Oh sweet Tempest how I loved thee. How many quarters? How much of my after school job paycheck went to you?
This could easily transition into a conversation on into 80s arcade game design and how developers essentially had the exact same attitude towards it.
Cerny Games president Mark Cerny and Raw Thrills CEO Eugene Jarvis:
"One of the beauties of Defender was that we killed you off in 37 seconds," said Jarvis, who created the sci-fi arcade game for Williams Electronics in 1980. "That was monetization! Now you get what, five or ten cents out of a guy in a day? We were getting 25 cents a play!"
“25 cents every 37 seconds or so -- we were monetizing like a mofo,” exclaimed Jarvis.
As much nostalgia as we may have for various arcade games (Simpsons, X-Men, and Marvel vs. Capcom), the reality is they were designed with even more brutal monetization in mind than modern games. They weren't selling you a meaningless cosmetic item. They were deliberately stopping you from playing the game (by killing you) in order to get more coins out of you. And yet it's apparently the modern games which are evil, when they give you 99% of the game free!
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Axehilt Originally posted by TorvalOh sweet Tempest how I loved thee. How many quarters? How much of my after school job paycheck went to you?
This could easily transition into a conversation on into 80s arcade game design and how developers essentially had the exact same attitude towards it.
Cerny Games president Mark Cerny and Raw Thrills CEO Eugene Jarvis:
"One of the beauties of Defender was that we killed you off in 37 seconds," said Jarvis, who created the sci-fi arcade game for Williams Electronics in 1980. "That was monetization! Now you get what, five or ten cents out of a guy in a day? We were getting 25 cents a play!"25 cents every 37 seconds or so -- we were monetizing like a mofo, exclaimed Jarvis.
As much nostalgia as we may have for various arcade games (Simpsons, X-Men, and Marvel vs. Capcom), the reality is they were designed with even more brutal monetization in mind than modern games. They weren't selling you a meaningless cosmetic item. They were deliberately stopping you from playing the game (by killing you) in order to get more coins out of you. And yet it's apparently the modern games which are evil, when they give you 99% of the game free!
Haha. Well id be hard pressed to find a single classic arcade game that made half as much as swtors cash shop last year.
Originally posted by Torval Originally posted by FoomerangOriginally posted by AxehiltOriginally posted by TorvalOh sweet Tempest how I loved thee. How many quarters? How much of my after school job paycheck went to you?
This could easily transition into a conversation on into 80s arcade game design and how developers essentially had the exact same attitude towards it.Cerny Games president Mark Cerny and Raw Thrills CEO Eugene Jarvis:"One of the beauties of Defender was that we killed you off in 37 seconds," said Jarvis, who created the sci-fi arcade game for Williams Electronics in 1980. "That was monetization! Now you get what, five or ten cents out of a guy in a day? We were getting 25 cents a play!"25 cents every 37 seconds or so -- we were monetizing like a mofo, exclaimed Jarvis.As much nostalgia as we may have for various arcade games (Simpsons, X-Men, and Marvel vs. Capcom), the reality is they were designed with even more brutal monetization in mind than modern games. They weren't selling you a meaningless cosmetic item. They were deliberately stopping you from playing the game (by killing you) in order to get more coins out of you. And yet it's apparently the modern games which are evil, when they give you 99% of the game free!Haha. Well id be hard pressed to find a single classic arcade game that made half as much as swtors cash shop last year.You should try these new fangled internet search engines. They reveal wonders.
Haha. Well id be hard pressed to find a single classic arcade game that made half as much as swtors cash shop last year.
There have been a few... (EDIT: oh, someone beat me to this. That'll teach me to reply to posts in order.)
SWTOR in 2013 made an estimated $139 mil (source: Superdata)
(Source) shows several classic arcade games making $280 mil or more over their lifetime.
#10 Donkey Kong starts the list with $280 mil in its first year or two.
$6 Defender made $1,000 mil over 12 years, but the $83 mil per year average would've been very front-loaded with most of the money being made in the first ~3 years or so. So it's very likely it had a better year than SWTOR too.
