Mythic Co-Founder Says Free-to-Play "Apocalypse" Coming

[StewShearerOld]

Mythic Co-Founder Says Free-to-Play "Apocalypse" Coming

Mark Jacobs, the former CEO and co-founder of Mythic Entertainment, expects the free-to-play market to decline within a few years.

One of the most prominent and profitable trends to emerge from the videogame world in recent years has been free-to-play. The free-to-play model and the microtransactions that accompany it have pulled many an online game back from the edge of oblivion, and turned more than a few into <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98683-Free-Dungeons-Dragons-Online-Revenues-Up-500-Percent>profitable and thriving properties. In the wake of this success, developers and publishers across the spectrum have been working hard to elbow into the expanding free-to-play market.

According to Mark Jacobs, co-founder and former CEO of Mythic Entertainment, however, companies chasing this current gravy train may, in fact, be sealing their own doom. "Free-to-play is just another model, and just like every other model in the industry, it will hold its special little place for a while but then there will be consequences," said Jacobs, speaking to VG247. "Those consequences in a few years will be a bit of an apocalypse. You're going to see a lot of developers shutting down, and you're going to see a lot of publishers going, 'Oh yeah maybe spending $20 million on a free-to-play game wasn't the best idea ever.' That's part of the reason, but the other reason is equally as important, that if you go free-to-play, you really have to compete with every other free-to-play game out there."

Trying to head off the impending free-to-play armageddon, Jacobs is tailoring his current MMO project toward a different crowd. Camelot Unchained, currently in the <a href=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained>process of being Kickstarted, will be aimed at smaller but more dedicated audiences. "Camelot Unchained is going to be a niche subscription game," said Jacobs. "I'll take a smaller subscription base that is dedicated, is energized and is excited to play our game, and to work with our game, than ten times that base where I have to deal with a lot of people who really don't care."

Time will have to tell if Jacobs is right about free-to-play games. Currently, the market is still expanding and while there are free-to-play failures, they don't loom as large as the <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112212-Free-to-Play-Age-of-Conan-Doubles-Revenues>prominent successes the model has helped to create. That said, it wouldn't be the first time and unforeseen ceiling has emerged to cap a growing trend, and if Jacobs is correct more than a few will be bumping their heads when it appears.

Source: VG247


Permalink

 

[piinyouri]

Ah DDO.
What ever in the hell happened to you.


OT: Of course it will, all bubbles burst eventually.
Then its on to the next convention, whatever it may end up being.

I'm a believer in circular existence, so I think it will come around in however many years to the subscription model again.

 

[SecondPrize]

Should click on the source and read the whole thing. What isn't clear in the article is Jacob's basic point is that the already crowded market is going to explode within the time frame he mentioned as devs who are currently working on or will soon start their games bring them to market.
There's a pretty long thread about it over on mumorperger .com featuring responses from Jacobs himself and exchanges with trolls who are clearly outmatched but valiantly battle on.
I don't disagree with the guy, but I wish I wasn't completely turned off from his project by the volunteer viral marketing army that have been shitting up the internet wherever the most tenuous link between anything and Camelot Unchained can be established.

 

[ASnogarD]

Not keen on the notion of a Kickstarted MMO, MMO's are expensive to maintain as a rule... unlike a single player game where you make the game and perhaps knock out some patches and DLC , MMO's need to be looked after for a long time.
Dare shut the thing down under a year and no one will trust you again.

As for the F2P market...

It depends entirely on what the developer is focusing on (or at least the perception of developer focus) , example Piranha (PGi) who is working on Mechwarrior Online seems to be hyper focused on making items to sell the players, ways to get players to buy more MC all the time... and not really on the game itself which at my last attempt to play was in dire need of fixing.
Riot (League of Legends) on the other hand have a very fair system and seem to be adding to the game in ways the none payer can appreciate (graphic updates, reworks, balancing, none pay for features like spectator and hopefully soon to come replays).
There is no sense of I NEED to put in money there... I put in money because I want to.

From my perspective I feel it depends entirely on how soon does a F2P game throw up the real cash option into your face, with LoL I didnt feel I ever needed to, I was progressing at a good pace, got all I wanted at a good pace... never felt I hit a wall I had to really work at to break through (or pay up).

