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Subscription model: Addressing the elephant in the room


bl4ckhunter

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I feel a lot of subscription games fail, specifically because they are trying to target the lowest common denominator of the market with the game content, while pushing for subscription based payment model. If you are targeting a horde of 11 year olds (no offense to any more intelligent younger people - we were all teens at one point in time - just using this as an example) with short attention spans, inability to accept any form of difficulty or challenge from a game, and wanting everything 'now', your game will never succeed with a subscription based - or even buy the game model.

 

And again, I know I'm generalising, and there are plenty of older people who think they are "gamers" and act the same as the above. But this mentality (which also originated when "gaming" became "cool" and "normal") is what most modern games have to cater to. You either create a whole load of hype and sell something - anything - on Steam, then milk the buyers for more cash with "DLC", or release a pay to win... err... "free" model filled with "microtransactions".

 

If you release a game targeted at the older generation of gamers, and produce quality over quantity or hype, you will find that the vast majority of the people can happily budget a subscription for a game they will spend most of their 'leasure' time on - the same way that these people pay for monthly subscriptions for various cable TV networks, various bills, and budget things like "going out to see a movie". 

 

This is exactly WHY games like EvE and it's payment model, are still very much relevant. And also why games like Everquest franchise, WoW and many others HAD to revert to 'pay to win' models, after they have either dumbed the game down to appease to the masses, or targeted that demographic in the first place. 

 

Just my two cents on the subject. I know my opinion would be far from a popular one. 

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I feel a lot of subscription games fail, specifically because they are trying to target the lowest common denominator of the market with the game content, while pushing for subscription based payment model. If you are targeting a horde of 11 year olds (no offense to any more intelligent younger people - we were all teens at one point in time - just using this as an example) with short attention spans, inability to accept any form of difficulty or challenge from a game, and wanting everything 'now', your game will never succeed with a subscription based - or even buy the game model.

 

And again, I know I'm generalising, and there are plenty of older people who think they are "gamers" and act the same as the above. But this mentality (which also originated when "gaming" became "cool" and "normal") is what most modern games have to cater to. You either create a whole load of hype and sell something - anything - on Steam, then milk the buyers for more cash with "DLC", or release a pay to win... err... "free" model filled with "microtransactions".

 

If you release a game targeted at the older generation of gamers, and produce quality over quantity or hype, you will find that the vast majority of the people can happily budget a subscription for a game they will spend most of their 'leasure' time on - the same way that these people pay for monthly subscriptions for various cable TV networks, various bills, and budget things like "going out to see a movie". 

 

This is exactly WHY games like EvE and it's payment model, are still very much relevant. And also why games like Everquest franchise, WoW and many others HAD to revert to 'pay to win' models, after they have either dumbed the game down to appease to the masses, or targeted that demographic in the first place. 

 

Just my two cents on the subject. I know my opinion would be far from a popular one. 

It's my point time and again, exactly. Many children born in the 2000s, think that the world is free. "Oh, quality music? Let me just watch youtube for free. Oh movies? Let me stream it online for free." They don't know that quality is not meant to be free, they don't understand you gotta pay for many things in life.

 

I agree with what you are saying over "quality worthy of subscription" overall but I really gotta ask something...

 

 

What "pay-to-win" model does WoW has ? :P Am I so much out of the loop I lost the big news ? :P And the chinese gold-farmer market was never proven to be tied to blizzard itself, so...

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It's my point time and again, exactly. Many children born in the 2000s, think that the world is free. "Oh, quality music? Let me just watch youtube for free. Oh movies? Let me stream it online for free." They don't know that quality is not meant to be free, they don't understand you gotta pay for many things in life.

 

I agree with what you are saying over "quality worthy of subscription" overall but I really gotta ask something...

 

 

What "pay-to-win" model does WoW has ? :P Am I so much out of the loop I lost the big news ? :P And the chinese gold-farmer market was never proven to be tied to blizzard itself, so...

