How much does the extra server traffic REALLY cost. lets be honest here.
They believe they are entitled to a free game.
If the company says it's free, then of course they believe that it's free.
Absolutely.
What part of FREE to play implies cost?
Point 1: You know it costs money to run and create games regardless of monetization label. Point 2: What you 'HAVE' to do, and what is the 'RIGHT' thing to do aren't always the same. Point 3: The 'RIGHT' thing to do is support a game so that it can afford future content and new games and not to rely on others to do the 'RIGHT' thing while you do the 'HAVE' thing. Point 4: Do the 'RIGHT' thing.
How much does the extra server traffic REALLY cost. lets be honest here.
They believe they are entitled to a free game.
If the company says it's free, then of course they believe that it's free.
Absolutely.
What part of FREE to play implies cost?
When did people forget the adage "there is no such thing as a free lunch?"
Few things in life are free, even if you aren't paying, someone has to.
I was taught by my parents to always pay for my way in life, and am uncomfortable if others pay for me, be it a restaurant check or in a video game.
I'm always wary of free offers in life such as vacations, dinners or electronics because they lead to attempts get me to buy expensive timeshares, investment opportunities, buyers clubs or insurance.
Sure, if you are under 25 you may not know all of this, but anyone older really should know better.
And my comment was taken out of a context of which is was intended. Someone made a comment about it doesn't cost them much for bandwidth. They leftout the "therefore they can give me a game for free" which inspired my comment.
You and I are older and were raised in an age where we had to work for things and pay our own way. In high school, I had a job and I was a volunteer on our towns ambulance department. Today kids seems to be given things or don't have to work for them. So they expect they don't have to work for anything.
How about we do this. Turn the freeloaders into workers in mmoRPGs. They work to gain some kind of currency. Subscribers can earn items that can be sold in an AH in exchange for the freeloader currency at a cost of what the market can bear. Subscribers can use the freeloader currency to open up new levels of content. Each level of content gives better challenge and rewards. Make them earn stuff.
not a bad start .. But instead lets use Facebook (social Media ) Find paying subscribers near them , and make them cut the grass , wash the car ,put the trash out .......etc .......
I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe these companies know how much it costs to have basically' pixels active on the server' and they have a grasp over if its worht it or not and if not then they will like not do it.
I also think this is one of the last places to test out ones latest morality simulator build.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
"Free" players are only useful into making your cash shop game seem popular.
This, in turn, prompts the whales to spend more, to make them feel superior, in some way, to all of the weaker free players they can lord it over.
This is done at the cost of building your game around game mechanics that are generally destructive to good game play, and of course giving your company a reputation for making cash shop funneling crap MMOs. Like just about all the Asian producers, they don't care about making good games, most of them.
As how this applies to formerly "P2P" MMOs that converted to F2P, it is just an attempt to wring a few more dollars out of a game that has already paid for primary production, and really it does not cost much to keep a game in maintenance mode.
Free players there are largely the formerly P2P players that tend to stop in once in a while, and don't stay when they see the restrictions they are now under unless they start paying again, to play a game is generally not as good as before, or is not perceived as good. Or people are pissed off about the crappy f2P system. EQ2, TOR, and others are examples of this.
TLDR is that F2P players only exist as a function of your game not being good enough for people to want to pay for it.
Wow, a lot of vile comments for this discussion. I'm curious as to what is considered a free player; is a free player someone who has not spent a dime on a game? Or is it someone who is not a patron, and doesn't pay for a subscription? Is a person considered a free player if they make occasional marketplace purchases? It seems that whales are respected more than "free players". Aren't whales part of the problem?
I prefer when you buy a game, and then you own it; with no additional purchases, but I guess that is considered a thing of the past. I'm in my 20's, and I'm old enough to remember the days where you could buy a game, and you owned it. The sad thing is, game developers are greedy; simply buying the game is no longer enough. They don't want you to spend hundreds; they want you to spend THOUSANDS. I find that to be ridiculous!
