Category Archives: Games

MMO Sub Fees Are Like the Dodo

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IGN has an op-ed piece on subscription fees for MMOs up for debate.

World of Warcraft is casting a long shadow with eight years of iteration and fresh content under its belt, asking anyone to pay the same for a new release seems ludicrous.

Above all, this is the most important quote to keep in mind for the argument and it applies to more than WoW – it applies to EvE just as much.

When SWTOR came out and people got to max level in a month or so, they looked at the game and then said “what now”?  The problem wasn’t that SWTOR didn’t have much to do (ehhh) but that compared to it’s competitor, it had a fraction of the things to do.  RIFT suffers from this as well and to its credit, it contains more in the recent expansion pack than WoW currently offers (minus pet battles) but even at that, it struggles to maintain market share.

It is extremely hard to argue that any new game coming to market can succeed with a subscription model unless it can maintain a core set of users and not require more than say, 200K players at any given time.  Other than WoW and EvE, the next game with the highest subscription is RIFT or LOTRO with about 250,000 subs.  200K, to me, would be a massive success.

This brings us to the The Elder Scrolls Online and Wildstar.  The former has been blunt to state that it’s going subscription while the latter has been mum on the subject.  TESO is directly competing, in every shape and form, with the existing fantasy themepark tropes and I see no reason for it to be able to break the 200K mark.  If the Star Wars IP can’t maintain the numbers (remember, it dropped subs by 90% from 3 million), how can this one?

Wildstar is a wild-card though.  While it does take the fantasy setting it is less themepark and more sandbox/themepark hybrid and doesn’t seem that it will require the same break-even point as TESO.

Are subs dead?  I wouldn’t say so exactly, more that subs are going to be smaller in scope and that any dev expecting to get a subscription game to market AND pull more than 100K players is taking a massive risk.

Final Acts

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I just finished Darksiders 2 and while the game as a whole left a lot of positive, I can’t help but notice a growing trend of games that just call it in for the final act.

Act1 I cleaned out an entire land with 4 dungeons, Act 2 was even bigger so that the combined play time was well over 20 hours without any effort to “complete” areas or anything other than the main quest.  Act 3 was compete in under 2 hours, with only a single dungeon.

There are quite a few games that seem to just give up at the end and rather than increase the challenge, they increase the difficulty by just plunging massive enemies in your way rather than continue the run through the game.  Diablo3 is a perfect example where rather than provide new zones and challenges, they fill the screen with dozens of enemies and bosses.  COD/MOH are pretty similar too.  Maybe this is supposed to make me feel more powerful?  Like I’m some sort of deity that can take on any challenge?

It’s interesting that RPGs typically take the complete opposite path, where the entire game opens up at the end.  Like all of a sudden you’re finally strong enough to take on hundreds of challenges rather than a single gauntlet.

Small rant aside, I have to say that Darksiders2 was a great game.  For the price I paid (~15$), I got nearly 25 hours out of it, clearly putting it into my value bucket (of which 1$ per hour is my lower limit).  I think I would have been happy with just 10 hours too, so I got some extra goodness from the game.  Refreshing.

Darksiders 2

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Darksiders 2

Over the holidays I picked up Darksiders 2 and I’ve put a few hours into it with some pleasant surprises. While the setting is simple enough (4 horseman, angels & demons) it has the comic book feel that Joe wanted. There’s a “big-ness” to everything which just feels right. There’s a good spread of bosses and they all seem to get bigger and badder as you go along. The story takes a couple odd turns but nothing too out of the blue.

From a gameplay perspective, it’s more akin to Zelda than I would have thought. There’s an overworld with travel on a horse. The majority of dungeons are about puzzle solving rather than continuous combat. There are 4 general skills that affect puzzles with the traditional grapple hook and teleportation. There’s a cool character split mechanic, allowing you to work in tandem with yourself. Combat is like most action games, weak attacks, strong attacks, combos, special attacks. Your weapons actually make a difference though, as all gear has stats and some weapons attack at different rates (maces vs gauntlets). Plus the weapons can be upgraded, adding a nice little RPG mechanic.

It’s hard to pick a weakness other than the typical “Zelda” weakness of not wanting to complete anything past the final boss. There are plenty of side objectives but in terms of relative power/effort, they rarely seem worth the time. Mind you, one particular side quest was well above my character level and I died multiple times, which was fun in itself.