So many/most of the games on that list outperformed SWTOR, even before adjusting for inflation.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Because without a cash shop there possibly couldn't be any way for those willing to shell out money to gain an advantage over others, right? =P
Devs merely cashed in on a very lucrative market that people themselves created when they constantly sought out RMTs so that they could buy the most expensive items in game, and increased every developer's workload by inspiring criminals to continue infesting the games. (i.e. The constant messes caused by RMTs that hack player accounts to strip bare, forcing them to waste valuable time on restores, validation of claims, etc, etc...)
Add in the fact that every new MMO that launches gets greeted with "It should be F2P. Or at least B2P." and "LOL, box and sub? No thanks, I'll wait to play it until it goes F2P in less than a year." it's no surprise there are so many cash shops.
You reap what you sow after all.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
And that brings up another question. Why are games failing to retain players after only a few months? And can that be corrected or is it that we have changed?
Because "retain players after a few month" is not the objective? There are other ways to make money. Single player games don't need to "retain players after a few months", and MMOs are learning how to do that.
If it is not desired, there is no need to "correct" anything.
Are you seriously suggesting that MMOs shouldn't desire to retain players?
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
And that brings up another question. Why are games failing to retain players after only a few months? And can that be corrected or is it that we have changed?
Because "retain players after a few month" is not the objective? There are other ways to make money. Single player games don't need to "retain players after a few months", and MMOs are learning how to do that.
If it is not desired, there is no need to "correct" anything.
Are you seriously suggesting that MMOs shouldn't desire to retain players?
Originally, when online games(MO) were sold, they were sold as B2P. They had no intention of keeping players for more than a few months, as they only made money off the original sale. Then MMO's came out, and one of the things that they added was the promise of ongoing development, at the expense of a monthly fee.
At this point MMO's sought to keep the paying players longer (everyone in P2P, Optional Monthly sub in F2P). However, these games were based off of the older games, and they found that they had similar churn rates. The act of prolonging the paying period brought them in more revenue, but they still had huge churn rates. The solution was to bring in new players faster than the old players left. Acquisition was cheap, so they just bought them with advertising. F2P was a way to lower this cost even more. This allowed them to grow the games while losing most of the customers, but keeping the hardcore spenders. Once this core was large enough, it could sustain the game.
Now we are seeing acquisition cost rise (even with F2P) and a return to the original B2P models, but with a high CPA. Without a way to grow the games, the initial buyin once again become the primary monetization. This means that there is little reason to keep players past that first month, and even less reason to keep working on the game (unless it is a paid expansion).
Now we are seeing acquisition cost rise (even with F2P) and a return to the original B2P models, but with a high CPA. Without a way to grow the games, the initial buyin once again become the primary monetization. This means that there is little reason to keep players past that first month, and even less reason to keep working on the game (unless it is a paid expansion).
Eh... that doesn't sound right to me at all. The old games, which were B2P + sub were almost entirely focused on paid expanions, without any content patches in-between whatsoever.
While today's F2P titles, like Neverwinter, are constantly adding new content to their games.
I think it's more about getting people to play (and spend money) before letting them get away, and then lure them back in later with new content in the hope that they'll spend money again.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
And that brings up another question. Why are games failing to retain players after only a few months? And can that be corrected or is it that we have changed?
Because "retain players after a few month" is not the objective? There are other ways to make money. Single player games don't need to "retain players after a few months", and MMOs are learning how to do that.
If it is not desired, there is no need to "correct" anything.
Are you seriously suggesting that MMOs shouldn't desire to retain players?
Originally, when online games(MO) were sold, they were sold as B2P. They had no intention of keeping players for more than a few months, as they only made money off the original sale. Then MMO's came out, and one of the things that they added was the promise of ongoing development, at the expense of a monthly fee.
At this point MMO's sought to keep the paying players longer (everyone in P2P, Optional Monthly sub in F2P). However, these games were based off of the older games, and they found that they had similar churn rates. The act of prolonging the paying period brought them in more revenue, but they still had huge churn rates. The solution was to bring in new players faster than the old players left. Acquisition was cheap, so they just bought them with advertising. F2P was a way to lower this cost even more. This allowed them to grow the games while losing most of the customers, but keeping the hardcore spenders. Once this core was large enough, it could sustain the game.
