Business and creativity have never been exclusive except in the minds of the naive. As I said, some of the most enduring art in history was done strictly for cash or to satisfy an investor/patron.
Damn straight.
Bach, arguably the greatest composer out there wrote music because...
it was his job.
He didn't sit there waiting for the muse or "feeling it". Every week he had to come up with music for the church he worked at so he did. Pretty scary that.
Beethoven? Worked for commissions, Hayden had a patron, Barber never wanted to write unless he had a commission, Puccini, lol, Puccini would write, make gobs of money and then wanted to spend his time hunting and carousing only to then be convinced by his agent to write again.
Rodin? money!
This is not to say that writers and composers, artists don't create for the sake of creating. But it's hard to be an artist and make good art when you are hungry. Believe me, I know! All the best music I have written was always when I was in a good place in life.
Starving is just starving.
I agree with your contention that if it wasn't for the players who sought out secondary parties to supply them with gold and powerleveling there probably wouldn't be the whole pay as you go model.
What are developers to do when they see on their forums that "gold sellers are bad" and yet they are spending a lot of time, money, resources tracking down and banning gold sellers and the players who are buying.
I mean, that pretty much flies in the face of logic. "well, the players are screaming that it's all bad yet we ban ALL the time and it doesn't stop".
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I think fans are willing to invest both time and money in to something that they enjoy. Everything in F2P and even "buy to win" is OPTIONAL. No one is being forced to buy anything.
Can that argument be made for the subscription model? If you don't pay 14.99 a month, you don't have access to the content on the BOX that you already paid for. Talk about a panzi scheme!
That's what I find so interesting.
The subscription model of yore is a strange one. Before you could even access the game you'd already spent full retail on, you HAD to set up billing and a subscription for $15/month. OTOH, the F2P + cash shop and Freemium models are different. You buy and/or download the game to play it, and don't spend any extra money if you don't want to.
As it turns out, people will spend more on a F2P + cash shop or Freemium game, but that's because they WANT to spend that extra cash. They don't HAVE to do it in order to play the game. They're paying what they want to pay for extra items or whatever. It brings MMOs closer to console games, in the sense that gamers are already used to optional extras being on XBox Live and PSN if they want them, but they're not required in order to play the game. A subscription is REQUIRED for a sub-based game.
At the end of the day, none of those systems would exist if there wasn't a player market for them. Somebody wants these games to go F2P + cash shop or Freemium, and it's not just the developers. Businesses will do what the market demands, and if there's a market for those kinds of payment plans for an MMO, then MMO developers will go in that direction.
I think the problem is the people who enjoy challenging games are far outnumbered by people who like quick easy games now.
A challenging "hardcore" mmo may become a niche game ;p
It's what I like about challenging games... to me it would be like if they made a sport game p2w like say basketball or soccer... you don't see teams "buying" extra time outs or extra penalty kicks / shots.
I think the problem is the people who enjoy challenging games are far outnumbered by people who like quick easy games now.
A challenging "hardcore" mmo may become a niche game ;p
It's what I like about challenging games... to me it would be like if they made a sport game p2w like say basketball or soccer... you don't see teams "buying" extra time outs or extra penalty kicks / shots.
But you do see 40 million dollars spent to bring in a player who may put more asses in the seats in real sports.
In a sports game a transacton fee amongst players to move virtual talent around could be a viable way to release the game to the public without a price on the box. Really that's all the devs are doing.
It's not some grand scheme to seperate people into various social classes in video games.
I mean for free to play MMOs it's all about gaining population. MMOs are more fun when they're massive and multiplayer. The more ways you have to bring hands to keyboards the more likely the game will be enjoyed by players and the more likely they'll make a profit with their work.
I think the problem is that people assume that a game that isn't sub-based somehow isn't challenging.
Also, there's a sort of selective amnesia at work. All those older MMOs that people say were more challenging and hardcore? They were filled with players who used gold farmers, XP power level services, and other ways of gaining an advantage over others. They were never the hardcore gamer paradise that the rose-colored glass wearing folks would like newer gamers to believe. The only difference now is that the developers are the ones offering what players were paying for in the frst place.
None of this F2P + cashshop or Freemium stuff came up out of the blue. It developed over many years of the developers watching gamers and adjusting their business models accordingly.
I think the problem is the people who enjoy challenging games are far outnumbered by people who like quick easy games now.