I’ve completed 2 of the 3 acts and I’m still entertained. Each zone is designed into chunks, so you can drop in, play for a bit and feel like you’ve completed something rather than the extra long chains of other games. While I like God of War’s combat, no one can say that Kratos is relatable, the story is anything near quality and that the dungeons don’t bleed into each other. Darksiders is a nice break from that tradition and I’m hoping someone buys the IP from THQ and continues the quest.

New Gadget

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My wife owns a Galaxy Tab 10.1, which I use often enough.  I have a customized gaming laptop for gaming sessions but the mobile aspect of the tablet form factor is really appealing.  We were at a cottage for a large chunk of the holidays and it was easy to have the tablet around for a quick spot of Netflix, keep track of emails of even check the news with a coffee in the morning.

I’ve been looking at options and I see very few that appeal to me.  While the iPad 4 is shiny, has great power, decent battery life and a slew of accessories, the price point is simply ridiculous.  I can practically buy an ultrabook for the same price.  Plus the whole 4:3 ratio seems 5 years old.

The Acer Transformer Infinity has the same power, better battery life and a keyboard attachment that is just bat-crap crazy.  I could connect the thing to my TV with a simple dongle, increase my storage space with an SD card and a wide range of other features. Sadly, they stopped making the keyboard and I can’t find anything to replace it with.  Argh!

Google’s Nexus 10 looks amazing, has more power and features than any other Android app, beats the iPad in every benchmark but has no stock anywhere.

This is discounting the software edge that Apple has.  Nearly every application is  designed for Apple first, then ported (often poorly) to Android.  And most Android apps are made for phones (Facebook is a major offender).

CES is here though and hopefully I’ll spot something that makes sense.

What’s in a Game

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Joystiq has finished their top 10 games of the year list and for the first time, I know what they are talking about. One of the site’s strong suits is that it covers all games, from the smallest to the largest and does it with blogging flair. Any given day can have 10-20 articles go up. Compare that to the big guns like Gamespot or IGN who can barely put out half that amount, plus fill your screen with more ads than content. The second good thing that comes from their format is the personal opinion pieces. While most sites will video chats (which is good) they have next to no text about their opinions. The Best of the Rest gives us an inside peek to writer’s minds, especially those we tend to align with.

There’s a saying that people go to the internet to find people that agree with them and while on the whole this is true, I like to read dissenting ideas. It makes me appreciate the medium as a whole rather than the specific flavours I am accustomed to. It’s like going to a restaurant and only every ordering the club sandwhich when there is a whole world that can be on your plate.

 Which brings me to the main topic for today, buying games. I’ll buy just about any game as long as the perceived value is there. I won’t pay full price for a game that I’m hesitant on but I will buy it if it comes on sale. The Secret World is a great example of this. I’ll dump money onto Torchlight 2 in a jiffy but Halo 4 needs to be on sale before I’ll touch it.

 This sort of puts a tiered structure for fun. I am willing to pay 1$ per hour of fun for a game I’m not so sure about but willing to spend 5$ per hour on a game I am very sure I’ll have fun with (Batman comes to mind). Other than multiplayer, which I don’t consider “fun” in terms of value, how many games pass the 10 hour mark, let alone the 20? FTL, a game I adore, already has over 20 hours into it and I got it on sale for under 10$. WoW has provided hundreds of hours of entertainment but also cost me hundreds of dollars. I stopped playing – and paying – when the fun value no longer matched the price value.

 In today’s day of Steam and Used game sales, we are all being taught to better value our entertainment dollars. While there will always be a mad rush to the door for CoD on launch day, other than 2-3 games a year, every other game needs to find the right balance and every gamer needs to do the same.

2013 Predictions

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We’re only a few days into the New Year so there’s still time for some predictions. I would say that 2012 went rather the way I thought it would, with a few surprises, so hopefully I’m not too far off the mark for this year.

Access

With the “death” of Flash, the surge of HTML5 and proliferation of mobile devices, it’s a safe bet to say that the majority of gaming will be mobile and through a browser or mobile app. Internet connectivity will be required for most gaming and digital distribution will cause gaming stores to close doors at an even faster pace.

