A View From the Road: The Subscription Equation

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Caliostro said:
I'll say it again: Ferrari, Fiat Punto. They're both driving. It's technically the same... Except not really...
Except yes, really. Exactly the same.

Yeah you have 90 hours of TF2, and a million hours of WoW, and the keyword here is "you". I have over 200 of TF2 in-game, and god knows how many in hammer. On the other hand I have played Portal through so many times now that, I'm not kidding, I must have clocked over 20 - 40 hours on that game by now. I have hundreds, possibly thousands of hours in GTA Vice City for the PS2 and even seemingly "low single-player longevity" games, like the Tekken series (again, in single player), have seen me net hundreds of gameplay hours. Meanwhile, and while I did have my MMO "phase", I never clocked nearly as many hours on any of them. In an argument like this, where the question is "is the subscription based plan better - FOR THE COSTUMER" you have to null out parasitic variables which otherwise influence the result, specifically, enjoyment of the game itself. In order for this "study" to be accurate, you have to assume people have the capacity to enjoy a P2P MMOG much in the same manner as they're capable of enjoying any other retail game... And if Steam profiles are anything is solid evidence that such people do exist.

And when you come down to it, is "renting" better than purchasing? Then for the most part the answer is no. Specially considering most of these "subscription based" services also force you to buy the actual game. That's why we usually buy our games, we don't rent them unless we're not planning on dedicating more than a bored weekend to them. The longer you have the game, and the longer you play it, the worse deal renting becomes. As said before, the added overtime cost of a "renting" anything forever (to equate ownership) is nothing short of infinite, which is slightly more than 60 bucks. Then there's the whole issue surrounding the fact that you never actually own the game, merely a temporary license to play it.

What you discuss in your article, in my opinion, deserved another approach entirely: Are P2P MMOS "that bad"? Cause that's a whole different deal. MMOs in general run on company-based servers, the cost of which is supported by the company, which in turn requires a steady source of income to support the servers the game runs on. A P2P plan in this case seems sensible (even though undoubtedly a lot of those 15$ a month per person goes into lining the company's pockets more than running the servers) and, some would argue, a better approach for the MMO world's "ambiance" than the "Free with premium store" one. If you really do want an MMO, then your choices are pretty limited as "retail-only" plans don't cover server costs and thus aren't efficient for the publisher, and given the options, "P2P" is not that bad a choice.

As for "length" of a game. Again, it's a slippery slope isn't it? First of all because longevity isn't everything. The time-proven slogan "quality>quantity" rings truer than ever here, and good single player games are generally built more towards a strong impact/experience than a longer lasting but more diluted one (i.e: mmos). But again, that's not the point of the article, so we need to assume there are equally enjoyable on both sides... That said, we stumble upon two more fallacies in your logic... First, that all p2p MMOs have good longevity while only SOME retail games do, which is a pretty big gaping hole in your theory. You use WoW as a comparison, but WoW is arguably the biggest behemoth of the subscription based MMO world, if not of all the MMOs, long held as the "king" of "MMORPG-land" every other MMOG attempts to dethrone... It feels tragically quaint to then pitch it against "average" games. Pitch it against equal "retail" behemoths like TF2 and CoD4 and suddenly the "gameplay time" field looks considerably leveled. If you wanna pitch it against "lower games" then you gotta pick a "lower class" of subscription based MMO as well. Perhaps one of those "WoW killers!" that surface every other month and go down under after a year or two (deja vu of "Halo killer!"s?). The other gaping fallacious hole in your theory revolves around your usage of hours played to correlate with price for the estimated price "per minute played"... This is pointless because you don't pay for your minutes, you pay for the hole month. 4 hours of WoW can cost me the same as a full "retail" game, I just need to play 1 hour a month. Ultimately you need to clock how many different months have you played these games? Even if you turn the game on once, log in your character, walk around, log off. That's one month you'd have to pay in subscription based services.

Anyways, this is becoming a rant, my apologies. I think I got the point across: I think you let your personal bias get the better of you in this one.
I could say the same. And I used WoW as my chief comparison because it was the one I played the most, but I stand by my point for... pretty much any MMOG that doesn't suck on the market. EQ, DAoC, WAR, Aion, CoX, et cetera. If the game is worth playing, it'll almost assuredly get you more playtime and save you money than your average retail game. Are there exceptions? Undoubtedly. But they're just that - exceptions.
 

BlicaGB

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Jul 10, 2009
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To me, the biggest bang for my buck is Medieval 2, Civ 4 or any other of the top rated Strategy titles. I pay once, I play countless times and when I'm done I put it away for about 3 months.

