Evil publishers
Most of you know that I am working for a computer game company. A company that even focusses on the „evil“ free to play business model. The model has a bad reputation. In the early days I saw a description „Free to play. You may start for free, starting to play might even be incentiviced. But to progress you will have to pay. A business model also very popular by some Columbian businessmen.“ I have just recently read in my twitter timeline that f2p models ruined some games totally.
Let me tell you a different story: The f2p business model did not ruin but in fact it saved a lot of games from certain death. Neither Aion nor Tera would still be around in the west if they were still subscription based. Same holds true for most of the f2p games. I don’t know what some players really think of the gaming industry. Do you really think we would ruin games on purpose? Do you have any idea what the production of a game costs? How much one has to spend on advertising to get a player to install a game? How many games that were developped were never published? How many published games fail?
I have been working for Gameforge for 10 years now. All the money it earned went straight to new games. When you start developping a new game, you always place a bet. Yes, with a lot of luck you get a blockbuster like LoL. I don’t know how many „WoW Killers“ I have seen and then see them fail. It is really a hard business. Maintaining a solid playerbase for more than a few months is really something that is not easily done. Some decissions a publisher makes might seem stupid, but any publisher that has more than one game running for more than a few months.. give them some credit. It is not as easy as it looks. If you are a gamer and you get a chance to visit a publisher.. you will be surprised to find.. well a lot of other gamers. If you visit Karlsruhe sometime.. drop by for a coffee!
#oneweekdailyblogging #5
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