It seems that some players were willing (in my opinion) to spend way too much; they ruined the gaming industry. If being a whale is the new definition of a person who supports the game, then I guess that gaming is too rich for my blood. Personally, I do buy items on the marketplace, and I currently do not play a game with a subscription. From reading comments on other threads, I've noticed some people don't mind paying several subscriptions, and some people throw hundreds or thousands at Kickstarter, where are people getting all this money?
"I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." ~ C. S. Lewis
How much does the extra server traffic REALLY cost. lets be honest here.
They believe they are entitled to a free game.
If the company says it's free, then of course they believe that it's free.
Absolutely.
What part of FREE to play implies cost?
When did people forget the adage "there is no such thing as a free lunch?"
Few things in life are free, even if you aren't paying, someone has to.
I was taught by my parents to always pay for my way in life, and am uncomfortable if others pay for me, be it a restaurant check or in a video game.
I'm always wary of free offers in life such as vacations, dinners or electronics because they lead to attempts get me to buy expensive timeshares, investment opportunities, buyers clubs or insurance.
Sure, if you are under 25 you may not know all of this, but anyone older really should know better.
And my comment was taken out of a context of which is was intended. Someone made a comment about it doesn't cost them much for bandwidth. They leftout the "therefore they can give me a game for free" which inspired my comment.
You and I are older and were raised in an age where we had to work for things and pay our own way. In high school, I had a job and I was a volunteer on our towns ambulance department. Today kids seems to be given things or don't have to work for them. So they expect they don't have to work for anything.
How about we do this. Turn the freeloaders into workers in mmoRPGs. They work to gain some kind of currency. Subscribers can earn items that can be sold in an AH in exchange for the freeloader currency at a cost of what the market can bear. Subscribers can use the freeloader currency to open up new levels of content. Each level of content gives better challenge and rewards. Make them earn stuff.
not a bad start .. But instead lets use Facebook (social Media ) Find paying subscribers near them , and make them cut the grass , wash the car ,put the trash out .......etc .......
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?"
"Free" players are only useful into making your cash shop game seem popular.
This, in turn, prompts the whales to spend more, to make them feel superior, in some way, to all of the weaker free players they can lord it over.
This is done at the cost of building your game around game mechanics that are generally destructive to good game play, and of course giving your company a reputation for making cash shop funneling crap MMOs. Like just about all the Asian producers, they don't care about making good games, most of them.
As how this applies to formerly "P2P" MMOs that converted to F2P, it is just an attempt to wring a few more dollars out of a game that has already paid for primary production, and really it does not cost much to keep a game in maintenance mode.
Free players there are largely the formerly P2P players that tend to stop in once in a while, and don't stay when they see the restrictions they are now under unless they start paying again, to play a game is generally not as good as before, or is not perceived as good. Or people are pissed off about the crappy f2P system. EQ2, TOR, and others are examples of this.
TLDR is that F2P players only exist as a function of your game not being good enough for people to want to pay for it.
This is absolutely true; I don't know whether to agree with this comment or not. Is this the player's fault or a problem with greedy game developers? Nobody should be forced to spend hundreds or thousands on a game. I realize that for some, this is their only form of entertainment (and it is worth paying for), but I have my limit.
"I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." ~ C. S. Lewis
I don't really care about the morality of the situation. I care that pure free to play with cash shop leads to the whale model. Whale model is about almost everyone playing for free and a few people paying ridiculous sums of cash to basically be god.
Whale models are only really fun for whales... until the whales realize just how much they have spent on a video game.
Subscription without cash shop models are the antithesis of the whale models in that everyone pays equally to participate and there is no advantage to be had in paying in more.
Freemium is in my mind the ideal compromise in that it requires everyone to pay in to not suck but if done well the disparity between a regular subscriber and a whale is much smaller. It also is a great model if you want to really try the game before paying for it and not be limited on how long you have to try it / if for some reason you can't afford a subscription for a month but still want to play with your friends.