A challenging "hardcore" mmo may become a niche game ;p
It's what I like about challenging games... to me it would be like if they made a sport game p2w like say basketball or soccer... you don't see teams "buying" extra time outs or extra penalty kicks / shots.
But you do see 40 million dollars spent to bring in a player who may put more asses in the seats in real sports.
In a sports game a transacton fee amongst players to move virtual talent around could be a viable way to release the game to the public without a price on the box. Really that's all the devs are doing.
It's not some grand scheme to seperate people into various social classes in video games.
I mean for free to play MMOs it's all about gaining population. MMOs are more fun when they're massive and multiplayer. The more ways you have to bring hands to keyboards the more likely the game will be enjoyed by players and the more likely they'll make a profit with their work.
What's the conspiracy here?
To an extent population is important... but after a while they just make more servers so you don't actually end up playing with 12 million + people like in WoW.. you just end up playing with whoever is on your server.
My best estimate is there are about 150 or so WoW servers so you only play with a fraction of the population each time you log on.
I'm just happy if the game i play isn't empty... it doesn't need to have hundreds of servers of people that i never meet.
I agree with the OP those kind of stuff really are disgusting.
And the worst part is that they don't really need to make good games to be commercially successful, they clearly spend a lot more effort into their commercial stragtegy than into their game making, in fact those games became nothing else than commercial strategies now, you clearly can tell it from the speech you linked. Those games are nothing else that traps for addicted people. It really is exactly the same shema as hacking/boting/macroing shame went on with grindy like game and "addiction". In fact both those system now "grindy game" + "cash shop" game are now so much a head of anything else, its just crazy, to the point even a lot of customers will tell you thats the only proper way to make good games.
As you said just disgusting really.
PS when i say grindy game in fact i only talk about game here which main core is all about accumulating goods, stat or whatever the game poured in.
But in the end this kind of stuff will stop working as well as they are doing now, because people will progressivly be aware of those kind of stuff and start avoiding them, as as they avoid grindy games now. But they still pervert a lot of people that know nothing about gaming industry, especially facebooker and poeple new to these stuff. In the end those kind of poeple just arm themselves really, they might get better result in the short therm, but they do really arm their working domain in long therm. For sure all this huge potential gaming people will get disguted about this kind of model, and will probaly leave the scene as quickly as they came.
A business does not need to lower themselves to EA's level in order to make money.
Hell, look at ArenaNet. Their micro-transactions are completely reasonable. It hardly affects gameplay, especially in a competitive sense. The only thing that really gives any gameplay "advantage" are the extra bag slots. And those are for PvE.
No gaming business has to do this.
The difference is GW also has a box price x 4 or 5 (I dont play it so no idea how many xpacs its at)
A free to play title does not have that £100 + revenue from box sales to factor to its ARPU so its all about making enough from the players who do pay I thought the presentation was good and matches my own experiences of F2P a core forum using base with high revenue paying for the millions of F2P leeches who have never and will never put a penny to the game yet are the first to whine when things change giving the paying player a small leg up.
Because I love games, and it seems that no one except for Arena Net and Bethesda are making games that I love.
We're in at the age where game developers are catering to the more braindead console gamer and Pc ports are more of an after thought or shows the console limitations within it. The Pc has the powerful dx11 API and yet developers around the world don't make full use of it as they have to make the bloody game cross plat giving us more of the same old mechanics, dx11 opens up way more mechanics to entrain with. Pc exclusives in the hands of indie now I'm afraid. Gaming has gone big time mainstream and with that corp mentally of do more of the same that's sold before to make money, gaming is loosing it heart with only gems every few years. Even Battlefield 3 promised to us by Dice to be a Pc exclusive so it can go all out, yet here we have it for console too thus design choices gone in to it to cater old crossplat where we'll have limitations that didn't need to be there if it was a Pc exclusive.
How someone uses their money to buy something should be judged now?
What? Don't we live in a free society?
I don't like P2W so I don't play them. However, if a large number of people want them, let them.
Free market / capitalism, working as intended.
You are so naive, do you really think the poeple that give that money to this kind of model give them with free will? You are seriously mistaken if you think so.
Sure some do, but a good majority don't. Those model really entice some compulsive behavior. Those compulsive behaviors are easily the ones that are the further away from any sort of free will as you are claiming. A lot of kids spend enormous amount of money each month, the guy pointed it in this speech, a small portion of player pay 10time more than the vast majority, did you listen to the guy? This is where the money and succes of this model come from really. What do you think this small portion of poeple paying 10time more are? Do you really think those are milionaires and can efford themself such pleasures? I think not, those are addicted kids with free access to parent cards most likely.
