But did they get more customers than others because their price was lower?
Again, Walmart is very different story. Walmart is a retailer - they are selling same products for lower price. That is not the same as lowering price of YOUR product.
The point is simple.
People play games to have fun.
Does lowering price make the game more fun? No, thus you won't get any more people playing it.
It is generally pretty bad practice to compete with price. In order to make business successful, you have to stand out.
But I thought the whole point of F2P was getting rid of that nasty "barrier for entry"?
If 15 bucks a month is truly a barrier to entry, then there is no hope for this genre. I think people like to pretend there is a barrier when all they really care about is a free ride on someone else's dime.
Wait I thought the problem was these games aren't worth 15 a month?
Worth is relative to the person judging the game, isn't it. I find that most games that were designed with a subscription in mind to be far superior to games designed with F2P in mind. Funny how that works, huh. I don't think there is a problem with subscriptions, developers make more money with F2P, at least till the whales start to rebel, then the freeloaders may not find things so peachy king.
Has anyone counted how many F2P games have closed over the last decade versus subscription games closing? I don't believe I have ever seen any company post just how much more money they are making once they convert to F2P from P2P nor how sustainable the revenue is before they have to go cash shop crazy like Turbine and Cryptic have with every item, stat and shortcut available through the store.
If 15 bucks a month is truly a barrier to entry, then there is no hope for this genre. I think people like to pretend there is a barrier when all they really care about is a free ride on someone else's dime.
why? There are plenty of whales, given how big the industry have become, to sustain everyone's gaming, including the free-riders.
So @Axehilt ;the sub option income is so trivial ,well that explains why most companies are opting for F2P. I hated the way Neverwinter Online never offered me a sub, I would still be playing it if it did. Even if it makes them trivial profits as a player I would like that option.
Why do you feel that way? (Serious question.)
I understand there's a psychological obligation when you pay money to something (especially a subscription) where the payer wants to "get their money's worth", but I'm curious why you would've played longer if the game had a subscription.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I know someone will bring this up and that is why I should be more precies and say "make more money" but given the context, I considered it would put more emphasis on my point...
Regardless, Walmart is a different story.
What Walmart did was that they were able to cut their costs due different approach to logistics thus they could operate at lower prices, yet they kept their margins. Something just lowering your price won't do, you will only lose money that way - cut your margins.
So when games go on sale they do it just for their health?
THe sub model worked in 1999 when there were few options, reeally all the way up to 2005 or so......Personally I did not like paying a sub....It has always felt like throwing money away.....Once I pay for a game I feel I should have to keep paying for it over and over, except for new content....Now almsot every MMO goes through the same transition: start as P2P, go to B2P option, then after a year or two free to play.....
I see no problem here. A lot of games offer subs and a lot of players pay subs.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
What am I missing that's convinced everyone that it's not a good business model for most games?
Without reading through the other posts, this is what I think.
Players dislike it for the excuse, "I feel compelled to log in every day." Even though they don't feel compelled to watch their cable TV a set number of hours (monthly fee), or use their phone a set number of hours (monthly fee), watch "X" number of NetFlix shows (monthly fee), or live in their home a set number of hours (monthly fee), games seem to get this stigma.
Companies do not like it because it stunts possible revenue. The old subscription models gave players the whole game for $15/month. That was all there was. They were unable to tap into the mega-millions that some gamers feel the need to spend on video game entertainment.
There are also 2 roads here: 1) Players with time 2) Players with money - Time makes no money for developers/publishers.
PS: If a player "feels compelled" to log in when they have no desire to do so, they are playing the wrong game.
this its strange that we might pay for TV to watch one or 2 shows and when off season not even bother with tv . yet when it comes to mmorpg its now a bad thing. i miss the old sub waywhere i had the whole game and thats it. not have to keep buying pieces at a time and the devs deliberately adding stuff to buy
What am I missing that's convinced everyone that it's not a good business model for most games?
Without reading through the other posts, this is what I think.
Players dislike it for the excuse, "I feel compelled to log in every day." Even though they don't feel compelled to watch their cable TV a set number of hours (monthly fee), or use their phone a set number of hours (monthly fee), watch "X" number of NetFlix shows (monthly fee), or live in their home a set number of hours (monthly fee), games seem to get this stigma.
