It's been a white elephant for some time in the industry because everyone in the know recognizes that the F2P model was designed in China by a government sponsored psychology team in order to find ways to use human compulsion to coax money from young adults.
I'm sure your post was very good, but at this point I just had to stop reading and call something out...
Matt Mihaly, founder and former CEO of Iron Realms Entertainment, is credited with the first use of micro transactions in an online game in 1997.
Free to play isn't Chinese or Korean, it is American. The eastern markets may have refined and exploited it since its inception, but they didn't create it.
I've always found it a little strange that a business model that came out of America is least popular in America
Interesting. The guy checks out and comes up in searches as attributed with starting it. I wasn't around for MUDs.
Had all games been like that maybe we would have loved it but I saw a better version of games where you paid once per month and the rest of the time you got to think about the game instead of your wallet and there was no nagging about what more you should be buying. Maybe it's escapism to setup monthly payments and walk away but the cost was so small that it never broke a budget.
The last two decades have also seen the rise of subscription services across a multitude of consumer industries, though they were around before then too. Subscriptions are a known quantity, whilst people may not be able to judge value for money with them from one game to the next, they are more than capable of understanding the value/cost for the game they play. For example, a WoW player knows that the game is worth $15 a month, a non-WoW player may not think it is worth that, but something else is, we can all judge the value compared to our own game.
Also, once you strip away the player mentality that drives concern of "pay to win", you will find that it the "greedy" free to play companies are actually more focused in the west as well (with a few exceptions in Japan). Capitalism shines through in this business model and a good example is King (a UK company). Whilst the average Candy Crush player may not think that $1.50 is much for a hammer to get past a level, what they don't know is that level, based on the algorithm behind the scenes has been tuned to that player's performance to be too hard to beat. The idea being that they will spend the money to get past it, or if they try and fail enough times then the algorithm will adjust the difficulty back down so they don't stop playing completely.
I'm not aware of any MMO from anyone, that exploits the player to that degree in such an unscrupulous manner. No matter how pay to win an MMO might be, it is transparent and obvious. Even the damn RNG boxes are transparent about their contents (though not the odds), so you know you have a low chance of getting what you want out of them.
Which is perhaps why I don't really mind whales, I obviously, like many, will avoid a game that lets you win by spending big, but I don't mind free to play or cash shops, they can be great and they can be awful, but in MMOs, the genre I like the most, they are obvious about what they sell and what they are trying to do. As long as I know what I'm getting in for, I accept that.
Originally posted by greenreen Examine them in their natural habitat.... oooo... ahhhh...http://forums.archeagegame.com/showthread.php?164093-Trion-needs-a-business-model-change-now".... To date, I have given trion well over 1000 dollars of my hard earned money in support of the game, and they continually ..."That's about 200 a month spent if this game was released 5 mos. ago in the West.Don't get too close to the glass!This one is angry, I have removed its angry comments from the source.
I am inspired to start a video game company and name it "Ahab!"
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I don't mind gambling with my time ; I play game to spend time and, ideally, have a fun time doing so.
However gambling with real money ... I just can't understand. I keep thinking ''whales'' will wake up and understand it's nothing but a lottery where you win pixels but... oh well.
I remembers the early days of everquest, back when MMO's weren't popular.... '' 15$ a month? every month for 4 years? do you realize how much money you've spent on that game?'' i'd then get into a heated argument about how 15$ per month at ~2-3 hours of fun per day was MUCH cheaper than a movie , or one night out drinking...
nowadays people argue about wether or not spending 1000$ for a mount is enough to qualify as a 'heavy-spender'.
I don't mind gambling with my time ; I play game to spend time and, ideally, have a fun time doing so.
However gambling with real money ... I just can't understand. I keep thinking ''whales'' will wake up and understand it's nothing but a lottery where you win pixels but... oh well.
I remembers the early days of everquest, back when MMO's weren't popular.... '' 15$ a month? every month for 4 years? do you realize how much money you've spent on that game?'' i'd then get into a heated argument about how 15$ per month at ~2-3 hours of fun per day was MUCH cheaper than a movie , or one night out drinking...
nowadays people argue about wether or not spending 1000$ for a mount is enough to qualify as a 'heavy-spender'.
Let these nerds find out that they can get good hookers for that much then they would quit gaming :P
However gambling with real money ... I just can't understand. I keep thinking ''whales'' will wake up and understand it's nothing but a lottery where you win pixels but... oh well.
Understanding is not required. Only acceptance. I do not gamble myself. But don't tell me you don't know there are tons who would lose their paychecks at Vegas.
If gamblers are going to wake up, they would have done so centuries ago.
Whales are not going away. If fact, given that f2p revenues have been growing, i bet there are more and more of them (despite still being a very small percentage).
Comments
The last two decades have also seen the rise of subscription services across a multitude of consumer industries, though they were around before then too. Subscriptions are a known quantity, whilst people may not be able to judge value for money with them from one game to the next, they are more than capable of understanding the value/cost for the game they play. For example, a WoW player knows that the game is worth $15 a month, a non-WoW player may not think it is worth that, but something else is, we can all judge the value compared to our own game.
Also, once you strip away the player mentality that drives concern of "pay to win", you will find that it the "greedy" free to play companies are actually more focused in the west as well (with a few exceptions in Japan). Capitalism shines through in this business model and a good example is King (a UK company). Whilst the average Candy Crush player may not think that $1.50 is much for a hammer to get past a level, what they don't know is that level, based on the algorithm behind the scenes has been tuned to that player's performance to be too hard to beat. The idea being that they will spend the money to get past it, or if they try and fail enough times then the algorithm will adjust the difficulty back down so they don't stop playing completely.
I'm not aware of any MMO from anyone, that exploits the player to that degree in such an unscrupulous manner. No matter how pay to win an MMO might be, it is transparent and obvious. Even the damn RNG boxes are transparent about their contents (though not the odds), so you know you have a low chance of getting what you want out of them.
Which is perhaps why I don't really mind whales, I obviously, like many, will avoid a game that lets you win by spending big, but I don't mind free to play or cash shops, they can be great and they can be awful, but in MMOs, the genre I like the most, they are obvious about what they sell and what they are trying to do. As long as I know what I'm getting in for, I accept that.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
You are too late.
MMO companies are all "Ahabs" secretly.
I don't mind gambling with my time ; I play game to spend time and, ideally, have a fun time doing so.
However gambling with real money ... I just can't understand. I keep thinking ''whales'' will wake up and understand it's nothing but a lottery where you win pixels but... oh well.
I remembers the early days of everquest, back when MMO's weren't popular.... '' 15$ a month? every month for 4 years? do you realize how much money you've spent on that game?'' i'd then get into a heated argument about how 15$ per month at ~2-3 hours of fun per day was MUCH cheaper than a movie , or one night out drinking...
nowadays people argue about wether or not spending 1000$ for a mount is enough to qualify as a 'heavy-spender'.
Let these nerds find out that they can get good hookers for that much then they would quit gaming :P
Understanding is not required. Only acceptance. I do not gamble myself. But don't tell me you don't know there are tons who would lose their paychecks at Vegas.
If gamblers are going to wake up, they would have done so centuries ago.
Whales are not going away. If fact, given that f2p revenues have been growing, i bet there are more and more of them (despite still being a very small percentage).
Internally on a game team, the definition varies from game to game. Although the designation usually isn't very meaningful in most cases.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver