62 replies to this topic

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Lukoi, on 20 March 2013 - 06:25 PM, said:

I don't that number is even remotely accurate MW Buddah

yeah was a bit o' sarcasm on my part, should have added the tag lol
Especially as the devs have at least twice told us that the forum counter doesnt mean anything

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 20 March 2013 - 06:28 PM.

[NocturnalBeast]

Matt Minus, on 20 March 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

No matter what anyone says Peter Jackson is incontrovertible proof that dropping out of high school can not only make you a success, but incredibly famous and wealthy beyond your wildest dreams!


See how that works.

Yes, Peter Jackson defied the odds and had to have had a leg up somewhere, the VAST majority of high school dropouts will barely be able to live a meager life at best (a good amount of college grads barely get by as well these days).

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Volthorne, on 20 March 2013 - 06:24 PM, said:

I'll admit, I haven't touched anything UT in a long time. The only memorable thing about those games for me were the maps, because the gameplay was almost non-existent. If a game has only two or three guns that are worth using, then it's no longer a game, it's "garbage".

not remotely like this at all.

Edward Steiner, on 20 March 2013 - 06:28 PM, said:

Yes, Peter Jackson defied the odds and had to have had a leg up somewhere, the VAST majority of high school dropouts will barely be able to live a meager life at best (a good amount of college grads barely get by as well these days).

yes... that was his point

[Xendojo]

Turning down the MC costs = more $$$$$$


Get on it!!!

[Davers]

Matt Minus, on 20 March 2013 - 04:18 PM, said:

I know that I play facebook games to kill time at work but would never buy gold in their marvel-flavored pokemon clone even if they reduced it by 99%.

Getting all the heroes sure takes forever! And talk about the grind! Playing the same maps over and over again to get those damn stars!

[Blackadder]

mwo made something like 5-7 million dollars from founders pre orders. WOT is a cash cow, mostly in europe and Russia/China. LOL is putting out million dollar tournaments on a pretty regular basis. there are multiple other examples, just look at the korean games market, where people pay absurd prices by US standards, for accessories.

The key is to make sure the game is done right, and can attract enough of a paying customer base to make money, while keeping the free players around as a population crutch.

F2P action games are the FOTM in development, because many players like myself really have no issue with spending more then 15$ a month if we like the game. For me, i look at it like its a MMO. by the time i spend 60-70$ on the game, 180$ for a year sub, plus another 30-40$ on a silly expansion, i am at the same price as dropping 300$ for a FTP game.

The main issue with MWO right now, is that PGI decided to go soft launch, after seeing how well the founders did, and the game lacks any kind of long term content to keep players playing it, so its really going to be interesting to see if they can flesh out this game to have more of an investment then exp/mech grinding.

[Terran123rd]

/me bumps the thread

[FunkyFritter]

The f2p model is absolutely sustainable, even off of purely cosmetic transactions. People are prone to impulse buys, especially while they're having fun. Given how well things like server costs scale with the number of players it only takes a small fraction of the community spending to finance the whole operation.

The catch is that the model relies on having a large playerbase to function. How dedicated individual fans are doesn't really matter, the moment a f2p game stops growing its playerbase is the moment it begins to die.

[Bogus]

Game maintenance costs are very low once major development is complete, given that they've already taken in a fat stack of cash from founders it should be very sustainable once the bulk of the game is here. The question is really whether they'll be able to get all of that out the door before the money dries up.

[Terran123rd]

/me bumps the thread

[stjobe]

Bogus, on 24 March 2013 - 07:06 PM, said:

a fat stack of cash from founders

That "fat stack" likely doesn't pay for much more than a year of development.

[anonymous175]

[Ratnix]

In the past I have played p2p games but will never do it again. Even if somebody made a pre chaos war Dragonlance mmorpg, which I have always wanted.
I do and will continue to spend money in cash shops although not for p2w stuff, I will never buy coolant shots.

P2p games make me feel like I have to play them every available second to get my moneys worth, even if I don't feel like playing.

F2p games I only play when I want and only if I feel like playing.

Now here's the rub.

I'll spend more money on a f2p in a year than I would spend paying a $30/mth subscription.

One MUD I played (look it up if you don't know) I spent $900 over the course of a year just to save myself time I didn't have.



People like me are the target audience for f2p games. People with disposable income and not enough time.
Any game can be sustainable on that model.
As MWO stands right now, no it won't, but that has to do with the game isn't finished yet and there is no advertising. I only found it by happenstance because I saw someone area among it on twitch.

[Arcturious]

Of course it is. F2P "Done Right" is in fact the ONLY way it can be sustainable.

The less people Chinese Whispers about how F2P isn't going to keep them afloat, or the game can't last based of pure speculation etc, the better it will do.

