MMO Subs are a dead model - John Smedley

[tgr]

We already established that there are "bad people" designing MTs, in the worst possible way, stopping at nothing to scam a quick buck. Turning these "games" into gambling and addiction traps, minus regulation and adults-only clause you expect to see from something that dangerous.
We have seen has-been old hand of the industry saying what boils down to "wouldn't it be great if we could do the same?"

Logical answer is: Fuck No! BEGONE SATAN.

So, using this logic you're going to ostracize bloodworth based on the fact he's not going "FUCK YOU SATAN" because there's actually money involved in making a game?

You must be a real hoot at parties.

[Sheepherder]

Sinij, I'm pretty sure Bloodworth's highlighted name and title disappearing overnight was supposed to be your cue to stop losing your shit at him.

You should also consider that sometimes a job is just a job, but that some people might decide to take umbrage to you painting them with the same brush as you do their (previous?) employers.

[Margalis]

Sinij is mostly right here.

Gamasutra runs plenty of interviews with social games guys where they freely admit that they design revenue streams rather than games, that they purposely make their games annoying so that people will purchases ways to get around those annoyances, etc. A lot of these guys are no more game developers than guys tasked with developing new themes for slot machines. They are proud of the fact that fun is not even a consideration when making games.

In this thread, Sinij incorrectly argues that exploitative games like Farmville are still showing growth and are the future of the industry while completely ignoring that exploitative gameplay design was the core of the industry in the 80s. Intentionally obnoxious game design intended to suck small fees from players who were bad or lazy, sound familiar?

This is a truly terrible analogy. Arcade games were fun and stressed mastery. The addictiveness came from the fact that the core game was enjoyable and you paid money to play more if you weren't good, not because the game was boring unless you spent $100 on Smurfberries to give your Smurfs extra energy so they could Smurf Smurfier.

The only similarity between arcade games and social games is reliance on incremental payments.

[UnSub]

Arcade games sent you back to the beginning of the game if you ran out of credits. That you might be "rewarded" by playing the entire game on one credit required a lot more capital to get good enough to reach that point.

Social games remember where you got up to the next time you put in a coin / wait for the cooling off period to expire.

All video games do their utmost to keep players coming back. The best video games are addictive, at least for a short period of time.

The social games market is set for an implosion at some point because the bubble is going to burst, but that isn't going to kill the RMT model at all. RMT has been embraced wholeheartedly by gamers who buy the DLC of their favourite games and provide a better source of revenue than was received by simply having box sales.

... we're a hell of a long way from Smedley's point.

[Ratman_tf]

It isn't right

Aren't you just so cute!

More importantly, it isn't fun, and it's what's going to lead to the FTP bubble bursting.

[eldaec]

One depressing and inevitable outcome of this is going to be tabloids running horror stories about little Johnny Atkins running if $1000 bills in MTgame2015.

Also, mediocre developers making mediocre cash grab games is nothing new and has never killed off other models before, it won't this time either. MtG wasn't killed by a thousand shitty yugihos. Original game ips weren't killed by a thousand shitty film tie ins. UO wasn't killed by a thousand shitty dingratz treadmills. PC gaming wasn't killed by a thousand shitty consoles.

I can still buy a fucking newspaper despite a thousand shitty news websites.

Shitty developers will continue to make shitty games with inappropriate payment models. Others will find more ways to make the same MT payment models work, and their games will last longer. Others still will make subscription or even stand alone games.

[Rokal]

This is a truly terrible analogy. Arcade games were fun and stressed mastery. The addictiveness came from the fact that the core game was enjoyable and you paid money to play more if you weren't good, not because the game was boring unless you spent $100 on Smurfberries to give your Smurfs extra energy so they could Smurf Smurfier.

The only similarity between arcade games and social games is reliance on incremental payments.

Using Allods online, the only borderline western (Russian, there was at least a serious attempt to market it in the US/EU though) example in this thread of a F2P MMO that had pretty blatant "exploitative" cash shop options (pay to level your gear, pay to -stats penalty from death), there's similarities to the old arcade game design.