Free will? ok sure...
Also personally i'm not against that model, its perfectly fine for people to find way to be better than the "others" really. But when such models totally suffocate gaming as a whole, it just goes too far.
A business does not need to lower themselves to EA's level in order to make money.
Hell, look at ArenaNet. Their micro-transactions are completely reasonable. It hardly affects gameplay, especially in a competitive sense. The only thing that really gives any gameplay "advantage" are the extra bag slots. And those are for PvE.
No gaming business has to do this.
The difference is GW also has a box price x 4 or 5 (I dont play it so no idea how many xpacs its at)
A free to play title does not have that £100 + revenue from box sales to factor to its ARPU so its all about making enough from the players who do pay I thought the presentation was good and matches my own experiences of F2P a core forum using base with high revenue paying for the millions of F2P leeches who have never and will never put a penny to the game yet are the first to whine when things change giving the paying player a small leg up.
And that's why all businesses that feature F2P games should take a hint and sell a great game with a box price, as I'm sure most people believe a great game deserves profit with a loyal playerbase. — I would have purchased Battlefield: Heroes, knowing it would be well maintained and balanced like all Battlefield games. Which brings me to my next point. EA has sold plenty Battlefield games. There is absolutely no excuse for them to completely destroy a great F2P game with a disgusting F2P model. They could have easily went with ArenaNet's model while maintaining it as F2P.
But there was no tangilbe backlash to the change. Sure, people complained on the forums, that 2% of vocal users they were. And when it changed, the vocal minority spent more on average than the silent majority.
Why should developers listen to people their own metrics and statistical tracking can prove to be hypocrites.
If enough people really opposed F2P / P2W environments, that vocal minority should have also indicated a massive drop off is userbase, new registrations, and profits, but nothing went down, and profits went up.
If the business model were really as destructive, evil, and disgusting as all the vitriolic hyperbole slung around these boards, then it wouldn't have worked.
It wouldn't have working in Asia, where it did. Wouldn't work in europe where it did, and wouldn't work in the US where it did.
And just because games are F2P doesn't mean they don't get regular updates and expansions as well. Almost every major F2P I can think of does a good enough job for regular content additions, events and updates.
They need to have new stuff for people to buy just as much as any other game needs new content for its playerbase to chew through.
And honestly, MMO business model highly reflects cable TV in a lot of cases. A sub to cable TV gets basic access to each jack in the house. That access is enhanced by renting a cable box, needing 1 per jack thats going to be enhanced.
Once you've enhanced with a box, you can opt in for some different channel packages, each varied in content, providers, etc, with a range of prices added into the monthly bill.
And then, there's movies on demand. When you just don't feel like waiting for Netflix to get the movie added to streaming. All at per-film price. Then add special events like UFC, WWE, etc etc.
So in many ways, we've already been paying to win at entertainment for decades. People who want more entertainment and have the fiscal means to obtain it will obtain it, and the market will cater to that, as well as the fact that those without money also want to be entertained, which it offers options to as well.
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
A business does not need to lower themselves to EA's level in order to make money.
Hell, look at ArenaNet. Their micro-transactions are completely reasonable. It hardly affects gameplay, especially in a competitive sense. The only thing that really gives any gameplay "advantage" are the extra bag slots. And those are for PvE.
No gaming business has to do this.
The difference is GW also has a box price x 4 or 5 (I dont play it so no idea how many xpacs its at)
A free to play title does not have that £100 + revenue from box sales to factor to its ARPU so its all about making enough from the players who do pay I thought the presentation was good and matches my own experiences of F2P a core forum using base with high revenue paying for the millions of F2P leeches who have never and will never put a penny to the game yet are the first to whine when things change giving the paying player a small leg up.
And that's why all businesses that feature F2P games should take a hint and sell a great game with a box price, as I'm sure most people believe a great game deserves profit with a loyal playerbase. — I would have purchased Battlefield: Heroes, knowing it would be well maintained and balanced like all Battlefield games. Which brings me to my next point. EA has sold plenty Battlefield games. There is absolutely no excuse for them to completely destroy a great F2P game with a disgusting F2P model. They could have easily went with ArenaNet's model while maintaining it as F2P and still make a good profit.