A single quote taken out of context, or a single thread topic heading, or a single poorly researched, outright fabricated news piece can kill a game these days. The internet is connected at the speed of rumour, which is roughly three times the speed of light.

Look at what happened to Kingdoms of Amalur, or Star Wars Old Republic is you don't believe me. They weren't even the first. The gaming public can be very cannibalistic, almost zombie like in their ability to completely destroy an IP through baseless "facts" and word of mouth.

However the opposite is also true. As long as the gamers stay positive, and use their brains rather than try to devour them, a game can rise and do well. However it's not anything the devs have control of. The gaming public only have themselves to blame in 99% of times a game goes under. A few word of mouth comments taken out of context, a blog reporting those comments but focusing on the major negative point. A large news site picking up the headline and reposting it without any fact checking. Thousands of gamers reading that stop playing the game.

It's called a self fulfilling prophecy for a reason people!

Sorry if this is rambling a little, just found out that my Aussie servers are being closed in Star Wars so a little off kilter.

Edited by Arcturious, 26 March 2013 - 04:14 PM.

[Bogus]

stjobe, on 26 March 2013 - 03:15 PM, said:

That "fat stack" likely doesn't pay for much more than a year of development.

Depends on how they spend it, not every studio follows the predominantly American model of bloated budgets, top-heavy org charts and vast sums spent on marketing and "character talent". Egosoft doesn't kiss and tell but based on what I know of X-universe sales figures I estimate they burn through no more than $3 million a year. Eve-Online has around 300k subscribers (or at least they used to) which translates to around $45 million per year, that's a lot but compares well given that they not only employ approximately ten times as many staff (600 vs. 65 according to Wikipedia) but it's their only income source (PGI has others) and has been profitable enough that they've bought another company, put regional offices all over the world, broken into the AAA console-game world, and shrugged off a very high profile failure to launch with minimal damage. Dwarf Fortress runs entirely on donations but it's apparently enough money to support the Adams brothers full time. Sins of a Solar Empire, another Vancouver original, was famously created on a five-figure budget, and looked and played damn good.

Of course none of that actually says how PGI is doing financially, only that there are many possiblities. And again, I'll grant you that they probably did need most/all of that for development but once the game is "done" they can kick it into maintenance & support and put 80-90 percent of the staff on the next big thing. The core framework is the hard part, new maps and mechs and stuff are lolcheap.

BTW to the SWTOR guy, that's what you get for buying an EA online game. They pull plugs like nobody's business.

[Warlune]

Even if PGI is doing fine money wise,
I'd still want them to try and add as many money makers as they can for themselves (provided nothings P2W or game breaking) because I want to see them prosper.

[stjobe]

Bogus, on 26 March 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

Depends on how they spend it

Of course. I just divided the sum of 5 million with the average Canadian programmer salary and got a number of 83, divided that by half and said "probably not more than a year".

It was, and ever will be, a guesstimate. We don't even know what percentage of that 5 million IGP took (if any, unsubstantiated rumour is unsubstantiated).

Bogus, on 26 March 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

Egosoft doesn't kiss and tell but based on what I know of X-universe sales figures I estimate they burn through no more than $3 million a year.

Egosoft is also less than a third as big as PGI (about 20 employees at Egosoft, about 65 at PGI), so that actually fits with the "probably not much more than a year" idea.

[Moromillas]

Yes.

[Warma]

Matt Minus, on 20 March 2013 - 03:46 PM, said:

Saying "of course it is, look at LoL" is like saying that every MMO should be successful charging $15/month because WoW did it.

Actually I am playing about $15 a month for the premium because I feel that using it I don't really need to 'grind' to get the mechs I want.

...And I've spent a shitload more on cosmetic things in this game. I love the customization and am willing to pay for it.

[aptest]

the big problem for online games today, especially middleware games, is to maintain a large enough player base so that when players who pay log in they find enjoyable games and don't get "unable to find game" messages. free players pay for their enjoyment by providing the game company with a valuable service I.E. their presence and barter their time for a limited gaming experience.

With non AAA pay2play games this is an issue, especially after a period when the game isn't new anymore. free2play helps solve this by offering casual players a game platform and only attempting to charge money from dedicated users.
In the broader sense of the word however free2play is not viable.

A reasonable portion of the game's core population need to pay at regular intervals for the game to subsist over time. They pay either to unlock more and more stuff (which requires the developers to constantly output more unlock-able content) or to play seriously (which means that casual players are restricted in the way they play and gimps any kind of large scale competitive scene).

At the end of the day you need to persuade people into paying for the game not just once but many times. A busyness model that makes people "subscribe" to the game in some way gives you less overhead and doesn't put you in a position where you have to R&D "cash items" all the time. OTOH it does inhibit your game's population and is in the way of getting money through having a massive number of players.