WTF is TANSTAAFG? I'm glad you asked! There's an old saying, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch"...TANSTAAFL. Having just eaten mine, I paid for the components a couple of days ago, so it wasn't free. More generally it implies that there is always a cost, even if the cost is hidden or indirect.
While eating a game is seldom advisable, it is in other ways similar to lunch in that there is always a cost. TANSTAAFG.
The MMO space has undergone a lot of changes over the years, but nowhere has it changed more than in the way it reaps revenue from the users. It all used to be subscription based, but now it's more often via free(HAH!)-to-play and so-called "freemium" models. Some pundits (Ever notice that someone who writes or blogs that you disagree with is a "pundit", where someone who is brilliant and perceptive like me is a "deep thinker"? Yeah, me neither.) have loudly proclaimed that the subscription model is dead...and they are, of course, idiots.
THOSE WHO CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT THEMSELVES
Yeah, that joke doesn't completely scan, but I had to go with Santayana as best I could. What can I say, once upon a time I was a history major.
To many of the pundits (again with the pundits!) loudly (and wrongly) proclaiming the death of the subscription model of MMOs, the coup de gras came via a lightsaber. With Star Wars: The Old Republic announcing it would be transitioning to the F2P model less than 8 months after launch, the logic seems to be "If BioWare and the Star Wars franchise couldn't make subscriptions work, then the subscription model is dead."
This is similar to saying "If Ford Motors couldn't make the Edsel successful, then the automobile industry is dead." Google "edsel" if you don't understand the reference. You kids today...
I'll even steal a line from the Wikipedia entry for the Edsel..."The aim was right, but the target moved."
TOR was sold to the masses of slavering fanboys (including yours truly) as some revolutionary new gaming experience. But upon getting into the beta I was disappointed to discover it was exactly what I feared it would be, a thoroughly conventional MMO with a Knights Of The Old Republic theme. They'd done what I expected and stapled some MMO boilerplate on the KOTOR games and convinced themselves that it was new.
A friend asked me if I thought SWTOR would be a hit and I replied that unless they had an aggressive content pipeline ready to go at launch, vast numbers of people would level up to 50 once or maybe twice and then quit because the game was so linear.
Unfortunately, their pipeline was comically empty, despite their boast of "unlike other games, we aren't laying people off after launch because we're still making so much new content!"
That's why TOR failed under the subscription model. Because after a few months most players had done everything the game had to offer (except each of the storylines), often more than once. No endgame, little replay value...those are the reasons for lousy retention, not the monthly subscription.
I've seen one prominent analyst claim that TOR could easily see a top-end of 10 million players under F2P, with a ceiling of 50 million. This fellow needs a long vacation and his attending physician should re-examine his meds.
I guarantee they won't see anywhere near 10 million players playing, let alone paying, for the same reason subscriptions didn't work...there's simply nothing to do. Will they have 10 million accounts? Maybe. How many will be active? How many will be using the microtransactions? What will the revenue-per-player be? Who knows? In the short run at least, I expect EA and BioWare will see increased revenue from the F2P change, but in the long run TOR will never be a "success".
Not because of the subscription model, but simply because it is a profoundly disappointing game.
OH LOOK, A GREAT BIG ENORMOUS ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
The subscription model is DEAD! Unless of course you include World of Warcraft.
The people who claim that subs are dead either ignore WoW entirely or put it off with something like "WoW is such an outlier, it doesn't count."
OK, hmm...what about EVE Online? Subscription-based success there. "Well, EVE is different because it's EVE."
Seriously!? WTF!? WoW doesn't count because it's WoW and EVE doesn't count because it's EVE. Thanks for your insightful commentary! I'd win every argument ever if I could simply exclude all of the counter-arguments too!
I could pretty much end the discussion there..."If the subscription model is dead, then WoW and EVE don't exist, right?"
