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How can a MMO justify subscription ?
Lobotomist
Member EpicPosts: 5,965
Here is a question for you -
How can a modern themepark MMO justify box price + ongoing 15$ subscription ?
Are we being ripped of ?
Lets analyse here :
1. Server cost : Today cloud servers are dime and dozen , its actually much much cheaper than even couple years ago. Asking players to chip in for server cost - false
2. Engine development cost : Let assume that MMO engines are more complicated than your regular game engines. And so they cost more to develop. But today there are several licenced engines that are so good even the biggest companies use them - Players chipping in for engine cost - false
3. Game development cost : What makes MMO more expensive than single player RPG ? Amount of content ? Judging from todays trends I seen single player RPGs with same or more content than many MMO games at release. Yet they dont ask for subscription. And even if amount of content is a question. Why not make less content , and than charge for aditional content as DLC ? - Platyers chipping in for content - false
4. Constant updates : Yea. I heared that myth. Most of MMOs fire 80% of work force month after release. And all those "Monthly new content!" turns out to be just PR bull.. Even if new content comes after all , it happens once or twice - than it turns into payed mini expansions. So paying for developers developing something that we get to pay for again. - Players paying for constant updates - false
So what we are paying 15$ for ? 180$ yearly ? Plus 60$ on box price ... thats 240$ a year from each player.
Not bad. No wonder the market is full with MMO wannabies that planned to cash in on this golden goose !
I give credit to games like EVE that are sandbox , and PVP based. With amazing "all players on same server" technology and actual free updates all the time. Even they could live with B2P+F2P model - if there was no PVP balance to keep in mind.
But themepark PVE games ?
No excuse !
Discuss
Comments
You don't really need to ask. It's to keep the profit steady and the shareholders happy.
Oh, btw value is perceived differently. For example, I think to some people, burning money in the litteral sense can be of extreme value if you're freezing to death/extremely rich. It just depends on what people perceive to be worth their money. And it's a good way to help someone get rid of his cash...
Agree 100% that there really is little to no justification for subs now.
The only actual customer value that should come from subs is free expansions, patches, and no cash shop....plus solid customer support and active GMs enforcing community "laws" including the possibilityof frequent live GM/Dynamic events.
Instead people get served 60 dollar game purchase, sub fee, expansion purchases, and a cash shop to add insult to injury (of the wallet).
while i dont think 15 bucks a month is a ripoff for any game you really like, if you factor in the hours of enjoyment, i do think that some subscriptions are more justified than others.
for inststance i see the SOE all access pass as starting to become a fantastic deal if you buy in for the year..
and look whats coming out:
dragon Prophet
planetside 2
Everquest Next (eventually)
thats a good deal for 15 a month (if you buy the year pass).
Your forgetting the monthly cost of bandwith (which is huge), cost of CSR, cost of IT & security guys, etc etc.
Also it depends on the studio. Some studio's take that $15 a month and just bank it, while you as a player never see a return for it. Some studio's like Trion actually view their game as a ongoing service, and you get quite a bit for your hard earned money. You can't really generalize all studio's together in this instance.
After GW2 a lot of PTP MMos are going to struggle to justify that payment.
Only recent MMO i trully believe they invest the money they get back into the game is RIFT.
Define "dime a dozen" in real-world monthly cost to rent a server farm terms. (Hint: It's non-trivial, no matter how much you want to pretend otherwise)
Since when is licensing an engine free?
Honestly, there's no point to going on. You haven't provided an ounce of analysis, just a bunch of hand waving that ignores anything that might dispute the point you wish to make.
Games are elective entertainment. It's not a critical, everyday, must have object like gas or food, so there's no such thing as price gouging. They apply a value to it, and if you agree with that value and want access to their product, you pay. If not, you don't. If the customer is willing to pay a subscription fee on top of a box price, then that's justification enough for the sub.
Bottom line, if you don't want to pay the sub, don't play the game.
P2P also stops gold farmers and hackers (often the same people) to some extent.
I don't like Guild War's model at all.
They live from the upfront cost of buying the game and then making fast money through the cash shop. People ask why GW2 servers are dying so fast...well...why wouldn't it, it's a game with the major profits upfront.
Guild Wars 2 has a fast leveling process, because the developer claim that's what they wanted? Really? As far as I'm concerned it's because of how the game monetizes, GW type games live from the upfront cost, they make all the money in the beginning from the game / collector's edition / and the few weeks after that when tons of people spending money on their cash shop.
Games in the past used to have to prove them over years with P2P.
Now the game carries a heavy upfront cost, has a heavy upfront revenue stream through the cash shop which exploits the leveling process, and after that..who knows..maybe the developer will still care about the game, but that's unlikely when the have 90% of their revenue already.
