For all the happy gamers out there, why are we seeing declines everywhere? I don't have to prove anything to see a problem.
If you want to site global warming as the cause over game hopping, I really don't care. The fact remains. Developers are hesitant to touch this genre. Why, if not for lack of revenue? And what of all those millions? Where's the money?
Again, where do you get those "facts" from?
You want me to prove there are no new big budget MMORPGs in development? You want me to prove WoW's subscriptions are in such decline, they announced they won't be releasing the numbers anymore? You want me to prove WildStar is in deep trouble? You want me to Prove why Blizzard scrapped Titan? You want me to Prove why DBG scrapped EQN?
There's a problem here, I don't need to prove anything to you to recognize it.
And yes whilst there are different types of market - a market = a set of applicable factors rather than a set of products. And comparisons can - and are - made even at the very top level and you drill down from there. And suffice to say the "soft rules and theories" work.
So perception is also a major factor. Subs were deemed OK when they launched because network / internet stuff was expensive basically. There are other reasons as well. And that is B2P + Sub + DLC of course.
AC started to deliver content for "free" the likes of CoH and WoW followed - to combat complaints about the sub no longer being needed. (New content was generally not free at that time).
GW1 then launched and fast forward to today and - as you say - the competition means most sub games that offer no new content are suffering. There are and probably will continue to be "niche" markets. In which people see value. Clearly people will pay if they are happy with what they are getting.
There is much simpler explanation - competition.
In the early days subs were accepted because there was no other option. There was no need for different business/pricing model since the market was fresh and growing rapidly.
After couple years, when market got more saturated, and there was much wider selection of games, players wanted to play more of these - and developers wanted players to play more of these, thus subscriptions had to go away.
You want me to prove there are no new big budget MMORPGs in development? You want me to prove WoW's subscriptions are in such decline, they announced they won't be releasing the numbers anymore? You want me to prove WildStar is in deep trouble? You want me to Prove why Blizzard scrapped Titan? You want me to Prove why DBG scrapped EQN?
There's a problem here, I don't need to prove anything to you to recognize it.
You would need to prove that any of that implies the market, as a whole, is in decline.
1) Big budget MMOs being no longer attractive venture does not mean MMOs are in decline. It just means the market is too saturated and makes such venture risky.
2) WoW losing subscriptions does not mean players are leaving market, they likley switch to other games.
3) Yep, some titles are struggling like they always did.
4) Yep, some projects get scrapped like they always did.
I agree threre is a problem but MMO market health is not the case :-P
You want me to prove there are no new big budget MMORPGs in development? You want me to prove WoW's subscriptions are in such decline, they announced they won't be releasing the numbers anymore? You want me to prove WildStar is in deep trouble? You want me to Prove why Blizzard scrapped Titan? You want me to Prove why DBG scrapped EQN?
There's a problem here, I don't need to prove anything to you to recognize it.
You would need to prove that any of that implies the market, as a whole, is in decline.
1) Big budget MMOs being no longer attractive venture does not mean MMOs are in decline. It just means the market is too saturated and makes such venture risky.
2) WoW losing subscriptions does not mean players are leaving market, they likley switch to other games.
3) Yep, some titles are struggling like they always did.
4) Yep, some projects get scrapped like they always did.
I agree threre is a problem but MMO market health is not the case :-P
What you said about WoW here is what I had said that prompted you to demand proof in the 1st place. WoW is losing money because players are moving to other games? I said something very similar and you demanded I prove it, now you are saying the same thing to show the overall market is healthy. But that wasn't my argument. I had said that individual games are still suffering. Not that there aren't millions of happy gamers. It's that individual publishers cannot reel in a large enough piece of that pie to justify the expense.
Cecropia said: Are you not aware that people are game hopping much more these days and are less likely to stay in an MMO for many months/years as they used to?
So...?
Hopping only means individual gamer spend less per title but it does not imply there is less money spent in total - there is still the same amount of players(money).
It is a reason and advantage of F2P - players are no longer locked down to 1 or 2 titles but they can spent their money among many titles as they see fit.
Not necessarily true. I game hope because I am bored. I don't spend money to be bored.
GeezerGamer said: You realize that what you said about WoW is what I had said that prompted you to demand proof in the 1st place right? WoW is losing money because players are moving to other games? I said something very similar and you demanded I prove it, now it's come full circle and you are saying the same thing to show the overall market is healthy. But that wasn't my argument. I had said that individual games are still suffering. Not that there aren't millions of happy gamers. It's that individual publishers cannot reel in a large enough piece of that pie to justify the expense.