Companies do not like it because it stunts possible revenue. The old subscription models gave players the whole game for $15/month. That was all there was. They were unable to tap into the mega-millions that some gamers feel the need to spend on video game entertainment.
There are also 2 roads here: 1) Players with time 2) Players with money - Time makes no money for developers/publishers.
PS: If a player "feels compelled" to log in when they have no desire to do so, they are playing the wrong game.
this its strange that we might pay for TV to watch one or 2 shows and when off season not even bother with tv . yet when it comes to mmorpg its now a bad thing. i miss the old sub waywhere i had the whole game and thats it. not have to keep buying pieces at a time and the devs deliberately adding stuff to buy
I'm curious what game did you play that only had a sub and never charged for expansions?
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
But did they get more customers than others because their price was lower?
Again, Walmart is very different story. Walmart is a retailer - they are selling same products for lower price. That is not the same as lowering price of YOUR product.
The point is simple.
People play games to have fun.
Does lowering price make the game more fun? No, thus you won't get any more people playing it.
It is generally pretty bad practice to compete with price. In order to make business successful, you have to stand out.
But I thought the whole point of F2P was getting rid of that nasty "barrier for entry"?
The whole g.d. Barrier of entry BS has been going on since we had to pay $$ per hour back in the AOL/TSN days. At this point, it is just beggars and freeloaders.................
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
Apparently I did, otherwise you wouldn't be asking....
Apparently, what you said made me wonder which school taught that rubbish. Basic economics 101: Lower prices mean more customers. No if's, and's, or but's.
Rolls Royce does not build cars for the masses. Chevrolet does. One gets more customers then the other.
Tailored suits are more expensive than off-the-rack suits. One gets more customers then the other.
If you want to sell more of something, be it product or service, do you charge more or less for it? Maybe you should consider taking a real economics class before spouting your inaccuracies?
I'm sure that there have already been plenty of reasonable and true answers to this question up until now and so I'll skip the simple stuff and get right down to the nitty gritty.
Companies don't like the subscription model because they can not manipulate it in the same fashion as they can the pay to win model in order to generate more revenue.
The J.R.R. Tolkien Theory
When the "Lord of the Rings" was adapted to film it was presented in the same fashion (through most of its parts) as it had been presented in the books.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
And, much like a subscription model, it was good. You paid for a product that promised a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that's what you got (although some might say that the second movie really didn't deliver on that).
When "The Hobbit" was released however, they took a book that was only about as long as any of one of the "Lord of the Rings" books and spread that out over the course of three movies as well.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
And although it was still good. What this succeeded in doing was to make YOU, the consumer, have to pay THREE TIMES (that's three prices of admission, three possible 12 dollar buckets of popcorn with a coke, and three separate DVD's and/or Blue Ray's) for only one beginning, one middle, and one end, the same as the previous movies.
No imagine still if the people at the movie theater were able to ENHANCE your Hobbit experience by making it 3D for just a little more money. Imagine if they could promise you that perfect seat in the theater for just a little more money, or do away with those noisy little kids (who's parents should have known better than to bring them to a movie theater) or those noisy adults (who can't stop talking or using their cell phones during the movie) for just a little more cash.
You might think any and all of that was a good deal, and you might pay for any and all of that.
Now imagine that the movie theater PURPOSEFULLY showing the film on a broken projector. Imagine that they are PURPOSEFULLY having employees bring their kids to the shows or sit in the audience and take up all the good seats or make noise or answer their cell phones. Well now you might feel like the only way you are going to even get a chance to enjoy the movie might be to purchase all of the extras yes?
Well consider this. In any pay to win game that is exactly what you are doing. In games like SWTOR, Age of Wushu, Archeage, and soon to be Black Desert Online, what you are presented with as a free player is vastly different and hugely inefficient, almost to the point of being unmanageable, to what you are presented with for just throwing a few dollars at these games. And what you are presented with for paying monthly is again, vastly more efficient than what you may get for only a few dollars here and there and what you get for really dumping your wallet into these things again, VASTLY different than what you get for only paying a monthly sub.