I hear this all the time with Guild Wars 2, people always said "I buy the game once and I don't have to worry about paying anything anymore". That's great, so why would the developer care about you after you have given them the money, I mean you're done paying so.....the content is over, go PVP a bit in some arena where they don't need to make content.
Thats the problem really, people seem to want everything for free, and forget that just running a game, takes resources, which arent cheap, and frankly, any decrease in the server side resources will always result in a game that is easier to hack, and frequenty is..
It may be true that individual servers the game world(s) reside on can be brought up and taken down on an as needed basis with little cost because they are Virtual Machines. Those VMs still need to be hosted somewhere. And VM farms have to reside on robust hardware. Setting up this type of system isn't cheap, it's just cost effective. It allows the publishers to add and remove the game's servers a lot more efficiently, but what makes you think it costs little to maintain?
Where did this idea that hosting remote software is cheap? I've seen everyone throw that statement around lately with no factual evidence. No sample pricing. no nothing to back it up.
@OP, do you know what the cost is involved with running a data center? Even if it's leased out, someone's got to host it and still make money on top of it. There is no free lunch here.
im still laughing about Eve, the guy seriously thinks that the only reason its not F2P is because of PVP balancing issues.. wut... obviously has no idea how much a server cluster costs, bearing in mind that CCP recently just upgraded their hardware, at no small expense but i can imagine it wasnt just a 'few quid' and when necessary, probably within the next year, will no doubt have to buy new servers etc yet again.. but thats okay, because their cheap right.. the guy seriously has no conception of what it takes to operate an MMO, even one with a 'relatively' small playerbase..
I have no problem paying $15/mo for a subscription to a good game.
People still have to get paid. Devs, CSRs, techs, suits. Salaries have remained the same or increased in the industry and some costs have increased as well. Yet the price of a sub hasn't changed in years, and often is discounted if you subscribe for a longer term.
There is nothing else in the world I can buy for $15 that provides as much entertainment.
OP, With great game play, great content, and services like, customer service, character restores, and bot/hack control.
From what I've seen, I don't like the way cash shops are built into the fabric of subless games.
1 and 4. Servers do cost money to keep up at 24h/day and support staff in case of issues.
Also you are assuming that no content updates can be done on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. It can and has been done in many MMOs altough lately it seems not as much as you expect.
So assuming that content is constantly added to a game I can justify a monthly subscriptions for an MMO.
My gaming blog
Because they can.
When you look at how much money WOW pulls in from subs and look at the amount of content updates, things don't really gel. It's a license to print them money. They've never increased their content production based on a massive increase in subs.
Games like Rift really need those subs in order to keep cranking out content.
I think you severely underestimate developer salaries, it technician salaries, cs salaries, and the benefits for all those.
On staff, real life GM's that are available to resolve issue. F2P or B2P are forced to use automated systems to detect problems (i.e., bits - ahem, GW2...). I'll pay a sub for GW2 if they can hire some live people to ban those chumps.
Or, in RIFT's case - they treat their subscribers as if it's a 'service' not just a game, and the content they put out is proof.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
yes, there really is WoW and then there is everything else.
WoW is truly a cash cow. It doesnt need a sub with the huge revenue they make off of the cash shop.
1) Subscription means no need for a "pay to win" item mall. Some paying customers prefer a subscription for that reason.
2) The main cost of making a game, as with most computer software, is in game development before launch. A company pours millions of dollars into developing the game, and if the game flops, they may only get back a small fraction of that. Most games don't become hits, so the ones that do need to make a ton of money in order to justify development costs. Investors won't put money into a project with a 90% chance of losing $10 million and a 10% chance of making $10 million. If it's a 90% chance of losing $10 million and a 10% chance of making $200 million, that's a different story.
You asked about server cost, here it is :
I work in internet company - we have around 180 million users log in daily. Yet we have moved all our servers to Amazon cloud.
Plus we have a inhouse server cluster for content updates and main system (hardened)
This costs around 16 thousand dollars a month.
Lot of money ? For 180 million users - which is over 100 times more than WOW had in its hay day ?
Second. I never said development tools do not cost money. But its a same cost single player games have. Yet they are B2P.
How come ?
We are being milked.
And as for claim that B2P games do not invest in user because they gat their money up front ? P2P games get all the money upfront too !
Ok, so why not have only subscription without box price ? Fair is fair ?
No they want Box price + sub (19$ for TSW) + cash shop !!!
Some nerve...
Seriously though a sub is sod all money wise.
The real question is "is it worth it to ME?". That answer depends on the game itself and how much time I have to play, not the total cost to run it. Most themepark games are not worth it to me because they simply don't offer enough content to keep me long term. Additionally I don't have a lot of time right now to play so a sub doesn't make sense.
Another reason why SoE wins again. I can play EQ2 silver sub while I don't have a lot of time but spend 15.00 for a ton of SC (thanks double/triple SC weekends) and when I do have time again switch to a recurring sub.
Rungard, you missed Wizardry Online