I'm not in disagreement BUT it will simply never work in a FPS, GW is unique in the market for what it offers a triple AAA MMORPG completely for free after a box purchase.
Lets use BC2 since I think COD post MW1 is the work of satan. Why am I going to play BF Heroes when I get nothing more than what I get with BC2's awesome multiplayer with just a box purchase.
BF:H or any other of the multitude of F2P shooters offer absolutely nothing I cannot get a better instance of from a box purchase and for free, majority are 32 man maps BC2 does that, majority have leveling up BC2 does that, social tools yep it does that also.
So all you end up with is a game for free that is poor in comparison to BC2 so why wouldnt I just go buy BC2 and thats where the problems lie.
Unless like GW you have a truly unique product then your going to struggle 90% of people with disposable income would just go buy BC2 in the above example leaving the 10% remaining to play BF:H and perhaps spend some money there whilst a whole host more without disposable income will play BF:H and expect the moon on a stick and it to be perfectly balanced.
A business does not need to lower themselves to EA's level in order to make money.
Hell, look at ArenaNet. Their micro-transactions are completely reasonable. It hardly affects gameplay, especially in a competitive sense. The only thing that really gives any gameplay "advantage" are the extra bag slots. And those are for PvE.
No gaming business has to do this.
The difference is GW also has a box price x 4 or 5 (I dont play it so no idea how many xpacs its at)
A free to play title does not have that £100 + revenue from box sales to factor to its ARPU so its all about making enough from the players who do pay I thought the presentation was good and matches my own experiences of F2P a core forum using base with high revenue paying for the millions of F2P leeches who have never and will never put a penny to the game yet are the first to whine when things change giving the paying player a small leg up.
And that's why all businesses that feature F2P games should take a hint and sell a great game with a box price, as I'm sure most people believe a great game deserves profit with a loyal playerbase. — I would have purchased Battlefield: Heroes, knowing it would be well maintained and balanced like all Battlefield games. Which brings me to my next point. EA has sold plenty Battlefield games. There is absolutely no excuse for them to completely destroy a great F2P game with a disgusting F2P model. They could have easily went with ArenaNet's model while maintaining it as F2P.
Different payement model will also lead to different desgin model and vice versa.
I think this is exactly the point about the actuall Eve cash shop drama. If you change your main revenu style you will change your design inevitably.
an absolutely astute presentation. Its reality folks, and I have never been a F2P guy, but I understand the thought process 100% now and it makes perfect sense. I cant blame them for trying to do what they can to maximize their profits, hell I do it every day in my work, why should a gaming company be any different. I was shocked about the forum %'s I always figured the people who constantly bitch on the forums werent playing or spending, and there were plenty of people who just play and never post, which was confirmed. Generally happy players never post, only people who have a gripe.
I dont begrudge any company who follows this pay structure, it might not be for me personally, but its not cause of the spending, its cause I havent found a f2p that keeps my interest enough to want to buy stuff from them. I am sure the day will come that I will.
You guys should be HAPPY and support this kind of F2P.
Look at the numbers ... ONLY 1.29% of the player base paid BEFORE their change. After, the conversion shot up may be a factor of 2 .. so we are still talking about less than 3% here.
97% of the players OBVIOUSLY have enough self-control not to use the cash shop. You complain about a game that essentially is given away to 97% of the players?
It is FREE. Get over it. Don't like it. Don't play it. EA is not obligated to provide you with free entertainment.
But there was no tangilbe backlash to the change. Sure, people complained on the forums, that 2% of vocal users they were. And when it changed, the vocal minority spent more on average than the silent majority.
Why should developers listen to people their own metrics and statistical tracking can prove to be hypocrites.
If enough people really opposed F2P / P2W environments, that vocal minority should have also indicated a massive drop off is userbase, new registrations, and profits, but nothing went down, and profits went up.
If the business model were really as destructive, evil, and disgusting as all the vitriolic hyperbole slung around these boards, then it wouldn't have worked.
EXACTLY.
EA's own numbers in that presentation showed that for all the whining and bitching on their message boards, it was those players who were whining and bitching that spent the most money on the system they were complaining about. The vast majority of players, who never went to the boards, never posted, and were not as heavily invested in the game spent considerably less, if they spent anything at all.