So you are back to your argument that that there are no more big budget projects?
As for individual publishers "suffering", I do not see EA/BioWare or Zenimax to suffer. Actually it is only now that we have 2 more big titles on the market besides WoW.
Vermillion_Raventhal said: Not necessarily true. I game hope because I am bored. I don't spend money to be bored.
Thanks for letting us know...?
You made it seem like players are spreading the wealth. Most players game hop and don't spend as most players don't spend on F2P. Those who do spend are usually the ones invested in a game. Kind of make sense.
MMO companies like it, in fact they prefer it, they just can't be successful with it based on the products they've delivered. We've seen many AAA and non AAA came as sub only to convert to B2P/F2P within a year or less. World of Warcraft and EVE managed to keep the sub for 7+ years before introducing cash shops and plex and what not.
What do you mean "where do I get that?" Really? well, whatever.
Huh? Is it too hard to back up your claims...?
Are you not aware that people are game hopping much more these days and are less likely to stay in an MMO for many months/years as they used to?
That may or may not be true but he didn't prove that game hopping generates less revenue, especially less revenue overall. I think it would need to be proven through a logic chain of arguments that: 1. There is less revenue. 2. That game hopping is the cause. 3. That people would stay and play just one game thus generating more revenue.
How many F2P games update content on a regular basis, outside of cash shop products? The more they update real game systems and content is the best indicator that they are making better than usual profits or that the company really is interested in re-investing into the game to make even more money. All I know is that the games that were subscription first had much larger and more frequent content updates than they have since switching to F2P, aside from the plethora of cash shop updates. What does this say about their profit margins since switching?
I keep reading criticisms of the subscription model for MMORPGs. In addition, it seems as though very few of the upcoming games are planning to use it. Why is that? It seems as though it's an ideal compromise between scaring off users by charging them a larger amount to buy the game up front, messing up game balance with pay to win in-game purchases, and not generating enough revenue by selling only cosmetic in-game purchases. It seems as though the WoW model of letting users play for free until they're hooked, and then charging them a relatively modest monthly fee is the best mix of generating a lot of revenue, not scaring off users and not negatively impacting game play and game balance. What am I missing that's convinced everyone that it's not a good business model for most games?
Here are some reasons as to why p2p is bad: 1. It locks you out of a game you paid for (sometimes upto $40-50, that ceases to work in 30 days unless you put more money down, over and over). This used to be accepted in the past, not so much now. 2. P2p games now double dip you anyway, they have cash shops and as such you aren't paying for everything (yes cosmetics are content to some people). 3. It puts a barrier to players coming back or joining your game. 4. Cash shops make more money than subs. 5. Why pay money for nothing, just to access a game when you can play something very comparable for free? Most of the time the only different between a p2p game and a f2p game is the graphics and art style, to many that's not enough to throw hundreds of dollars for. 6. There is nothing better about a p2p game over a f2p one, aside from the snob answer of "those people are trashy" or something.
The only time I'll pay a subscription for a game is if they offer a unique experience, I've paid for FFXI and Eve. The only other time I've paid a sub is when it's optional, as on Tera or Rift.
Subscription games are awful and a genuine ripoff, you buy something and they stop it working unless you pay more... laughably silly by todays standards
What do you mean "where do I get that?" Really? well, whatever.
Huh? Is it too hard to back up your claims...?
Are you not aware that people are game hopping much more these days and are less likely to stay in an MMO for many months/years as they used to?
That may or may not be true but he didn't prove that game hopping generates less revenue, especially less revenue overall. I think it would need to be proven through a logic chain of arguments that: 1. There is less revenue. 2. That game hopping is the cause. 3. That people would stay and play just one game thus generating more revenue.
How many F2P games update content on a regular basis, outside of cash shop products? The more they update real game systems and content is the best indicator that they are making better than usual profits or that the company really is interested in re-investing into the game to make even more money. All I know is that the games that were subscription first had much larger and more frequent content updates than they have since switching to F2P, aside from the plethora of cash shop updates. What does this say about their profit margins since switching?
Most of the big ones offer as many updates as p2p games, also most p2p games seem to offer more cash shop updates than patches these days anyway. At least newer ones.
what your missing is if people only have a certain amount of money they can only play a certain amount of games
so no matter what happens most people can only have 1-2 subs
to top this off there is probably 100 mmos out , but for mr joe average they can at most only afford to pay for one or two of them and the other 98 mmo 's do not get or have any chance to get a single penny from them
by going f2p they have a chance mr joe average might try the game and in doing so they might spend some money
Players love it. Devs, not so much. It puts them on the hook to keep the game interesting month after month.
