6 ms·
> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".
by Timshel 4y ago
> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".
What I find really sad is that multiple games have proven that there is a middle ground and that making a f2p while making enormous amount of money is possible (League of Legend ...) and using such predatory system that are so prevalent on mobile is not the only solution.
There is probably already enough monetisation around skins in the games that they would have easily turn up a profit.
The rest is just greed and disregard for players but then when they don't care that the game is banned in two countries at launch because it violate gambling laws what else to expect ...
- dmarchand90 4y agoI believe there is a deep disease of extreme and growing wealth inequality, whose symptoms are erupting in every area of our way of life. This is a good example. In a more wealth equal society you're financial motivated to build good products for all users. Now the entire system is geared to the whims of the rich
- permo-w 4y agothe entire system is geared towards getting money from poor people it's easier to afford ~£5 in 99p microtransactions every month for a year than it is to afford a £60 triple A of course this isn't where the bulk of money comes from for these games (whales), but it's still a big factor
- jstummbillig 4y agoIf you need to reference LoL/Fortnite to make a point, you are not making a point. In fact, there are very few games that have done the f2p walk successfully, sustainably, and all of them pale in comparison to the few extraordinary exceptions.
- qrazhan 4y agoThere are a _ton_ of successful f2p games with reasonable monetization models - Valorant, CSGO, Warzone, Dota, Path of Exile, Lost Ark, Hearthstone, etc. It's just that games in general are a power law industry - I don't think monetization model is really what will prevent a game from being successful. In fact, much of the discourse around Immortal is that the gameplay itself is in fact top notch. Blizzard has the dedicated fanbase to make a healthy profit and more with a reasonable cash shop - they don't _need_ to resort to these extremely cash-grabby mechanics.
- green_on_black 4y agoAnd how do those compare to the cash-grab market revenue? (Actual question). Let's include games like Genshin and FGO.
- creakingstairs 4y agoCash grab will always be superior especially when you factor in the effort making the game. MMOs will be magnitudes harder than making mobile cash grab games. I honestly thought it was inevitable for Blizzard to go down this route the moment I saw the revenue slides post acquisition. In that slide it showed that King’s mobile games made way more than Blizzards games. At that point, all the MBA suits in the board must have started thinking, “why go through all the hoops of making a good game when you could spend way less money and effort to milk the cash cows?” Thus the pressure started mounting up on Blizzard to create more “efficient” games like Hearthstone and newer releases instead spending long time creating and refining a game like they have before.
- kirso 4y agoPrecisely this, I feel like the only middle-ground here is not to sell your company to corporate overlords, we learned that lesson with many other companies. Stay profitable, stay calm, stay mediocre in size => delight customers. Greed & corporate min/maxing has failed us.
- 4y ago
- vvanders 4y agoBack when I was in the industry there was very few games that did better than breaking even. It's the same reason you don't see a lot of independent large studios any more. If you need to hit the top 15-20% to make it only publishers who can afford to spread out the risk are able to stay afloat.
- noobermin 4y agoAlso, F2P isn't the only option, we could pay (once) for games like we used to.