Of course I've seen articles about how Freemium is one of the worst scams in gaming here on MMORPG.com. But then again they have also published interviews with Derek Smart so I have to question if they quality control any of their content.
I don't really care about the morality of the situation. I care that pure free to play with cash shop leads to the whale model. Whale model is about almost everyone playing for free and a few people paying ridiculous sums of cash to basically be god.
Whale models are only really fun for whales... until the whales realize just how much they have spent on a video game.
Subscription without cash shop models are the antithesis of the whale models in that everyone pays equally to participate and there is no advantage to be had in paying in more.
Freemium is in my mind the ideal compromise in that it requires everyone to pay in to not suck but if done well the disparity between a regular subscriber and a whale is much smaller. It also is a great model if you want to really try the game before paying for it and not be limited on how long you have to try it / if for some reason you can't afford a subscription for a month but still want to play with your friends.
Of course I've seen articles about how Freemium is one of the worst scams in gaming here on MMORPG.com. But then again they have also published interviews with Derek Smart so I have to question if they quality control any of their content.
taking the 'bottom line view' the bottom line is this.
if it was not working companies would not be doing it. pure and simple.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
taking the 'bottom line view' the bottom line is this.
if it was not working companies would not be doing it. pure and simple.
Which is why most of the MMOs I've played that are free to play use some kind of freemium model as opposed to pure free to play with cash shop (ESO, ArcheAge, SWTOR, LotRO, DDO etc.) and it's mainly crappy MMOs that nobody plays (Knight Online, Archlord etc.) that go with a pure F2P.
I would also say the MMO industry is more out of tune with the needs of their consumers than any other industry though. Which is why we keep getting WoW clones when everyone who wants one is already playing one and you see people leaving for MOBAs and Steam games in droves.
The assumption that paying players are whales is really questionable, i seriously doubt there are all that many players who are all that happy to pay $100's a month to play a game, the reality is that players who do pay, and i don't mean huge amounts either, are just playing the game the way it was meant to be played, those who don't pay anything, aren't benefitting from 'whales' they are just playing a reduced version of the game, if they are satisfied with that, fine, but don't expect to be able to compete or have a comparable experience in the game as someone who has paid. The trouble is of course is that free players tend to complain about how unfair it is, and that if a game claims to be F2P then they should have access to everything, and not have to pay to unlock game features etc. which is an entirely unrealistic expectation, and players who do not pay should not expect to be entitled to experience the full game, that is how F2P games are monetised after all, its not about relying on some 'semi mythical' whale of a player who generously throws around $1000's without a care in the world.
The entire concept of whales is that there aren't many of them. My "assumption" is based on an article I read a couple years ago in which employees of some of the major F2P companies were coming forward laying down the way they operate.
Their entire business model relies on getting people addicted to RNG cash shop items and letting their lack of self control do the rest. They don't even care that the vast majority of players never pay in at all. Exploiting a few people with addictive personalities for their life savings draws sufficient revenue. F2P games have the same target market as casinos.
Moral issues aside. Nobody is a winner in these kinds of games. You either get your butt handed to you for free, or you ruin your life to win in a virtual world. If you notice a game using a pure F2P monetization model, particularly one with RNG cash shop items, your best option is to get out and get out fast.
That's not to say there is anything wrong with games like Elder Scrolls Online where you are paying either a monthly subscription for all content access or buying the content you want à la carte but if the monetization model resembles an iPhone game... run for your life.
The assumption that paying players are whales is really questionable, i seriously doubt there are all that many players who are all that happy to pay $100's a month to play a game, the reality is that players who do pay, and i don't mean huge amounts either, are just playing the game the way it was meant to be played, those who don't pay anything, aren't benefitting from 'whales' they are just playing a reduced version of the game, if they are satisfied with that, fine, but don't expect to be able to compete or have a comparable experience in the game as someone who has paid. The trouble is of course is that free players tend to complain about how unfair it is, and that if a game claims to be F2P then they should have access to everything, and not have to pay to unlock game features etc. which is an entirely unrealistic expectation, and players who do not pay should not expect to be entitled to experience the full game, that is how F2P games are monetised after all, its not about relying on some 'semi mythical' whale of a player who generously throws around $1000's without a care in the world.
