Subscriptions with an Item Mall? Oh Noes!
The Subscription plus Item mall debate is something that rages on and on these days. People come up with witty equations to illustrate the differences. Comparing the price of; (Insert unrelated product here) to the price of a game subscription. It’s all very cute and all, but the primary arguments, generally aren’t based completely in reality. A lot of the associated costs of an MMO gets left out, or blatantly ignored.
Is $15 bucks too much for a subscription?
Not really, yes different currencies translate into more or less, that goes without saying. Yes the cost of servers and bandwidth might be down, but that’s not all that’s being paid for, neither is Customer service the sum total of what you’re paying for.
Something that seems to be forgotten is that just like Single Player games (which you used to only pay for once, but with DLC you now pay for expanded content) is the cost of development for the games. For several years games are in design and development, internally tested, worked on and so forth. In the case of triple A titles, that costs a huge amount of money.
Designers, Programmers, Artists, Animators, Writers, Voice Actors, Server Techs, etc, all these people working to make the games people are complaining about, get paid to make the games. This can be a massive investment for a company, and the “box price” and the subscription fees, even the item mall content being added to sub model games go to recoup the money spent to make the game.
But beyond that, with MMO’s or at least with the good ones, new content and patches don’t come out of thin air, the above mentioned group of game staff, plus GM’s, plus Customer service people, plus community management all have to be paid to get all the new content/updates/patches created/made/tested before it gets released.
Using the “Game of main comparison” WoW, Blizzard spent millions developing it before it even launched and they spend more and more for expansions, updates and the like. Now yes they are making a pant load of money but when you factor in original and continuing development costs, continued operation and repair costs, corporate tax and more, that cuts down on actual profit.
Of course all these companies are interested in making profit; no company can survive without it. Not just because profit is good, but also because profit translates into capital for the next game they create/build/launch/operate.
I am not a happy go luck fan of Item malls, not because I don’t like paying for extra content, but because of the kind of crap that usually ends up in them. Items that unbalance a game, uber xp scrolls and the like that those who can afford love and those who can’t loathe.
Looking at STO (which yes I currently play as you all know) which was in development for something like 4+ years, that’s all that money spent, hoping that it would attract Star Trek fans, and gaming fans alike with a new experience. Yes there is the box fee or digital download cost, there’s the subscription cost be it monthly, 3 months, 6 months, or the special year or life time sub cost. Also they do have the C-Shop, which presently only contains 2 items, a playable Federation Klingon or Ferengi.
They need to make back all the money spent designing, developing, and testing the game, then make money to continue to operate, expand, and repair the game. Continuing with this example, the Staff for STO has already said in different places, that how Cryptic’s other games are operated in price models and how STO will be modeled isn’t going to be the same thing. The Borg update was free, and I get the sense other expansion content will likely be free also.
So looking at the overall subscription + item mall model, when you factor in all the costs either spent in development or going forward, it makes sense the company needs to generate revenue. Yes not everyone can or will pay for stuff in the item mall, which goes without saying. People play F2P games all the time without buying a thing. They however balance out with those who do buy things and usually spend an insane amount of money doing it.
How is that any better?
I’m not really sure it is, or different for that matter. The only differences between F2P and Subscription based games is usually quality (though that may be starting to change) and the word “Free”. It might be free to play the basic game, which is great for players, but to get the most out of the game experience you have to spend money. With P2P games you pay money to get the main experience, but there’s also the occasional bonus goodies in the Item mall, usually nothing that is really required, generally in the P2P world these are just nice little bonuses, and not really impactful to the experience over all. (Broad strokes I know)
Expansions on the other hand, yes some companies will make you pay for expansions, but considering an expansion is usually quite a bit of additional content, this makes sense. When of course, the expansion is priced reasonably and is worth buying. Any gamer who plays the Sims franchise will tell you that not always is the expansion worth buying, not because of the price, but because they, for whatever reason, don’t like the content. (Generally)
But you’re still paying for a higher end content package, not just a quick update patch, which costs more to create and develop.
If you want to really argue about this issue, at least be intelligent about it and do some research. Debate, discussion, and dissent is vital to keep the industry moving forward, but just complaining for the sake of complaining doesn’t do anything short of making you look rather stupid and waste the time of those whom participate in it.
My grandma used to fill my ears with the cliché “Money doesn’t grow on trees” Well in Gaming, neither does new content, expansions, and patches.
“Items that unbalance a game, uber xp scrolls and the like that those who can afford love and those who can’t loathe.”
I encounter this far too often myself. I used to play an MMO Mud game called Imperian. The ‘special credits’ were called Credits. You bought them with real life money, or you bought them in-game from other players.
They were pretty much THE only way to get the best armour and weapons. So either you grinded for months and bought loads from other players to buy one weapon or you sunk into your wallet for $40-50 and got it that way.
I didn’t like it naturally. It created such a power gap that those with the money were the most feared players.
I do like how D&D Online handled it, mostly anyway. I could buy from the store what I could get in game. Just quicker and easier from the store.
I bought a +1 Scimitar, but I could have paid 1000 gold or so for one too. Nothing in the store was unique, except classes/races and some content. The content bit was what I didn’t like as you were pretty much forced to run the same content over and over or buy the extra stuff.
For World of Warcraft, with the level of content, content quality, server quality and good connection I get. I’m happy to pay the monthly fee. I have played many many MMOs, WOW is one of the best in all ways, especially in lag XD
Well this is it, if it’s content you can achieve in the game anyways, just buying it through an item mall as a faster means, makes a lot of sense to me, it’s not overly disruptive to the game, and when items from the store are trade-able in game, it’s a means to drive a player economy and more equal op for players whom might not have the cash to invest.
My main issue with item malls, which you give a great example of is the over powering content, and remarkably it’s usually free to play games that are guilty of this more than any subscription game I know of.
Problem that I seen with D&D Online is that the bought content gives the best items.
I think one of the downsides to Item Mall in my book is that in the end, you can easily wind up and spend more on a monthly basis than you do if you pay for a subscription. I’d rather know exactly how much I’m going to pay. It helps me decide if I can afford to subscribe to multiple games. I’m also somewhat aghast at the price of some of the items in Item Malls. $300 is over the top!
Not meaning to be nit picky, but you missed both a major cost and major revenue source. While not an issue for most games, Cryptic and Turbine both had to deal with obtaining liscencing rights. With LOTR, I’m not entirely sure how the rights made their way to Turbine, but Vivendi had an 8 year exclusive period that if it fully matured, overlapped with Trubine’s release and given how protective Tolkien Enterprise is with it’s IP, you know they’re paying for it one way or another. For STO, Cryptic had to purchase the rights from Perpetual Entertainment, which ment upfront development fees.
Now maybe this goes to Item Malls, but WoW and SWG both have an additional source of income. TCGs… Players buying into the trading card games based on the MMO with the hopes of getting special cards for special Item Mall type items. It’s a scheme that both appeals to the collectionists and gamblers… and quite frankly, at least with WoW, it’s quite a profit machine for them.
Anyways, good read as always.
Yes that’s another source of expenses I’d considered putting in, but left it out for the sake that many MMO’s are new IP’s, though you are quite right about ones that are built around franchises/established IPs.
Yeah, merchandising is much the same as Item malls, although they are physical items, they are just another profit channel companies use. Though not many in the MMO space. Which surprises me for some of the bigger ones, as geeks and gamers are notorious buyers of collectible swag.