 

They switched to a "free to play" model, but if you want to use the "better" items or get above a certain cap on progression, you have to pay. Same as what EverQuest does now. Though I admit, I was never a fan of WoW, as when it came out, it felt like it was the start of the whole dumbing down MMOs genre. EQ followed suit. It just got boring since everything lost meaning - except for stabbing things to get shinies and exp. 

 

As for music and movies, while I agree with you, I would argue that DRM forces people to pirate things today. As an example, the last couple of EA games that I purchased before I boycotted them, I had to then subsequently pirate because I could not run the original games that I bought due to excess DRM restrictions. Cannot run the game without internet connection, cannot run the game without downloading a 6Gb patch released on the second day of purchase. At that point in time I was travelling around the world, so did not have consistent unlimited internet connections all the time, and gamed specifically when I had nothing else to do. Same applied to movies - I have a bunch of original movies that I could not watch due to region blocking, and I could not burn an .iso image onto my computer because clearly I'm not going to hoard hundreds of disks while I travel. So same scenario, buy original, put it on a shelf at home without even opening it, and download a pirated version that you could actually use.

 

So while I do agree with you that 'you get what you pay for' in terms of quality, quality costs, and a lot of people take others' work for granted, I cannot deny the fact that few people are going to want to purchase a broken product they cannot use, merely to have a clear conscience for when they download a 'pirated' version anyway. Kind of like buying an "unlocked" / "cracked" cellphone - people want to buy something that they can actually use. 

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Ok so we don't have expansions... would you rather have 15 million players paying $14.99 month over 15 years like world of Warcraft or would you like to cash grab for 5 months with a pay 2 win cash shop and have all the real players quit playing after that

 

Thats the difference in subs... and f2p (pay2win)

 

Once you can convert a cash sold item into in game cash, any skill based players will flee the gsme

 

Look at black desert right now the internet is full of the outrage that it went pay 2 in after 5months of not being that way. People have left the gsme in the thousands.. the company has had so many paypal charge backs demanding refunds that they closed their email section down!! Archeage before it did the same thing, and went down in flames.

 

Warcraft? Still charging $14.99 a month, still has a huge player base. A freaking Movie with more on the way.. there is no cash shop to cheat with

 

The way dual universe is setup, it's player base can keep expanding as the universe does onto more planets.. expanding empire borders and more subs

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Ok so we don't have expansions... would you rather have 15 million players paying $14.99 month over 15 years like world of Warcraft or would you like to cash grab for 5 months with a pay 2 win cash shop and have all the real players quit playing after that

 

Thats the difference in subs... and f2p (pay2win)

 

Once you can convert a cash sold item into in game cash, any skill based players will flee the gsme

 

Look at black desert right now the internet is full of the outrage that it went pay 2 in after 5months of not being that way. People have left the gsme in the thousands.. the company has had so many paypal charge backs demanding refunds that they closed their email section down!! Archeage before it did the same thing, and went down in flames.

 

Warcraft? Still charging $14.99 a month, still has a huge player base. A freaking Movie with more on the way.. there is no cash shop to cheat with

 

The way dual universe is setup, it's player base can keep expanding as the universe does onto more planets.. expanding empire borders and more subs

You make no sense.

 

PLEX is not a "cash-sold pay-2-win" item, it's a way for someone who has no time for in-game farming because of work, to sell a subscription for in-game cash to another player who has time but not money to spare for a subscription. PLEX's price fluctuates with the market, it's not a "pay 20 bucks for 100,000,000 spacedollars". Sure, if you have the only PLEX in the market, you can charge for 1,000,000,000 spacedollars, you got monopoly. But if there are 1,000 other people selling PLEX as well, its price goes down to 1,000 space dollars. PLEX is not PAy-2-Win. Please, learn how supply and demand works.

 

 

Also, Black Desert is the casual trashcan MMO out of Korea. What did you expect other than a mediocre gameplay and pay-2-win?

 

 

Female models got their asses bouncing about, boobs bouncing with every slight movement and giant swords and casual Korean trash MMO. So, again, did you expect Koreans to build your bestest MMO ever?

 

 

Be glad DUAL is developed in Europe.