Why listen to that vocal minority at all when they're the ones that are going to turn around and open their wallets to support a system that they supposedly despise? The rest of the metrics showed no decline in users and no major loss for them at all when they switched. If anything, it showed that the vocal minority don't represent the average user at all, since they might be loud, but they're also doing exactly what they say players object to the most.
Again -- none of these new payment models would exist if there wasn't a market for them. They didn't appear out of the blue. Players gave developers the idea for them over many, many years of buying gold and items and weapons and characters, etc. for real money in MMO's and other games.
Again -- none of these new payment models would exist if there wasn't a market for them. They didn't appear out of the blue. Players gave developers the idea for them over many, many years of buying gold and items and weapons and characters, etc. for real money in MMO's and other games.
The funny part is the market is very very small and enough to fully justify the business model. There is no shortage of people who will play at a disdvantage if it's free. That's the real lesson. We always knew there were those who would pay for an advantage no matter how small.
Yep.
The numbers in that presentation bear it out. The vast majority of players will look at a game that is F2P + cash shop and ignore the cash shop. They'll play because it's free. When they get tired of playing, they move on. They don't care that they're at a disadvantage over paying players. They're just there to have some free fun for a while then leave. Those are your casual fans.
It's the hardcore, who were the ones spending real money on gold, items, weapons, characters, etc. in previous games, that drive the market. They might complain the loudest, but they also spend money. WAY more money than the vast majority, who don't buy anything at all. It's the hardcore player, who will look for any advantage they can against other players, that support these F2P + cash shop and Freemium systems the most.
I was shocked about the forum %'s I always figured the people who constantly bitch on the forums werent playing or spending, and there were plenty of people who just play and never post, which was confirmed. Generally happy players never post, only people who have a gripe.
Pretty much.
It's like the casual Facebook games market -- most people playing games like Farmville, Cafe World, or Mafia Wars aren't going to spend cash on them. There's no point. Those games are a way to kill a few minutes at work or in class when you're bored. You click around for about five minutes, then get back to whatever you were doing before. It's the hardcore, and the people who get more invested in the games that start spending money on them.
Zynga doesn't profit off the vast majority of users who never buy items or in-game currency at all. They profit from the small minority of players who want an advantage of some sort. That holds true for companies like EA and other game developers as well.
But there was no tangilbe backlash to the change. Sure, people complained on the forums, that 2% of vocal users they were. And when it changed, the vocal minority spent more on average than the silent majority. Why should developers listen to people their own metrics and statistical tracking can prove to be hypocrites. If enough people really opposed F2P / P2W environments, that vocal minority should have also indicated a massive drop off is userbase, new registrations, and profits, but nothing went down, and profits went up. If the business model were really as destructive, evil, and disgusting as all the vitriolic hyperbole slung around these boards, then it wouldn't have worked.
EXACTLY.
EA's own numbers in that presentation showed that for all the whining and bitching on their message boards, it was those players who were whining and bitching that spent the most money on the system they were complaining about. The vast majority of players, who never went to the boards, never posted, and were not as heavily invested in the game spent considerably less, if they spent anything at all.
Why listen to that vocal minority at all when they're the ones that are going to turn around and open their wallets to support a system that they supposedly despise? The rest of the metrics showed no decline in users and no major loss for them at all when they switched. If anything, it showed that the vocal minority don't represent the average user at all, since they might be loud, but they're also doing exactly what they say players object to the most.
Again -- none of these new payment models would exist if there wasn't a market for them. They didn't appear out of the blue. Players gave developers the idea for them over many, many years of buying gold and items and weapons and characters, etc. for real money in MMO's and other games.
Comments
Damn straight.
Bach, arguably the greatest composer out there wrote music because...
it was his job.
He didn't sit there waiting for the muse or "feeling it". Every week he had to come up with music for the church he worked at so he did. Pretty scary that.
Beethoven? Worked for commissions, Hayden had a patron, Barber never wanted to write unless he had a commission, Puccini, lol, Puccini would write, make gobs of money and then wanted to spend his time hunting and carousing only to then be convinced by his agent to write again.
Rodin? money!
This is not to say that writers and composers, artists don't create for the sake of creating. But it's hard to be an artist and make good art when you are hungry. Believe me, I know! All the best music I have written was always when I was in a good place in life.
Starving is just starving.
I agree with your contention that if it wasn't for the players who sought out secondary parties to supply them with gold and powerleveling there probably wouldn't be the whole pay as you go model.