The entire premise of this thread was that the F2P craze was going to degrade MMO quality and lead to exploitative design. We aren't just talking about shitty facebook games that aren't fun on their own. Allods online is by most accounts a pretty decent game. It was pretty popular during beta before the cash shop was added. It's not a game that is complete shit unless you pay to remove the boredom. The game does penalize you for dying (or did at one point) by giving you a -stats debuff that could only be removed for free every 24 hours, and giving your items a chance to get 'cursed' when you died unless you spent cash to buy protective wards for your items.

This is similar to quarter-eaters from the 80s. The base game is cheap (free in Allods case), but if you suck you'll end up paying a lot more in small fees throughout your game session. The games are both designed expecting you'll die. Some arcade games even gave you more credits for your initial quarter, meaning that you *could* just wait (not a day in this case, but starting a new game) and hope to do better next time. Or you could get around the inconvenience of waiting/starting over by spending more money.

There are similarities, and both are examples of "designing for revenue streams" instead of "designing to make the best game". The model wasn't sustainable in the 80's and did not permanently lead to all games adopting the design. Similarly, Allod's model wasn't sustainable and the game flopped in the US/EU. It's not an inevitable outcome that all F2P MMOs will eventually adopt exploitative design.

[Zetor]

My biggest issue with the f2p thing is that it disincentivizes developers from outright fixing bad/clunky/grindy game mechanics. It's much better to keep them in and have the players either put up with them or pay $$ in the cash shop to bypass them.

See also this rant (that I mostly agree with).

[Lantyssa]

This is a truly terrible analogy. Arcade games were fun and stressed mastery. The addictiveness came from the fact that the core game was enjoyable and you paid money to play more if you weren't good, not because the game was boring unless you spent $100 on Smurfberries to give your Smurfs extra energy so they could Smurf Smurfier.

Gauntlet says, "Feed me, Seymour."

[Margalis]

Also, mediocre developers making mediocre cash grab games is nothing new and has never killed off other models before, it won't this time either.

It caused the 80s video game crash. Had it not been for Nintendo cleaning up that mess who knows if we'd even have home consoles right now.

Gauntlet says, "Feed me, Seymour."

I was going to mention Gauntlet and other arcade games where you lose life just by doing nothing but decided against it because I could only think of a couple. (Gaunlet and Xybots being the two that spring to mind immediately) That's not a through line of arcade game design. Also that's really a different model - in that model you are essentially paying for time. That's not the same as paying to remove barriers. (Also I would argue that those games were badly designed in that respect, although I liked both games!)

I cannot think of any arcade game where the game had some sort of barrier in it that paying more removed. (I don't consider "running out of lives" a barrier) Especially where the barrier was boredom and you could pay to make the game move at a decent pace.

It's true that free to play does not mean you have to inconvenience the player then charge them to remove those inconveniences but that is certainly the most common form it takes in "social games" and social/iPhone games was the subject of the piece Sinij linked to.

[Kageru]

Actually on the original gauntlet machine you could play for quite a while if you worked together since you could find food to make up for the loss of health over time. Indeed Wikipedia mentions that as an issue,

"There were some skilled players that could play an unlimited amount of time on one credit, especially with the Warrior and Wizard, and thus causing the arcades to lose money. A ROM update was released, reducing the "extra shot power" and "Extra shot speed" powerup bonus for Warrior and Wizard, and adding a new points-based difficulty counter to the game. The difficulty counter caused the game to become more difficult, in 16,384 point steps, which removed more designated food from the levels, and made the monsters respawn faster. Unfortunately, this was not well thought out, as on the default game difficulty of "4", it was almost impossible to pass levels 1-7 without dying, and level 4 was designed so that some of the food drops would block the monsters from swarming the player."

I'm not sure bringing in arcade games really pushes the argument forward. At the time they were very expensive units, unmatched by the domestic equivalent and it was understood they'd have to generate a decent amount of revenue over time. There is not much cross-over with free2play.

