Those others would pay anyway. Thus the money from the free player is still missing overall. The point is that the overall market size (in terms of profit) shrinks. This leads to smaller future budgets and less polish/updates to current games than would be possible otherwise.
I think the reality is many people wont' pay no matter what.
I believe in capatlism. Those game studio change their game to freemium because they think it'll drive them more money.
Wasn't talking about the model or the studios changing anything. F2P is great and needs the "free".
It was about specific people who find a game, enjoy it, stick to it, but milk the free option without thinking about the consequences. Was just food for thought for them.
Doesn't matter in the end. People will do what they do.
I know when I play Atlantica Online. Half of the people never pay a dime. And When I ask them, they said the reason they are playing is because it is free.
So many people actually play for free.
The problem is many people pay hundred of dollars each month. Me included.
The real reason those people manage to play for free, is because there are many people willing to pay much more than 15$ per month.
Originally posted by adam_nox freemium works when a game is bad, but subs work better when a game is good.
So what you are saying is that WoW is the only "good" game ever made. Nice to know.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Originally posted by funyahns I would consider this all to be terrible news for gamers. I don't understand why some of you are so happy about this. Game designers will see that the key to making money off of games is not in making a great experience. It will be in putting in little financial obstacles, gambling and ease of use hurdles. All of those things don't make for better gaming. Candy Crush makes more money than everyone does that mean its a good game? No, it just feeds off of stupid human nature. Applaud how f2p is so great while the whole market is stagnant.
So? I only care if a game is fun, and would care less what is motivating the devs.
If they put in too many things to make the game not fun, i am not playing it. So far, that has not happen to the specific games i am playing.
This outlook will not support your idea of "fun" over the long term. If everyone felt as you do, this whole genre would have imploded in on itself years ago. And if you say, "Fine, I'll just find the next thing that comes along, then I have to question just how much of this truly is fun for you or if you are just bored
Who says i need an outlook to support "fun" over the long term. Today i play some MMOs because they are fun to me. I care less if it would last for a year, or 10. Entertainment changes anyway. I watch more tv (because of many good shows like The Blacklist, Arrow, GoT ...) in the last 2 years than before. Who can says what is the best entertainment for me in the long term.
And devs need to reach an equilibrium with the market. If they don't provide something that is fun to their audience, they don't have a business. Now they don't necessarily cater to me, since i am only one free player. When they stop doing that, i am moving on to other entertainment.
Well,
I guess at the end of it all, regardless of anyone's feelings, you aren't the one who put these games out there for "free" so I have to ultimately live with my own opinion no matter what it is, since you aren't doing anything other than what they (Publishers) are telling you to do. All I can do is bow out and say....
"Have fun"
That is true, but none the less, every free player needs to know and understand that his refusal to pay is lowering the quality of the games they enjoy.
The "free" option is there, and we can't blame anyone for using the offered option, I agree to that, but they should think about the consequences.
Yes, the consequence is that i have fun now for free .. isn't that pretty obvious?
And what lowering quality of the games i play? first, i don't see that happening in the specific games i am playing. In fact, they are getting better with more features, and content. Secondly, the whales are funding the development. If the whales & devs offered me free fun games, i intend to take advantage of that with zero apologies.
Originally posted by funyahns I would consider this all to be terrible news for gamers. I don't understand why some of you are so happy about this. Game designers will see that the key to making money off of games is not in making a great experience. It will be in putting in little financial obstacles, gambling and ease of use hurdles. All of those things don't make for better gaming. Candy Crush makes more money than everyone does that mean its a good game? No, it just feeds off of stupid human nature. Applaud how f2p is so great while the whole market is stagnant.
So? I only care if a game is fun, and would care less what is motivating the devs.
If they put in too many things to make the game not fun, i am not playing it. So far, that has not happen to the specific games i am playing.
This outlook will not support your idea of "fun" over the long term. If everyone felt as you do, this whole genre would have imploded in on itself years ago. And if you say, "Fine, I'll just find the next thing that comes along, then I have to question just how much of this truly is fun for you or if you are just bored
Who says i need an outlook to support "fun" over the long term. Today i play some MMOs because they are fun to me. I care less if it would last for a year, or 10. Entertainment changes anyway. I watch more tv (because of many good shows like The Blacklist, Arrow, GoT ...) in the last 2 years than before. Who can says what is the best entertainment for me in the long term.
