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General: Recent News of Interest
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In The Free Zone today, we take a look at the most compelling news of the last couple of weeks and give our take from the unique F2P perspective. See what caught our eye and then leave us your thoughts in the comments.
Most gamers look forward to industry events like the recently completed E3 for one main reason. They know that publishers use these occasions to reveal additional information about their upcoming titles and to unveil new ones. I'm far from immune to this, but over the years, my balance of interests has shifted. Nowadays, it's just as important to me to see what comes out about goings-on in the industry, both at the shows and elsewhere but in the same time frame. That said, here are a few things that grabbed my attention in the past couple of weeks.
Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: Recent News of Interest.
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Comments
Sad news
What is? You don't make it clear which part is sad or why?
I think that TOR going F2P was written on the wall pre-launch. Its about maximizing revenue and past the initial sub, it was evident that F2P is the only way to save the game.
http://werewood.wordpress.com/
http://werewood.wordpress.com
For once I think he has it correct about swtor. I think the f2p to level 15 is just a stepping stone, and by year end we will see total f2p, with a rmt shop of some sort. Since obviously the sub system is not working for them.
Crytek going f2p is sad news...
Obviously going to join the rest of the people trying to milk every penny out of its customers..
Hopefully they will see how wrong they are and go back to the normal thing of selling a game for a fixed price...
Cryptic going F2P, since I very much prefer B2P single player over some another F2P FPS.
Nexon buying shares in NCSoft as well. This will just speed NCSoft into F2P area with it's mmorpg's + Nexon cash shop are totally retarded & their support as well.
NCSoft was like only big asian mmorpg maker that was still until recently making big p2p mmorpg's.
Seriously hate whole gaming is turning into F2P.
I think the trend of game shops turning to F2P means we'll see more variation on F2P offerings as they'll be in direct competition with eachother. The best way to see innovation is to be in the same market.
P2P will still play a large part in offerings, but I feel that the subscription+ model is more likely to be used (unfettered access for the monthly sub + some "currency" for the cash shop) to encourage games to use this familiar payment option.
In other news of interest, Chinese gaming company Tencent buys a small stake in Epic.
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...
The entertainment industry as a whole is just way too greedy and lucrative. You can bet dollars to doughnuts that these change's in the industry is not for the benefit of us consumer's. It's all about increasing an already lucrative profit margin.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
F2P is the hot new market, so traditional developers/publishers are trying to get their share of the market. This usually happens with some sort of a hybrid model, as they are not necessarily up to the challenge to go full F2P.
Chinese gaming companies have experience with F2P... and are rolling in the money (when most of the world is still trying to make ends meet). They are buying into the western market, because they have been unable to gain a foothold themselves.
I agree that Nexon bought into NCSoft, as a way to gain access to its resources. This is not an outright merger (yet) so partnership deals will be where it starts. If Nexon sees more value, they can invest more money. If not, they will get thier returns via their status.
Nexon is a corperate monster. I don't want them to have any more power in the mmo industry than they already do. Their games are filled with bugs (check out Mabinogi. It's constantly crashing), they are greedy and their item shops are filled with gachas (which is like gambeling because there's only a slight chance that you'll actually get a good item), and not only that their customer service suck and it may takes years for someone to actually get a response on their tickets. I've currently been waiting 2 years to get one of my tickets answered.
Smile
I think SWTOR would be smart to model LOTRO pretty closely. They may take flak but it's a great model for Turbine. The issue for SWTOR is that this doesn't open the legacy system to the new player at all -- this free-to-15 idea -- which just proves to me that EA doesn't *GET* SWTOR at all.
I posted about this (the idea of SWTOR being "KOTOR with Friends" and EA killing it with marketing, not letting Bioware play to the obvious strengths of the game) here today on the forums:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=486281
CRYPTIC isn't going full F2P. CRYTEK is. I misread it too at first. So, maybe LESS sad (or more, depending on your opinions of both these companies), but I agree with your point in general.
It was written on the wall pre-launch? Give me a break.
So many F2P awesomeness in one article. Lets hope this marks a new step towards a serious business of Free To Play model with Microtransactions that dont go pay to win. Everything is possible in the gaming industry just as it is in life. So lets wait and see.
F2P with no pay to win, for a better gaming future.
I was keepong an eye on Planet Side 2. I learned it was F2P. I'm no longer looking at PS2.
This, I think, is the misunderstanding about the 'new' F2P model that companies like Turbine have delivered...
It will NOT save your game by itself.
The "F2P" / buy-by-zone model works for LotRO, DDO and Wizard 101 (KingsIsle) because those are actually fun games to begin with. They are games that people want to play. They have content.
So players get to the end of the free content and still want more.
But just dumping the "F2P" model on any game will not save it.
That said - it might work for SWTOR because I hear the Single Player Story (leveling) is pretty good?
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Companies are in it to make money, and because of that F2P is such an oxymoron. You may wish for it but you may not like what you see when you get it.
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...
I love the people that fear F2P then turn around and throw $15 a month at a game they're not actively playing just to "maintain a sub". Nevermind that if you threw half of that at nearly any f2p game out per month, you'd be playing without any of the typical f2p restrictions (bank/inventory room, classes/races, etc) and still end up with more money in your pocket than if you were maintaining that sub.
But, kay.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
I don't think EA has a choice at this point.
TOR is not the Golden Goose they hyped it up to be. Not even close. They need a Plan B. Of course, who's to say this hasn't been their plan all along. Get a huge influx of cash with an initial retail release, milk as much as they could on subs, and then switch to F2P to keep it coming in after that.
Could you possibly have thought of a more extreme outside case to use for your argument?
What you're arguing there is the equivalent of someone saying, "I love the people who spend $800+ every month on a F2P game, are playing it no more than they could a $15/month sub-based game, and believe they're getting a better deal."
Are there people out there who fit that description? I'm sure there are. There are reports of people who spend into the thousands in a single month on so-called "F2P" MMOs.
Like in your example, they're also an outside case, just at the other end of the spectrum.
Are they the norm? Nope.
Would it be rational to use them as the basis for an argument indicting the entire F2P model as a whole? Nope.
Yet that's basically what you're doing with your statement regarding subscriptions. You're using an outside case as your basis to knock the entire subscription model.
And how do you qualify your statement anyway? What do you consider "not actively playing" in your statement? Is it not playing at all? Playing less than 10 hours a month? Less than 20?
How do you resolve the fact that not everyone values their subscriptions on "time played per month", but rather on "enjoyment experienced while playing"?
Millions of people routinely spend $10+ per ticket to sit and watch a movie for ~2 hours. And they may end up hating it and leaving part-way through. Yet, you never really see people questioning the value of going ot the movies. Is it so inconceivable, then, that someone can spend $15 on a monthly subscription, play the game for even just 4 hours in an entire month and feel equally satisfied, purely because they enjoyed the experience? Or even because they feel $3.75/hr is still a good value for the fun they have playing the game?
Of course it's conceivable. It's conceivable even without the movie example to compare it against.
That's just one example of why your argument fails.
This is the problem when it comes to basing an argument around people and how they value things, such as you're doing here. Everyone has their own sense of "value for their money", and their own threshold for what they consider "worth it" or "not worth it"