Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Death of the F2P
psiic
Member RarePosts: 1,642
It has been a long time coming but thankfully industry accountants and managers are starting to real study the numbers and realize F2P is not as lucrative as they once imagined.
A F2P business model is ok for a stagnant game with limited staff and no designs on expansion or growth.
The F2P business model is so support and resource heavy that it usually manages to pull an Ouroboros.
The F2P business model has been found to be an unstable, unpredictable revenue source for a factor that directly effects investor support, staffing, and growth.
The problems created by a free to play model outweigh the benefit..
Publishers have begun to realize even though it is less cash in, it is better to 100 players willing to play $15 each, than 2000 paying $1 each. It's a logistics, stability, security, and support issue. Less cash in, but way less expenses out as well.
In the end it is all about the profit on the books at the end of the day, and not how many unpaying players you can load on to your servers in the mean.
Comments
If the both game and module are good there will be a stable amount of people playing.
we have seen a lot of games went from p2p to either f2p or b2p, plus there are a couple or reports that tell f2p is making more money, not alot of people got 15$ to spend every month (we are talking about sane people that play a F2P game not P2W game a game like Tera for example Rift or any good game with a good F2P module), so baiscly any good game and module works.
Come back 6 months after the release of Wildstar and ESO and I'm sure you'll find they have gone F2P as well.
At the moment with a couple of notable exceptions, subscriptions are only used by publishers to milk as much money as possible from players in the first few months before the inevitable drop off of subscriptions and their conversion to F2P.
The Enlightened take things Lightly
Bullshit.
It all depends how the game is set up from the beginning. If you design your game from the beginning with cash shop in mind, you will get your money.
Try to imagine how League of Legends would have ended if it was p2p. Yes it wouldnt have that playerbase it has now.
Heroes of Newerth tried it with box sales and ended with 40k players after 1 year.
In fact, go read about articles from chinese f2p games. New games set up as f2p make there millions a week.
Now imagine if SOE would have made EQ:Next p2p. Yes, the playerbase would have been 1/100. Instead its gona keep a healthy population true its 10y lifecycle. And people will spend money- because its new, fresh and they are not bound to play it by p2p system.
steady growth? Bullshit- its about longlivity, the average income per year is higher in f2p games, because they have a unlimited source.
Thanks, it was a good one
But if some slight chance you ment it seriously, I bet the whole eastern region of online game publishers, the web gaming publishers, and the (massively growing) mobile gaming division are rolling on the floor and laughing their heads off.
OP is right about few things, but rest is just making him look silly...
True that F2P is not as stable and lucrative as P2P model, in THEORY it is better to have constant income in a reasonable amount, BUT... The whole reason why most of the games use F2P model is because this is the model people play. It is better to have less profitable system, than have system that is better in theory, but won't have it's demand.
I can see you and your managers have zero idea even about how a simple business works, not to mention a game industry. F2P not stable? Please... only little percent of services work with monthly payment system, TV, internet, mobiles... and now we have internet with mmos, subscription inside a subscription... other option is trade, and that system is fine for everything else in the world, why wouldn't it be for mmo suddenly? You invented new economy? Are you saying grocery shop owner is doing risky business, because he is never sure he will sell a carrot every day? Premium shops are designed just like every other shop.. products that are attractive enough for players to generate stable income.
If it was better to have 100 players in P2P than 2000 in F2P than we wouldn't see games changing their model to F2P, but other way around. Actions of large developers speak for themselves. Those are the companies that hire the best accountants and managers. Suggesting they are all wrong is the most arogant and bold move you can make, and makes you look even less inteligent.
Everyone thinks they know best what is better for the industry. The industry is doing better than ever, yet we have all that smart as*es trying to put out some strange theories.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
apparently youre wrong. very wrong lol.
Facts and data are inconvenient huh.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/01/18/led-by-mobile-and-free-to-play-u-s-digital-sales-see-big-gains/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/208762/US_digital_game_sales_grew_11_in_2013.php
http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=a2b9207999131347c9c0c44ce&id=f1b8fb8081&e=56010f2224
Currently playing: Eldevin Online as a Deadly Assassin
Empirical evidence, market analysts, and accounting departments worldwide tend to disagree with you. Just because a couple of new-ish games are going P2P doesn't mean the F2P model has failed; companies like Carbine are just banking on the fact that old-school gamers are dead set against F2P due to its perceived evils. Chances are in 6 moths to a year they'll go free or B2P too, and if not it'll be the exception and not the rule.
F2P and B2P are the future of MMO payment models, and denying this isn't going to change anything. People were proclaiming the death of F2P years ago on this very site, and yet its simply continued to expand.