I'm fairly certain there is a large number of people who spend a LOT. It's a small minority if you consider the whole population of a game, but it's also the core of the business model. It's definitely not rare - high spenders are a known category of the player base.
I don't work for a studio, so I don't have any direct numbers. But from the articles I read and the people I talk to, it seems "whales" are more common than you'd think. I've spoken to several people in the army, who are high spenders. They are happy to spend 500$+ a month on a single game. Their pay is decent, with not many spending options in the real life.
I know people who spend similar amounts on RNG loot boxes. And most of these games we all talk about are serious MMOs. They require time investment as well. They also offer a lot of gameplay not directly tied to micro transactions.
If you look at games such as Farmville, it has to be significantly worse. Those games are built directly around micro transactions - you literally pay to do stuff in the game. Imagine if you had to pay 5$ in WoW each time you wanted to kill a monster without waiting 2 hours. Those games also attract people who are not typical gamers. High end business executives. There has to be a good number of people who pay in the thousands a month.
Which made me think about the non-payers. There's a lot of good responses in this thread. Based on the comments, I suppose the non-payers would naturally "enhance" the experience for those that pay.
Wow, a lot of vile comments for this discussion. I'm curious as to what is considered a free player; is a free player someone who has not spent a dime on a game? Or is it someone who is not a patron, and doesn't pay for a subscription? Is a person considered a free player if they make occasional marketplace purchases? It seems that whales are respected more than "free players". Aren't whales part of the problem?
I prefer when you buy a game, and then you own it; with no additional purchases, but I guess that is considered a thing of the past. I'm in my 20's, and I'm old enough to remember the days where you could buy a game, and you owned it. The sad thing is, game developers are greedy; simply buying the game is no longer enough. They don't want you to spend hundreds; they want you to spend THOUSANDS. I find that to be ridiculous!
It seems that some players were willing (in my opinion) to spend way too much; they ruined the gaming industry. If being a whale is the new definition of a person who supports the game, then I guess that gaming is too rich for my blood. Personally, I do buy items on the marketplace, and I currently do not play a game with a subscription. From reading comments on other threads, I've noticed some people don't mind paying several subscriptions, and some people throw hundreds or thousands at Kickstarter, where are people getting all this money?
"I'm curious as to what is considered a free player" - someone who has not spent money yet on the game.
"Is a person considered a free player if they make occasional marketplace purchases?" - Once they have made a purchase they are considered to have "converted" to a paying customer. How long they are considered a paying customer and the weight of the money they paid is also based on whether they are an active user (played in the past 30 days) or not.
"They don't want you to spend hundreds; they want you to spend THOUSANDS." The people that are spending thousands had already been doing it for the past 10-15 years. The difference is that they money is now going to the developers instead of a 3rd party.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
The assumption that paying players are whales is really questionable, i seriously doubt there are all that many players who are all that happy to pay $100's a month to play a game,
Correct. Whales often make up just 1-10% of the 10-20% that pay money in a F2P game.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
It depends. People who pirate single player games and never pay for them aren't useful. In MMORPGs, gold spammers sure aren't useful.
People who hang around in pay to win games so that the whales have someone to feel superior to are essential to such games. If non-paying players provide a critical mass for paying players to group with or otherwise make the game more playable and interesting for paying players, that's huge.
And that's ignoring that people who start out as non-paying players might someday pay for the game.
I'm gonna say no, simply because I don't wanna encourage or praise people for being leeches. It's extra fun when they're leeching, and then start complaining about everything with an entitlement that would make you think they'd personally funded the entire game to that point.
Yes, word of mouth brings in more $$ than silence.
While you may not play game x someone else does and they tell someone else who tells someone else and so on ..'Six Degrees of Separation' is the difference between ShamWow! and Shamwhat?