And devs need to reach an equilibrium with the market. If they don't provide something that is fun to their audience, they don't have a business. Now they don't necessarily cater to me, since i am only one free player. When they stop doing that, i am moving on to other entertainment.
Well,
I guess at the end of it all, regardless of anyone's feelings, you aren't the one who put these games out there for "free" so I have to ultimately live with my own opinion no matter what it is, since you aren't doing anything other than what they (Publishers) are telling you to do. All I can do is bow out and say....
"Have fun"
That is true, but none the less, every free player needs to know and understand that his refusal to pay is lowering the quality of the games they enjoy.
The "free" option is there, and we can't blame anyone for using the offered option, I agree to that, but they should think about the consequences.
Yes, the consequence is that i have fun now for free .. isn't that pretty obvious?
And what lowering quality of the games i play? first, i don't see that happening in the specific games i am playing. In fact, they are getting better with more features, and content. Secondly, the whales are funding the development. If the whales & devs offered me free fun games, i intend to take advantage of that with zero apologies.
Noone said you should apologize. If the free option is there, use it if you want and don't let anyone blame you for it.
It was just some food for thought about the consequences. (The whales funding the development has nothing to do with it btw. They pay anyway. They don't pay because you don't. You are missing the point. But you are free to do so.)
Noone said you should apologize. If the free option is there, use it if you want and don't let anyone blame you for it.
It was just some food for thought about the consequences. (The whales funding the development has nothing to do with it btw. They pay anyway. They don't pay because you don't. You are missing the point. But you are free to do so.)
It is actually quite simple. The consequence of me not paying is may be at most couple of hundred bucks a year, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
The consequence of everyone free-riding is big. However, I don't care enough to provide a public good (if other can free ride, there is no reason why i should not), and even if the whole MMO genre collapse tomorrow (which by the GROWTH of revenue, it is highly unlikely), i will just do something else.
And lastly, the whales funding development has everything to do with it. Free-riding has no bad consequences if there are enough of those who are willing to pay.
F2P is following the same path as many other online services. Just look at examples like web hosting, email providers, etc. They have all shown that free services are extremely popular, and profitable. I dont get why people are always suprised that this has happened to other products (now gaming).
I just write it off as insanity (i.e. doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results).
I can totally get the people who spend time figuring out how to get the game completely for free and are very satisfied that they have gotten it for free and move from game to game doing exactly that. It would be great if no damage is being done to this genre if this type of f2p games become very popular but unfortunately the overall quality is declining and in favour of good content they spend time creating clothes and vehicles to make more money in the cash shop.
I do not like people who capitalize on the whales but I especially dislike the whales because they are funding this decline. Games are going down because more money is spent on hiring people to make cosmetic items to get money from the cash shop or introduce ways to get people to spend more and in the end we the gamers are the losers.
I guess at the end of it all, regardless of anyone's feelings, you aren't the one who put these games out there for "free" so I have to ultimately live with my own opinion no matter what it is, since you aren't doing anything other than what they (Publishers) are telling you to do. All I can do is bow out and say....
"Have fun"
That is true, but none the less, every free player needs to know and understand that his refusal to pay is lowering the quality of the games they enjoy.
The "free" option is there, and we can't blame anyone for using the offered option, I agree to that, but they should think about the consequences.
Yes, the consequence is that i have fun now for free .. isn't that pretty obvious?
And what lowering quality of the games i play? first, i don't see that happening in the specific games i am playing. In fact, they are getting better with more features, and content. Secondly, the whales are funding the development. If the whales & devs offered me free fun games, i intend to take advantage of that with zero apologies.
See, i really don't like the whole "i'm having fun, so who are you to say whats fun or not" argument, because is presupposes that the person having "fun" is omnisciently aware of all things "fun" and this is still "fun" to him.
What i mean by that is fun is relative. I remember watching a video of a guy who was a force recon marine talking about some time they had spent in central africa, where a bunch of kids had basically found a bunch of wire, had mashed it into the relative shape of a ball, and were running around hitting the ball of wire with sticks, and they were having "fun".
Now, in theory you could say "oh well they were having fun so who are you to say thats not fun", when i can pretty much guarantee you if you gave those kids the option of say playing on one of the fancy playgrounds we have across neighborhoods in the US that they would choose the playground every single time.
Its the same thing with F2P games. If all you ever have access to is crap F2P games, then you'll never know what a good quality sub game can offer. The unfortunate sad part for so many MMO players is the only experience they've had with sub games is WOW. All the rest of the sub games converted to F2P to keep drom dying.
