Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Why it makes sense for AAA games to plan to start out as subscription and then later go "free to los
Quizzical
Member LegendaryPosts: 25,507
Let's suppose that you're in charge of a heavily hyped AAA MMORPG. Let's furthermore suppose that it's a year before scheduled launch (which you figure means about two years before actual launch), and you're trying to decide on a business model. There's still time to change a lot of things before launch, so nothing is set in stone just yet.
You know that AAA games used to be basically all subscription in the west. But you've also seen the trend toward "free to play". So you start thinking, should the game go with:
a) a traditional subscription model ($50 to buy a box, then $15/month), or
b) a "free to play" item mall model?
I say that the correct answer is neither. What you're better off doing is to plan right from the start that the game will launch with option (a), and then as subscription numbers fall with the passage of time, you later add a free trial. Once that's not enough to keep your player base (not just subscriber base) up, you eventually convert the game to option (b). And furthermore, you plan this well before launch, so you know exactly what your "free to play" item mall is going to consist of and have it in mind when coding stuff long before launch.
So why have the planned switch rather than sticking with option (a)? Look how the switch has revitalized struggling subscription games. If your game starts struggling, you want to have everything ready so it's easy to flip a switch and go "free to play", rather than needing months to prepare for it after it becomes necessary. The only question is when it will be necessary.
Perhaps the harder question is, if you know you're going to go with option (b) eventually, then why not just go there to start? Why start out as a subscription game and only convert later? There are two answers to this. First, a subscriber is worth more than a random player in a "free to play" game. This is especially so in the first month when people are paying $50 to get access to the game, rather than the subsequent $15/month. If you have people willing to pay a lot to get access sooner, then why not let them? Selling a million boxes at $50 each is good money. You can still get money from the "free to play" crowd that won't pay a subscription fee later.
The other answer is a more stable player population. You know how games often have a ton of players flood in on launch day, and then many of them soon leave? For many games, this means you have to open way too many servers on launch day, knowing full well that you're going to have to merge most of them later. That's disruptive. Even for games with better methods of spreading players out (and your game does have a better method than the stupid separate servers model, doesn't it? If not, then you're fired.), you'd still much prefer to spread out the times when players pick up the game rather than having wild swings.
So what you can do is to start out with a head start for preorders, then allow everyone else willing to buy a box in on launch day. When the playerbase starts to sag, you can bolster it for a while with a free trial, and make it increasingly generous as needed, eventually resulting in "free to play" with an item mall. That way, the size of the playerbase fluctuates a lot, but you spread out the dates when players choose to join. If you're going to typically have 20k players online concurrently (at peak times of day) two years after launch anyway, then it's better to have that bounce around between 20k and 50k (with a spike whenever you offer more stuff for free) than to have to accommodate 200k at the very start and see the playerbase steadily shrink after that.
Comments
That is the pattern of recent games but I don't think it's planned or intentional. There are a few games that have stayed subscription based over the long term and have seen rises in their player base. If a game company is planning for the demise of their game at launch then it shows they have little to no faith in their product.
Love the "free to lose" term by the way!
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
The smart AAA MMORPG designer would create a MMORPG from the ground up to support the right kind of F2P.
But of course the reason that AAA games release as buy2play is that they can overhype the game and sucker a ton of players into the high up-front cost before they've determined for themselves whether or not the game is worth paying for. An upfront fee sells hype. A free to play model won't make money unless the game is fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
TSW will follow that model.
Will start as P2P WITH CS and then convert onto Freemium.
One of reasons I will not play it.
Seriously I understand WHY games convert into freemium model ,but for me that's worst possible model out there.
Give you stirpped P2P-like option that does not have biggest P2P advantages (access to 100% of everything with one flat rate - cause there is microtransactions & CS out there - also true to many of P2P games currently which are not truly / only P2P anymore)
and
give you stripped F2P-like option that does not have biggest F2P advangages (sealed parts of game behind sub or buy2play gating)
and frequently offer B2P-like options for some of content and again without B2P biggest advantages (buying does not give you access to everything).
Freemium do they do good atm and they will continue to do so for some time ,but they will ultimately lose mainstream to B2P and F2P models , and more niche / specialized niches also to P2P.
Should that title do terribly, why would you want to play a failure of an MMORPG that has lost the vast majority of players? If a title "has gone F2P," then it has done so for a variety of reasons. Usually failures, to merit it worthy of being "free."
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)