Well, the problem is that the free to play market is simply too greedy and too expensive. The original success of the model was a lot of people who couldn't really afford or justify $15 a month jumping into FTP games to at least play the free content, which was fairly substantial, and then sticking around to spend something, or viewing what they spend as a donation. This was a godsend to games that were making virtually nothing, or losing money.
The problem is that the FTP trend has turned into a "pay to win" or "pay for everything" market that has become focused on inconveinencing players who don't wind up paying constant money, and largely producing more and more paid content. In some cases creating intentionally overpowered content attached to a cash-lottery system which requires players who want to be on top (or remain there) buying keys, chance rolls, or similar things, oftentimes in large quantities.
Some of the better FTP games have been fairly balanced. Star Trek Online, my personal favorite, included a mechanic by which you could slowly obtain any paid content just by playing the game and accumulating and refining dilithium. A trend which also has an equivilent in Champions Online, and the upcoming Neverwinter. Giving Cryptic Money tends to mostly speed the process (greatly) rather than being strictly nessicary, and also their profits have gone into expanding the game outside of just adding more "cash shop" items including a couple of large adventure zones (Nukara, Romulus), new grindcore maps, and of course the upcoming Romulan expansion.
That said, for every STO type game out there, there are tons which exist largely just to hopefully hook people and then hit them with a massive bill to keep playing in a way that is fun. Or games like "DC Universe Online" or "The Old Republic" which are what I like to call "faux free to play games" because for all their pretensions they mostly try and force people into a subscription model anyway (which I actually prefer, but it defeats the purpose). Both of those games feature things like currency caps in order to prevent free to play players from participating in or having much effect on the in-game economy, along with no "ala carte" option to remove that, and other assorted permanant barriers. In short you can pay as much as a lifetime subscription to a subscription based game for those titles and still not get an experience anywhere close to what someone dropping $15 a month gets.
At any rate I expect there to be a collapse in the FTP market simply due to all the greedy idiots jumping on the bandwagon, producing derivitive, but expensive, games which they have no desire to expand other than more paid content. People are catching onto this as time goes on, and I expect a lot of those to collapse. I expect a lot of the more reasonably run games like STO (which still exists to make money, and get you to buy stuff, but isn't as obnoxious about it) to stick around and perhaps more of them, but I expect a lot of those jumping onto the model expecting monster profits and success for little effort to collapse just as those who tried to dial in subscription games did. What's more while they already did their thing, and made a ton of money while lasting a number of years, I expect some games like "Atlantica Online" which got greedier over time to collapse on their own weight right now. With some games you are seeing situations where the survival of the game is literally resting on a relative handfull of fanatics that pay hundreds of dollars each month, while most people pay little or nothing. That's not a state of affairs that can
continue indefinatly.
As much as I hate to agree with anyone from Mythic, I do kind of agree with him, but for seemingly differant reasons. I'll also say that he has a good attitude about intentionally making a subscription niche game, it's a surprisingly healthy one. More MMOs should have such reasonable attitudes. Of course whether he's being honest about that or not remains to be seen, I saw something similar with "The Secret World" which was being presented as exactly that, yet apparently behind closed doors it was being promoted as this huge, blockbuster, mainstream success that was going to have Funcom rolling in subscription dollars. Anyone could tell you just by looking at the premise that this really wasn't going to happen, though it would collect a solid user base if they maintained it as promised and didn't set expectations too high. This lead to Funcom's stock majorly tanking, and far less tham the promised support for The Secret World where new content has been arriving at a trickle, and it's unknown if we're ever going to see the central plotline continue into Tokyo.
The problem is that the FTP trend has turned into a "pay to win" or "pay for everything" market that has become focused on inconveinencing players who don't wind up paying constant money, and largely producing more and more paid content. In some cases creating intentionally overpowered content attached to a cash-lottery system which requires players who want to be on top (or remain there) buying keys, chance rolls, or similar things, oftentimes in large quantities.
Some of the better FTP games have been fairly balanced. Star Trek Online, my personal favorite, included a mechanic by which you could slowly obtain any paid content just by playing the game and accumulating and refining dilithium. A trend which also has an equivilent in Champions Online, and the upcoming Neverwinter. Giving Cryptic Money tends to mostly speed the process (greatly) rather than being strictly nessicary, and also their profits have gone into expanding the game outside of just adding more "cash shop" items including a couple of large adventure zones (Nukara, Romulus), new grindcore maps, and of course the upcoming Romulan expansion.
That said, for every STO type game out there, there are tons which exist largely just to hopefully hook people and then hit them with a massive bill to keep playing in a way that is fun. Or games like "DC Universe Online" or "The Old Republic" which are what I like to call "faux free to play games" because for all their pretensions they mostly try and force people into a subscription model anyway (which I actually prefer, but it defeats the purpose). Both of those games feature things like currency caps in order to prevent free to play players from participating in or having much effect on the in-game economy, along with no "ala carte" option to remove that, and other assorted permanant barriers. In short you can pay as much as a lifetime subscription to a subscription based game for those titles and still not get an experience anywhere close to what someone dropping $15 a month gets.
At any rate I expect there to be a collapse in the FTP market simply due to all the greedy idiots jumping on the bandwagon, producing derivitive, but expensive, games which they have no desire to expand other than more paid content. People are catching onto this as time goes on, and I expect a lot of those to collapse. I expect a lot of the more reasonably run games like STO (which still exists to make money, and get you to buy stuff, but isn't as obnoxious about it) to stick around and perhaps more of them, but I expect a lot of those jumping onto the model expecting monster profits and success for little effort to collapse just as those who tried to dial in subscription games did. What's more while they already did their thing, and made a ton of money while lasting a number of years, I expect some games like "Atlantica Online" which got greedier over time to collapse on their own weight right now. With some games you are seeing situations where the survival of the game is literally resting on a relative handfull of fanatics that pay hundreds of dollars each month, while most people pay little or nothing. That's not a state of affairs that can
continue indefinatly.
As much as I hate to agree with anyone from Mythic, I do kind of agree with him, but for seemingly differant reasons. I'll also say that he has a good attitude about intentionally making a subscription niche game, it's a surprisingly healthy one. More MMOs should have such reasonable attitudes. Of course whether he's being honest about that or not remains to be seen, I saw something similar with "The Secret World" which was being presented as exactly that, yet apparently behind closed doors it was being promoted as this huge, blockbuster, mainstream success that was going to have Funcom rolling in subscription dollars. Anyone could tell you just by looking at the premise that this really wasn't going to happen, though it would collect a solid user base if they maintained it as promised and didn't set expectations too high. This lead to Funcom's stock majorly tanking, and far less tham the promised support for The Secret World where new content has been arriving at a trickle, and it's unknown if we're ever going to see the central plotline continue into Tokyo.