And companies ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS. Because all they have to do is have a couple of marketting guys log on, get you into a group, take you into an area, and cause you to fail, or simply PVP you into the ground and you are instantly into their cash shops buying this and buying that in order to make your character "better" in order to be able to complete content or compete with other players that you should have been able to complete, or compete with for the simple price of the game + the amount of time/effort/and skill that you put into it.
Nothing shows the reality of this better than this video.
You
see, it comes down to some fairly simple math. You can either release a
game and grab as much cash as you can in the amount of time that it
takes for another title to come out or for your playerbase to get bored,
or you can release a game and only generate as much cash it you can
from your monthly subscriptions and hope that it is good enough to
withstand the release of a new title or the boredom of it's players.
Special
note, take a look at some of the quests that the pay to win games put
you up against and realize how hard they are manipulating you.
This is one of Archeage's easiest to attain end-game rings.
It
requires you to go into fairly challenging dungeons at least 150 times
(if you are splitting the loot fairly), manufacture and destroy, or
purchase and destroy, 20 fairly high level items (that can only be
manufactured by owning land, which can only be done by purchasing apex
or paying real money, and apex can only be purchased by attaining gold
which is fairly time intensive for a free player of the game, likewise
purchasing can only be done using gold as well). Grind out another 20
items that only come in fragments in those same dungeons or go through a
dungeon that can only be beaten (without an extreme amount of skill)
using fairly high level crafted gear (which again can only be attained
through crafting/owning land, spending real money in order to purchase
apex, or grinding until your eyes bleed in order to get enough gold,
in-game, to purchase it).
And finally, to amass yet another 60
items that can only be attained randomly within those same fairly
challenging dungeons that can only be run with a minimum of three,
fairly skilled or highly over-geared players.
And all of this only AFTER you manage to perform the majority of the previous steps of the quest.
All
that or you could just spend real cash to buy apex, sell that apex for
gold and use that gold to buy a really good suit of armor and a really
good weapon, and just eat through that content with very little skill,
ability, or understanding.
It's the same concept as the theater presenting you with an inhospitable environment just to trick you into buying the perks.
In this interview Scot Hartsman, CEO of Trion quotes...
"There are two ways to think about the psychology of sales in
free-to-play games. Number one is when I pay for a thing, I get a thing
that I genuinely value and that I’m happy for. The other type of sale is people paying to make the hurting stop."
And
although he says that he and his company try to stay away from what he
calls the "Darker" side of that quote, as you can see from the
information I've provided you just now, they don't try THAT hard.
Add
to that the fact that, because his game was going to be such a money
maker, he could have it funded by venture capital (also mentioned in
that article) and not only be able to pay that off but come out of it
with enough cash to go on and create additional projects and you can see
why, as far as developers are concerned, the casino is the place to
be!!
That is at least until people finally catch on. But you
know what I've been noticing a lot of lately? People don't seem very
smart anymore.
But did they get more customers than others because their price was lower?
Again, Walmart is very different story. Walmart is a retailer - they are selling same products for lower price. That is not the same as lowering price of YOUR product.
The point is simple.
People play games to have fun.
Does lowering price make the game more fun? No, thus you won't get any more people playing it.
It is generally pretty bad practice to compete with price. In order to make business successful, you have to stand out.
But I thought the whole point of F2P was getting rid of that nasty "barrier for entry"?
The whole g.d. Barrier of entry BS has been going on since we had to pay $$ per hour back in the AOL/TSN days. At this point, it is just beggars and freeloaders.................
Yet the F2P folks like to throw that barrier into the debate as a major set-back AND a plus for F2P games. I happen to agree that at this point, video games are inhabited mainly by beggars and freeloaders. There have always been these folks, but now they are the majority.
And then there's this guy, who has always been, and who will always be in your life, at the back door generating even more profits by selling you ways to get around what the other guys are doing.
And in their defense, what they will tell you is that you have a choice. But the choice that they give you is akin to the choice of a horny virgin in a tittie bar with a pocket full of cash. And who is NOT going to take advantage of that? We came to play after all didn't we?
Special note. I have been, for the last year, and will continue to play Archeage. It's a good game. I just know the deal is all. That's what you call "an informed decision".
I think the industry simply moved on from the sub model and now makes games that only have to be good enough to hook free users. It has two sides to it imo.
