Jim_Callahan said:
Starting as FTP isn't a failure, just means you're monetizing differently and your game may still be quite good.
Starting subscription and then _moving_ to FTP means that, and I'll type this slowly so you can follow the basic, simple logic that's immediately obvious to everyone else:
Ah yes, the ever popular "appeal to popularity", made doubly hilarious when "popularity" isn't even established, just assumed. You're at least somewhat correct, though. On a website with a heavy console user population, where MMOs aren't particularly popular and a lot of people have a lot of crazy misconceptions. And this is indeed one of those misconceptions.
Let's take a look at the "basic, simple logic".
Jim_Callahan said:
1. You thought people would want to pay a membership fee to play your game, because it's content of good quality worth paying for.
Or because $14 a month was, at one time, industry standard, so you were attempting to capitalize on the industry standard. Early in the life cycle of MMOs it was quite possible to not only build a substantial player base, but actually grow it over time. Competition was limited, and the first few hit MMOs saw rapidly expanding audiences.
Jim_Callahan said:
2. You're scrambling to monetize because people aren't willing to pay a membership fee and you need to recover costs.
I'm certain this is true in some cases, particularly for games that failed to sell enough up front to cover their development costs...either because the development cost was too high given the size and nature of the market (TOR) or because the game wasn't very good and failed to sell at launch (TSW). In others, such as the aforementioned DDO Online and LOTRO, the game switched to a FTP model and dramatically increased both paying subscribers AND revenue. For an inferior, desperation-based business model, that was quite extraordinary, wouldn't you say?
Jim_Callahan said:
3. If A implies B, then !B implies !A. A = "the game is of good quality" and B = "people are willing to subscribe to your game"
Ergo, if people aren't willing to pay for your game, you probably made a not-good-quality game.
But people did pay for the game, in a lot of cases. What often happens is people are not willing to continue paying for the game after 1-3 months. Which often amounts to hundreds of hours of game play. If the year is 2000 and you're bored of Everquest, you have maybe one or two other options...which you might have already played, or whose feature set does not appeal. If the year is 2012, you have dozens and dozens of options, most of which allow you to jump in and start playing for free, and even the sub-genres have multiple competing games. Yet the market didn't continue to grow exponentially the way it did briefly after WoW's release, it plateaued. More and more games crammed into an increasingly competitive space, each cannibalizing off the other...borrowing features and play style, looking to provide similar but oh-so-slightly different experiences to lure people off when their billing cycle ended. Now, a large number of people play an MMO very much the same way they play a single player game...they exhaust the content on hand, then they go play something else. MMOs tend to be a demanding, time consuming hobby in and of themselves, there's seldom
time for more than one. Intelligent companies saw the writing on the wall and started shifting to business models that weren't dependent on a large body of fee paying incumbents.
Very few games were straight up victimized by poor public/critical reception. Even stumble-bums like TSW had a feverishly loyal core fanbase that was more than sufficient to keep the game cash positive as a sub game, if not a robust hit.
Frankly ANY game that releases into today's market without at least an optional FTP model or an EXTREMELY generous trial is setting itself up for a rough ride. Way, way, way too much competition for players.
Jim_Callahan said:
4. The most likely cause of a game going from Pay to FTP is that it wasn't a particularly good game.
i.e. the transition to FTP is a completely _valid_ indication of failure.
It is if you have an extremely limited understanding of the genre, the market, why games do well or don't, etc, etc. A similar line of reasoning might look like this:
1. You thought people would want to eat at your restaurant and enjoy your delicious food.
2. You're scrambling to change your business model...menu or prices...because you're not getting the amount of customers expected.
3. If A implies B, then !B implies !A. A = "The food is of good quality" and B = "People are willing to eat the food"
4. The most likely cause of a restaurant changing the business model is bad quality food. Ta-da! Logic! Derp.
Of course, that's "logic" only if you don't comprehend that restaurants run into problems for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with food quality, and change up sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with "Well, we failed. Might as well give the food away for free now."
Let's try a different analogy. You are opening a new restaurant. Every other restaurant on the street except one old one with a loyal cadre of customers who have been eating there forever gives the food away for free, and makes the money back by charging extra for drinks. You, a completely new restaurant, attempt to open up and charge for food.
1. Is that an intelligent move to take for a new restaurant owner, given the location and state of the competition?
2. If the restaurant failed to attract a large number of customers, would you assume it was because the food was bad?
3. Would you then go on a restaurant forum and conclude that the food was bad because A naturally follows B, and state imperiously that this fact is "immediately obvious to everyone"?
I rather suspect that you would not.
Or let's try this. Which is the more LOGICAL statement.
1. Games that change from subscription model to a FTP model do so for a variety of reasons. Changing market, aggressive competition, opportunity for increased revenue, etc.
2. Games that change from subscription model to a FTP model do so for a single reason, because the game was bad. A = B! Logic!