Now we are seeing acquisition cost rise (even with F2P) and a return to the original B2P models, but with a high CPA. Without a way to grow the games, the initial buyin once again become the primary monetization. This means that there is little reason to keep players past that first month, and even less reason to keep working on the game (unless it is a paid expansion).
I was going to respond to this with some details of how the genre has changed from an insiders perspective, but.. I can't be bothered to correct so much of what you've written.
And that brings up another question. Why are games failing to retain players after only a few months? And can that be corrected or is it that we have changed?
Because "retain players after a few month" is not the objective? There are other ways to make money. Single player games don't need to "retain players after a few months", and MMOs are learning how to do that.
If it is not desired, there is no need to "correct" anything.
Are you seriously suggesting that MMOs shouldn't desire to retain players?
Yes .. if the cost of doing that is too high.
If single player games can make profits purely on box sales (and hence whether the players play one month or one years matter nil), MMOs can learn from that.
It is basically a cost-benefit analysis. If retaining players make LESS money than acquiring new ones (which old content can be used to do that), than may be getting new ones is a better strategy.
And that brings up another question. Why are games failing to retain players after only a few months? And can that be corrected or is it that we have changed?
Because "retain players after a few month" is not the objective? There are other ways to make money. Single player games don't need to "retain players after a few months", and MMOs are learning how to do that.
If it is not desired, there is no need to "correct" anything.
Are you seriously suggesting that MMOs shouldn't desire to retain players?
Yes .. if the cost of doing that is too high.
If single player games can make profits purely on box sales (and hence whether the players play one month or one years matter nil), MMOs can learn from that.
It is basically a cost-benefit analysis. If retaining players make LESS money than acquiring new ones (which old content can be used to do that), than may be getting new ones is a better strategy.
Depends on the business model, but player retention is important for all genres. The prime example of this is Call of Duty, where Activision sell a boxed game, then four DLC over the space of a year, followed by the next boxed game. This cycle continues, there are no particular mechanics designed to keep players retained, other than the prestige system, but the franchise is built around retaining players from one year to the next.
On a shorter term scale, this is what daily quest, login reward, etc are for, they aren't designed to keep you for years, but perhaps six months. Everyone does this, either to get an extra month of pay out of the player or turn a new product into a billion dollar franchise. It is just more obvious in MMOs where the gameplay can be sufficiently stale that they need gimmicks to do the retention work for them.
Selling cosmetic items was a first step to the sorry state we are in now. Rather like a gateway drug it has led to gamers being addicted to the P2W cash shop that is now the norm.
In of itself cosmetic items are not an issue, but they not only made buying items normal for players, they created a signpost for gaming companies. A signpost that said "Make money here". So that's the route they went down, and now we have casino-play as the latest iteration of the cash shop brand. I say latest because if you have any sense you know there is worse to come.
P2P MMOs are nearly dead, B2P MMOs are the fall back position. But there is only one king in the world of MMOs and its name is cash shop, P2P/B2P/F2P it does not matter, cash shop is king.
And since we are talking about an entertainment service, it is the consumer that placed the crown upon its head.
No it was the gaming companies that placed the crown on the cash shop. And you seem to agree with that conclusion in your later posts on Lotro. Lotro did not go hybrid/Turbine model because the gamers wanted it, they did it to make more money. Cosmetic items were a first step in making sure they could get away with it, Lotro went from cosmetic items to P2W in one year.
Selling cosmetic items was a first step to the sorry state we are in now. Rather like a gateway drug it has led to gamers being addicted to the P2W cash shop that is now the norm.
In of itself cosmetic items are not an issue, but they not only made buying items normal for players, they created a signpost for gaming companies. A signpost that said "Make money here". So that's the route they went down, and now we have casino-play as the latest iteration of the cash shop brand. I say latest because if you have any sense you know there is worse to come.
P2P MMOs are nearly dead, B2P MMOs are the fall back position. But there is only one king in the world of MMOs and its name is cash shop, P2P/B2P/F2P it does not matter, cash shop is king.