Of course now multi-player games of that type cannot expect to demand a subscription fee. A subscription fee or even cash shop for something like dungeon defenders? That's not going to fly at all.

[Margalis]

Actually on the original gauntlet machine you could play for quite a while if you worked together since you could find food to make up for the loss of health over time. Indeed Wikipedia mentions that as an issue,

The same is true of Xybots, there was a way to recover health.

Anyway comparing some energy-based Smurf iPad game to arcade games is really inappropriate. Again beyond extremely reductionist "you pay incrementally" or "both try to make money" there's not much overlap. The through-line of design for energy games is you pay to relieve boredom.

[sinij]

Also, mediocre developers making mediocre cash grab games is nothing new and has never killed off other models before, it won't this time either. MtG wasn't killed by a thousand shitty yugihos. Original game ips weren't killed by a thousand shitty film tie ins. UO wasn't killed by a thousand shitty dingratz treadmills. PC gaming wasn't killed by a thousand shitty consoles.

You forgot green tag, because that is exactly what happened to MtG, UO and PC gaming. Sure, all of these still exist, but that is about it.

Spelled out for dense people:

Shitty DIKUs did kill UO
Shitty consoles did greatly damage PC gaming
MtG did lose entire generation due to shitty yugiohs.

I don't see "Shitty F2P MMOs killing off MMORPGs for another decade" as that far-fetched.

[Mrbloodworth]

You do realize that Magic the gathering is the PINNACLE of what you dislike right? Its was built in day one that every deck and card would be obsoleted by the next paid for pack. Its like, the entire model. In fact, I would go on to say its card games like that that really opened the gates for this new model and conditioned a generation to it. The problem I have is this leap from social/Facebook games, that have always been for the fly by night casual player, people who spend 100's on online poker, to thinking all games use this model or will.

Sinij has brought it up in every thread he has been in, indiscriminate of game type. Social, console, MMO or standalone, blowjob preferential dongle enabled. Its the blanketing I do not understand. To the point he now blames the loss of popularity on games that lost popularity well before any of this. If he has a point, this just waters it. Even the last link he posted was squarely inside the facebook/social game area, it makes no mention of MMO games. MMO games, that arguably use a completely different MT model than Facebook games, its a different audience.

I can't even name one MMO that will be out in the next 3 years that will use facebook like practices in revenue model.

If you do not like the Facebook/social game model, do not play them. The vast majority of games STILL do not use it. There are still many really well crafted games out there. There are also many well crafted games that use Micro transitions.


EDIT: Also, UO is old, get over it, ITS OLD. That's why its not popular today. Has shit to do with Farmvile players and pigs. Though I am sure Mafia war players are VERY concerned with the goings on In PVP in UO.

[sinij]

If you do not like .....,  do not play them.

This is exactly what concerns me. I realize that there are differences between card games, social facebook games, PC games and MMO games. Reason I brought 'social' games (and avoided arcade games and card games)  into this discussion  about MMO is that while they are quite different, they are not so different that design F2P methods cannot "jump species" and infect MMO. We already seen this happening with LoTRO, DDO and few others but so far it was mostly failed games that succumbed to this malaise.

Now we have Smed very publicly opening Pandora's box with a loud "Wouldn't it be great ..." There is no closing this box, and trust me there will be discussions just like that going on in multiple boardrooms between suits for who only exposure to gaming is golfing.

My very grounded fear is that next step will be a flood of even shittier (like decade of DIKU cloning wasn't bad enough) F2P MMOs that will put further stigma into playing few non-shitty ones out there, completely kill off overall grows of genre and make coming up with a decent subscription-based niche game all but impossible.

Now tell me I am wrong, because I WANT to be wrong. I just know better.

[Mrbloodworth]

I really can't make that leap that LOTRO and DDO are anything like Facebook/Social game models. I can't make this leap. Not even Aloids is as bad at pushing you to the shop as Farmvile. Sometimes, I think perhaps you just have not meet a F2P you have liked, for whatever reason.

