7/30 Shortcuts

Another shortcuts from another day. We’ll probably have more on the Scrabulous, Blizzard, and Age of Conan stories in a later segment.

• Facebook pulls Scrabulous from US and UK servers.
• Gamepolitics has the court documents from Hasbro’s prior lawsuits over the game.
• Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) indicted in Alaskan court. The internet may be a series of tubes, but his bank account is a series of oil company transactions.
• Blizzard moves for a permanent injunction in the Glider case. Virtually Blind has the PDF of the motion.
• EA reports a $95 million loss this quarter (better than last year. Most companies post a loss this time in preparation for holiday sales). Smart investors know this is not a bad thing, and EA’s porfolio of upcoming games is as as strong as we’ve seen for any company. Also, Bad Company sells 1.6 million copies.
• Rob Pardo says: Raph Koster is wrong, PC gaming is not dying, it’s evolving. No offense Raph, but Rob’s got a better track record on this one, and the technological state of the PC gaming industry tends to agree with Pardo.
• EA acquires Shawn Fanning’s social networking site. Spore has 33% female fanbase. Battlefield Heros to integrate social networking, and EA to focus on strong launches for Heroes and Spore.
• Nintendo files for injunction in Tokyo District Court against R4 Revolution modchip sales. Gamasutra says the suit is limited only to Japan’s jurisdiction and is not aimed at western sales.
• Age of Conan developer Funcom’s stock drops by half. It’s misleading, because it’s now still above the levels it was shortly before Conan’s launch. This is both a non-issue and a big deal. It’s a non-issue because the stock price boom was the result of the Conan launch, clearly a temporary bubble, and due to correct anyway, and it recovered to a still-higher-than-pre-launch price. It’s a big deal, because it dropped by half, meaning some traders made it big on the stock, and others missed out on a big chunk of change. The drop was precipitated by SOMETHING, in this case, a huge exodus of players due to bugs, balance issues, and lack of end-game content.

That’s all for this edition of shortcuts. Tune in next time for “Son of shortcuts!”

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Study: MMORPG subscriptions out of favor

New, from the “telling us what we already know” department: MMORPGs that make players pay a monthly subscription are disfavored by players, who prefer free-to-play models. So says a recent study by the Parks Associates research firm, which surveyed around 2000 online game players and found that only the hardest hardcore gamers preferred the subscription based model, and of those who did not already play an MMORPG only 2% would consider a non-free model.

Of course, hardcore players are also opposed to microtransactions, and they figure a subscription gives them the most bang for their buck, since they’ll always have access to the best gear (since they are the hardcore high-end raiding players) while paying the same amount as other players. They oppose microtransactions because it allows players with more money to gain a significant advantage over them, and cite play balancing issues when all players don’t have the same items.

The irony of this final statement is that all players usually don’t have access to the same items. High end raiding loot is unaccessible to nearly all players except those in the most elite guilds. In essence, this is a traditional situation where “those in power wish to remain in power at the expense of the greater good” social problem found in nearly every political science handbook. According to the study, aside from WoW most MMO games are using the free to play model anyway. We’ve always known that WoW’s unrealistically high subscription numbers, and atypical hardcore fanbase can seriously skew statistics in the MMO tracking field. But as more and more games go to a free to play, or pay once to play model, either supported by microtransactions or not, I predict we’re going to see a serious drop in the statistical power and strength of WoW. Not their subscriber numbers, because Blizzard has always been an influence-driven market player. But because of their highly atypical status, and the overwhelming acknowledgement by other MMO companies that “we’re not even trying to compete with WoW”, eventually WoW will (d)?evolve into a field of its own, the last bastion of the subscription based, high box price, costly expansion pack style MMOs; while the rest of the market focuses on free-to-download-low-subscription games, pay-once-for-the-box-and-no-subscription-fee games, Steam/Impulse style distribution systems that lower the cost for the consumer while improving the margins for the developer and publisher, and completely free games supported by advertising and microtransactions.

It’s basic economics, which interestingly enough, a white paper submitted by Terra Nova titled “Project Arden” suggests apply readily to the online world. Consumers will choose, among equals, the product that costs less. Smart consumers will weigh rationally the monthly subscription cost into the total price of the game, making a $50 WoW suddenly $170 to play for a year. They’ll compare that to a completely free Battlefield Heroes (even throwing in $30 for microtransactions), or a $20 Guild Wars, with no subscription, and the significantly lower price point weighs strongly for them. The fact that Blizzard has managed to keep so many subscribers is in large part due to the incredibly high perceived quality of the game (it pains me to say that, as I disagree with the perception), but that is also tethered to the Blizzard brand name, and is something that other publishers simply cannot hope to capitalize on. If they attempt to charge the same high monthly rates along with an initial outlay for the box and disc, they will lose in the end unless their game is perfect — something we all know NEVER happens in the MMO arena on your first few tries.

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