And since we are talking about an entertainment service, it is the consumer that placed the crown upon its head.
No it was the gaming companies that placed the crown on the cash shop. And you seem to agree with that conclusion in your later posts on Lotro. Lotro did not go hybrid/Turbine model because the gamers wanted it, they did it to make more money. Cosmetic items were a first step in making sure they could get away with it, Lotro went from cosmetic items to P2W in one year.
LOTRO's cash shop was full of fail though. There was nothing in there that big spenders could keep spending on, it was all one-off purchases or rubbish no one wanted. You couldn't spends thousands of dollars on LOTRO even if you wanted to, because there simply wasn't anything to spend it on after the hundred or so.
I expect this was why they started selling powerful items in it and later systems were designed with nice RNG where a shop consumable could help (if I'm remembering the systems right).
Originally posted by Torval US Gamer has an article here: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/top-10-biggest-grossing-arcade-games-of-all-timeDonkey Kong, the least profitable on the list made $280M outright which, adjusted for inflation, is $686M. They made that by 1982.The most profitable game on that list is Pac-Man which made $3.5 BILLION by 1990. Adjusted for inflation that is 7.68 BILLION dollars.I hope that puts things in perspective.
I find it interesting that a "lifetime earnings" gets compared to a "yearly earning."
But the gist of the argument is still there: Pretty close to what MMOs use as a business model these days
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Now we are seeing acquisition cost rise (even with F2P) and a return to the original B2P models, but with a high CPA. Without a way to grow the games, the initial buyin once again become the primary monetization. This means that there is little reason to keep players past that first month, and even less reason to keep working on the game (unless it is a paid expansion).
Eh... that doesn't sound right to me at all. The old games, which were B2P + sub were almost entirely focused on paid expanions, without any content patches in-between whatsoever.
While today's F2P titles, like Neverwinter, are constantly adding new content to their games.
I think it's more about getting people to play (and spend money) before letting them get away, and then lure them back in later with new content in the hope that they'll spend money again.
Part of the problem with my posts is that my history goes back much farther than many remember.
Originally online games were free as they ran on the servers, and you paid for both the access time and the connection time per minute. When PC's became popular they started selling offline games with online components. The online component was not normally charged for, but connection time was still expensive (and often per minute).
As online connection time became cheaper, there was a push for the flat monthly fee. The same thing occurred with online games and services. They moved from the per minute, to the flat monthly fee. This monthly sub was sold as being needed to pay for operations, and to provide ongoing development for the game. Paid expansions were still part of the process, as they were considered to 'big' to be covered by the monthly fees.
There is currently a resurgence of interest in one off B2P online games. They are much simpler to monetize, and there is no need to continue with unpaid service if they do not do well. This is similar to what we have seen with mobile as well, and it is a less risky way to develop new products.
I know it's a small thing and probably not many people care. But it has always bothered me. Selling cosmetic items in a cash shop is generally seen as an acceptable practice.
+1
I don't accept selling cosmetic items for $ either. I simply don't accept selling any in-game stuff for $.
I only accept monetization done via selling content.
So yeah I don't play MMOs anymore and I won't play them monetized like that anymore.
I don't and I won't play them if I do suspect they might add microtransaction in first 3 years after release and nowadays I don't have a reason to believe that any MMO will not.
Originally posted by Axehilt Originally posted by FoomerangHaha. Well id be hard pressed to find a single classic arcade game that made half as much as swtors cash shop last year.
There have been a few... (EDIT: oh, someone beat me to this. That'll teach me to reply to posts in order.)
SWTOR in 2013 made an estimated $139 mil (source: Superdata)
(Source) shows several classic arcade games making $280 mil or more over their lifetime.
#10 Donkey Kong starts the list with $280 mil in its first year or two. $6 Defender made $1,000 mil over 12 years, but the $83 mil per year average would've been very front-loaded with most of the money being made in the first ~3 years or so. So it's very likely it had a better year than SWTOR too. So many/most of the games on that list outperformed SWTOR, even before adjusting for inflation.