Making that access "free" quadruples that effect...giving the game a larger playerbase whether transient or stable and thus a larger % of player buying whatever.
If done right,many example MMO's floating around, the percentage of paying players(big and small) will more then offset the cost of totally free players...iow they make a profit.
Wow, a lot of vile comments for this discussion. I'm curious as to what is considered a free player; is a free player someone who has not spent a dime on a game? Or is it someone who is not a patron, and doesn't pay for a subscription? Is a person considered a free player if they make occasional marketplace purchases? It seems that whales are respected more than "free players". Aren't whales part of the problem?
I prefer when you buy a game, and then you own it; with no additional purchases, but I guess that is considered a thing of the past. I'm in my 20's, and I'm old enough to remember the days where you could buy a game, and you owned it. The sad thing is, game developers are greedy; simply buying the game is no longer enough. They don't want you to spend hundreds; they want you to spend THOUSANDS. I find that to be ridiculous!
It seems that some players were willing (in my opinion) to spend way too much; they ruined the gaming industry. If being a whale is the new definition of a person who supports the game, then I guess that gaming is too rich for my blood. Personally, I do buy items on the marketplace, and I currently do not play a game with a subscription. From reading comments on other threads, I've noticed some people don't mind paying several subscriptions, and some people throw hundreds or thousands at Kickstarter, where are people getting all this money?
"I'm curious as to what is considered a free player" - someone who has not spent money yet on the game.
"Is a person considered a free player if they make occasional marketplace purchases?" - Once they have made a purchase they are considered to have "converted" to a paying customer. How long they are considered a paying customer and the weight of the money they paid is also based on whether they are an active user (played in the past 30 days) or not.
"They don't want you to spend hundreds; they want you to spend THOUSANDS." The people that are spending thousands had already been doing it for the past 10-15 years. The difference is that they money is now going to the developers instead of a 3rd party.
I don't dislike or hate on people who don't spend on games in general. However, I don't like the people who feel entitled to play for free because they know others are paying. It amounts to the same thing, obviously, it's the attitude behind the act (or lack of act) that irritates me.
There are some games that I don't put money into and there are some that I do. Some games are very casual and I only play sporadically, so I don't feel the need. However, for those games that I actively patronize, I make it a point to spend a bit of coin to show my support and appreciation of it.
The reason why I commented on this thread is because some people suggest that "free players" are lured to make the game look healthy, and should be limited to punching bags for whales. They propose that they shouldn't progress at all in the game, but how much money should it cost? My boyfriend was a patron in ArcheAge; he was paying, and he was not a "freeloader". He even purchased the founders pack. However, in order to be geared, you have to shell out serious money in ArcheAge, if you don't know about the regrade system in ArcheAge (his divine bow breaks at 3:36).
My boyfriend was a patron for a year, and we had a good amount of land. I had to break it to him that he would have to shell out MORE money if he wanted to get geared for unsafe trade runs, or that we would lose our trade packs. My boyfriend, like some players in ArcheAge, just want to be farmers. That's not something that I wanted to do; the point is, whether you are a paying or a non-paying player, the cost to get geared,etc. is ridiculous. The system (at least in ArcheAge) is set up for people with unhealthy spending habits. I understand that there are other ways to get geared, like with most games, either with your time or money. The point is, some games DO want to bleed you out of your money, in @Abuz0r comment, "only paying customers should win.", but what if they don't win? What if some games are really designed to be appealing to whales? What if simply being a patron is not enough?
This is the problem that I have if non-paying players are not "winning", and patrons are not winning, who is really winning, it's the whales. So does it make a difference if you're a non-paying player or a patron? I don't think so, as @SEANMCAD said "this evaluation of the morality of player who exercise the given option of playing for free is getting asinine. gaming is not a morality simulator".
