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Honesty is a good policy!
Whitebeards
Member Posts: 778
Originally Posted by Nusquam 
Let me tell you why.
200,000 sales was not enough to support a team the size we had at launch, and cuts were made. Good people had to go.
And so we held on, hoping that people would notice that we were delivering monthly updates. Hoping that Guild Wars 2 was mostly hype. We believed in The Secret World as a subscription and we hoped that players would keep coming.
Still, any fool can draw a line on a graph and see where things were going. And so the business guys made a call. They gave us a timeframe.
There were meetings about this decision. Discussions. A lot of opinions.
Don't blame the business guys, they allowed us a lot of freedom. Different arguments were made, models suggested and scenarios projected.
We tried to build a new model that will work for everyone. It has to be attractive to new players, to bring them in. It has to reward old players, to keep them happy. I believe that growth = sales, not squeezing our current customers for everything that they are worth.
I am not a money maker. I'm not doing this job because of my detailed knowledge of economics or my savvy investment skills. My job is communicating outwards and inwards - I set the direction for the game based on the conversations that I have with the community and the developers.
Perceived value for GM players has gone down, I am not blind to it.
But there is this: I don't want to say goodbye to any more of the good developers that I work with. I'm tired of it. I have been through it four times now.
The business guys win because I couldn't make it work as a subscription game. That's why. That's about as brutally honest as it gets at 1am.
http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=62808&page=76
Joel is becoming my favorite guy in gaming industry 
Comments
Rare thing, yes. No matter how bad decisions Funcom had done on the financial side of their business I like them as game creators. They've created some of the best single-player games in the last decade and I hope they don't get bought by some company like EA only to be destroyed later.
There track record says they new what was likely to happen and they still went ahead and sold " Life-Time " subscriptions. There greedy side got the better of them and now its time to pay the piper. They have condemed TSW to a slow death even if company is sold.
MAGA
Well i can somehow agree that they were greedy, even if the decision was there for each player. No one was "forced" to buy lifetime, they did it because they loved the game a lot and felt like they'd be playing it for more than a few years. Or maybe they just expected more people to buy the game and pay the sub.
On the other hand, the game does not do well at the moment. What would have been the better solution, fire the staff, forget any updates, let it rot? Is being subbed for life to a dead game a wet dream for anyone? Not sure if the B2P move would save the game, but it has the potential to do so. That brings at least a spark of hope, which is better than how the things seem now.
They weren't greedy. They were a business. Their objective was to maximise profit, because otherwise they lose their jobs and we lose updates. Of course, delivering a good game is a part of that, but you can't just make a good game and hope for the best. You have to sell it, too.
Old games are cheaper than new ones. I paid around 150$ for Guild Wars 1, but now you can get the whole thing for 30$. So what? Should I yell at ANet and demand a refund? Of course, GW1 is very old and TSW is relatively new, but some games are more successful than others. If spending a lot on what is essentially a deluxe edition of a video game makes you feel bad, don't spend. There will always be cheaper options later on.
That was a good post from Joel. Hopefully, things work out for them, although they must continue updating if they want to compete.
Since when offering something as optional as a lifetime sub is being greedy? greed would be to force everyone to buy the lifetime sub whichw as never the case.
Their move is inspired by success of GW2, the other option was to go F2P or keep incurring more loses and ultimately shut down the game.
Rare to see such Honesty.
I´m happy with their decission...they got me...i´m already in, bought the game yesterday.
Hope it works fine for them,at least they have a big chance a lot of people get attracted to their game like i did and increase their player base.
For me it´s the best option they could have taken.
I´m happy i´m finally giving TSW a shot!
and without subscription,i guess i´ll be playing it for a long time
Yep -- Joel is one of the most honest and open guys I've seen, and he posts regularly on the board directly to players. He's incredibly passionate about this game, and it shows. I think the decision has already brought in a flood of new folks, and it was fun saying hi to everyone last night -- many, many times. Secret World now #4 seller on Steam.
Welcome newscomers-- we're glad to have you!
Yup -- it's not being greedy to keep your game in business and be healthy so it can continue to be improved into the future. Just sound business practice, and the Right Thing To Do.
amazing. glad to see someone with a bit of candor and a willingness to take responsibility.
isn't that what all of us really want out of each others fk'ups? some candor, some taking of responsibility? this man has earned much street cred in my book. i hope he is rewarded for it openly so that other gaming companies take the high road as well. (here's looking at you Smed.)
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
If there's any sort of ethical conundrum related to lifetime subs, it's in selling them at all, in any game, ever. The odds of any player getting a year's worth of playtime out of them is pretty close to zero, regardless of which game you're talking about. You would calculate that possibility by finding the total number of people who play any given game for a year or more, and compare it to the total number of people who start to play a game. MMOs have a horrible retention rate, so that number is going to be really low. It doesn't really make any sense to buy any lifetime subscription.
Yet people continue to buy them. Why would any developer not offer them?
If the only ethical blip is offering a lifetime sub, then Funcom is a shining beacon of ethical behavior in a rotting morass of MMO super villains.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.