Are you guys being serious? Because I sure wasn't. Do we really need to point out how ridiculous this comparison is?
1. What pro-P2P gamers want isn't exactly relevant is it? If BMW started selling their best cars for $500, I could support that and want them to remain in business. But the reality is it isn't a sustainable business model. They'll go out of business selling cars that way. Pro-P2P gamers want their companies to remain in business, but the reality is that business model isn't sustainable.
2. A handful of games do make it work. You've probably listed the majority of them, with most other MMORPGs being F2P. Perhaps more importantly, those games which switched to F2P all reported higher overall revenue which means that the subscription model is pretty clearly worse at supporting developers. Is it good enough to subsist on? Sure, for a handful of games.
But that leads right to my point with the other post: gamers are explicitly asking these devs to make less money for them.
3. Nobody said quality didn't matter. It absolutely does. But at any given quality, one business model works better. And gamers are saying "Could you intentionally use the worse model? Thanks!"
None of which implies that every company on the market is going to use the extra revenue responsibly (to improve the game by an extra amount, relative to the extra income,) but it's really the typical starving artist problem where people don't want to pay for art. If it's bad art, that's one thing, but if it's good art then severe haggling just drives more businesses and games to shut down than really deserve it.
Certainly I'm biased on this subject. I work in the industry (not MMORPGs, but other F2P genres.) But gamers are biased too, so I'm acting as counter-point to that bias. The simple reality is that subscription games are consistently failing to get enough subscriptions to survive that way, and any gamer asking games to continue to use that old failing model is asking those companies to take on a lot of risk and probably fail. Almost none of those gamers realize that's what they're asking for (they're not deliberately asking companies to make suicidal mistakes because they want those companies to commit suicide.) But anyone who's watched the MMORPG market for a significant length of time has to have some sense that that's what's really happening.
Well, for me microtransaction in mmorpg is dealbreaker or bundary condition to even have a shot at enjoying game in first place. So it is simply a case of pure sub or nothing.
If companies making mmorpg's cannot make good business while not using microtransactions, then I am simply not interested in their products.
It does not matter to me as client if there is 10 or 1000 F2P mmorpg's out there on the market - as they equal to 0 when I am in decision making process of should play or not.
Wasnt our roots also subscription? Now it seems its universally hated... if there wouldnt be any of that B2P and even worse F2P crap and sub was still norm, we wouldn't have such a crapy state of genre. If we sticked with sub as main and wouldn't bother with monetizing of gameplay im sure eventualy no company would manage to stick a cash shop in sub games and survive.
Damn i miss the times when not every part of game was selling you something...
Originally posted by Taneon Wasnt our roots also subscription? Now it seems its universally hated... if there wouldnt be any of that B2P and even worse F2P crap and sub was still norm, we wouldn't have such a crapy state of genre. If we sticked with sub as main and wouldn't bother with monetizing of gameplay im sure eventualy no company would manage to stick a cash shop in sub games and survive.Damn i miss the times when not every part of game was selling you something...
Our demographic is no longer what it once was, that is why sub has fallen out of favor.
Our roots are dependent on hire fat back we go. For some it is subs. Others look at games before then and say the roots are pay per hour. Others goeven further and say qquarters prr game.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Comments
This could easily transition into a conversation on into 80s arcade game design and how developers essentially had the exact same attitude towards it.
Cerny Games president Mark Cerny and Raw Thrills CEO Eugene Jarvis:
"One of the beauties of Defender was that we killed you off in 37 seconds," said Jarvis, who created the sci-fi arcade game for Williams Electronics in 1980. "That was monetization! Now you get what, five or ten cents out of a guy in a day? We were getting 25 cents a play!"
“25 cents every 37 seconds or so -- we were monetizing like a mofo,” exclaimed Jarvis.
As much nostalgia as we may have for various arcade games (Simpsons, X-Men, and Marvel vs. Capcom), the reality is they were designed with even more brutal monetization in mind than modern games. They weren't selling you a meaningless cosmetic item. They were deliberately stopping you from playing the game (by killing you) in order to get more coins out of you. And yet it's apparently the modern games which are evil, when they give you 99% of the game free!