Which brings me to another point. Name one game that actually STARTED as F2P thats even remotely decent. I certainly can't think of one. All the examples of "good" f2p games were games that started out as Subscription and changed to F2P to keep from having to shut down.
Only time will tell, but i don't see this F2P trend lasting. It doesn't produce sustainable profits at high levels, they always dwindle down to a niche audience and although its "profitable" its not exactly a whale for the company like WOW is.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
To suggest that one authors findings settles the debate over f2p vs p2p of which makes more then the other is small minded. This would suggest through these finds that we the community of MMO gamers are dumb for supporting f2p when in return everyone would pay more then you would for a sub.
f2p is evil, I always have said this and this is a example of how evil corps that use this model exploit the end game player. One stamen that i predict will be said is "not everyone is a end game gamer". This is true but, how many of us strive to be close to that end game as possible and why else play a game if you don't want to see end game content?
I love most of the kickstarters that have popped up, I have faith that the ones that succeed will face law suits from companies like EA crying about lose of revenue due to kickstarters success. Much like what Microsoft does they will keep them in court and run them dry, thats where we come in as the consumer, we speak best with our money, stop buying crap from large corps and they lose all their power.
You just used the word evil to refer to people trying to make money. Credibility, gone.
You seem very confused or just simply blind def and dumb to what is considered " trying to make money" and people trying to make a ton of money with cheap tricks. As far as evil part of it all just do a good search for " greed and money" something tells me that about 100 or so creditable websites will pop-up telling you how "evil" it is for people to be greedy and what it brings.
Back on topic, F2p is only can only be done if every thing you can make is on par with everything you can buy, swtor and neverwinter are by far the worst of the worst when it comes to the market and showing how evil they really can get. In swtor if you are a F2p person you have to pay money for more then 1 casting bar if i remember right, wtf is that? In neverwinter you have to pay $5.00 for a health stone that last 5 or 10 charges while the ones you can buy with in game currency are about half as good.
I personally will stop supporting the evil Corps. and focus my time, effort and money toward kickstarters.
Blizzard has ~12 billion, yes BILLION, dollars sitting in a bank...now what MMO company has that? nuff said
If you divide those numbers by the number of games it makes it so that F2P games actually make less. As for P2P games that switched to F2P, they did that because they were making little money as a P2P, because they weren't worth the subscription fee. The numbers are cooked as well. WoW at number 7 without including subscription fees is like selling a car without an engine...
Not sure why this debate is still going on tbh. It's market research. If the wanted they could make it look like p2p makes more money than f2p, it's just that the market research comapny wouldn't make as much money if they did(more f2p game makers/runners to sell to)
I do not like people who capitalize on the whales but I especially dislike the whales because they are funding this decline. Games are going down because more money is spent on hiring people to make cosmetic items to get money from the cash shop or introduce ways to get people to spend more and in the end we the gamers are the losers.
and there is little you can do about it. Whales have zero obligation to take your opinions into account.
So since they are there already, and there are fun free games, i see zero reason of not taking advantage of it. Long term be damned, since even if i care, my personal action will be zero impact on the broader market anyway. This is the perfect example of why free-riding is a rational strategy.
Blizzard has ~12 billion, yes BILLION, dollars sitting in a bank...now what MMO company has that? nuff said
and Blizz next game, Hearthstone, is F2P.
Yes, they know how to make money, and it seems that they are doing a F2P game next. May be they know something that you don't?
You do realize that these "X > Y!" generalizations across different game genres are totally silly and meaningless, right?
Can we finally stop the F2P vs P2P stupidity? All we got so far is bogus misunderstood/misrepresented data, outrageous claims without any proof and people who don't understand the simplest concepts and are not afraid to show it.
If the data shown so far told us anything, than that F2P and P2P can both work well and some of the most successful games are hybrids using both instead of having endless inhouse "who's is bigger" F2P vs. P2P discussions.
Blizzard has ~12 billion, yes BILLION, dollars sitting in a bank...now what MMO company has that? nuff said
and Blizz next game, Hearthstone, is F2P.
Yes, they know how to make money, and it seems that they are doing a F2P game next. May be they know something that you don't?
You do realize that these "X > Y!" generalizations across different game genres are totally silly and meaningless, right?
Can we finally stop the F2P vs P2P stupidity? All we got so far is bogus misunderstood/misrepresented data, outrageous claims without any proof and people who don't understand the simplest concepts and are not afraid to show it.