My problem with the MMO's is.. it gets boring after a while, I played CoH, DAoC, EQ, WoW ( a tiny bit ) WarHammer Online, UO, GW, that Microsoft one where you had instruments ( I can't remember the name ) and the one thing they all gave me was about a month of addiction followed by.. so now what. Time and time again I would be stuck in the mid levels with no group sitting around camping the small xp stuff in a grindfest. Then I'd quit because it got annoying. Or I'd create another caracter, which was just a repetition of the cycle.

I suppose it is a good point though that if you want to commit the time 15 a month is nothing. If you put in the hours.

Anyway, good mathematical point. Sort of. If you don't count replayability... or multiplayer goodness. Or Neverwinter Nights and other such games that allowed you to create your own experience or log on to someone else's created world.
 

PedroSteckecilo

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Feb 7, 2008
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I don't really get "bang for my buck" out of gaming, I have too short of an attention span and I haven't fully replayed a game in god knows when.

The best "bang for my buck" that I've had in recent years would be Persona 3 FES, $39.99 CDN (Pretty cheap) for over 100 hours of high quality, story based gameplay. Persona 4 is close, but it doesn't have the expansion game packaged with it that adds an extra 30 hours to the game. Also both of these games came with really good soundtracks.

Regardless though, I always feel like MMOG's are a very shallow experience. Sure I get a base line RPG experience full of leveling, treasure hunting, cool environments and tons of unique enemies. However I never really feel "fulfilled" since there isn't really a "story" in the same sense as a game like Persona 4, Final Fantasy 6 or Xenosaga 3. There are no "characters" there's no "ending" and hence less "satisfaction" as far as I'm concerned. It's like eating Salad or Plain Potatoes when you really want STEAK! Sure it fills you up but you never really feel "satisfied". Also you need to play with other people, so it's like trying to eat potatoes while some random douchebag with poor grammer sits on the other side of the table stealing your food at random intervals and shouting poorly phrased insults at you. Everyone else at the table is cold and aloof... and then the high level horde ass holes busts in, shove your head in your food, kick your chair out from under you and flip over the table, and then leave as unceremoniously as they entered.

Yes, I'm afraid it's not worth all that to just eat salad or plain potatoes and I don't think I'll ever really be interested in an MMOG again, at least not until The Old Republic comes out, I play that for a bit and once again get severely jaded by it.

I suppose it also comes from being a Pen and Paper Roleplayer, I mean, if you're going to spend hours in your basement pretending to be an elf, you may as well have some friends over, drink some beer, order some pizza and make a mini-party out of it.
 

Arbitrary Cidin

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Apr 16, 2009
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The problem with your WoW gaming hours model is that you don't take into consideration time where you were dicking around, afk, waiting for people, etc. Of course it still would beat the second choice but if you look at it from a quality perspective, it's like saying you can spend a lot less on gaming... except you can only play one game. ONE game. Wanna play an FPS like Halo? Too bad. Wanna play an RTS like C&C? Too bad. Wanna play a fighting game like Street Fighter? Too bad! You get World of Warcraft and NOTHING else for as long as you go by this plan. Now, I'm sure that's not the case. I'm sure that while paying the subscription, you were also buying other games, some that you play all month while still paying $15 a month. Even gamers of the most intense dedication get bored of playing the same game after a while (usually). So how do you get a cheap gaming experience AND variety? Simple... last gen consoles and old PC games. Most people didn't have all 3, and most MMOs have lower quality graphics and gameplay mechanics than the Xbox, PS2, or Gamecube. It's the middle man. You can get games from the Wallmart dollar bin for a good few hours of gameplay each. Besides! Don't you ever wish you got references to old games that you didn't play? Now's your chance to get up to speed. Or you could play an MMO, do whatever.
 

Sark

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Jun 21, 2009
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I think that with the upcoming release of Aion, I might overlook my previous stingyness towards MMOGs. Thinking back to all the titles I have bought in the last six months or so, being, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Prototype and NWN2 and expansions, I have to admit that the pay per play system is looking fairly good. Between these three games I clocked maybe 10 hours for Star Wars, 20 for Prototype and maybe 50 for NWN2.
That's 80 hours for a grand total of around $300AUD. That's $3.75 an hour. A subscription for a year as well as the initial purchase of Aion should be around $280. The difference isn't that much, but then the longevity of an MMO should be significantly higher than any of these games, so the "bang for my buck" is quite a bit better.
Perhaps I will save some money, if I limit myself to one game, which probably isn't going to happen. Above my dying fear of the pay per play subscription model is my dire hatred for the game prices in Australia.
 

jimBOFH

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Nov 15, 2008
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I paid $90 AUD (standard AAA release price in Aus, sadly) for CoD4, and would have clocked several hundred hours on it without a doubt. I think the value comes more from being a multiplayer oriented game than from being a MMORPG specifically.
 