MW:O ... hero mechs which are slightly superior to the none real cash variants, consumables with real cash only versions that are superior, slow progress to getting new mechs... and worst of all, a metric tonne of MC only items (cosmetics) in each patch and very little in progress to fixing the game (server side aiming checks + lag, balancing, performance, matchmaking + noobstomping, boating + silly mechanics which work with random dice rolls but not with precision aiming options in a FPS, questionable features (third person view when driving mechs about)).
This leads to the perception that the developers are more interested in pulling money out your wallets than your game experience with their title... like how you would feel if say EA launched a very buggy title, and only worked on DLC after... no fixes but lots of DLC.

The F2P market is getting saturated but a lot of the titles are blatant cash grabs which very quickly show the real money wall, so yes lots of titles but only a few real stand outs at the moment.

 

[Colt47]

Actually a smaller niche MMO is possible, it's just that their is the problem of how much server space is needed to make it work at launch. Also, as Dark Souls has kind of proven, sometimes a niche game can become a booming success, which provides the whole problem of expanding the server space to accommodate.

It's kickstarter, though. I say let people experiment with all the crazy ideas they want, since something good is definitely going to come out of it.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

One of the reasons DDO is doing so well as F2P is because they actually do the F2P price model rather well. Unlike so many other games. Although DDO has taken a trend for the worse lately with all the astral shards crap.

 

[Gorrath]

If Camelot Unchained brings back some of the magic that was Dark Age of Camelot, I'll certainly be on board. DAoC was the only MMO I ever played where I felt the subscription was worth every penny and that the vast majority of the expansions held immense amounts of content. How I long for the days of dropping the mighty hammer of Thor on the heads of a dozen unsuspecting Albs while sieging a keep.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Yeah I agree that the Free to play market will dip and balance out over the next few years after the gold rush period ends. I think the free to play games that handle their micro transactions and game balance fairly well will likely survive any bubble burst mostly but the others we will likely see crash and burn quite badly.

 

[BrotherRool]

Yep. It's bound to happen, there's space for free-to-play, but it's the nature of things that we'll go too far first. People don't realise that you can't look at Lord of The Rings Online and say they're making millions with free-to-play if we do it then we will too. There's only a limited pool of people and every F2P MMO lowers the potential profits for every other F2P MMO.



And isn't the conversion rate of freeloaders to payers 3%? You can only support so many games off only 3% of the market actually paying for things (unless they're spending 10x what they'd spend on a normal game. Which is unfair for the non-payers to benefit from other people giving so much)

 

[Entitled]

And isn't the conversion rate of freeloaders to payers 3%? You can only support so many games off only 3% of the market actually paying for things (unless they're spending 10x what they'd spend on a normal game. Which is unfair for the non-payers to benefit from other people giving so much)

The majority of players are freeloaders in most other genres as well, except there they are called pirates.

This might also lead to increasing the pool of MMO players. There are whole demographics of PC gamers, who just ignored the MMO market because there was no chance of freeloading at all, but now even they might end up spending a few dollars on the long term.

OT: Of course it will, all bubbles burst eventually.
Then its on to the next convention, whatever it may end up being.

Every bubble bursts, but every new business model is a bubble. When TV programs were first invented, they were basically a free-to-watch alternative to cinemas, where the production is effectively funded from all the merch that people are buying thanks to the ads placed beteen the films.

Yet the TV model never bursted.

Just because something is a quickly growing business model, doesn't guarantee that it's growth is fueled by nothing but hot air, maybe there really is a market behind it.

 

[BrotherRool]

And isn't the conversion rate of freeloaders to payers 3%? You can only support so many games off only 3% of the market actually paying for things (unless they're spending 10x what they'd spend on a normal game. Which is unfair for the non-payers to benefit from other people giving so much)

This might also lead to increasing the pool of MMO players. There are whole demographics of PC gamers, who just ignored the MMO market because there was no chance of freeloading at all, but now even they might end up spending a few dollars on the long term.

I agree that F2P definitely brings more people into the genre. Way more. That's why it's so successful now. But lets do the maths on it.

You need to bring in 34x more people just to break even on value to the MMO economy. (Which lets recognise for a minute is huge. If there were say 20 million MMO player's before (that's probably a little low. I'm basing it on the idea that WoW had 11 million ish alone) then you need 680 million MMO players before you start even having the same amount of money as you had before. That's 1 person in every 12 alive right now, playing an MMO.


That's not possible. We either need to get the conversion rate a lot higher, or those people paying have to be paying way more than someone did on a monthly subscription. F2P can become profitable for the industry as a whole, but not in it's current form.


(I'm actually a little surprised at just how high that number is. I actually thought it was going to support your side of the argument and I was going to follow it up with how it'd struggle to expand. But the number turned out huge)

 

[Monsterfurby]

Will it decline?