Reminds me of the people who said computers will only ever need 640K of memory, and that 3 1/2" floppy disks & Windows 95 were 'just a fad', same as math coprocessors.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
There will be always people like you with small vision. THe market back then when SOE launched theyr games p2p was another like its today. Thats why Planetside 2 went stright f2p and so will all upcomming mmos from sony- because in longterm- they provide more income. Also the cost (servercost, boradband) will decrease due new technologies. Futthermore most thigns can be scripted, so who need a staff when a script can response to your needs?
And LoL adapted f2p because there was a huge hype with f2p games. I remember when almost all 2 months a new f2p game came out. Vanguard as example tried the p2p route instead- and we can see where its going now- shutting down.
Better get people hooked to your game while its new- for that you need to grant all players access.
LoL is a MOBA, I get that there are similarities between this genre and MMOs but they are different genres and I think the F2P model does work well for MOBAs.
As to the OP, whilst I doubt F2P MMOs aren't profitable, their death will, more likely, come from sheer saturation and we are probably approaching that point sometime soon.
Most F2P MMOs are, quite frankly, shovelware, churned out cheaply to milk as much profit as possible before being shut down or put into maintenance mode.
But even this will have a limit - just as the saturation of P2P MMOs lead to F2P, so F2P will give way to something else...Not sure what at this stage but my best guess will be a consolidation of the genre, with less titles available. Devs and publishers will need to start asking "Does this need to even be an MMO or could we make it single-player/Co-op?". It may lead to titles becoming more innovative, to truly differentiate them from competitors.
Or the MMO genre may go another way entirely.
Either way I still think there is a crash coming.
Think about it, nobody wants to die, there's rules to this game son, I'm justified.
i'd rather say "death of P2P" tbh
the market is too massive nowadays
anyway, i think it's similar to my other topic yesterday
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/403234/Is-It-True-That-P2P-Is-The-Best-Business-Model.html
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
Gotto agree with others here..what a load of BS!
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
In my opinion, Free-to-play = terrible quality and quantity. Its been proven already that a F2P game shells out worse quality and quantity. Look at any game on the market that turned F2P from a sub structure. The game simply isnt good as it was prior to the change.
I personally cannot stand F2P. For starters in brings in all the childish morons to spam your chat channels with non sense and badger those playing the game. Id much rather pay 15 a month and enjoy all the content were given vs a f2p game that makes you buy every little thing.
You want to create a character? Oh thatll be 5 dollars, you want an extra character? Oh thats another 10 dollars, you want to use the chat system in the game? Oh that 10 dollars, oh you want to use the AH, oh thats 10 dollars, oh you want to wipe your own ass? thatll be 5 dollars. Its highway robbery and I cannot staaaaaaaand Free to play games. Another thing Ive noticed is that when games are free to play, the players expect a bunch of stuff when in reality they arent going to get it or they have a sense of entitement.... Free to play, the bane of any decent mmo.
The F2P revolution is in full tilt as a majority of people realize that paying for something they can get access to for free instead is just plain wrong on so many levels in the era where internet in most western countries is dirty cheap and hosting servers have gone from rarities to possible even for low end computer users
( I know plenty of WoW private shards run on personal machines).
Aside from a few dinosaurs and stubborn people who deny the evolution of MMOs we are heading towards a bright future of virtual worlds and sandbox/themepark hybrids of increasing quality and no access costs (hidden or visible).
Would like to see this proof.
(your personal opinion isn't a proof by the way)
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
Mind posting some sources that support this claim?
yeah, it's sad that people tend to generalize F2P games after trying a game or two
Rift, Tera, Aion, GW2 & Secret World (B2P) and some other games have no such restrictions
Just read an interview with ..(I Think it was a TRION or SOE dev ) ...that said that ONE HUGE reason to choose the BTP as payment model is because of the modern consoles .
Console players are NOT used to pay "extra" fees and dabble with credit cards etc,,so the easiest solution is to go BTP for the consoles...
SO...I do think that this is a HUGE reason for games taking on a certain payment model, console markets are big and adpting to conoles is a huge deal for a game and Company in terms of users and income..
So..We can partly blame the consoles for FTP and BTP..
I have a lot of responses to this, all trying to climb out of my head at the same time. I'm just going to list them in no particular order.
You assertions are either delusions or lies with no reality to back them up.
If "industry accountants" were studying the numbers on monetization models, they wouldn't be studying whether or not F2P is worthwhile. They would be studying which combination of F2P and P2P models worked the best. They probably come up with ways to charge money for a game, and then name it later.
If F2P really is on the way out, the entire industry is boned because P2P isn't working out so great either. Since more money is being pumped into the industry, it seems the "industry accounts" haven't packed up and moved on. F2P is probably here to stay.
Your revenue example is wrong. The kind of people who would spend their days determining which monetization system works out the best would tell you the same thing. Their goal isn't 100 people at $15 over 2000 people paying a $1. Their goal is 2100 people, some of them paying $15 a month and some of them paying $1 a month.
The only thing you're right about is that it is about making a profit. You're wrong about pretty much everything else though.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.