If the data shown so far told us anything, than that F2P and P2P can both work well and some of the most successful games are hybrids using both instead of having endless inhouse "who's is bigger" F2P vs. P2P discussions.
You do realize that i have said nothing about generalization.
I merely point out that a) Blizz is doing a F2P game next, and b) since they are the expert of producing games, they may know things you do not.
Tell me how any of those two statements can be a "X>Y" generalization? In fact, there is no Y here. I only talked about F2P without comparing it to anything.
I can totally get the people who spend time figuring out how to get the game completely for free and are very satisfied that they have gotten it for free and move from game to game doing exactly that. It would be great if no damage is being done to this genre if this type of f2p games become very popular but unfortunately the overall quality is declining and in favour of good content they spend time creating clothes and vehicles to make more money in the cash shop.
I do not like people who capitalize on the whales but I especially dislike the whales because they are funding this decline. Games are going down because more money is spent on hiring people to make cosmetic items to get money from the cash shop or introduce ways to get people to spend more and in the end we the gamers are the losers.
I'm with you, but I think that this whole "whale" phenomenon in MMOs isn't going to last. I got a preview of what awaits the whales in the CoH closure. Imagine a group of players who regularly and exhaustively patron the cash store, because they have no reason to suspect things aren't alright, to awake one morning and see "We're sorry, but the decision has been made to close the game." Many of the folks still haven't bought another MMO, because they don't want to ever, EVER have that happen again.
Now the people I saw in CoH were small time cash shoppers...they typically spent $50 a month on a good month. Just imagine a game that's supported by a cadre of a few who drop $1000 into the game REGULARLY, and just imagine how they are going to react, when all that cash invested in the game amounts to nothing as soon as the announcement is made. That kind of model doesn't last long. It's the kind of business model that causes good customers to drop out entirely when the model breaks down.
At least the real whales, the Casino whales, are treated to a free room, a nice show and a prime rib dinner when they lose a mint in Vegas. The only thing awaiting these "virtual whales" is the cold shoulder, flamewars from the peanut gallery here, and a harpoon of regret for ever buying into these games in the first place.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Facts are simple and facts are straight Facts are lazy and facts are late Facts all come with points of view Facts don't do what I want them to Facts just twist the truth around Facts are living turned inside out Facts are getting the best of them Facts are nothing on the face of things
Without greed we wouldn't have any of these games to play, so yes, it is.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
I do not like people who capitalize on the whales but I especially dislike the whales because they are funding this decline. Games are going down because more money is spent on hiring people to make cosmetic items to get money from the cash shop or introduce ways to get people to spend more and in the end we the gamers are the losers.
and there is little you can do about it. Whales have zero obligation to take your opinions into account.
So since they are there already, and there are fun free games, i see zero reason of not taking advantage of it. Long term be damned, since even if i care, my personal action will be zero impact on the broader market anyway. This is the perfect example of why free-riding is a rational strategy.
Thank god the masses don't share this kind of attitude regarding entertainment, otherwise all we'd have left is Tic Tac Toe in the sand with a stick.
Foresight my friend, is not your forte.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
that kind of data has been around for years now, everyone knows f2p makes the most money thats why every game in existence is full of microtransactions now and there are so many successful f2p mmos
Originally posted by DamonVile You'd think with so many people posting predictions on the future we'd be better at doing it. Even throwing totally blind the sheer number of attempts made should at least give you pretty good odds..... We sure are putting that infinite number of monkeys thing to the test.
Hehe! Even with an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite amount of time, if one of the monkeys happens to be right it would take forever to actually find the one correct monkey in the barrel of infinite monkeys.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I'm with you, but I think that this whole "whale" phenomenon in MMOs isn't going to last.
How do you reconcile your opinion with the fact that the F2P market is growing in revenue. Someone (i.e. whales) have to pay.
At the least, the "whale" phenomenon has not reached the turning point yet, from data.
Sure, nothing last forever. Sub-only games dominate the market for what? 10-12 years? And now sub-only is trending to be gone.
All I have to look at is back to those first few games which made a living from the cash store early on, games like YoVille, make closure anouncements. The 400,000 people there aren't leaving happy, and why should they? They didn't dump thousands of dollars into a virtual dollhouse just to have it go "poof" because there are /only/ 400,000 players on there daily. Indeed, if this model is so successful, Zynga wouldn't be closing up games left and right and pushing their customers to things like online poker.