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Cerny Games president Mark Cerny and Raw Thrills CEO Eugene Jarvis:
"One of the beauties of Defender was that we killed you off in 37 seconds," said Jarvis, who created the sci-fi arcade game for Williams Electronics in 1980. "That was monetization! Now you get what, five or ten cents out of a guy in a day? We were getting 25 cents a play!"25 cents every 37 seconds or so -- we were monetizing like a mofo, exclaimed Jarvis.
As much nostalgia as we may have for various arcade games (Simpsons, X-Men, and Marvel vs. Capcom), the reality is they were designed with even more brutal monetization in mind than modern games. They weren't selling you a meaningless cosmetic item. They were deliberately stopping you from playing the game (by killing you) in order to get more coins out of you. And yet it's apparently the modern games which are evil, when they give you 99% of the game free!
Haha. Well id be hard pressed to find a single classic arcade game that made half as much as swtors cash shop last year.
Haha. Well id be hard pressed to find a single classic arcade game that made half as much as swtors cash shop last year.
You should try these new fangled internet search engines. They reveal wonders.
US Gamer has an article here: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/top-10-biggest-grossing-arcade-games-of-all-time
Donkey Kong, the least profitable on the list made $280M outright which, adjusted for inflation, is $686M. They made that by 1982.
The most profitable game on that list is Pac-Man which made $3.5 BILLION by 1990. Adjusted for inflation that is 7.68 BILLION dollars.
I hope that puts things in perspective.
You act like namco got all those quarters hehe
There have been a few... (EDIT: oh, someone beat me to this. That'll teach me to reply to posts in order.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Because without a cash shop there possibly couldn't be any way for those willing to shell out money to gain an advantage over others, right? =P
Devs merely cashed in on a very lucrative market that people themselves created when they constantly sought out RMTs so that they could buy the most expensive items in game, and increased every developer's workload by inspiring criminals to continue infesting the games. (i.e. The constant messes caused by RMTs that hack player accounts to strip bare, forcing them to waste valuable time on restores, validation of claims, etc, etc...)
Add in the fact that every new MMO that launches gets greeted with "It should be F2P. Or at least B2P." and "LOL, box and sub? No thanks, I'll wait to play it until it goes F2P in less than a year." it's no surprise there are so many cash shops.
You reap what you sow after all.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Are you seriously suggesting that MMOs shouldn't desire to retain players?
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Originally, when online games(MO) were sold, they were sold as B2P. They had no intention of keeping players for more than a few months, as they only made money off the original sale. Then MMO's came out, and one of the things that they added was the promise of ongoing development, at the expense of a monthly fee.
At this point MMO's sought to keep the paying players longer (everyone in P2P, Optional Monthly sub in F2P). However, these games were based off of the older games, and they found that they had similar churn rates. The act of prolonging the paying period brought them in more revenue, but they still had huge churn rates. The solution was to bring in new players faster than the old players left. Acquisition was cheap, so they just bought them with advertising. F2P was a way to lower this cost even more. This allowed them to grow the games while losing most of the customers, but keeping the hardcore spenders. Once this core was large enough, it could sustain the game.
Now we are seeing acquisition cost rise (even with F2P) and a return to the original B2P models, but with a high CPA. Without a way to grow the games, the initial buyin once again become the primary monetization. This means that there is little reason to keep players past that first month, and even less reason to keep working on the game (unless it is a paid expansion).
Eh... that doesn't sound right to me at all. The old games, which were B2P + sub were almost entirely focused on paid expanions, without any content patches in-between whatsoever.
While today's F2P titles, like Neverwinter, are constantly adding new content to their games.
I think it's more about getting people to play (and spend money) before letting them get away, and then lure them back in later with new content in the hope that they'll spend money again.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I was going to respond to this with some details of how the genre has changed from an insiders perspective, but.. I can't be bothered to correct so much of what you've written.
Yes .. if the cost of doing that is too high.
If single player games can make profits purely on box sales (and hence whether the players play one month or one years matter nil), MMOs can learn from that.
