(04-02-2014, 01:05 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote: The fact is, the only contemporary games on the market that are still P2P (in the West, at least) are World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, and EVE Online. And that's it. Some assert that everything that went freemium or F2P did so because they were inferior games... which outright proves the rule that the business model guarantees you NOTHING. It is entirely up to the developer to bring value to the players, and if they fail to do that, their game is doomed to fade away no matter what business model they use.
To be fair, I think the reason free-to-play games are more numerous isn't necessarily a badge of quality, it's that a free-to-play game that isn't very good can stick around for a long time simply by drawing people in and keeping them hooked for a few months. Â Subscription games don't work that way.
The truth is, it isn't just any kind of company that can make a game fifteen-dollars-a-month good. Â People will play big handfuls of F2P games because it doesn't cost anything to have the account. Â You can't play more than one or two P2P games; it's just too expensive and at some point won't be worth the money you pay. Â It isn't that there haven't been a wealth of subscription games that have tried, you just have to be a cut above to make it on that model.
Let's take XIV for example. Â What did it cost them to get to stay subscription based? Â They had to COMPLETELY REDESIGN THE GAME! Â Seriously, I can't stress enough how Square managed to get my respect by doing that. Â All these laughably bad Final Fantasy games later, and they still had the panache to say, "No, we ARE still big dogs in this industry, and we're not going to charge you less for it, we're going to make our game worth the money." Â To their credit, they did. Â I think FFXIV:ARR is worth the sub. Â They could have just said, "We'll make if F2P and make it work as it is," but that wasn't good enough.
And for all my criticism of CCP (and my criticisms are many), I wouldn't necessarily say EVE Online is a terrible game. Â Definitely, I think, a complete undermining of the strengths of an MMORPG, but my issues with it are philosophical more than technical; I get why people would pay monthly for it. Â Blizzard is.... well, it's Blizzard. Â Say what you want about the megalith, they scrapped an almost-finished game not because it wasn't reportedly good, but because it wasn't reportedly World Of Warcraft good. Â Blizzard, for all that we tend to riff on them (me included), are very serious about their work. Â I haven't played a Blizz game that hasn't been good, though I haven't played Hearthstone yet so someone can tell me if that's horrible. Â I spent most of this weekend playing Diablo 3 and WoW. Â Blizz makes sure they're worth the money.
But who else can develop on that level in the industry today? Â You have to make a game not only great, but KEEP making it great month-in and month-out. Â It takes some brass balls just to stay in the arena. Â Who else can design that well for that long? Â Even decent companies like Bioware couldn't maintain that level. Â Who could that isn't in it now? Â Capcom? Â Nintendo? Â Valve? Â From?
Heh, From Software. Â I'd like an Armored Core or Tenchu MMO.