What are developers to do when they see on their forums that "gold sellers are bad" and yet they are spending a lot of time, money, resources tracking down and banning gold sellers and the players who are buying.
I mean, that pretty much flies in the face of logic. "well, the players are screaming that it's all bad yet we ban ALL the time and it doesn't stop".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
That's what I find so interesting.
The subscription model of yore is a strange one. Before you could even access the game you'd already spent full retail on, you HAD to set up billing and a subscription for $15/month. OTOH, the F2P + cash shop and Freemium models are different. You buy and/or download the game to play it, and don't spend any extra money if you don't want to.
As it turns out, people will spend more on a F2P + cash shop or Freemium game, but that's because they WANT to spend that extra cash. They don't HAVE to do it in order to play the game. They're paying what they want to pay for extra items or whatever. It brings MMOs closer to console games, in the sense that gamers are already used to optional extras being on XBox Live and PSN if they want them, but they're not required in order to play the game. A subscription is REQUIRED for a sub-based game.
At the end of the day, none of those systems would exist if there wasn't a player market for them. Somebody wants these games to go F2P + cash shop or Freemium, and it's not just the developers. Businesses will do what the market demands, and if there's a market for those kinds of payment plans for an MMO, then MMO developers will go in that direction.
I think the problem is the people who enjoy challenging games are far outnumbered by people who like quick easy games now.
A challenging "hardcore" mmo may become a niche game ;p
It's what I like about challenging games... to me it would be like if they made a sport game p2w like say basketball or soccer... you don't see teams "buying" extra time outs or extra penalty kicks / shots.
But you do see 40 million dollars spent to bring in a player who may put more asses in the seats in real sports.
In a sports game a transacton fee amongst players to move virtual talent around could be a viable way to release the game to the public without a price on the box. Really that's all the devs are doing.
It's not some grand scheme to seperate people into various social classes in video games.
I mean for free to play MMOs it's all about gaining population. MMOs are more fun when they're massive and multiplayer. The more ways you have to bring hands to keyboards the more likely the game will be enjoyed by players and the more likely they'll make a profit with their work.
What's the conspiracy here?
I think the problem is that people assume that a game that isn't sub-based somehow isn't challenging.
Also, there's a sort of selective amnesia at work. All those older MMOs that people say were more challenging and hardcore? They were filled with players who used gold farmers, XP power level services, and other ways of gaining an advantage over others. They were never the hardcore gamer paradise that the rose-colored glass wearing folks would like newer gamers to believe. The only difference now is that the developers are the ones offering what players were paying for in the frst place.
None of this F2P + cashshop or Freemium stuff came up out of the blue. It developed over many years of the developers watching gamers and adjusting their business models accordingly.
To an extent population is important... but after a while they just make more servers so you don't actually end up playing with 12 million + people like in WoW.. you just end up playing with whoever is on your server.
My best estimate is there are about 150 or so WoW servers so you only play with a fraction of the population each time you log on.
I'm just happy if the game i play isn't empty... it doesn't need to have hundreds of servers of people that i never meet.
I agree with the OP those kind of stuff really are disgusting.
And the worst part is that they don't really need to make good games to be commercially successful, they clearly spend a lot more effort into their commercial stragtegy than into their game making, in fact those games became nothing else than commercial strategies now, you clearly can tell it from the speech you linked. Those games are nothing else that traps for addicted people. It really is exactly the same shema as hacking/boting/macroing shame went on with grindy like game and "addiction". In fact both those system now "grindy game" + "cash shop" game are now so much a head of anything else, its just crazy, to the point even a lot of customers will tell you thats the only proper way to make good games.
As you said just disgusting really.
PS when i say grindy game in fact i only talk about game here which main core is all about accumulating goods, stat or whatever the game poured in.
But in the end this kind of stuff will stop working as well as they are doing now, because people will progressivly be aware of those kind of stuff and start avoiding them, as as they avoid grindy games now. But they still pervert a lot of people that know nothing about gaming industry, especially facebooker and poeple new to these stuff. In the end those kind of poeple just arm themselves really, they might get better result in the short therm, but they do really arm their working domain in long therm. For sure all this huge potential gaming people will get disguted about this kind of model, and will probaly leave the scene as quickly as they came.
medoricity and apathy are enemies to humanity
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/
Disgusting for who?
How someone uses their money to buy something should be judged now?
What? Don't we live in a free society?