Zynga is a bellweather for the more action-oriented online games that we are a part of. And I think that, for the most part, a lot of the big games are still open, but not as many as their used to be (CoH and WAR both shut down). Indeed, when the next round of games comes out, how many of the cash-shop titles we see now are going to remain open? LotR? The Funcom games? DDO? And how many of those hardcore "whales" who get closed on are going to dump /yet more/ cash on something that might only remain open half as long? Or perhaps close in 88 days, like APB?
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Originally posted by adam_nox freemium works when a game is bad, but subs work better when a game is good.
So what you are saying is that WoW is the only "good" game ever made. Nice to know.
Considering WoW isn't the only MMO with a subscription model... I'd think not
He said that subs work better when a game is good; WoW is the only game with a large population that doesn't have a substantial free option. The only one. So he is either saying that only WoW is "good," or only WoW and niche games with tiny audiences are "good."
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Comments
I know when I play Atlantica Online. Half of the people never pay a dime. And When I ask them, they said the reason they are playing is because it is free.
So many people actually play for free.
The problem is many people pay hundred of dollars each month. Me included.
The real reason those people manage to play for free, is because there are many people willing to pay much more than 15$ per month.
So what you are saying is that WoW is the only "good" game ever made. Nice to know.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Yes, the consequence is that i have fun now for free .. isn't that pretty obvious?
And what lowering quality of the games i play? first, i don't see that happening in the specific games i am playing. In fact, they are getting better with more features, and content. Secondly, the whales are funding the development. If the whales & devs offered me free fun games, i intend to take advantage of that with zero apologies.
Noone said you should apologize. If the free option is there, use it if you want and don't let anyone blame you for it.
It was just some food for thought about the consequences. (The whales funding the development has nothing to do with it btw. They pay anyway. They don't pay because you don't. You are missing the point. But you are free to do so.)
It is actually quite simple. The consequence of me not paying is may be at most couple of hundred bucks a year, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
The consequence of everyone free-riding is big. However, I don't care enough to provide a public good (if other can free ride, there is no reason why i should not), and even if the whole MMO genre collapse tomorrow (which by the GROWTH of revenue, it is highly unlikely), i will just do something else.
And lastly, the whales funding development has everything to do with it. Free-riding has no bad consequences if there are enough of those who are willing to pay.
F2P is following the same path as many other online services. Just look at examples like web hosting, email providers, etc. They have all shown that free services are extremely popular, and profitable. I dont get why people are always suprised that this has happened to other products (now gaming).
I just write it off as insanity (i.e. doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results).
I can totally get the people who spend time figuring out how to get the game completely for free and are very satisfied that they have gotten it for free and move from game to game doing exactly that. It would be great if no damage is being done to this genre if this type of f2p games become very popular but unfortunately the overall quality is declining and in favour of good content they spend time creating clothes and vehicles to make more money in the cash shop.
I do not like people who capitalize on the whales but I especially dislike the whales because they are funding this decline. Games are going down because more money is spent on hiring people to make cosmetic items to get money from the cash shop or introduce ways to get people to spend more and in the end we the gamers are the losers.
See, i really don't like the whole "i'm having fun, so who are you to say whats fun or not" argument, because is presupposes that the person having "fun" is omnisciently aware of all things "fun" and this is still "fun" to him.
What i mean by that is fun is relative. I remember watching a video of a guy who was a force recon marine talking about some time they had spent in central africa, where a bunch of kids had basically found a bunch of wire, had mashed it into the relative shape of a ball, and were running around hitting the ball of wire with sticks, and they were having "fun".
Now, in theory you could say "oh well they were having fun so who are you to say thats not fun", when i can pretty much guarantee you if you gave those kids the option of say playing on one of the fancy playgrounds we have across neighborhoods in the US that they would choose the playground every single time.
Its the same thing with F2P games. If all you ever have access to is crap F2P games, then you'll never know what a good quality sub game can offer. The unfortunate sad part for so many MMO players is the only experience they've had with sub games is WOW. All the rest of the sub games converted to F2P to keep drom dying.
Which brings me to another point. Name one game that actually STARTED as F2P thats even remotely decent. I certainly can't think of one. All the examples of "good" f2p games were games that started out as Subscription and changed to F2P to keep from having to shut down.
Only time will tell, but i don't see this F2P trend lasting. It doesn't produce sustainable profits at high levels, they always dwindle down to a niche audience and although its "profitable" its not exactly a whale for the company like WOW is.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Greed is good!