Lets make an example. Is spiral knights a game that has suffered loss of production value because of its F2P nature?

[Margalis]

You do realize that Magic the gathering is the PINNACLE of what you dislike right? Its was built in day one that every deck and card would be obsoleted by the next paid for pack.

That's actually not how the game was originally designed. I don't feel like elaborating so suffice it to say you are wrong.

Its like, the entire model. In fact, I would go on to say its card games like that that really opened the gates for this new model and conditioned a generation to it. The problem I have is this leap from social/Facebook games, that have always been for the fly by night casual player, people who spend 100's on online poker, to thinking all games use this model or will.

There is a lot of desire on the part of "real game" publishers to use this model. It's really pretty self-evident given all the interviews, articles, GDC talks, etc.

I can't even name one MMO that will be out in the next 3 years that will use facebook like practices in revenue model.

Firefall. Bang. What do I win? Firefall has what is basically the energy-game system, where you can do things like quests on long timers but can pay to do them instantly. And games like Tiger Woods already have things like earning special gloves by either playing a hundred hours or forking over cash. That's not precisely an energy system but it still fits the paradigm of something you want to get that takes a ridiculous amount of time and boredom but that you can shortcut with cash.

Sinij is painting with a broad brush but I think it's fair to say that the industry is moving in this direction. Wether or not that's a long-term trend is anyone's guess, but yeah, in every boardroom of every publisher people are asking how they can make their games more like Farmville. That absolutely is happening.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hold on, hold on.

I am talking about what Sinij has been ranting about. Exploitative practices, Low production values, Intentional pay for advantages. Not something as mundane as energy systems. An energy system ( Basically pay for time played, like a sub does ) is not a root of evil.

All of those card games are indeed designed just as I said. Got to catch them all, after all. Hell, how many handheld Pokemon games are there now?

[sinij]

Exploitative practices, Low production values, Intentional pay for advantages.

Not something as mundane as energy systems.

 

Sorry, I really don't have anything to talk to you about. We don't meet basic level of agreed-on concepts to facilitate any kind of meaningful information exchange.

[Mrbloodworth]

How is having to pay for time played Exploitative, you paid nothing to get in the door. I feel you really keep mixing things up. Seems any kind of income for a free game other than a sub is exploitative to you. That then leads to the game being "low production value cash grabs".

Perhaps do this another way.

You see a free game you would like to play. What exactly is an acceptable thing you would pay for?

[Margalis]

Bloodworth I am not a mind reader, I can only read what you write.

When you write something like this:

I can't even name one MMO that will be out in the next 3 years that will use facebook like practices in revenue model.

I can only read the words you wrote and understand what you meant based on the meaning of those words.

Firefall is using facebook like practices in revenue model. Period. Now maybe you meant "I can't even name one MMO that will be out in the next 3 years that will be the shoddy product of underpaid child laborers" but if so you should have written that.

Sinij is overly broad but so are you. For example claiming that Facebook-style energy systems and sub fees are basically the same thing. They aren't, except at the high level "you pay for something." If they are basically the same why don't FB games just have sub fees?

[sinij]

You see a free game you would like to play. What exactly is an acceptable thing you would pay for?

I am right now methodically going through a list of F2P games, even Korean grinders, trying to find a single non-shitty one out there. I am not seeing it, but at the same time I am paying attention to how cash shops working and presented to players.

What would be acceptable to me? Anything that is a) convenience feature and can be played without _or_ b) visual-only fluff and doesn't affect competitive aspect of game play _and_ c) is not a "solution" to artificially created "problem". If I am not hammered with "pay pay pay" I will gladly pay, otherwise fuck-off.

Acceptable things to pay would be extra bag/bank slots, extra character slots, gag items, funny hats, funny pets, instant travel, instant catch-up level-ups for alts, shared bank...

[sinij]

Penny Arcade has interesting review of Skylanders , a game for kids with toy-based MT in it.