That's true of any content-driven game. F2P games worry even more about keeping their game interesting month after month (if they don't, they collapse and die even faster than subscription games.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Players love it. Devs, not so much. It puts them on the hook to keep the game interesting month after month.
That's true of any content-driven game. F2P games worry even more about keeping their game interesting month after month (if they don't, they collapse and die even faster than subscription games.)
Not really. The advantage F2P has is the "no barrier to entry" aspect. Part of the big reason it can gain revenue off users isn't even the retention rate, but the means with which they can monetize the game's assets.
Even with a remarkably low retention rate, it has enabled plenty of cheap F2P titles to go on life support without any sort of updates for quite some time purely because players can pop in and out, and just the small amount of revenue they get from the arbitrary, impulse, and emotionally driven sales is sufficient in many cases for these F2P titles to continue on regardless of stagnation.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Players love it. Devs, not so much. It puts them on the hook to keep the game interesting month after month.
That's true of any content-driven game. F2P games worry even more about keeping their game interesting month after month (if they don't, they collapse and die even faster than subscription games.)
That makes no sense. Why would they collapse faster? People can play them for free, and might play even if they're not that interested because it costs them nothing.
You can justify being bored in a game that costs you nothing. Nobody can justify paying 15/month to be bored.
When sub games start to fail, they go f2p, not the other way around.
If what you say was true, if a f2p game was failing, it would go sub to prevent collapse.
Are you high?
***
The main reason sub is better for us is it allows us to vote with our wallets. Don't like how a game is going- don't sub. With a f2p game, if you don't pay, the only thing you're voting on is the cash shop.
P2P w/sub has 2 downfalls, first is barrier to entry (buy game, pay monthly), second is something a lot of people miss is that it *caps* how much a player can spend. If you LOVE WoW more than anything in the world... how much can you really spend? $15/mo plus whatever trinket things you buy from their store, but that has a solid cap on it.
Successful F2P games allow many times the number of players to enter the game and have no cap on spend depth (or at least VERY deep spending ability). You've heard of "whales"? Well those guys spend crap tons of money on the games they love. In F2P, ONLY 3-5% of all of the players will EVER spend money in your game and 85% of ALL the revenue comes from the top few % of spending players. It sounds crazy, but there are people out there spending 10s of thousands of dollars (some hundreds or millions) -- that offsets A LOT of non spenders. Generally, game devs look at the non-spenders as "content" for the spenders (specifically in PvP games) so it's in the developer's best interest to keep as many people playing as possible, even if they don't ever pay.
In the mobile space, publishers have to "buy" users. Yes, BUY them. They cost anywhere from $1 each to upwards of $10-12 depending on the quality of the player. Your game then has to generate AT LEAST this much from each player (on average) in order to stay profitable and stay up for players to play.
You made it seem like players are spreading the wealth. Most players game hop and don't spend as most players don't spend on F2P. Those who do spend are usually the ones invested in a game. Kind of make sense.
yeh .. but MMOs are still viable because there are whales.
That makes no sense. Why would they collapse faster? People can play them for free, and might play even if they're not that interested because it costs them nothing.
You can justify being bored in a game that costs you nothing. Nobody can justify paying 15/month to be bored.
When sub games start to fail, they go f2p, not the other way around.
If what you say was true, if a f2p game was failing, it would go sub to prevent collapse.
Are you high?
***
The main reason sub is better for us is it allows us to vote with our wallets. Don't like how a game is going- don't sub. With a f2p game, if you don't pay, the only thing you're voting on is the cash shop.
They collapse faster because:
Being free doesn't mean it matters whether "people can play them for free". They live or die on profit like any other game.
When a player invests money into a game, there's a certain psychological investment along with it. If you start playing a new game on the first of the month, you're way more likely to keep trying to enjoy it at the end of the month if you invested into a subscription or B2P cost, than if the game cost you absolutely nothing.
So F2P games survive purely on whether there continues to be enough content worth playing, because the moment that stops being true players leave.
Games switch to F2P because it's a stronger revenue model. That part has nothing to do with collapsing faster.
So you fully understand: I make F2P games for a living and even the PVP-driven ones (the ones most able to survive without a constant flow of content) are extremely content-reliant. If there's lots of high-quality content players care about, the game does great. If not, the game rapidly decays.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That makes no sense. Why would they collapse faster? People can play them for free, and might play even if they're not that interested because it costs them nothing.