Blizzard has ~12 billion, yes BILLION, dollars sitting in a bank...now what MMO company has that? nuff said
If you divide those numbers by the number of games it makes it so that F2P games actually make less. As for P2P games that switched to F2P, they did that because they were making little money as a P2P, because they weren't worth the subscription fee. The numbers are cooked as well. WoW at number 7 without including subscription fees is like selling a car without an engine...
and there is little you can do about it. Whales have zero obligation to take your opinions into account.
So since they are there already, and there are fun free games, i see zero reason of not taking advantage of it. Long term be damned, since even if i care, my personal action will be zero impact on the broader market anyway. This is the perfect example of why free-riding is a rational strategy.
and Blizz next game, Hearthstone, is F2P.
Yes, they know how to make money, and it seems that they are doing a F2P game next. May be they know something that you don't?
You do realize that these "X > Y!" generalizations across different game genres are totally silly and meaningless, right?
Can we finally stop the F2P vs P2P stupidity? All we got so far is bogus misunderstood/misrepresented data, outrageous claims without any proof and people who don't understand the simplest concepts and are not afraid to show it.
If the data shown so far told us anything, than that F2P and P2P can both work well and some of the most successful games are hybrids using both instead of having endless inhouse "who's is bigger" F2P vs. P2P discussions.
You do realize that i have said nothing about generalization.
I merely point out that a) Blizz is doing a F2P game next, and b) since they are the expert of producing games, they may know things you do not.
Tell me how any of those two statements can be a "X>Y" generalization? In fact, there is no Y here. I only talked about F2P without comparing it to anything.
I'm with you, but I think that this whole "whale" phenomenon in MMOs isn't going to last. I got a preview of what awaits the whales in the CoH closure. Imagine a group of players who regularly and exhaustively patron the cash store, because they have no reason to suspect things aren't alright, to awake one morning and see "We're sorry, but the decision has been made to close the game." Many of the folks still haven't bought another MMO, because they don't want to ever, EVER have that happen again.
Now the people I saw in CoH were small time cash shoppers...they typically spent $50 a month on a good month. Just imagine a game that's supported by a cadre of a few who drop $1000 into the game REGULARLY, and just imagine how they are going to react, when all that cash invested in the game amounts to nothing as soon as the announcement is made. That kind of model doesn't last long. It's the kind of business model that causes good customers to drop out entirely when the model breaks down.
At least the real whales, the Casino whales, are treated to a free room, a nice show and a prime rib dinner when they lose a mint in Vegas. The only thing awaiting these "virtual whales" is the cold shoulder, flamewars from the peanut gallery here, and a harpoon of regret for ever buying into these games in the first place.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
still waiting...
Without greed we wouldn't have any of these games to play, so yes, it is.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Thank god the masses don't share this kind of attitude regarding entertainment, otherwise all we'd have left is Tic Tac Toe in the sand with a stick.
Foresight my friend, is not your forte.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
"new" data
that kind of data has been around for years now, everyone knows f2p makes the most money thats why every game in existence is full of microtransactions now and there are so many successful f2p mmos
Hehe! Even with an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite amount of time, if one of the monkeys happens to be right it would take forever to actually find the one correct monkey in the barrel of infinite monkeys.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Considering WoW isn't the only MMO with a subscription model... I'd think not
All I have to look at is back to those first few games which made a living from the cash store early on, games like YoVille, make closure anouncements. The 400,000 people there aren't leaving happy, and why should they? They didn't dump thousands of dollars into a virtual dollhouse just to have it go "poof" because there are /only/ 400,000 players on there daily. Indeed, if this model is so successful, Zynga wouldn't be closing up games left and right and pushing their customers to things like online poker.
Zynga is a bellweather for the more action-oriented online games that we are a part of. And I think that, for the most part, a lot of the big games are still open, but not as many as their used to be (CoH and WAR both shut down). Indeed, when the next round of games comes out, how many of the cash-shop titles we see now are going to remain open? LotR? The Funcom games? DDO? And how many of those hardcore "whales" who get closed on are going to dump /yet more/ cash on something that might only remain open half as long? Or perhaps close in 88 days, like APB?
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
He said that subs work better when a game is good; WoW is the only game with a large population that doesn't have a substantial free option. The only one. So he is either saying that only WoW is "good," or only WoW and niche games with tiny audiences are "good."
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.