Steam Big Picture (or set top box) will change the way people game from this point forward. Unless consoles can move away from box copies into a streaming model that is pick up and play (eg: no more daily patches on the PS3), I don’t see much of a future for them. This year’s crop of games has shown that graphics don’t mean much anymore and most processor power is wasted. We don’t need stronger consoles, we need entertainment units.

Video Streaming

Up here in Canada, it’s next to impossible to rent any movies, unless you’re subscribed to Zip or know some corner store. Netflix in Canada has about a quarter of the content of the US feed and most people just proxy to a US address to get a better feed. I expect this to be one of the last years for cable TV, where we get to a personal distribution model. I don’t want 200 channels I never watch, I want a dozen or so that I care about – or even better, just the shows that I want to watch.

Payment Models

This is the year that F2P finds its footing. While it’s naïve to think that you can game for free, it’s also insulting to pay a subscription fee’s worth of F2P items and be further restricted than a subscriber. Buy to Play, with some cash store, is likely to be the new standard for success in a post-Zynga world. Get rich quick schemes will stay, certainly, but the game lifespans will be a year or less. This likely means the end of LOTRO and TOR.

MMOs

WoW will remain the behemoth it has been but drop to under 8 million subs and be unable to maintain any reasonable patch schedule. Rift will lose more subs but find a stable ground for dedicated gamers and continue to shame other developers in terms of content for value. EvE will grow a bit more but likely reach a critical mass in game in terms of power, which will have an Us vs Them mentality. Wildstar will launch and jump straight to F2P, filling a nice gap in MMO action gaming. Firefall won’t ever leave beta. Many existing F2P games will close their doors, where the models simply can’t support the operating costs. TESO will surprise people in terms of quality of content but disappoint in terms of quantity of content. Feels more like this year will be the year of MMO house cleaning.

Games

Bioshock Infinite will launch to acclaim. GTA 5 will launch and break sales records. The Last of Us is going to be my game of the year. Tomb Raider will reboot the franchise. God of War and Gears of War will stink but sell well. Kickstarter games will start coming out of the gate, raising eyebrows in terms of quality vs quantity. Indie games that show up out of the blue are going to be the real story drivers, blending nostalgia with current gaming controls (ala XCOM).

Overall

I see 2013 as a year of path finding. There’s a current glut of gaming and a lot of new territory for people to try out. Mobile gaming is going to kill Facebook gaming and put a focus on short, intense gaming sessions, rather than the 4 hour raids of WoW. Shops will close, playing it big will fail and your Mom is going to end up gaming with you.

 

Reading Resolutions

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I read a lot of blogs and one of my favorite streams is the Joystiq line.  The main site provides all sorts of gaming and it’s relatively neutral in terms of opinion.  I do like to read their reviews though, as they take a rather different, almost meta, approach to the process.  Quite a bit different than IGN’s game reviews, where you can practically see the dollars changing hands.

The World of Warcraft stream used to be the go-to place for information.  It’s been a few years now but I would say mmo-champion is the place for breaking news.  WoW Insider is clearly lacking in content drivers and more importantly, authors.  Other than the class columns (which I think only the  Rogue and Warrior ever have regular updates) the site is mainly a platform for Olivia (PvP) Grace and Mike (WoW-fanatic) Rossi.  It’s really too bad, as the past authors brought some needed diversity to what now reads as continual gripes about the game.  If I was Blizzard, I’d be worried that the #3 search result for WoW lacked quality and content.  Too bad, I rather enjoyed the Warlock vs Mage battles that happened on that site.

The next stream that I enjoy is Massively.  This to me seems the future of gaming, where everything is persistent multiplayer – either characters or setting.  The best part is the widely divergent views of gaming.  I think it would be hard to find more opposite gamers than Shawn, Justin and Eliot.  When you have a clearly jaded gamer, a superfan and a realist in a room, it makes for very interesting commentary.  Even Jef’s Soapbox  columns clearly are made to generate conversation.  The recent hands-on testing with Marvel Heroes with Justin and Eliot went exactly the way I thought it would.

The concept of Confirmation Bias is prevalent in many blogs.  I’m quite certain the Syncaine doesn’t read much else than Aventurine and EvE material. I read the left and the right to try and find some semblance of balance.  It’s a lot harder than it seems as there tend to be more critical bloggers (myself included) than positive ones.

