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Guest Interview: Talking Embers Adrift With Stormhaven Studios | MMORPG.com
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Guest Interview: Talking Embers Adrift With Stormhaven Studios | MMORPG.com
We're proud to host the English-language interview of Stormhaven Studios by our incredible and brave colleagues at MMOZG.com. Check out their interview with John Gust and the team behind Embers Adrift in part one of the interview series.
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They will be forced to switch to B2P. I also would never consciously pay for a monthly subscription on any MMORPG. How good can it be to deserve paying rent every month? 4 months x $15 = $60 - a full price game, they can ask for just that and be done with it, no need to be greedy or self absorbed thinking their game is so remarkable. It will end up like Pantheon and Ashes of Creation if those ever release - they will have a handful of whales playing them, but not nearly enough to sustain them.
The money is not the issue, the issue is B2P essentially means you can play whenever you want and as much as you want. Subscription means if you want to play, you have to pay and if you don't play enough, the money and month are wasted. It's a matter of principles and psychology rather than finances.
I think a mandatory subscription for an online game nowadays is an antiquated business model and the only games that can afford doing that are two - WoW and FF14 and that's because they are super mainstream and popular.
Embers Adrift, Pantheon and Ashes of Creation seem very niche, so I think the developers overestimate the success of their games if they think a subscription will do it. Or maybe they are looking at only one demographic in mind.
Is that not the definition if niche? Which is what you said these products seem to be.
The whole "not worth the money for the time" argument had *some* merit until people showed they were more than happy to spend much more than that, over a much shorter period, on microtransactions, and didn't see any such lack of value. This is despite playing it no more than they would a sub-based MMO. Folks even defending it in many cases.
Many MMO devs go F2P or B2P because of the stigma marketers successfully pushed out about subs. Still, many F2P devs still prefer the consistency of a monthly subscription, and greatly incentivize them for their titles.
People accept recurring subscription-based revenue models on numerous other things... Netflix and similar streaming services, Spotify and similar music services... and so on. But for some reason, the idea of paying $15 a month (50 cents an hour if you play 1 hour a day) for all-you-can-eat access to a MMO is just "outrageous" and "unacceptable". Interesting, that.
Seems to me the folks who cry loudest about "Subs bad" just want what they want for free, and throw out any excuse or rationale they can to justify it. Their arguments are often not even truthful.
Example: I've seen at least a couple people do the whole 'I'm an adult with family and a career and I don't have the time to put into a MMO anymore, so the sub fee isn't worth it", only to have them later reveal they're still in high school.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Unfortunately I acknowledge that this is currently effective, but I still hate the trend. When people pay a la carte it encourages quality. Pay for what you think is good, don't pay if its bad. I cant really think of anything that when put in a large bundle actually increases the quality over time.
Bundles is just a bad place for the industry to go. As time goes on the quality will continue to lower.
But the idea paying a subscription for games is clearly not dead, it is just how many you get to play with the sub from what you are saying.