Choice quote:

I think Skylanders is much more mercenary in its manipulation though. LOL shows you all the cool skins and heroes you can buy but they aren’t twisting your arm. Not only does Skylanders twist your arm, it punches you in the stomach and takes your lunch money. Every level is comprised of zones that cater to certain types of Skylanders. You are always hearing the message that Skylanders of a given elemental type are stronger in this zone. There are also hidden zones that can only be accessed by a Skylander of a certain type. Don’t have the right one? Time to go to the store. You will also find “Soul Gems” in the levels that will grant special powers to specific Skylanders. So you are always finding cool powers for dudes you don’t even own. When Skylanders die they have to “rest” which means you can’t play with them. I hope you have more Skylanders to play with. I don’t mind being manipulated but this honestly feels like too much. I like your toys, I want to buy more of them them. You don’t have to be such assholes about it.

[Mrbloodworth]

"Shitty" is rather arbitrary. Games like Drakensang and Spiral knights are high quality titles, that do feature paid for items and in the case of Spiral knights, an energy system.  I'm not really denying that many houses are looking at using Facebook like systems, not all will. More so that any MT system instantly means its a bad game, in game-play, or production or that any MT system is inherently exploitative, grossly so.

I also do not believe that simply having an energy, or more simply a time based limit, is all that defines the majority of Facebook/social game models. Energy/pay for time is one method. Constantly being funneled into the cash shop like you say is also a defining point.

Big difference between sub fees and energy systems is the commitment. I believe that was part of the point of developing such systems. They still serve the same reason, pay for time, but in many cases with energy you can consume your time all at once.

Shitty developers will continue to make shitty games with inappropriate payment models. Others will find more ways to make the same MT payment models work, and their games will last longer. Others still will make subscription or even stand alone games.

This is a great summary.

[Simond]

This is a truly terrible analogy. Arcade games were fun and stressed mastery. The addictiveness came from the fact that the core game was enjoyable and you paid money to play more if you weren't good, not because the game was boring unless you spent $100 on Smurfberries to give your Smurfs extra energy so they could Smurf Smurfier.

The only similarity between arcade games and social games is reliance on incremental payments.

Using Allods online, the only borderline western (Russian, there was at least a serious attempt to market it in the US/EU though) example in this thread of a F2P MMO that had pretty blatant "exploitative" cash shop options (pay to level your gear, pay to -stats penalty from death), there's similarities to the old arcade game design.

The entire premise of this thread was that the F2P craze was going to degrade MMO quality and lead to exploitative design. We aren't just talking about shitty facebook games that aren't fun on their own. Allods online is by most accounts a pretty decent game. It was pretty popular during beta before the cash shop was added. It's not a game that is complete shit unless you pay to remove the boredom. The game does penalize you for dying (or did at one point) by giving you a -stats debuff that could only be removed for free every 24 hours, and giving your items a chance to get 'cursed' when you died unless you spent cash to buy protective wards for your items.

Most of the "pay 2 survive" crap has actually been pulled from Allods...mainly because the unwritten rule zero of F2P games is "First, retain your playerbase". Make the game too punishing and dependant on "Insert coin to continue" mechanism and the playerbase buggers off for pastures new (or at the very least pastures greener).

That is the bit the "Monetised games are the MALIGNANT CRAFT OF THE INFERNAL BEHOOVED ONE" miss.

[Malakili]

That is the bit the "Monetised games are the MALIGNANT CRAFT OF THE INFERNAL BEHOOVED ONE" miss.

Not really, I think Sinij is saying that they would prefer to use cheap psychological tricks to get you to retain you as a customer than make an actual good game.  I think he is at least a little bit right.  I don't think the model is inherently as bad as he does, but the temptation to include game mechanics based on your business model, rather than on the value to the game itself, its very high when you need to keep getting money from your players in this fashion.    This exists in sub fee games as well, but I think it generally manifests it ways that demand your time, rather than explicitly your money (even though they are related things), and therefore it doesn't feel quite as bad.