Perhaps this has more to do with the genre as a whole.  Where WoW has become more familiar and therefore less news-worthy and the MMO-genre as a whole is in a rather large transition.  People have trouble with change and when you realize that your corner of the world is getting less and less relevant, it’s certainly something to talk about.  While it may not seem like it, this year was a great year for gaming in my mind.  Grimrock, XCOM, Torchlight 2, Borderlands 2, Rift and now The Secret World are all consistently putting smiles on my face.  I wish I could express that more.  It might be a bit early for it, but I’ll be trying really hard in the New Year to temper the criticism with more positive posts as well.

The Secret World

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The subscription model did not harm SW:TOR, SW:TOR seriously, if not fatally, wounded the subscription model.

-NosyGamer

I, along with what seems a few thousand people, waited until The Secret World dropped its sub fee to give it a shot.  Even better news, the game is buy to play rather than free to play, so there’s no massive hindrances left and right.

I picked up the game on Friday, put in about a dozen hours and am pleasantly surprised with the quality of the game.  I know I would not have subscribed for more than a month but for a pick up and play game, pieces at a time, it’s got a fair amount to show.  I really dig the setting, maybe a bit less the enemy models and do think that skill-based games (not twitch based) are more fun than the typical themepark-level-based games.

You know how SWTOR spent millions on voice acting for all quests?  TSW spent it for the main quests and not for the side quests.  And the writing is actually decent enough so that I’m not wishing for a spacebar to skip everything.  Context is key, I actually care about the story and I’m looking forward to each unveil.

Give it a shot.  You’ll have a hard time finding more content for 15-30$ (depending on where you pick it up).  You’ll also realize that this business model (as GW2 before it and DDO to some degree) might be the wave of the future.  Funcom won’t make a cent unless it’s something you WANT to buy.

This is What Rage Looks Like

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Gamasutra has an article on the failings of SWTOR and specifically on the conversion to Free to Play.

I’ve covered this topic enough to really not need to add much to the material.  I agree with Simon’s argument but not so much with the tone.  The entire argument reads as a “/ragequit” forum posting where the salient points are covered with hyperbole.

Read 3 pages of this and just remember this.  SWTOR has made no improvements to the core game, simply added gates to the features.  So many gates that it really pushes people to subscribe (but not purchase more once subscribed).  Considering that the whole argument for moving to F2P was that subscriptions were a bad financial model, it begs the question.

Still, it’s worth a chuckle.

A New Model

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As everyone seems to be reporting, The Secret World is going Buy to Play (pretty much the same business model as Guild Wars 2) and Trion has let some people go.  The former is somewhat expected, though most thought Free to Play was the way to go.  The latter is a bit more complicated due to Rise of Nations and doesn’t speak directly to Rift’s future but could be a sign.

So what’s left in the subscription realm?  EvE and WoW as the two benchmarks for sandbox and themeparks.  They can afford to charge due to their size and business models.  Rift is a sort-of-straggler here in that the product is arguably better than WoW yet needs more mass to really justify the subscription.

Any game that comes out from now on in either realm needs to be as good or better than EvE/WoW in order to justify any subscription price.  As much as I think Wildstar looks cool, there is zero way it can compete in a sub-model with WoW.  The Elder Scrolls Online is doomed for failure on that model.    The problem with that model is that you can’t easily take it apart and change to another after launch (SWTOR is a prime example), it needs to be core to the design phase.

As Tobold alludes, the traditional single player games are converging to the model of buy the base game, pay for DLC.  We’re well past the days of Horse Armor but DLC is here to stay and a very valid way to extend the life of a game.  The argument of “on-disk dlc” is going to be a fun one, or rather the difference between true DLC and game unlocks (a-la Street Fighter).  I would think though, that the market itself will decide on the correct path as there appears to be nothing worse than an angry gamer.  BioWare has learned this the hard way – see Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3 and TOR – where I’m certain the cost to fight the bad press has been in the hundreds of millions.

So single player games are coming to be more like MMOs in both financial and play models while MMOs are dropping the idea of a subscription for a more a-la carte model in order to pick apart pieces of the pie.  The danger here is that the concept of an MMO community is gone.  The odds of a game keeping any given player’s attention for more than 3 months (as is the case with single player games) is low.  If you were going to play something for longer, you probably already are.

Makes you wonder where the in-roads are for any new game.