MMORPG players are often like Hobbits: They don't like Adventures
When I choose a mmorpg, its not for a short duration. With that in mind ($15 a month / $180 for a year and that's not counting cash shop items). Screw that.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Okay, how about Netflix tiered subscriptions. That brought it more customers and strengthened retention.
Who else on the DVD rental market was operating under subscription model? Netlix stood out. Warehouse network and mail delivery? Netflix stood out. Superior analytics? Netflix stood out. No late fees? Netflix stood out. etc.
They didn't try to undercut their competition, they did something different, they were able to quickly adapt to market changes, did a lot of research and were not affraid to try out new things. They stood out and it worked for them.
How about focusing on MMO market and the given context instead of throwing out random company examples?
Apparently, what you said made me wonder which school taught that rubbish. Basic economics 101: Lower prices mean more customers. No if's, and's, or but's.
Rolls Royce does not build cars for the masses. Chevrolet does. One gets more customers then the other.
Tailored suits are more expensive than off-the-rack suits. One gets more customers then the other.
If you want to sell more of something, be it product or service, do you charge more or less for it? Maybe you should consider taking a real economics class before spouting your inaccuracies?
Try to sell those Rollses for the price of Chevrolette and come tell us how it worked for you.
If you want to sell more, you need to be better. There is no way around it.
If you want an example from vehicle market, Ford F series is the top selling vehicle for some years now and it is not the cheapest on the market nor on in it's own category.
If Ford lowered their prices, they would only lose money.
All you have to do is think of how many different ways you could exploit a person's natural sense of competition and wanting to belong and then translate each thing into money in your pocket and then you will understand. I'm not even mad at em for it. I'm mad at everyone else for being so gullible to the point that they will argue on the behalf of the system.
I won't be paying money every month, that's insanity for me and it's not because i live in trash country where we survive each month pay check by pay check. I'd buy a game and purchase cosmetics from the shop, but not pay monthly,because if i pay monthy i feel obliged and forced to play and i may not have time to play then i'll feel bad that i paid money and not used what i paid for.
The difference is that with my sub I pay a one time fee for what I need vs. the gambling scale of the you failed to enchant or destroyed your weapon go buy another one. This is where you pay ten times what a sub fee would cost for the same thing. Don't believe me go into one of the f2p and tell me how much you ended up spending to upgrade a weapon to its highest tier. Got a feeling it will be in the hundreds unless you are the luckiest person alive. Guess what in a p2p without that I get the highest tier for just my time and a flat $15 or less. Oh and when the next xpac come out and your new shiny weapon becomes worthless I can do the same for $15 or less and you spend over a hundred to do it again.
So your complaint is you cannot afford to pay for some content in some MMOs...?
I still fail to see what is supposed to be wrong there....or do you expect to be able to afford anything you desire in life?
Wow there is no where to go with you on this. The difference is I don't believe in nickel and diming your player base. I also do not support gambling in video games as a form of payment.
I support a one fee monthly vs hiding under the guise of f2p and then charging players for things that they have to buy to stay competitive. This also stops a person that has more money like myself from being able to just buy the best options in the game without requiring any effort. I have no problem dropping a couple hundred on a game I plan to stay with, in fact I am one of the few that can do it and not worry about it, I just believe in being up front with your customers and not trying to hide the fact that you are basically milking your customer base for fast profits.
But let me ask you this if you were able to pay $10 and get everything a
game offered why would you say that it is better for you to pay $100
multiple times for the same thing? Only an idiot would support that.
I believe in paid xpac and box prices for up front investment returns with subs being the main form of revenue after the fact. This business practice will not bring in the money like the miss named f2p because a lot of people have no self control and spend unwisely. This is the only reason that most companies have changed to the f2p is that it is a cash cow, it isn't good for consumers just the corporations.
Most f2p games are just throw away games not meant to last much longer than 3 or 4 months to the average consumer. So in return most are put together as fast as possible with the least amount of effort and work they can get by with to make a profit. Now look at the other side if you did the same thing with a p2p game you would lose money faster than you could blink. A p2p game must be good and have staying power to make profit, this is the major difference in the two methods.
Comments
Worth is relative to the person judging the game, isn't it. I find that most games that were designed with a subscription in mind to be far superior to games designed with F2P in mind. Funny how that works, huh. I don't think there is a problem with subscriptions, developers make more money with F2P, at least till the whales start to rebel, then the freeloaders may not find things so peachy king.
