A subscription-based revenue model seems rare for a game, especially on the web. I'm curious why. Is it that most games lack the replay value needed for subscription? Are virtual goods more lucrative? Do gamers hate subscriptions?
I've thought about this a lot, since I have a subscription based game with about 1200 active subs, yet nearly all newer games coming out seem to be in the item-mall / freemium category.
When I ask my players what they think, the most common response I get is that they prefer subscription model because it's more fair. They hate games where the person who spends more money gets an advantage. (Of course, my sample set is biased.)
The advantage of the item-mall category is that you get great price discrimination, and you also get a much larger player base than you would on subscription only. But it's seen as cheesy and unfair, so works better with casual games, and I think that's the key.
If it's a casual game, go for item mall or freemium. If it's a more serious or competitive game, then go for subscription. I think we're seeing a lot of item mall games coming out these days because we're also seeing a lot more casual games.
I have roughly 1200 people paying $10/mo. I also allow people to play for free, but capped at level 20 (out of about 1000 meaningful levels). There are maybe 1000 active free players, but not nearly as active as the paying players. At any given time, about 3/4 of the people online are paying subscribers.
It's hard to say how sensitive the game is to critical mass, since the game has grown over the last 7 years with the number of people playing it. When it first started out, there were only a dozen or so star systems and it was a much smaller game in scope. Now we're up to about 6000 systems. Basically I keep growing the game / universe as more people join.
Pretty much. You still get gamers that riff on the subscription costs of MMOs, services like Xbox LIVE or PlayStation Plus, etc. and most-recently Call of Duty Elite—where I’m betting it’s subscription model and the general distaste for it is talked about more than the actual benefits and features of the service.
With the kind of hate console/PC games and services get, where you arguably get a richer experience compared to web-based games, I’m not really surprised that web-based games tend to err on the side of caution for generating revenue.
I'm not so sure if this is true. I think the vocal minority dislikes subscriptions but there are millions and millions of WoW or XBOX Live players who don't seem to mind. And I'm sure, in the end, there will be plenty of people paying for CoD Elite as well.
Call of Duty Elite—not yet available—is an additional service on-top of the Call of Duty games. So yeah, all the haters right now are just upset that they can’t use this service for free.
I’m not necessarily saying that gamers hate the subscription model enough to not buy a product solely because of it. But it’s enough of a touchy subject on console/PC that I believe a web-based game would have to work much harder to convince the typical gamer to pay monthly for it. If given the choice between a subscription model (WoW), freemium (Global Agenda) or microtransactions (TF2), I think gamers would greatly favour freemium or microtransations over subscriptions.
That's interesting. In the CoD:Elite example, do you know if the "haters" were folks who paid and were disappointed, or were generally upset about not being able to play for free? Do you think that deterred others from paying?
The example that immediately comes to my head is Runescape. The game is free for everyone. If you want more access to the world, you need to pay for a monthly subscription. Note that this is not like the item mall games because in Runescape you pay for access to more content. You still have to work to get new items/skills like the free players. (although you can sometimes accomplish things more easily compared to a free player)
I think "freemium" is the most common option. For instance, landgrab.net (a Risk clone) offers a premium option that lets you play more than four games simultaneously, and gives you other features.
Yep, I can second that.
Looks like most browser games get most of their revenue from premium features/items whatever.
At least I guess we're talking about browser games?
Because if web-based includes MMOs then of course it's different. (well a lot of those are freemiums too, but many aren't).
Oh and I myself have once paid for premium features on tribal wars and paid for my friends too, so make sure it's easy to buy stuff for other people, they like doing that :-)
Good point RE: MMOs, I wasn't thinking about them as a separate category. Why do you think it's easier for them to pull off a freemium/subscription model?
Gifting is interesting, I first noticed it with reddit. If you don't mind me asking, why did you pay for your friends on Tribal Wars?
Well an MMO on average provides far far more content, it's simply a more intense and complete gaming experience. It's more unique. At least it used to be. MMOs are definitely slowly shifting away from the subscription model to the freemium one (some start experiment with ads but I don't think there's anything significant so far). The shift is obviously because there's more MMOs, they loose their uniqueness factor and it's so much cheaper to develop and then maintain them.
Nowadays if you want to make a significant subscription based MMO it would have to be really cutting edge or very niche (check out WW II online, but keep in mind it's not a financial success, they can just support themselves).
Why did I pay for my friends?
Well some were not even friends. I was basically a leader of a "tribe" there and made an "invitation contest" (every member could invite people to the tribe, top 3 inviters would get the "premium points from me".
But let's be honest, the true underlying reason is "oh look how cool I am, I gave you a gift", in fact that little contest of mine was somewhat a scam, I made sure the right people won :-)
But generally speaking browser games and MMOs are very different in almost all aspects. Revenue models might be getting similar but everything else is fundamentally different. I guess that doesn't need explanation.
As for the money making potential I think MMO market is definitely over-saturated, competition is very fierce and barriers to entry big.
Web browser market is very saturated too, but mainly with low quality stuff, as in it's no sooo hard to build something better. But the downside is that most games really struggle with profits there.
Cool, thanks for the link! I've noticed that a few sites align their premium with being able to play more. Chess.com is a service that I started paying for because I wanted to get past the rate limit and they had a lot of neat-looking members-only things.
When I ask my players what they think, the most common response I get is that they prefer subscription model because it's more fair. They hate games where the person who spends more money gets an advantage. (Of course, my sample set is biased.)
The advantage of the item-mall category is that you get great price discrimination, and you also get a much larger player base than you would on subscription only. But it's seen as cheesy and unfair, so works better with casual games, and I think that's the key.
If it's a casual game, go for item mall or freemium. If it's a more serious or competitive game, then go for subscription. I think we're seeing a lot of item mall games coming out these days because we're also seeing a lot more casual games.