I outright questioned the wisdom of releasing in China when I saw all those propaganda pieces whereby there were people decorated a room to welcome Yoshi-p and others. The business model FFXIV is committed to isn't a great option, and the game makes you work quite a bit to get anything done -- a breath of fresh air to the Western Markets, to be sure (and not surprising that it's doing so well, so far in Korea).
They needed to localize it a bit better beforehand if they really wanted to break through in the market, as they're all different beasts. Perhaps the Chinese market will get it's own A Realm Reborn of sorts that involves better management and game design decisions appropriate for said market.
Ultimately, the payment models they have can be a double edged sword, in any case. WoW has about five million, but people always question if more than half of those are premium priced $15 a month or not due to differing payment models.
I would say that the mobile market is inching its way into every genre or games company, who wants to put in minimal effort for maximum profit -- something that Blizzard has been adopting in recent years. Though to really say that's a reason for anything is an excuse, as it's true for all games.
That said, I concur with the other statements, as my writing here indicates. But that's really the fault of Square to begin with for not adequately preparing for a new market.
Thanks for the article and personal opinions with regards to only it (as opposed to turning it into a personal thoughts of the game thread), Scorpex-X.
Edit: I can definitely see the appeal of selling characters levels in an area where mobile games is dominating, though. If people are willing to spend $150,000,000 on that stupid Simpsons app to save a few hours or days of their time, just to get to the next time sink level... Then, yeah. As much as I loathed it back in Ultima online a decade ago -- and despise the WoW version -- it makes business sense. Still don't understand why this has become a thing in the entertainment industry. Skip entertainment to get to entertainment? Then again, if you develop it as such, then... yeah. People will buy anything to save time.
Simple to explain really. Linear questing sucks; no one wants to do it. Forcing new players to slog through hours of boring questing no one wants to do is just asking them to quit. It's so much easier to give them level boost with the current expansion.
The other alternative is to spend an ungodly amount of resources on a third redo of the leveling process and hope it doesn't suck this time around.
The choice is pretty obvious. I know some bitter vets think the leveling process is important, but in 2015 it really isn't. It's just another obstacle no one wants to climb over. Developers have spent the last 10 years trying to figure out how to make it fun and no one has really succeeded.
I just hope that buying a level 50 bypasses the storyline missions because of FFXIV's genius idea of attaching the games main story to all the main features of the game. No real point in a free level 50 if you have to do all the story missions while synced lol.
I was under the impression that to get into China you had to partner with a Chinese company and that company just happens to skimmed off most of your profits so being in China isn't nearly the big deal the numbers would indicate due to high levels of corruption.
They do indeed partner with another company but to suggest said company simply skims is erroneous. The partner company will operate the game, handle customer support, probably localization, collect payment, market, distribute ....... the exact deal will have been negotiated between both companies and will last a set period of time. At the end of which it can be renewed or - as Blizzard did - they may go with another company if they can get better terms.
This is why we have no idea what "not doing as well as expected " means. They will have agreed targets, money may well have changed hands and there will be caveats for what happens if those targets are not met. Who pays who then - throws hands in air! Depends what they agreed.
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"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber
This is why we have no idea what "not doing as well as expected " means. They will have agreed targets, money may well have changed hands and there will be caveats for what happens if those targets are not met. Who pays who then - throws hands in air! Depends what they agreed.