From some of the comments above, it seems that people are trying to demonize non-paying players; they want to separate players into groups. I understand that games should be supported, and it irritates me that people feel entitled to a free game, but this whole elitist attitude that's going around, is equality sickening. It seems that some people fail to see the real issue; It's the players that are in between that are getting affected the most. Whales are allowing non-paying players to play for free (but they will never compete with them anyways). Patrons won't get ahead (yet they are paying customers) because the whales are spending MORE money.
Now the question for this thread is "Are non-paying customers useful?" Who is really "useful", who wants to be a punching bag for some whale that spent thousands on a game. This is the reason I quit AA, and never played BDO, to me BDO is just ArcheAge 2.0. I'm hoping for a game that breaks away from the downward spiral that was caused by F2P games. F2P games are certainly a mess, the games that I prefer, are the games that you buy and you own it; with NO cash shops.
"I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." ~ C. S. Lewis
Sometimes fear of PvP is far greater than its threat realized. This is certainly the case with ArcheAge trade runs. My guild composed almost entirely of 1-3 month old characters would do multiple trade runs a day with a success rate significantly greater than 90%.
While that was largely due to my smuggling skills from my Freelancer days that I passed down to them, it does prove the point that gear disparity does not automatically mean success or failure in running or stealing trade packs.
However we did encounter many scenarios in which we wanted to go head to head with opponents, and a 2000 gear score difference turned out to be an incredible difference to overcome. There were situations where someone 3-4K higher than us could solo wipe 5 to 6 of us because they could one shot everyone and our attacks did little if anything.
The root problem there was not pay to win. If you played long enough or used high enough income revenue methods you could achieve the same results. The problem was simply that the power disparity was too high. When someone can one or two shot a character you've poured hundreds of hours into, the game is broken. No matter how they reached that point.
During the last couple of weeks of my time playing ArcheAge I discovered the true elite class of players in that game was not credit card warriors but people who played the auction house because it was a consistently replicatable income source while swiping is difficult to keep going for very long.
Comments
Point 2: What you 'HAVE' to do, and what is the 'RIGHT' thing to do aren't always the same.
Point 3: The 'RIGHT' thing to do is support a game so that it can afford future content and new games and not to rely on others to do the 'RIGHT' thing while you do the 'HAVE' thing.
Point 4: Do the 'RIGHT' thing.
I self identify as a monkey.
I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe these companies know how much it costs to have basically' pixels active on the server' and they have a grasp over if its worht it or not and if not then they will like not do it.
I also think this is one of the last places to test out ones latest morality simulator build.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
This, in turn, prompts the whales to spend more, to make them feel superior, in some way, to all of the weaker free players they can lord it over.
This is done at the cost of building your game around game mechanics that are generally destructive to good game play, and of course giving your company a reputation for making cash shop funneling crap MMOs. Like just about all the Asian producers, they don't care about making good games, most of them.
As how this applies to formerly "P2P" MMOs that converted to F2P, it is just an attempt to wring a few more dollars out of a game that has already paid for primary production, and really it does not cost much to keep a game in maintenance mode.
Free players there are largely the formerly P2P players that tend to stop in once in a while, and don't stay when they see the restrictions they are now under unless they start paying again, to play a game is generally not as good as before, or is not perceived as good. Or people are pissed off about the crappy f2P system. EQ2, TOR, and others are examples of this.
TLDR is that F2P players only exist as a function of your game not being good enough for people to want to pay for it.
Well ... sort of. Except for the douchebags, which are a lot of them really. But then the issue changes to "do douchebags have value?"
But even then, when I meet a douchebag, I never think to ask "are you a paying douchebag?"
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
And have them act as a taxi service.
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?"
Whale models are only really fun for whales... until the whales realize just how much they have spent on a video game.
Subscription without cash shop models are the antithesis of the whale models in that everyone pays equally to participate and there is no advantage to be had in paying in more.
Freemium is in my mind the ideal compromise in that it requires everyone to pay in to not suck but if done well the disparity between a regular subscriber and a whale is much smaller. It also is a great model if you want to really try the game before paying for it and not be limited on how long you have to try it / if for some reason you can't afford a subscription for a month but still want to play with your friends.
