Syncaine is adamant that Eve Online did not go F2P with its new alpha accounts. I think he's mostly right, but its interesting to see exactly why. After all, a pretty literal reading of "Free-To-Play" gives you the fact that people can play a hugely significant amount of Eve for free.
The difference lies in the nature of subscriptions. A subscription is a barrier to entry. If you don't want to pay $15/month, you can't play the game.
But a subscription is also a "cap" on revenue. If a dedicated player would be happy to pay $40/month, she can't. (Well, unless we get into multi-boxing, etc.)
What the F2P games currently do is that they remove both facets of the subscription. They remove the barrier to entry, and they also remove the cap on revenue. If a dedicated player wants to drop $40/month, they'll happily sell her lockboxes or whatever.
The F2P marketing emphasizes the first facet, because it sounds very generous and is good marketing. But I think they actually make their money from the second facet, from dedicated players spending above the subscription cap.
Eve Online's program is fairly unique in that it dropped the barrier to entry side of subscriptions, but kept the cap on revenue. Aside from buying a few ship skins, most transactions are a constant amount per month of play-time.
So Eve Online is not F2P as we commonly think of it. But it is half-way there. If CCP unveils a much expanded in-game store, then at that point we can say that Eve Online has truly gone F2P.
Well, EVE already had a cash shop. I'm curious: if selling ship skins, character clothing and customisation options and tradable currency is not enough for it to count as a "real" cash shop, where would you draw the line?
ReplyDeleteI guess it's a matter of degree. I don't think there are really a huge number of skins, so I see that as more or less in line with WoW or FFXIV's cash shop. It really isn't on the same scale as the various lockbox or F2P cash shops. I could be wrong about this though.
DeleteHowever, I don't count PLEX in this. PLEX just shifts around game-time. Overall, buying PLEX doesn't change the revenue gained from subscription.
I'm not sure why you see PLEX as such a hard cap on spending. I would think that if you wanted to play the whale, you could buy a lot of PLEX and trade it for ISK without ever going "hm, I don't know what to do with this virtual currency anymore". Also, since PLEX is destructible, nobody necessarily needs to actually convert it to game time. I still remember that headline from a couple of years ago about the guy who got blown up while carrying thousands of dollars worth of PLEX.
DeleteWell, my assumption (and I could certainly be wrong) is that the vast majority of PLEX is eventually used for game-time. Even if it isn't used right away, the accounting would force CCP to consider it as unused game time, and effectively reduce revenue. You can't actually book the money from PLEX as revenue until it is used or destroyed.
DeleteSo across 2 players, no PLEX, each pays $15/month for $30/month or $15/month/player. Player A buys PLEX, sells it to B who uses it. Player A plays $30, Player B pays $0, but across 2 players it's still $15/month/player. The cap is preserved.
Now, if a significant amount of PLEX was destroyed on a regular basis, that would change the revenue per subscriber. But I think PLEX getting blown up is a rare case, and the majority of PLEX is kept safe.
Eve's a little bit more complicated than that since Plex allows that dedicated player to buy more than a month's subscription turn it directly into ISK, services, and or cosmetics. Those that buy the PLEX in game are generally players without the cash to subscribe so in end one whale ends up supporting CCP with cash for the subscriptions of many other players. It's not the revenue model of a Star Wars but a hybrid that gets them to same place.
ReplyDeleteYes, it allows one player to spend more per month, but it's balanced by having a second player spend less per month. Since the two are linked, I don't really consider it same as removing the cap on spending.
Delete@Shintar and Regelle: It doesn't get them to the same place, because other than fluff or PLEX, CCP doesn't magically generate anything in EVE Online. I can't pay CCP directly to spawn me a ship, ammo, or anything else that isn't fluff in EVE.
ReplyDeleteSo yes, I can buy PLEX and sell it to buy a ship/ammo, but that ship/ammo was made by a player, not CCP. That is a black and white difference in terms of not just business model, but also game design.
@Syncaine1: absolutely not. You can't verify if they ammo/ship you buy is coming from another player or a botter or a CCP shill account. They can sell items directly by spawning them from thin air, placing them to a shill account, sell them on the marketplace for ISK, buy PLEX-es from the ISK and destroy PLEX-es.
DeleteThe problem with your statement, Syncaine, is that you're implying that a F2P game which only sold cosmetic items (fluff) is not a "true" F2P game.
DeleteIf that's the case, then SWTOR is not a F2P game, as the vast majority of stuff sold (in cartel packs and on the market) is cosmetic, and I don't think there's any significant power sold.
We know Gevlon, we know, Falcon spawns items to destroy your master plan, and only he could stop your brilliance. Go queue up with Warwick you little Bronzy nutcase.
ReplyDelete@Rohan: There is an ocean of difference between "mostly" and "zero". In EVE it's zero, and in EVE item production is at the heart of the game (plus almost all items can be converted to production materials, which in turn can be turned into almost any other item. In SW:TOR and most other MMOs, a lvl 10 item doesn't matter past level 10. In EVE all items always matter). Plus did SW:TOR stop selling hotbars and other "make the game suck less to play" stuff?
Hotbars and similar things don't matter to SWTOR subscribers. So for the purposes of "raising the cap on subscriber revenue", they're irrelevant. Bioware does not sell power to its dedicated players. The important things that Bioware sells to that segment is Cartel Packs, which are pretty much entirely cosmetic fluff.
DeleteBut hotbars matter to F2P players, and so matter to SWTOR since they are a source of revenue. Ideally sure everyone subscribes, but that $5 (or whatever a hotbar costs) is still $5 to both a player (to pay to remove an annoyance) and to the devs.
DeleteIf more money is being made off F2P players than subscribers, which way do you think development is going to be influenced?
In EVE that conflict of interests doesn't exists, because you either sub, or you don't. There is no F2P money middle ground.
"If more money is being made off F2P players than subscribers, which way do you think development is going to be influenced?"
DeleteThis is my point. I don't think more money is made of the non-subs. The real money is made by encouraging subscribers to spend more. Those hotbars, etc, are more to encourage people to subscribe, or to get the equivalent of a subscription from people who absolutely refuse to subscribe.
Realistically, if they didn't make money off selling hotbars and other F2P nonsense like that, they wouldn't continue to try and sell them. If the only goal was to get free players to sub, they would limit hotbars for free players, and only offer the sub option (which is basically what CCP is doing in EVE, with the SP and item limits, just less dumb than making your UI suck for free players).
DeleteSince that's not the case, its hard to argue that they don't make at least enough money to justify the bad press and player annoyance of the whole thing in exchange for hotbar money. I mean, don't you wish you didn't have to defend/justify your MMO of choice doing something as absurd as literally selling UI elements to make the game more playable to players? That fact alone has to drive some people away, but at least in EA's mind, the loss isn't enough to stop collecting hotbar money directly.