You can justify being bored in a game that costs you nothing. Nobody can justify paying 15/month to be bored.
When sub games start to fail, they go f2p, not the other way around.
If what you say was true, if a f2p game was failing, it would go sub to prevent collapse.
Are you high?
***
The main reason sub is better for us is it allows us to vote with our wallets. Don't like how a game is going- don't sub. With a f2p game, if you don't pay, the only thing you're voting on is the cash shop.
They collapse faster because:
Being free doesn't mean it matters whether "people can play them for free". They live or die on profit like any other game.
When a player invests money into a game, there's a certain psychological investment along with it. If you start playing a new game on the first of the month, you're way more likely to keep trying to enjoy it at the end of the month if you invested into a subscription or B2P cost, than if the game cost you absolutely nothing.
So F2P games survive purely on whether there continues to be enough content worth playing, because the moment that stops being true players leave.
Games switch to F2P because it's a stronger revenue model. That part has nothing to do with collapsing faster.
So you fully understand: I make F2P games for a living and even the PVP-driven ones (the ones most able to survive without a constant flow of content) are extremely content-reliant. If there's lots of high-quality content players care about, the game does great. If not, the game rapidly decays.
Sub games live or die on content because that's all there is. F2P games live or die (they never die, not the big ones anyway) because of the cash shop. Therefore Devs spend more time updating the cash shop then the game.
Not sure what kind of indie games you work on but this is the case for AAA titles.
Most the top-end F2P games in the mobile market don't see any dramatic growth of content, though they do see a migration of cost over time in market goods.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Sub games live or die on content because that's all there is. F2P games live or die (they never die, not the big ones anyway) because of the cash shop. Therefore Devs spend more time updating the cash shop then the game.
Not sure what kind of indie games you work on but this is the case for AAA titles.
Oh well of course if you pretend content isn't content then you'd feel that way.
Meanwhile in real life, when LoL or TF2 or any other games releases vanity item content or new features or new zones, that's all content. The reality is that without constantly injecting their game with new content, revenue will decline considerably faster.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
New features in those games is few and far between. The bulk of what you're claiming as new content is what Holden already mentioned as "cash shop content", being predominantly vanity items (hats, skins, etc).
The reality is that the game's playable content does not generally get a lot of updates (save for the minor balance/FOTM tweaks) in F2P titles because it's not necessary so long as the perceived standard is in the realm of "It's good for a F2P".
EDIT: I mean seriously, how many maps does LoL have for example? >_>
The most they release can amount to a new character every so often to force sales in competitive play through the introduction of an unknown, and predominantly it's hyping the crap out of skin packs.
You can call that content if you want I guess, but making Lux shoot hearts or rainbows instead of light beams isn't really much of a game changer.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Comments
You want me to prove WoW's subscriptions are in such decline, they announced they won't be releasing the numbers anymore?
You want me to prove WildStar is in deep trouble?
You want me to Prove why Blizzard scrapped Titan?
You want me to Prove why DBG scrapped EQN?
There's a problem here, I don't need to prove anything to you to recognize it.
In the early days subs were accepted because there was no other option. There was no need for different business/pricing model since the market was fresh and growing rapidly.
After couple years, when market got more saturated, and there was much wider selection of games, players wanted to play more of these - and developers wanted players to play more of these, thus subscriptions had to go away.
1) Big budget MMOs being no longer attractive venture does not mean MMOs are in decline. It just means the market is too saturated and makes such venture risky.
2) WoW losing subscriptions does not mean players are leaving market, they likley switch to other games.
3) Yep, some titles are struggling like they always did.
4) Yep, some projects get scrapped like they always did.
I agree threre is a problem but MMO market health is not the case :-P
As for individual publishers "suffering", I do not see EA/BioWare or Zenimax to suffer. Actually it is only now that we have 2 more big titles on the market besides WoW.
How many F2P games update content on a regular basis, outside of cash shop products? The more they update real game systems and content is the best indicator that they are making better than usual profits or that the company really is interested in re-investing into the game to make even more money. All I know is that the games that were subscription first had much larger and more frequent content updates than they have since switching to F2P, aside from the plethora of cash shop updates. What does this say about their profit margins since switching?
1. It locks you out of a game you paid for (sometimes upto $40-50, that ceases to work in 30 days unless you put more money down, over and over). This used to be accepted in the past, not so much now.
2. P2p games now double dip you anyway, they have cash shops and as such you aren't paying for everything (yes cosmetics are content to some people).