Has anyone counted how many F2P games have closed over the last decade versus subscription games closing? I don't believe I have ever seen any company post just how much more money they are making once they convert to F2P from P2P nor how sustainable the revenue is before they have to go cash shop crazy like Turbine and Cryptic have with every item, stat and shortcut available through the store.
I understand there's a psychological obligation when you pay money to something (especially a subscription) where the payer wants to "get their money's worth", but I'm curious why you would've played longer if the game had a subscription.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
its strange that we might pay for TV to watch one or 2 shows and when off season not even bother with tv .
yet when it comes to mmorpg its now a bad thing.
i miss the old sub waywhere i had the whole game and thats it.
not have to keep buying pieces at a time and the devs deliberately adding stuff to buy
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
The whole g.d. Barrier of entry BS has been going on since we had to pay $$ per hour back in the AOL/TSN days. At this point, it is just beggars and freeloaders.................
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Rolls Royce does not build cars for the masses. Chevrolet does. One gets more customers then the other.
Tailored suits are more expensive than off-the-rack suits. One gets more customers then the other.
If you want to sell more of something, be it product or service, do you charge more or less for it? Maybe you should consider taking a real economics class before spouting your inaccuracies?
VG
Companies don't like the subscription model because they can not manipulate it in the same fashion as they can the pay to win model in order to generate more revenue.
The J.R.R. Tolkien Theory
When the "Lord of the Rings" was adapted to film it was presented in the same fashion (through most of its parts) as it had been presented in the books.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
And, much like a subscription model, it was good. You paid for a product that promised a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that's what you got (although some might say that the second movie really didn't deliver on that).When "The Hobbit" was released however, they took a book that was only about as long as any of one of the "Lord of the Rings" books and spread that out over the course of three movies as well.
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
- The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
And although it was still good. What this succeeded in doing was to make YOU, the consumer, have to pay THREE TIMES (that's three prices of admission, three possible 12 dollar buckets of popcorn with a coke, and three separate DVD's and/or Blue Ray's) for only one beginning, one middle, and one end, the same as the previous movies.No imagine still if the people at the movie theater were able to ENHANCE your Hobbit experience by making it 3D for just a little more money. Imagine if they could promise you that perfect seat in the theater for just a little more money, or do away with those noisy little kids (who's parents should have known better than to bring them to a movie theater) or those noisy adults (who can't stop talking or using their cell phones during the movie) for just a little more cash.
You might think any and all of that was a good deal, and you might pay for any and all of that.
Now imagine that the movie theater PURPOSEFULLY showing the film on a broken projector. Imagine that they are PURPOSEFULLY having employees bring their kids to the shows or sit in the audience and take up all the good seats or make noise or answer their cell phones. Well now you might feel like the only way you are going to even get a chance to enjoy the movie might be to purchase all of the extras yes?
Well consider this. In any pay to win game that is exactly what you are doing. In games like SWTOR, Age of Wushu, Archeage, and soon to be Black Desert Online, what you are presented with as a free player is vastly different and hugely inefficient, almost to the point of being unmanageable, to what you are presented with for just throwing a few dollars at these games. And what you are presented with for paying monthly is again, vastly more efficient than what you may get for only a few dollars here and there and what you get for really dumping your wallet into these things again, VASTLY different than what you get for only paying a monthly sub.
And companies ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS. Because all they have to do is have a couple of marketting guys log on, get you into a group, take you into an area, and cause you to fail, or simply PVP you into the ground and you are instantly into their cash shops buying this and buying that in order to make your character "better" in order to be able to complete content or compete with other players that you should have been able to complete, or compete with for the simple price of the game + the amount of time/effort/and skill that you put into it.
Nothing shows the reality of this better than this video.
https://youtu.be/s9GqaJaS4bs
And that is why companies prefer the pay to win model over the subscription model.
Continued.......
You see, it comes down to some fairly simple math. You can either release a game and grab as much cash as you can in the amount of time that it takes for another title to come out or for your playerbase to get bored, or you can release a game and only generate as much cash it you can from your monthly subscriptions and hope that it is good enough to withstand the release of a new title or the boredom of it's players.
