "any sub game" and listens to people call others idiots...
Someone or a couple of someone's messed up and made bad choices. SWTOR is a casual game, but casual and sub mixes as well as oil and water.
This should have been clear when the idea was first presented. Why didn't anyone stand up and say, "But if you make it easy to level and don't have much to keep players's interest outside of the personal story, how will we retain our subs?"
At this point someone/s must have said, "We know what's best, because with the star wars ip and Bioware we can't lose."
Actually that is not true. Speaking of such: Lord of the Rings online has a cash shop however as long as you play the game you can play it for free regardless. About the only thing they sell in that game is cosmetic stuff and different type of mounts. And that game has triple it revenue when it went from p2p to f2p.
So, from what I understand of this, AKA the TL;DR version:
they could always make most of the game F2P and have certian servers for if you like pay for it and get full game instead buying the little bits