NCsoft Q1 2010 financials out: ouch.

Should they be looking to sell more things in a cash shop to make up the difference? Not that I actually think the game is taking a nose dive. According to the graph someone posted earlier it just looked like a slow attrition rate.

I would be willing to buy teleporters, storage and a larger plot for my bases.

Nice discussion.

And I have a new fave poster to look out for now (*waves at Arcanaville*)!

Just a slightly different viewpoint from someone who's worked in a number of different subscriber-driven industries in his (way too long) career.

Do those numbers show a healthy or unhealthy business? Not sure. They only really show what has already happened and the last few quarters have been pretty pants for most businesess. One of the key indicators of the future health of a business is what they're doing TODAY that will make the future better than the past. It's one of the things that the clever investors look at when making their investment decisions.

So what can you do to ensure the long term viability of a subscription-led business? Stepping away from the costs side of the business which others have already commented on, what about the revenue side? There's broadly 3 things to try:
1. Keep your current subscribers as long as possible
2. Get your current subscribers to pay you more money
3. Get new subscribers.

Unsurprisingly these become steadily harder and more expensive to achieve from the first idea to the last.

From where I sit number 1 is addressed by the regular pulse of new issues and a bit by things like community initiatives and in-game events.

Number 2 is Super-Boosters and possibly even part of the rataionale behind CoV and GR. CoV was a while ago but Super Boosters are a relatively recent addition to the game. This looks like an increase in "Good Marketing" to me. Whether you like the term or not, "Good Marketing" = "Healthy Business".

Number 3 is often, in some businesses, too expensive to do through deliberate marketing. If it costs $300 to acquire a new customer and they usually only spend $200 before leaving you then that wasn't a great investment of $300. If, however, 1 & 2 together are driving up the average value of a subscriber beyond that $300 mark then all of a sudden advertising starts to become worth it.

It's obviously just my opinion but the marketing of this game looks like to me like it's grown up a lot in the last couple of years. If they can reach that tipping point where they can afford to go into the market and buy those new subscribers then the last few quarters' numbers will become irrelevant.

I wonder if anyone has ever made a video of naked character dragging a corpse to Benny Hill music.

We had "real content" in Issue 17; the story arcs, including new maps and foes and stories and forebodings of things to come are all new content.
We also had the new explores, Market interface overhaul and so on.

We feel impatient because we've "done it all". A new player entering the game can't "do it all" because there is so much in the game; all the arcs, zones, associated arcs and the new stuff. On top of that there are systems like Inventions, the Market, PvP, costumes...it's all a timesink. You just need to decide which parts of the timesink are for you and whether you feel it's worth paying money to access them.

In my case right now, the answer is yes. It's still "fun". I don't know if new people find it fun, enough to level to the cap and see the content and try new things...but hopefully they do.

It's easy to lose sight of things when you're trying to purple out Alt #50 but there's still a lot of stuff in the game. And hey, getting bored happens too. That's why you try other stuff, decide if you like that better, etc.

I just hope there are enough of us keeping subs active to keep the content coming at a fair pace.

You know, as avid a soloer as I am, I suspect I might still make use of some kind of insta-team feature similar to what you get when you join servers in your average online FPS. One of my biggest problems with teaming in an MMO setting is that it's an inherently social setting, and if I'm going to interact with people in a social setting, it's going to be for the sake of interacting with people, NOT because I need more warm bodies.

In a counter-intuitive, roundabout way, a completely impersonal, anti-social means for building teams where people join the same way they ride on the bus would actually shift the nature of the setting and convince me to team more. I wouldn't give a crap about my team-mates, of course, just the same way I don't give a crap about my team-mates in, say, Battlefield 2142. If they die, tough. If I can resuscitate them, then I will. More points for me. If I can't, too bad so sad.

It'd get me to team more, but I fear what it will do to team spirit in general and team performance in particular. If online FPS games are any indication, most people are idiots who are useless to the team.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.