None of this changes the fact that f2p is going to be the way of the future though.  We can bitch about it all we want, but in a couple years, we'll all either be playing no MMOs, old MMOs, or f2p MMOs, and this model is spreading to other genres too (Tribes: Ascend, LoL, etc)

[Mrbloodworth]

Side note: I can't find any official anything about Firefall having an energy system. I was surprised that slipped by me. Only thing I see them officially supporting is cosmetics and XP boosts. Care to link where you had seen this announced?

[Ingmar]

MtG is more popular now than it has ever been in its existence. The end, full stop. And if you'd ever take off your anti-Steam tinfoil hat, you'd see PC gaming is thriving as well.

[tgr]

And if you'd ever take off your anti-Steam tinfoil hat, you'd see PC gaming is thriving as well.

And if only companies such as ubisoft would cut out their DRM, they might see it too.

[Valmorian]

MtG is more popular now than it has ever been in its existence. The end, full stop. And if you'd ever take off your anti-Steam tinfoil hat, you'd see PC gaming is thriving as well.

Indeed, has Sinj even walked into a game store in the last year or so?  Check out the CCG section and tell me MtG isn't doing well, I dare you!   

As for F2P games that "don't suck", that's going to be subjective, but off the top of my head:
LOTRO
DDO
CoH

None of those "SUCK" if you liked the gameplay before they went F2P you should like it after.

And if you didn't like it before?  Well, then it's not the F2P model that made it "suck" to you then.

[Nebu]

As for F2P games that "don't suck", that's going to be subjective, but off the top of my head:
LOTRO
DDO
CoH

None of those "SUCK" if you liked the gameplay before they went F2P you should like it after.

And if you didn't like it before?  Well, then it's not the F2P model that made it "suck" to you then.

That's not fair at all.  None of those games were designed to be F2P.  They became F2P when they ran into financial trouble with their subscription model.  I doubt we'll see many games developed on a reasonable budget with F2P in mind... particularly games as ambitious as Lotro. 

[Valmorian]

That's not fair at all.  None of those games were designed to be F2P.  They became F2P when they ran into financial trouble with their subscription model.  I doubt we'll see many games developed on a reasonable budget with F2P in mind... particularly games as ambitious as Lotro.  

So let me get this straight.  These MMOs were made with the intent of being subscription based, but because they were unsuccessful they went F2P and then had a large revenue increase, demonstrating that the F2P model can be at LEAST as successful as a subscription model.

You then follow that up by saying we won't see many games designed (on a reasonable budget) that target what has already been admitted as a model which is at least as successful as one they WERE being designed for.

How does that make sense?

[Ratman_tf]

Firefall. Bang. What do I win? Firefall has what is basically the energy-game system, where you can do things like quests on long timers but can pay to do them instantly.

It is? God-dammit! I was kinda looking forward to it. I was attracted by the squad based PvE stuff, but if it's going to have "Energy", fugedaboutit.

[Kageru]

So let me get this straight.  These MMOs were made with the intent of being subscription based, but because they were unsuccessful they went F2P and then had a large revenue increase, demonstrating that the F2P model can be at LEAST as successful as a subscription model.

The question is whether they made enough money to justify their initial development costs, which were predicated on the basis of a subscription model. And that is far from proven. If they were releasing a f2p game, rather than trying to extend the natural life of a dwindling game, it would be a much stronger argument.

Or put more simply would they have spent that much on development if it was going to release as a f2p game?

[Margalis]

Side note: I can't find any official anything about Firefall having an energy system. I was surprised that slipped by me. Only thing I see them officially supporting is cosmetics and XP boosts. Care to link where you had seen this announced?

The guy who founded the studio was on the Weekend Confirmed podcast talking about it last week. Specifically he was talking about quests that you can only do every so often but you can pay to be able to do them immediately. That's not EXACTLY energy but it's functionally pretty equivalent. I don't mean to slag the game, I don't know much about it, but that sort of thing seems pretty clearly inspired by Farmville-style systems.