4 ms·
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-
by JeffL 15y ago
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.
- gbelote 15y agoVery cool, thanks! Do you mind me asking how much users pay for a subscription? How sensitive is your game to "critical mass"? That's a good point about fairness and casual vs serious, it makes a lot of sense.
- JeffL 15y agoI 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.