Of course I've seen articles about how Freemium is one of the worst scams in gaming here on MMORPG.com. But then again they have also published interviews with Derek Smart so I have to question if they quality control any of their content.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I would also say the MMO industry is more out of tune with the needs of their consumers than any other industry though. Which is why we keep getting WoW clones when everyone who wants one is already playing one and you see people leaving for MOBAs and Steam games in droves.
The trouble is of course is that free players tend to complain about how unfair it is, and that if a game claims to be F2P then they should have access to everything, and not have to pay to unlock game features etc. which is an entirely unrealistic expectation, and players who do not pay should not expect to be entitled to experience the full game, that is how F2P games are monetised after all, its not about relying on some 'semi mythical' whale of a player who generously throws around $1000's without a care in the world.
Their entire business model relies on getting people addicted to RNG cash shop items and letting their lack of self control do the rest. They don't even care that the vast majority of players never pay in at all. Exploiting a few people with addictive personalities for their life savings draws sufficient revenue. F2P games have the same target market as casinos.
Moral issues aside. Nobody is a winner in these kinds of games. You either get your butt handed to you for free, or you ruin your life to win in a virtual world. If you notice a game using a pure F2P monetization model, particularly one with RNG cash shop items, your best option is to get out and get out fast.
That's not to say there is anything wrong with games like Elder Scrolls Online where you are paying either a monthly subscription for all content access or buying the content you want à la carte but if the monetization model resembles an iPhone game... run for your life.
I don't work for a studio, so I don't have any direct numbers. But from the articles I read and the people I talk to, it seems "whales" are more common than you'd think. I've spoken to several people in the army, who are high spenders. They are happy to spend 500$+ a month on a single game. Their pay is decent, with not many spending options in the real life.
I know people who spend similar amounts on RNG loot boxes. And most of these games we all talk about are serious MMOs. They require time investment as well. They also offer a lot of gameplay not directly tied to micro transactions.
If you look at games such as Farmville, it has to be significantly worse. Those games are built directly around micro transactions - you literally pay to do stuff in the game. Imagine if you had to pay 5$ in WoW each time you wanted to kill a monster without waiting 2 hours. Those games also attract people who are not typical gamers. High end business executives. There has to be a good number of people who pay in the thousands a month.
Which made me think about the non-payers. There's a lot of good responses in this thread. Based on the comments, I suppose the non-payers would naturally "enhance" the experience for those that pay.
"I'm curious as to what is considered a free player" - someone who has not spent money yet on the game.
"Is a person considered a free player if they make occasional marketplace purchases?" - Once they have made a purchase they are considered to have "converted" to a paying customer. How long they are considered a paying customer and the weight of the money they paid is also based on whether they are an active user (played in the past 30 days) or not.
"They don't want you to spend hundreds; they want you to spend THOUSANDS." The people that are spending thousands had already been doing it for the past 10-15 years. The difference is that they money is now going to the developers instead of a 3rd party.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
People who hang around in pay to win games so that the whales have someone to feel superior to are essential to such games. If non-paying players provide a critical mass for paying players to group with or otherwise make the game more playable and interesting for paying players, that's huge.
And that's ignoring that people who start out as non-paying players might someday pay for the game.
Are non-paying customers useful?
Yes, word of mouth brings in more $$ than silence.
While you may not play game x someone else does and they tell someone else who tells someone else and so on ..'Six Degrees of Separation' is the difference between ShamWow! and Shamwhat?
Making that access "free" quadruples that effect...giving the game a larger playerbase whether transient or stable and thus a larger % of player buying whatever.
If done right,many example MMO's floating around, the percentage of paying players(big and small) will more then offset the cost of totally free players...iow they make a profit.
There are some games that I don't put money into and there are some that I do. Some games are very casual and I only play sporadically, so I don't feel the need. However, for those games that I actively patronize, I make it a point to spend a bit of coin to show my support and appreciation of it.
I self identify as a monkey.