Special note, take a look at some of the quests that the pay to win games put you up against and realize how hard they are manipulating you.
This is one of Archeage's easiest to attain end-game rings.
http://www.ign.com/wikis/archeage/Ynys_Guardian_Ring
It requires you to go into fairly challenging dungeons at least 150 times (if you are splitting the loot fairly), manufacture and destroy, or purchase and destroy, 20 fairly high level items (that can only be manufactured by owning land, which can only be done by purchasing apex or paying real money, and apex can only be purchased by attaining gold which is fairly time intensive for a free player of the game, likewise purchasing can only be done using gold as well). Grind out another 20 items that only come in fragments in those same dungeons or go through a dungeon that can only be beaten (without an extreme amount of skill) using fairly high level crafted gear (which again can only be attained through crafting/owning land, spending real money in order to purchase apex, or grinding until your eyes bleed in order to get enough gold, in-game, to purchase it).
And finally, to amass yet another 60 items that can only be attained randomly within those same fairly challenging dungeons that can only be run with a minimum of three, fairly skilled or highly over-geared players.
And all of this only AFTER you manage to perform the majority of the previous steps of the quest.
All that or you could just spend real cash to buy apex, sell that apex for gold and use that gold to buy a really good suit of armor and a really good weapon, and just eat through that content with very little skill, ability, or understanding.
It's the same concept as the theater presenting you with an inhospitable environment just to trick you into buying the perks.
In this interview Scot Hartsman, CEO of Trion quotes...
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2014/09/05/thought-leaders-in-online-gaming-scott-hartsman-ceo-of-trion-worlds-part-6/
"There are two ways to think about the psychology of sales in free-to-play games. Number one is when I pay for a thing, I get a thing that I genuinely value and that I’m happy for. The other type of sale is people paying to make the hurting stop."
And although he says that he and his company try to stay away from what he calls the "Darker" side of that quote, as you can see from the information I've provided you just now, they don't try THAT hard.
Add to that the fact that, because his game was going to be such a money maker, he could have it funded by venture capital (also mentioned in that article) and not only be able to pay that off but come out of it with enough cash to go on and create additional projects and you can see why, as far as developers are concerned, the casino is the place to be!!
That is at least until people finally catch on. But you know what I've been noticing a lot of lately? People don't seem very smart anymore.
And so there you have it.
VG
http://www.wired.com/2008/11/ff-ige/?currentPage=all
The shit is deep.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Warehouse network and mail delivery? Netflix stood out.
Superior analytics? Netflix stood out.
No late fees? Netflix stood out.
etc.
They didn't try to undercut their competition, they did something different, they were able to quickly adapt to market changes, did a lot of research and were not affraid to try out new things. They stood out and it worked for them.
How about focusing on MMO market and the given context instead of throwing out random company examples?
If you want to sell more, you need to be better. There is no way around it.
If Ford lowered their prices, they would only lose money.
Can we stop comparing apples to oranges?
No, change of business model =/= lowering your prices.
I support a one fee monthly vs hiding under the guise of f2p and then charging players for things that they have to buy to stay competitive. This also stops a person that has more money like myself from being able to just buy the best options in the game without requiring any effort. I have no problem dropping a couple hundred on a game I plan to stay with, in fact I am one of the few that can do it and not worry about it, I just believe in being up front with your customers and not trying to hide the fact that you are basically milking your customer base for fast profits.
But let me ask you this if you were able to pay $10 and get everything a game offered why would you say that it is better for you to pay $100 multiple times for the same thing? Only an idiot would support that.
I believe in paid xpac and box prices for up front investment returns with subs being the main form of revenue after the fact. This business practice will not bring in the money like the miss named f2p because a lot of people have no self control and spend unwisely. This is the only reason that most companies have changed to the f2p is that it is a cash cow, it isn't good for consumers just the corporations.
Most f2p games are just throw away games not meant to last much longer than 3 or 4 months to the average consumer. So in return most are put together as fast as possible with the least amount of effort and work they can get by with to make a profit. Now look at the other side if you did the same thing with a p2p game you would lose money faster than you could blink. A p2p game must be good and have staying power to make profit, this is the major difference in the two methods.
f2p = fast cash, short term normally