sMMOrgasbord

“Finally, in the modern MMO environment, players often rotate through several games that they’re engaged in. With a subscription, it’s a hassle to cancel and then re-subscribe as they move back and forth between games. With F2P, players can play the games they want to play right that moment without having to keep in mind what they committed to weeks or months ago. F2P is a win for the player, and it’s a win for a more diverse MMO community.” – Flying Lab Software

Free doesn’t mean failure

Until recently there seemed to be an attitude in the mmo community that a game going free to play was something a game developer or publisher did out of desperation.   It is almost as if the prevailing attitude in the mmo community were one of “If they can’t get subscriptions out of us maybe they can con the money out of us.”  If you go even further back (and that only takes a few years) if you suggested that microtransaction supported games would take a foothold in the west you would have been told you are crazy.  And if a developer considers a subscription game with a cash shop? … Time was when that was considered tantamount to heresy.

When Blizzard stuck in “paid-for pets” and starry little ponies in cash shops players acted like the world was about to come to an end – conveniently forgetting, of course, that Blizzard had been offering paid services like name changes and server transfers all along.  Just like the Woodie Guthrie song says, “the times they are a’ changin’”.  There will always be detractors that claim Turbine taking Lord of the Rings Online free to play was lunacy.  There will always be those shorted sighted individuals who follow up the new commercial for Lord of the Rings Online where Gandalf walks out of an office building and says “You shall not pay…” with their own caveat “until…”

“I don’t think you understand all the issues here.”

It is a common phrase that I have seen used in business quite often. It is usually wielded by someone who has no other means to get their way than to rattle their saber and issue the “dreaded” phrase.  Most often I found such a phrase wielded by men who would attempt to call me “sweetheart” in an office environment. Still, the more we get to know people in the game development industry the more we find ourselves quoting Mr. T (the original one) who used to say “I pity the fool”.  I pity the fool who has a job where they have not one supervisor, but an audience of thousands, each telling them how to do their job. If Turbine succeeds in making a go of taking Lotro free to play, perhaps that will finally convince the majority of the mmo community that “free to play” does not mean “failure”.

How big is the pot?

Still, it all leaves me wondering how big the “pot” is in this particular game of game development poker.  Time was, as World of Warcraft started to climb in subscriber numbers, each new milestone found people claiming that was as big as the community will get.  Yet as Richard Garriott and Rob Pardo have both pointed out in the past, the mmo community is bigger than anyone ever thought it was. And whether you or I or anyone else like it or not, if there is one thing that World of Warcraft did for the mmo community it is make the hobby both acceptable and main stream.  Even with all that, it still make me wonder how much money there is to go around in the long run as player begin to accept the mmo smorgasbord that is offered to them.  Will the same amount of money be spread around even thinner? Or will it be just the breath of fresh air the industry needed?