I don't like P2W so I don't play them. However, if a large number of people want them, let them.
Free market / capitalism, working as intended.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/
The difference is GW also has a box price x 4 or 5 (I dont play it so no idea how many xpacs its at)
A free to play title does not have that £100 + revenue from box sales to factor to its ARPU so its all about making enough from the players who do pay I thought the presentation was good and matches my own experiences of F2P a core forum using base with high revenue paying for the millions of F2P leeches who have never and will never put a penny to the game yet are the first to whine when things change giving the paying player a small leg up.
We're in at the age where game developers are catering to the more braindead console gamer and Pc ports are more of an after thought or shows the console limitations within it. The Pc has the powerful dx11 API and yet developers around the world don't make full use of it as they have to make the bloody game cross plat giving us more of the same old mechanics, dx11 opens up way more mechanics to entrain with. Pc exclusives in the hands of indie now I'm afraid. Gaming has gone big time mainstream and with that corp mentally of do more of the same that's sold before to make money, gaming is loosing it heart with only gems every few years. Even Battlefield 3 promised to us by Dice to be a Pc exclusive so it can go all out, yet here we have it for console too thus design choices gone in to it to cater old crossplat where we'll have limitations that didn't need to be there if it was a Pc exclusive.
You are so naive, do you really think the poeple that give that money to this kind of model give them with free will? You are seriously mistaken if you think so.
Sure some do, but a good majority don't. Those model really entice some compulsive behavior. Those compulsive behaviors are easily the ones that are the further away from any sort of free will as you are claiming. A lot of kids spend enormous amount of money each month, the guy pointed it in this speech, a small portion of player pay 10time more than the vast majority, did you listen to the guy? This is where the money and succes of this model come from really. What do you think this small portion of poeple paying 10time more are? Do you really think those are milionaires and can efford themself such pleasures? I think not, those are addicted kids with free access to parent cards most likely.
Free will? ok sure...
Also personally i'm not against that model, its perfectly fine for people to find way to be better than the "others" really. But when such models totally suffocate gaming as a whole, it just goes too far.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/
But there was no tangilbe backlash to the change. Sure, people complained on the forums, that 2% of vocal users they were. And when it changed, the vocal minority spent more on average than the silent majority.
Why should developers listen to people their own metrics and statistical tracking can prove to be hypocrites.
If enough people really opposed F2P / P2W environments, that vocal minority should have also indicated a massive drop off is userbase, new registrations, and profits, but nothing went down, and profits went up.
If the business model were really as destructive, evil, and disgusting as all the vitriolic hyperbole slung around these boards, then it wouldn't have worked.
It wouldn't have working in Asia, where it did. Wouldn't work in europe where it did, and wouldn't work in the US where it did.
And just because games are F2P doesn't mean they don't get regular updates and expansions as well. Almost every major F2P I can think of does a good enough job for regular content additions, events and updates.
They need to have new stuff for people to buy just as much as any other game needs new content for its playerbase to chew through.
And honestly, MMO business model highly reflects cable TV in a lot of cases. A sub to cable TV gets basic access to each jack in the house. That access is enhanced by renting a cable box, needing 1 per jack thats going to be enhanced.
Once you've enhanced with a box, you can opt in for some different channel packages, each varied in content, providers, etc, with a range of prices added into the monthly bill.
And then, there's movies on demand. When you just don't feel like waiting for Netflix to get the movie added to streaming. All at per-film price. Then add special events like UFC, WWE, etc etc.
So in many ways, we've already been paying to win at entertainment for decades. People who want more entertainment and have the fiscal means to obtain it will obtain it, and the market will cater to that, as well as the fact that those without money also want to be entertained, which it offers options to as well.
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
I'm not in disagreement BUT it will simply never work in a FPS, GW is unique in the market for what it offers a triple AAA MMORPG completely for free after a box purchase.
Lets use BC2 since I think COD post MW1 is the work of satan. Why am I going to play BF Heroes when I get nothing more than what I get with BC2's awesome multiplayer with just a box purchase.
BF:H or any other of the multitude of F2P shooters offer absolutely nothing I cannot get a better instance of from a box purchase and for free, majority are 32 man maps BC2 does that, majority have leveling up BC2 does that, social tools yep it does that also.
So all you end up with is a game for free that is poor in comparison to BC2 so why wouldnt I just go buy BC2 and thats where the problems lie.