Gildedtongue

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Nov 9, 2007
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Honestly, if I'm going to constantly fork over money to a person, I'd like to have some diversity to my product. No matter how many updates and how many expansion packs WoW comes out with, in the end, you're always doing the same thing, "Go over there, hit him over the head with a stick, and see what the piñata comes out with." There's zero character development (getting new fireballs or whatnot is not character development), the storyline is weak at best, and the activity done is repetitious with zero actual reward. In MMOs nothing you ever do matters, you can go kill a rampaging dragon, kill an evil space emperor, kill an entire army of kobolds (notice, the sum total of the player's ability is to simply kill, every once in awhile there's a need to gather materials for something, but that can only be done by, guess what, more wanton bloodlust), and in the end, they'll pop right back up for someone else to go kill. The game's status quo means that there is no change whether or not I've actually put in any input.

So, every 15 dollars, I hand someone money for him to... not change a damned thing. Oh, sure, there's a few niches and pockets fleshed out here and there, but, that has nothing to do with what I, or anyone else has done. In the end, there is zero variety in the whole thing.

At this point, things like, say, Gamefly or Gametap make much more sense. Sure, I'm paying a man an entry fee to get into their funhouse, but once inside, I have access to all the arcade machines they have. Do I feel like a rampant shooting spree? Do I feel like high fantasy swords and sorcery? Do I feel like a zombie invasion?

I guess the point is, I like strawberry ice cream, but sometimes rocky road hits the spot better?
 

theklng

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May 1, 2008
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CantFaketheFunk said:
snip for reference
i think it's worth mentioning that the amount of hours put into a mmo game aren't always their money's worth. maybe it's true, you do get many more hours for your buck; but what is the quality of those hours?

how many of those hours have been running, flying, swimming or otherwise moving to a destination? how many of those hours have been idle while waiting for a raid or group to arrive at some point? can you really say that the quality of a game such as world of warcraft will exceed that of an critically acclaim singleplayer game such as batman: arkham asylum?
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Gildedtongue said:
Honestly, if I'm going to constantly fork over money to a person, I'd like to have some diversity to my product. No matter how many updates and how many expansion packs WoW comes out with, in the end, you're always doing the same thing, "Go over there, hit him over the head with a stick, and see what the piñata comes out with." There's zero character development (getting new fireballs or whatnot is not character development), the storyline is weak at best, and the activity done is repetitious with zero actual reward. In MMOs nothing you ever do matters, you can go kill a rampaging dragon, kill an evil space emperor, kill an entire army of kobolds (notice, the sum total of the player's ability is to simply kill, every once in awhile there's a need to gather materials for something, but that can only be done by, guess what, more wanton bloodlust), and in the end, they'll pop right back up for someone else to go kill. The game's status quo means that there is no change whether or not I've actually put in any input.

So, every 15 dollars, I hand someone money for him to... not change a damned thing. Oh, sure, there's a few niches and pockets fleshed out here and there, but, that has nothing to do with what I, or anyone else has done. In the end, there is zero variety in the whole thing.

At this point, things like, say, Gamefly or Gametap make much more sense. Sure, I'm paying a man an entry fee to get into their funhouse, but once inside, I have access to all the arcade machines they have. Do I feel like a rampant shooting spree? Do I feel like high fantasy swords and sorcery? Do I feel like a zombie invasion?

I guess the point is, I like strawberry ice cream, but sometimes rocky road hits the spot better?
Just saying, you're not entirely correct. That's why phasing technology is so awesome - it allows players to feel like the world is moving and evolving based on their contributions while still leaving content accessible for those who follow.

theklng said:
CantFaketheFunk said:
snip for reference
i think it's worth mentioning that the amount of hours put into a mmo game aren't always their money's worth. maybe it's true, you do get many more hours for your buck; but what is the quality of those hours?

how many of those hours have been running, flying, swimming or otherwise moving to a destination? how many of those hours have been idle while waiting for a raid or group to arrive at some point? can you really say that the quality of a game such as world of warcraft will exceed that of an critically acclaim singleplayer game such as batman: arkham asylum?
Yes, absolutely. It's a different TYPE of time spent, but as much as I loved Arkham, I've gotten way more hours of fun out of WoW.
 

theklng

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May 1, 2008
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CantFaketheFunk said:
Yes, absolutely. It's a different TYPE of time spent, but as much as I loved Arkham, I've gotten way more hours of fun out of WoW.
but then, you've also played wow for at least 100 times longer than you've played arkham asylum. with a boiled down analysis (however subjective this may be), will the quality per hour in world of warcraft really be higher than that of arkham?
 

Gmano

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Apr 3, 2009
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My younger brother bought COD:MW2, play time is like 300 hours....

I bought fable2, playtime is probably around 110 hours...

I went halfsies with my brother for halo 3, my play time is probably around 80 hours, his is around 150.

yeah, I think I get use out of it, besides, MMOGs tend to be grindy and soul destroying, not for me thanks.