Of course it will.

Will that be the "apocalypse"?

No.

There is room in the business for more than one business model. People trying to defend their particular flavor by crapping on others are ham-fistedly trying to market their own idea. Maybe someone should remind them that this is not the 60s, and marketing ethics have advanced a bit since then.

 

[Entitled]

That's not possible. We either need to get the conversion rate a lot higher, or those people paying have to be paying way more than someone did on a monthly subscription.

Or F2P MMOs need to be cheaper to make and sustain than subscription ones.

Read the other half of my previous post, about the TV industry business model. That analogy really works here:
If TV wouldn't exist, and I would propose it right now, you could rightfully complain "That doesn't work, only every 100 TV viewers bring in as much profit as a cinema ticket's price, a single movie like The Avengers would need hundreds of millions of viewers, and you still only made one show".

That's why TV doesn't offer cinema production values, that's how a big and stable economy of dozens and hundreds of TV channels and shows can be supported, even though freeloaders fund a fraction of a cinema ticket's price.

 

[Ishal]

Well I'm glad the guy is at least aware of his dedicated cult of followers. He'll get exactly what he is looking for when this game comes out.

Though I have to wonder if he he sees far enough into the future to realize that his little cult of content locusts just might treat this Camelot Unchained as all the other corpses they've left behind since DAoC and Warhammer. What happens if you cater to a niche that you believe is dedicated, only for them to not like the changes you've made? What happens if it isn't "DAoC" enough? What happens if the locusts devour your content then move on and you don't have a FTP model to fall back on?

Its an interesting concept, and it might work. But I have to wonder if this guy really knows his niche players, he might be surprised by how much they have changed.

 

[Jorec]

Well I guess it's a good thing some of the MMOs that took to the F2P/Pay-if-want-to model early have already carved out their own little niches.

Games like Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online are still pretty active and seem to have a pretty decent userbase respectively.

One of the reasons DDO is doing so well as F2P is because they actually do the F2P price model rather well. Unlike so many other games. Although DDO has taken a trend for the worse lately with all the astral shards crap.

Oh yes Astral Shards are getting a bit annoying. Especially since they changed the way you turn in those collectibles now. I wish they would go back to when you would turn it them in for a random potion or item depending on who you turned it into to. At the very least if you couldn't use it you could sell it for a meager amount of money. Now it's like "Oh no you need about 100 more of those things and maybe about 50 of those other things for this stuff now. Oh but if you bought astral shards you can buy gems from us!"

 

[BrotherRool]

That's not possible. We either need to get the conversion rate a lot higher, or those people paying have to be paying way more than someone did on a monthly subscription.

Or F2P MMOs need to be cheaper to make and sustain than subscription ones.

Read the other half of my previous post, about the TV industry business model. That analogy really works here:
If TV wouldn't exist, and I would propose it right now, you could rightfully complain "That doesn't work, only every 100 TV viewers bring in as much profit as a cinema ticket's price, a single movie like The Avengers would need hundreds of millions of viewers, and you still only made one show".

That's why TV doesn't offer cinema production values, that's how a big and stable economy of dozens and hundreds of TV channels and shows can be supported, even though freeloaders fund a fraction of a cinema ticket's price.

There are technically no freeloaders in the TV business. Also the really do work on the model that you can get pretty much everyone in the world watching TV.

But in principle I agree with you, there is room in the business for a couple of high quality F2P mmos and lots and lots of little ones providing they really are little and can survive on low business numbers.

But that doesn't mean there isn't going to be a F2P apocalypse. There wouldn't be a crash if there's signs that the big executives and CEO's understand that F2P isn't a miracle cure and can only compete in a market carefully limited on budget accepting and sustaining small scale games.

There is 0 sign of that. So there will be a crash. Activision and EA will keep on trying to launch big scale MMOs and doing hash jobs of F2P and it will blow up in their faces and lots of MMOs will shut down and then the MMOs run by smarter people with a clearer understanding of how the model works will survive and we'll reach your safe zone

 

[Atmos Duality]

*snip*
MW:O ...

The F2P market is getting saturated but a lot of the titles are blatant cash grabs which very quickly show the real money wall, so yes lots of titles but only a few real stand outs at the moment.

Mechwarrior Online definitely a cash-grab right now, and they're going to get bit hard by it if they don't start fixing the myriad of gameplay balance problems, and soon.

I have no doubt that is the real reason Microsoft pulled rights to release MechWarrior 4 for free; it's a far, far superior game to what it as supposed to be generating hype for.