Unless like GW you have a truly unique product then your going to struggle 90% of people with disposable income would just go buy BC2 in the above example leaving the 10% remaining to play BF:H and perhaps spend some money there whilst a whole host more without disposable income will play BF:H and expect the moon on a stick and it to be perfectly balanced.
Different payement model will also lead to different desgin model and vice versa.
I think this is exactly the point about the actuall Eve cash shop drama. If you change your main revenu style you will change your design inevitably.
an absolutely astute presentation. Its reality folks, and I have never been a F2P guy, but I understand the thought process 100% now and it makes perfect sense. I cant blame them for trying to do what they can to maximize their profits, hell I do it every day in my work, why should a gaming company be any different. I was shocked about the forum %'s I always figured the people who constantly bitch on the forums werent playing or spending, and there were plenty of people who just play and never post, which was confirmed. Generally happy players never post, only people who have a gripe.
I dont begrudge any company who follows this pay structure, it might not be for me personally, but its not cause of the spending, its cause I havent found a f2p that keeps my interest enough to want to buy stuff from them. I am sure the day will come that I will.
Look at the numbers ... ONLY 1.29% of the player base paid BEFORE their change. After, the conversion shot up may be a factor of 2 .. so we are still talking about less than 3% here.
97% of the players OBVIOUSLY have enough self-control not to use the cash shop. You complain about a game that essentially is given away to 97% of the players?
It is FREE. Get over it. Don't like it. Don't play it. EA is not obligated to provide you with free entertainment.
EXACTLY.
EA's own numbers in that presentation showed that for all the whining and bitching on their message boards, it was those players who were whining and bitching that spent the most money on the system they were complaining about. The vast majority of players, who never went to the boards, never posted, and were not as heavily invested in the game spent considerably less, if they spent anything at all.
Why listen to that vocal minority at all when they're the ones that are going to turn around and open their wallets to support a system that they supposedly despise? The rest of the metrics showed no decline in users and no major loss for them at all when they switched. If anything, it showed that the vocal minority don't represent the average user at all, since they might be loud, but they're also doing exactly what they say players object to the most.
Again -- none of these new payment models would exist if there wasn't a market for them. They didn't appear out of the blue. Players gave developers the idea for them over many, many years of buying gold and items and weapons and characters, etc. for real money in MMO's and other games.
It's called capitalism, but yes I agree with you. It is disgusting.
My gaming blog
Yep.
The numbers in that presentation bear it out. The vast majority of players will look at a game that is F2P + cash shop and ignore the cash shop. They'll play because it's free. When they get tired of playing, they move on. They don't care that they're at a disadvantage over paying players. They're just there to have some free fun for a while then leave. Those are your casual fans.
It's the hardcore, who were the ones spending real money on gold, items, weapons, characters, etc. in previous games, that drive the market. They might complain the loudest, but they also spend money. WAY more money than the vast majority, who don't buy anything at all. It's the hardcore player, who will look for any advantage they can against other players, that support these F2P + cash shop and Freemium systems the most.
Pretty much.
It's like the casual Facebook games market -- most people playing games like Farmville, Cafe World, or Mafia Wars aren't going to spend cash on them. There's no point. Those games are a way to kill a few minutes at work or in class when you're bored. You click around for about five minutes, then get back to whatever you were doing before. It's the hardcore, and the people who get more invested in the games that start spending money on them.
Zynga doesn't profit off the vast majority of users who never buy items or in-game currency at all. They profit from the small minority of players who want an advantage of some sort. That holds true for companies like EA and other game developers as well.
EXACTLY.
EA's own numbers in that presentation showed that for all the whining and bitching on their message boards, it was those players who were whining and bitching that spent the most money on the system they were complaining about. The vast majority of players, who never went to the boards, never posted, and were not as heavily invested in the game spent considerably less, if they spent anything at all.
Why listen to that vocal minority at all when they're the ones that are going to turn around and open their wallets to support a system that they supposedly despise? The rest of the metrics showed no decline in users and no major loss for them at all when they switched. If anything, it showed that the vocal minority don't represent the average user at all, since they might be loud, but they're also doing exactly what they say players object to the most.
Again -- none of these new payment models would exist if there wasn't a market for them. They didn't appear out of the blue. Players gave developers the idea for them over many, many years of buying gold and items and weapons and characters, etc. for real money in MMO's and other games.
thisFree to play means pay to win.