Here's one more...Lord of the Rings Online. Yes, it went F2P, but it was still profitable and successful before that. When DDO saw its revenues skyrocket after going F2P it was inevitable that LotRO would change. As a lifetime subscription LotRO player I can genuinely say that even if F2P has increased the revenue for Warner Brothers and Turbine, it has negatively impacted the game. This opinion is shared by the majority of my LotRO guild, as we've seen our collective enthusiasm wane drastically over time.
And here's a difference...unlike TOR the guys at Turbine have been keeping the content pipeline relatively full. Unfortunately, they are no longer designing a compelling game, they are designing a compelling commercial enterprise. And it shows.
So here's a case where going F2P helped the bottom line (in the short-to-medium run, at least) while irreparably damaging the game and loyalty of the player base. In the long run, it may kill the game. Not because the game went F2P, but because of the implementation.
TOR didn't fail because it was a subscription game, it failed because it wasn't compelling over time. LotRO won't fail because it went F2P, but it might because commerce-driven design decisions are making it less compelling over time.
Subscriptions aren't dead. They just are no longer the only option. And F2P isn't the only option going forward.
LOOKING INTO THE CRYSTAL BALL
So if subscriptions aren't dead and F2P isn't the only option, what does the future look like?
Subscriptions and the much sought-after recurring revenue they represent is still the Holy Grail for MMO developers. But the landscape has changed enormously and anyone bringing a new game out needs to very carefully decide how they are going to approach the question of monetization, and they have to do it from the very outset of the game design.
Going F2P for a game like TOR may salvage it financially, but then the question comes up...how would the game be different if that had been the plan from the start? How will the design and implementation be different going forward?
If they can't add compelling content to TOR in a timely fashion, then the game will end up in a Zynga-like death-spiral, where the company is relying on fewer players over time spending more money. At that point, it's no longer about making a game, it's about desperately trying to keep addicts hooked in something akin to JediVille.
But right as so many are talking about how everything needs to go F2P, with microtransactions being the only route to financial success...here comes Guild Wars 2 with a pay-to-play model.
In GW2 you pay full rate for the game, but there is no subscription. There are some convenience and cosmetic options available through microtransactions to keep the revenue stream flowing somewhat until the next paid-for expansion comes out.
It worked in Guild Wars and I expect it will work in Guild Wars 2 even better.
So I guess maybe the future isn't completely F2P after all eh?
I repeat the question...what does the future look like?
It used to be all subscriptions and some pundits (Hah!) are saying it's going to be all free-to-play, but life is more nuanced than "all".
I expect we will see more games follow the GW2 route. I think theirs is a sound market approach, but not the only one.
I think we'll see more games try different approaches in an effort to find the "sweet spot" for their product.
Because there is no right answer for all games, but there is a right answer for each specific game. Every game has an ideal monetization model that fits the strengths and reduces the impact of the weaknesses of the game. The hard part is finding the right model.
I hope we'll see the debate broaden out from subscription vs. F2P, because more options is usually better. But I think even something like subscriptions can be fiddled around with. Why is $15 seemingly the sacred number?
What if it was $5, would you get three times as many subscribers? What if your F2P game allowed you to buy 300 store points for $5 but gave you 400 per month if you subscribed for $5 per month, what would that do to your numbers?
Just as the "pay per month" model went unquestioned for too long, the idea that the F2P/microtransaction model can't be fiddled with has outlived whatever usefulness it had.
Not every game needs a subscription. Most can't support one. But some games can and some could in the future. To successfully launch with a subscription, a game needs to be compelling enough to create a loyal player base like WoW and EVE have. TOR just wasn't compelling enough. The industry as a whole needs to have a wider discussion than "subscriptions are dead", one that examines more options for more games.
Because building your game along with your monetization method is a necessity now. There hasn't been a single "right answer" for quite some time. But finding the single right answer for your game is the key.
There ain't no such thing as a free game, but how we pay matters, both to us and to the game design itself.
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