3. It puts a barrier to players coming back or joining your game.
4. Cash shops make more money than subs.
5. Why pay money for nothing, just to access a game when you can play something very comparable for free? Most of the time the only different between a p2p game and a f2p game is the graphics and art style, to many that's not enough to throw hundreds of dollars for.
6. There is nothing better about a p2p game over a f2p one, aside from the snob answer of "those people are trashy" or something.
The only time I'll pay a subscription for a game is if they offer a unique experience, I've paid for FFXI and Eve. The only other time I've paid a sub is when it's optional, as on Tera or Rift.
Subscription games are awful and a genuine ripoff, you buy something and they stop it working unless you pay more... laughably silly by todays standards
Pretty much any a bit successful F2P game provides content updates on regular basis...
so no matter what happens most people can only have 1-2 subs
to top this off there is probably 100 mmos out , but for mr joe average they can at most only afford to pay for one or two of them and the other 98 mmo 's do not get or have any chance to get a single penny from them
by going f2p they have a chance mr joe average might try the game and in doing so they might spend some money
for the other 98 games F2p is a better option
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Even with a remarkably low retention rate, it has enabled plenty of cheap F2P titles to go on life support without any sort of updates for quite some time purely because players can pop in and out, and just the small amount of revenue they get from the arbitrary, impulse, and emotionally driven sales is sufficient in many cases for these F2P titles to continue on regardless of stagnation.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You can justify being bored in a game that costs you nothing. Nobody can justify paying 15/month to be bored.
When sub games start to fail, they go f2p, not the other way around.
If what you say was true, if a f2p game was failing, it would go sub to prevent collapse.
Are you high?
***
The main reason sub is better for us is it allows us to vote with our wallets. Don't like how a game is going- don't sub. With a f2p game, if you don't pay, the only thing you're voting on is the cash shop.
It's pretty simple:
P2P w/sub has 2 downfalls, first is barrier to entry (buy game, pay monthly), second is something a lot of people miss is that it *caps* how much a player can spend. If you LOVE WoW more than anything in the world... how much can you really spend? $15/mo plus whatever trinket things you buy from their store, but that has a solid cap on it.
Successful F2P games allow many times the number of players to enter the game and have no cap on spend depth (or at least VERY deep spending ability). You've heard of "whales"? Well those guys spend crap tons of money on the games they love. In F2P, ONLY 3-5% of all of the players will EVER spend money in your game and 85% of ALL the revenue comes from the top few % of spending players. It sounds crazy, but there are people out there spending 10s of thousands of dollars (some hundreds or millions) -- that offsets A LOT of non spenders. Generally, game devs look at the non-spenders as "content" for the spenders (specifically in PvP games) so it's in the developer's best interest to keep as many people playing as possible, even if they don't ever pay.
In the mobile space, publishers have to "buy" users. Yes, BUY them. They cost anywhere from $1 each to upwards of $10-12 depending on the quality of the player. Your game then has to generate AT LEAST this much from each player (on average) in order to stay profitable and stay up for players to play.
- Being free doesn't mean it matters whether "people can play them for free". They live or die on profit like any other game.
- When a player invests money into a game, there's a certain psychological investment along with it. If you start playing a new game on the first of the month, you're way more likely to keep trying to enjoy it at the end of the month if you invested into a subscription or B2P cost, than if the game cost you absolutely nothing.
- So F2P games survive purely on whether there continues to be enough content worth playing, because the moment that stops being true players leave.
Games switch to F2P because it's a stronger revenue model. That part has nothing to do with collapsing faster.So you fully understand: I make F2P games for a living and even the PVP-driven ones (the ones most able to survive without a constant flow of content) are extremely content-reliant. If there's lots of high-quality content players care about, the game does great. If not, the game rapidly decays.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Not sure what kind of indie games you work on but this is the case for AAA titles.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Meanwhile in real life, when LoL or TF2 or any other games releases vanity item content or new features or new zones, that's all content. The reality is that without constantly injecting their game with new content, revenue will decline considerably faster.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The reality is that the game's playable content does not generally get a lot of updates (save for the minor balance/FOTM tweaks) in F2P titles because it's not necessary so long as the perceived standard is in the realm of "It's good for a F2P".
EDIT: I mean seriously, how many maps does LoL have for example? >_>
The most they release can amount to a new character every so often to force sales in competitive play through the introduction of an unknown, and predominantly it's hyping the crap out of skin packs.
You can call that content if you want I guess, but making Lux shoot hearts or rainbows instead of light beams isn't really much of a game changer.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin