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MMORPG Developer Cash Grab Mentality
gessekai332
Member UncommonPosts: 861
Is there a point to waiting on a decent mmorpg nowadays? Developers are treating mmorpgs like console games. Hype it up, make money off initial box sale and cash shop, then put it on maintenance mode. If it happens to retain maybe a quarter of players for a few months, they will make some expansion or content upgrade using a small fraction of the resources they used to make the game in the first place. They never intend on it lasting for several years like they used to. It is probably our fault also that they continue to do this, since we never call them out on this atrocious behavior and just continue to purchase games like these every season. I think the worst offenders of them all are companies that will sell a founders pack knowing full well the ship has a very high likelihood of sinking within the first year. Its sad that most people want to just make a quick buck rather than run an honest business.
However, can we really blame either side? We the customers are the addicts yearning for our drug at no matter what the cost and the devs are the dealers just simply trying to run a business.
Is there any hope to this hopeless cycle? It doesnt help that mmorpg players are a declining demographic. almost all new players coming of age are console or fps gamers and most of the people that came into mmorpgs during everquest or the WoW boom are slowly moving on to other things in their life.
Most memorable games: AoC(Tryanny PvP), RIFT, GW, GW2, Ragnarok Online, Aion, FFXI, FFXIV, Secret World, League of Legends (Silver II rank)
Comments
RED: with as much time, effort, imagination,skill, and money involved, I think this statement is COMPLETELY unfounded.
The rest of this post is just ranting from a self-entitled perspective of someone who is angry that THEIR needs haven't been met. I would suggest that you have a close look at what you want to fulfil your gaming needs and seek out the "best fit". If this game doesn't exist, then move on; you've outgrown the genre or the games have evolved away from your play style. Either way, you are no longer compatible with MMO gaming.
I have pretty much gone back to single player RPG's i get more for my money that and indie devs they have the passion and realize to stand out we need to be different and they are not scared to try new things.never gonna get that blizzard polish with indies but you will see new things.
Like all things when something becomes mainstream accepted it almost always becomes watered down.The mmorpg is pretty much dead to me at this point.all the amazing friends i have made is why i even pay any mind to any of the games anymore.
Depending on the game and company, it's not unfounded. Here is a business presentation by a company that, at the time, made $21 MILLION a MONTH from its F2P games (and honestly today probably makes more given that its library keeps expanding)
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016417/-100-000-Whales-An
Straight from a company's mouth. On the "Pros and Cons of Chinese Design" it's right there in the list. "GAME LIFESPANS SHORT"
Basically any company that adopts similar business practices for their game (stamina/energy/labor refills in the cash shop, gambling mechanics, releasing new servers shortly after previous servers, pay-to-be-powerful, burst spending on server launch (though they've apparently gotten smarter since then and now encourage burst spending BEFORE server launch), equipment upgrade system, spending increases with level power, etc) probably has a similar mentality.
(I still gotta say I find it absolutely hilarious that company had the guts to publically post this. What I also find hilarious is they probably got away with it and likely make even MORE money today than they were making at the time)
The next part is bogus. A player that wants something they enjoy playing makes them "entitled"? What a load of crap. Do you want to play a game you hate? If not, than you are just as "entitled" as the one you accuse. Personally, I want a game I enjoy playing. Guess that makes me "entitled", too.
I enjoyed MMOs when they had the RPG tag at the end. Since they have pretty much dropped that tag, I guess all of us "RPG" folks should just move on and let you "Combat Simulator" folks play in peace.
What I want in an MMO I got, way back when. Where are they now? (Now comes the big list of 3-4 indie titles?) Oh that's right. You don't care, because YOUR entitlements are met.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I have been saying this for years now, these games are cash grabs and thats it. and i really believe that these games are made with full intent of going F2P at some point after they milk the sub as long as possible.
Its really easy to figure out, look how easy it is to level up in these games, you can normally get max level in the first free month, to me that isnt a game that is ready to be around for along time. IMO if you can level up that fast then the game better have a ton of content for max level players or else subs are going to drop. and this is why they have the F2P back up plan before the game even launchs.
and you know what? i cant even blame them, because the sheep will allways believe the hype and purchase the game hopeing its the next best MMO that they can play for years. only to find out its just another MMO that is pretty much the same as their old MMO just with a new shiny skin. once they figure that out they normally quit and complain, after a year of defending the game before it came out because they believed the hype.
Once again, If WE want better MMOs then WE need to stop buying the garbage they are making. If we keep buying garbage then they will keep making garbage.
I don't really know about that
Seems to me that F2P is a lot more lucrative then subs are in this day and age.
I own a fabricating and manufacturing business, money isn't #1 to me. Maybe some developer's have a similar philosophy as I do.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
This happens with every hobby that turns into a business. Money becomes the number one thing instead of quality, which came from the love of the hobby.
American Football (not a hobby, but relevant) went from a bunch of guys playing a game they loved to contract disputes, advertisements calling time outs during a game, and cities getting hit with billion dollar stadium fees. The old players sometimes had part time jobs at the companies the team owners ran to make ends meet. Then Joe Namath got a $400k signing bonus for signing with the "upstart" AFL. It went downhill fast after that.
Comic books went through a "Hey! This crap actually sells!" phase. It almost ruined them, but they recovered by going back to their roots of loving the medium.
Movies are going through the same phase a games right now: "Hey! This crap really sells!" Maybe it will take a "crash" to get things back to a hobby instead of big business?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
If what the OP said is true, why even bother making MMORPG.
Game company can just make single player game. Or FPS.
And maybe that is exactly what is happening and all the big studio give up on making new mmorpg.
I guess it really depends if you think games are art or consumable products. If you believe they should be classified as art, then the developers are definitely to blame. However, if you view them as a consumable product, then the developers are doing nothing more than targeting the biggest possible audience.
I would be willing to bet that most developers see themselves as producing art and I find it extremely disturbing that they would rather sell their creation 1 pixel at a time instead of a completed project.
How can it not be a cash grab, when you have a cash shop? A fixed fee versus itemized purchases, the same payment made by all versus a casino system.
While that financial model rules there is no hope for future MMOs. P2P is not a recipe for automatic success, I am a fan of ESO, but it has some big problems. But F2P has become a recipe for near automatic failure. As time has gone on, the invention of ever more invasive cash shop systems like gambling makes the likelihood of failure more certain. There are exceptions, but they are either the likes of Planeside which is a FPSMMO, or Path of Exile which has the best cash shop I have seen.
"Best" in what sense? There was a recent post in the TERA forum from someone saying that the TERA cash shop was the best he had seen, because there was not a single essential item in it. I'd agree with that.
If we the consumer keep buying this crap then they will keep producing it, so the buck stops with us no one else to blame.
Idiots keep paying to play beta's and then whine when the game sucks is also causing this industry to flounder. We the consumer have the power to break these company's, however people who can afford to buy rubbish do so and then leave the games quickly. People who are on limited incomes have to do their home work before investing in any game so there is also where the problem lies.
So until we all stop paying for beta or pre-orders we will continue to get ripped off from many games in the coming future. Pre-ordering games give the producers instant income weather their product works or not, they slow in refunding or even refuse to when the likes of steam are involved. I have a friend who works for a famous games store in the UK and he reckons console sales are the biggest contribution to gamer's being ripped off! They buy a game then as soon as another comes out they buy that weather they finished the title or not. These shops rely on gamer's getting addicted to franchise full stop!!!
We the consumer keep falling or more like hoping the next fix will be the holy grail and guess what it is not...Making games for the masses is difficult and even more so when you want a certain genre of game so they will never be able to please all the people all the time and I think that as consumer is what we have to look at when buying any games in the future. WE HOLD THE POWER!
Asbo
Ironically, there are more MMO players now than at any time in the history of the genre. Similarly, there are more MMO's available to play now than at any time previously (many, many more).
Back in 2003 it was very easy to be "loyal" to your favorite MMO for a year or more. That's because there was seldom more than 1 AAA MMO launch in any given year. And if that year's new MMO wasn't your kind of thing, you carried on with your "main game" until the next year brought the next big MMO launch.
Fast-forward to 2014 and there's almost 2 to 3 new launches PER YEAR ! The chances tat players will stick to one title exclusively are practically nil. The chances that players will return to a previously abandoned game are equally low, because there's simply too many new shinies coming along at a steady rate.
Is it any wonder that developers plan for the worst while hoping for the best ?
Launch with 50% of the content ready, promise the rest for "later". You'll probably only take a 10% hit on initial sales. If (by some miracle) enough players remain in the game a few months after launch, start trickling-out the rest of the content while keeping a weary eye on player numbers. If most players leave after the first 2 months, put the game on life-support and focus on the next project...
This! So much!
Sorry, but the OP let's the gamers off the hook, and they're the main reason that this problem even exists. The content locusts have ruined the genre at this point. Everybody always points at the developers, but the players, now, literally spend the entirety of expansion betas on figuring out how to exploit the system in order to level faster, get done faster, etc. ,etc.
I would challenge that there are "more MMORPG Gamers than ever" too. There are definitely more gamers than ever, but there are definitely not more MMORPG Gamers than ever. When I talk of MMORPG Gamers, I'm talking about people who are invested in a game and they stick around in the game for years.
Crazkanuk
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What you have just described is the P2P business model, selling hopes and dreams... and delivering garbage. This is why so many people have moved to F2P, because you can at least see the game before you put any money down, and are under no misconceptions if you decide to pay for something.
When something takes 3-5 years to produce and costs tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, when describing it the words cash grab IMO don't fit.
Yes, but at some point they recoup their costs and from then on it's pure unadulterated profit. Not unlike any other business out there...
You design a car, it costs x to design/build, if you only ever sell one, you're screwed. But, if on the other hand, you sell well over a million of them, you are swimming in the dough.
You're confusing cash grab with smash and grab.
But no I'm not confusing anything. Anything (literally anything) that exists, did exist / will exist that takes years to make and takes that much is IMO never ever ever a cash grab.
There is literally just to much effort and resources put in to ever label it such.
Just having profit, even a lot of profit, doesn't make something a cash grab. Putting in minimal effort and/or crap effort and expecting a maximal reward is a cash grab.
E.g. really really really bad sequals to movies comes to mind for this. Very poor/little effort but expecting maximum results.
Many things in a shop are IMO cash grabs, but the game itself (for the games we discuss here anyway) usually not.
OP, I feel similarly. The MMO industry has been in the hyperactive cash grab phase for a number of years now.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
Yep, so true.
It time to wake other up!.
So much fail in this thread...
Armchair developers and economists that have zero clue. Zero. Literally no clue at all.
I might be inclined to consider many of the yearly Eastern made MMO's blatant cash grabs, like everything published by Perfect World, but even then - they aren't developers!
They are publishers!
Developers want to make games people will like and want to play.
This freemium trend is disturbing, but you can't really call a game that takes years to develop a cash grab compared to these freemium mobile/browser games - the Farmvilles and Clash of Clans etc. of the world.
MMOs are simply too big, take too many people and too much time to build. Again, only reason I call out PW is I swear they publish a lot of stuff with re-used a lot of the same assets.
I agree. There are better ways to "cash grab" than to spend an inordinate amount of time and money creating something for fickle players which may or may not be successful.
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
Which is all the more reason it bothers me to see them put all that effort into something they intend, or by sheer incompetence cause, to pump and dump.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit