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Where are the N/A Game Developers?
CenCal
Member Posts: 60
Just wondering..... I have seen many beautiful F2P games with stunning graphics, with various features/servers and most of them seem to be of Asian/European origin. Why are many N/A developers falling by the wayside? There is a HUGE game market but N/A devs seem to be missing the boat. Discuss......
Comments
I cal trollbait. We all know there's too many anti-F2P players out there to find a market for it, but if you need an example of where there has been success; DDO, Free Realms
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In my opinion, probably because it's cheaper to let a Korean dev shop crank them out then just get a licence.
I could be wrong, I probably am, but it's what I think.
Those aren't great examples.
DDO was developed and released as a subscription MMO. Just not well, apparently. But it got a second chance at life in the F2P world.
Free Realms - well how 'successful' that has been is debatable. SOE layed off 5% of their staff soon after it launched and the only statistic we ever hear about is the number of registered users - which says nothing more than how many people have tried it.
As for where the free-to-play N/A game developers are, well I'm going to dare to be facetious and say they're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Rather than developing free-to-play games supported by item shops, they're trying to develop subscription games further supported by item shops. They see it as the best of both worlds for them. For players though....
That 5% from SOE was most likely the Matrix Online crew. That happened due to the team leader paying more atention to Freerealms instead of the project he was in charge of.
As for DDO it was done well, it used standard D&D rule sets which just isn't everyones cup of tea.
For a F2P MMO game in North America, Free Reals is very successful.
As for N/A game developers in general, they're creating subscription-based games, obviously. This site is full of them. F2P is not as popular in the Western markets as it is in the East. Maybe that's starting to change, but fortunately it's slow going.