 

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They switched to a "free to play" model, but if you want to use the "better" items or get above a certain cap on progression, you have to pay. Same as what EverQuest does now. Though I admit, I was never a fan of WoW, as when it came out, it felt like it was the start of the whole dumbing down MMOs genre. EQ followed suit. It just got boring since everything lost meaning - except for stabbing things to get shinies and exp. 

 

 

Uhm, no? That's only for Everquest 1 and 2. And yes, that's casual S.O.E. or DaybreakGames cashgrab practises.

 

 

WoW now offers a bundle for all the expansions together prior to the latest one and it's still subscription based. WoW has 5,000,000, it won't go F2P anytime soon. And yes, WoW did became all about ze ep1x and leg0ndaries.

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You can sell plex... here is a novel solution, make plex worth 0.0 gold

 

That way if I have s guildy that needs plex, can buy him one and give it to him.. bit there is no way I can convert it into gold gto buy myself enough resources to build a death star the first week the gsme is open

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You can sell plex... here is a novel solution, make plex worth 0.0 gold

 

That way if I have s guildy that needs plex, can buy him one and give it to him.. bit there is no way I can convert it into gold gto buy myself enough resources to build a death star the first week the gsme is open

PLEX isn't set-in-stone price. You buy it for real money, then you got it in your inventory. Then you barter with another player or simply put it up on the auction house / marketplace and tag it as "1,000,000" spacebucks.

 

Yes, you can give it away for free to a guildie if you want to.

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Uhm, no? That's only for Everquest 1 and 2. And yes, that's casual S.O.E. or DaybreakGames cashgrab practises.

 

 

WoW now offers a bundle for all the expansions together prior to the latest one and it's still subscription based. WoW has 5,000,000, it won't go F2P anytime soon. And yes, WoW did became all about ze ep1x and leg0ndaries.

 

 

Ah my bad then. I must have gotten confused when they ran one of their "free up to level X" promotions or something. Like I said, I felt it was too dumbed down on release, thus didn't feel it was worth my time so didn't play / keep up with it. Went to play EvE for 5 or so years instead since EQ went to shit shortly after.

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  • 2 years later...

It's funny no one mentionned successful f2ps like Wargaming business. It is not p2w, but of course you can boost your progression with subscription or using money. And the cash shop for cosmetics and boosts works very well. Even Ubisoft based the success of R6 Siege on the cosmetics and boosts, and guess what, it's working.

Anyway, to become a p2w, a game has to have a clear goal, not depending on players. A game like DUAL, or SC, will never become p2w as the players decide for themselves what they wanna do.

Just to say that i think a b2p + cosmetics and blueprints shop would work for that game... Many players with less time or a bit lazy would probably use it. Subscriptions might work, but it is a niche game, it probably won't be comfortable revenues. 

Future will tell.

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I don’t like chiming I’m on this but I feel I have to at least throw my 2 quanta in on this. 

 

PTP (aka sub model)

- As long as you have sustainable numbers will give you a set amount of income a month 

 

FTP (cash shop model)

- income will fluctuate with the desire for new and popular emotes, decorative elements, avatar customization and the ability to just buy the elements and voxel materials you need.

 

FTP (buy the game once and done)

- finding is reliant on the initial purchase

- can be combined with cash shop

 

Those are the models that all could work IMO. The first thing that people will think of is Fortnite. Its ftp and successful therefore all games should be ftp as well. It’s a f2p game but has millions of players (125m as of June 2018). So if 1/2 of 1% spend $5 a month on the cash shop that’s $312k a month.  A study I saw of fortnite players say that on average of those interviewed that they have spent on average $85 on appearance items. Dual probably won’t come close to those numbers. If DU has 100k players and each player thru The DAC system pays say a $15 sub that’s 1.5 mil a month thru buying or earning DAC (DAC is has to come from somewhere). That’s a lot. Good for paying staff, making upgrades and paying investors. On that note it would take 30 million users at 1% that spend on average of $5 a month on the cash shop to compete. Yes I don’t know what the cash shop results might result in. But going by these numbers I’ll take 100k dedicated players over 30 million trolls 

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