It is basically a cost-benefit analysis. If retaining players make LESS money than acquiring new ones (which old content can be used to do that), than may be getting new ones is a better strategy.
Depends on the business model, but player retention is important for all genres. The prime example of this is Call of Duty, where Activision sell a boxed game, then four DLC over the space of a year, followed by the next boxed game. This cycle continues, there are no particular mechanics designed to keep players retained, other than the prestige system, but the franchise is built around retaining players from one year to the next.
On a shorter term scale, this is what daily quest, login reward, etc are for, they aren't designed to keep you for years, but perhaps six months. Everyone does this, either to get an extra month of pay out of the player or turn a new product into a billion dollar franchise. It is just more obvious in MMOs where the gameplay can be sufficiently stale that they need gimmicks to do the retention work for them.
No it was the gaming companies that placed the crown on the cash shop. And you seem to agree with that conclusion in your later posts on Lotro. Lotro did not go hybrid/Turbine model because the gamers wanted it, they did it to make more money. Cosmetic items were a first step in making sure they could get away with it, Lotro went from cosmetic items to P2W in one year.
LOTRO's cash shop was full of fail though. There was nothing in there that big spenders could keep spending on, it was all one-off purchases or rubbish no one wanted. You couldn't spends thousands of dollars on LOTRO even if you wanted to, because there simply wasn't anything to spend it on after the hundred or so.
I expect this was why they started selling powerful items in it and later systems were designed with nice RNG where a shop consumable could help (if I'm remembering the systems right).
But the gist of the argument is still there: Pretty close to what MMOs use as a business model these days
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Part of the problem with my posts is that my history goes back much farther than many remember.
Originally online games were free as they ran on the servers, and you paid for both the access time and the connection time per minute. When PC's became popular they started selling offline games with online components. The online component was not normally charged for, but connection time was still expensive (and often per minute).
As online connection time became cheaper, there was a push for the flat monthly fee. The same thing occurred with online games and services. They moved from the per minute, to the flat monthly fee. This monthly sub was sold as being needed to pay for operations, and to provide ongoing development for the game. Paid expansions were still part of the process, as they were considered to 'big' to be covered by the monthly fees.
There is currently a resurgence of interest in one off B2P online games. They are much simpler to monetize, and there is no need to continue with unpaid service if they do not do well. This is similar to what we have seen with mobile as well, and it is a less risky way to develop new products.
I never understood how people could spend so much money on those arcade games.
Once I've realized how they operate I have stopped playing them, regardless of how much fun they have might be.
+1
I don't accept selling cosmetic items for $ either. I simply don't accept selling any in-game stuff for $.
I only accept monetization done via selling content.
So yeah I don't play MMOs anymore and I won't play them monetized like that anymore.
I don't and I won't play them if I do suspect they might add microtransaction in first 3 years after release and nowadays I don't have a reason to believe that any MMO will not.
Are you guys being serious? Because I sure wasn't. Do we really need to point out how ridiculous this comparison is?
I have absolutely no problem with it, since there isn't a significant impact on gameplay.
Half the cosmetics are out of place like maid outfits and angel wings anyway.
Waiting for:
The Repopulation
Albion Online
Well, for me microtransaction in mmorpg is dealbreaker or bundary condition to even have a shot at enjoying game in first place. So it is simply a case of pure sub or nothing.
If companies making mmorpg's cannot make good business while not using microtransactions, then I am simply not interested in their products.
It does not matter to me as client if there is 10 or 1000 F2P mmorpg's out there on the market - as they equal to 0 when I am in decision making process of should play or not.
Wasnt our roots also subscription? Now it seems its universally hated... if there wouldnt be any of that B2P and even worse F2P crap and sub was still norm, we wouldn't have such a crapy state of genre. If we sticked with sub as main and wouldn't bother with monetizing of gameplay im sure eventualy no company would manage to stick a cash shop in sub games and survive.
Damn i miss the times when not every part of game was selling you something...
Our demographic is no longer what it once was, that is why sub has fallen out of favor.
Waiting for:
The Repopulation
Albion Online