NC Soft's BIG MISTAKE

Not exactly.

Today, that would be a healthy number. Niche is < 100k.
Pre-Wow, that would be a good number. A smash hit would have been 500k.

I'm just picking up on this because I think this as the nub of the issue.

The guys who set the prices have been fixated with the cost of a monthly sub and haven't done enough thinking out of the box.

Some people - plenty of the die-hard fanboys would pay a premium rate for their favourite game *IF* they got perceived value for money. And plenty more would pay a lower subscription just so they could get almost everything on demand when they dive in on a casual basis.

Others still would be happy to pay a minimal premium rate if they could do most of the game, interact with their crowd but didn't need to have all the goodies that came with the premium rates above.

Some won't pay squat because they aren't interested or the free value works for them.

There's also plenty of prices between that you could set but I put those examples there for simplicity - or we'll be all night

What most MMOs seem to do is go Limited F2P and a single all-inclusive Sub rate, and hope the store brings in more than the subs they aren't getting from the F2P players.

But if you offer more subscription choices - and flexibility in swapping between them, plus bonuses for longer term subs - and those options offer perceived value for money (especially in tough times as we're in now) then you can set price points for every pocket.

Paragon didn't do this terribly well. They had a binary option and the store - and some of their options were horribly overpriced (the 30 day jet pack seems to be the most obvious marketplace/booster item from memory) plus (and I know this from experience) the move to Freedom on top of Ultra Mode caused a lot of problems - I had to upgrade from XP to Win 7 just to play the game and I (anecdotally but reasonably) understand that was a not uncommon experience.

But when I learned of Freedom it was the official announcements. It seemed there was minimal market reasearch undertaken - surprisingly perhaps because NCSoft love doing surveys. So if they did do research they probably kept it very tight and close to their chests before and after. Added to which - it's sometimes very difficult to do good market research and respond if the results don't meet the expectations of the decision makers.

Paragon Studios weren't doing anything wrong by industry standards - but they should have been setting new standards, not just following sheep.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I think the problem is that the price-point for getting *everything* is set at $15. So if you need more per month, how do you do that?

You think games would be better off just being themselves insead of trying to topple WoW and fail?

I think there are plenty of people that is out there that want something different than the usual WoW like games. On average, mention MMO to anyone and first game they usually think of is WoW, even though WoW didnt coin the term and wasnt even the first. Secodn in line is Everquest, if not WoW is not mentioned. Take those two then a lot of times it's blank stares as if they dotn realize there are others.

I think even a small game can be a success, even with 800 people playing if the cost to make that game run is on scale with 800 people. While it sounds good to spend millions and millions on updates for a game, staff and stuff to keep a game running, but if the game is only bringing in a few thousand subs, then maybe a cutback in staff and running costs is in order and when setting up a game, especially one that is in an untested market, or niche market, then the ability to adjust is a wise move.


Many niche market items dont sell much but is still considered a success while many niche market items are considered basically failures although they havea solid fan base. Corvette, or sports cars in general are considered a niche market, but still the Corvette is considered a success. Do it make sense, not much trunk space, cant carry more than one, big engine, ride stifffer than an old fashioned wash board although better than most sports cars, and a top speed where there is nowere to really test it out or land you with a big ticket or jail. Yet people buy it. On the other hand the Delorean, most people heard of it, but is considered a relative automotive failure although they still demand a pretty penny as a collection item and have die hard fans and it was unique in many ways. Or as GM said wit hkilling off the Eldorado, personal luxury coupes are niche and isnt selling well now, yet MBZ CL-class is said to be doing well for their range, BMW 6-series two door is not considered a failure but this just points that success also depends on who is asked what they consider success and their opinion. A failure in one eyes is a success in another and that is why sometimes, especially when a product is killed off, it seems a product that seems to be doing well is knocked off while other products that seem to be doing worse is still kicking.
There is not one fit all definition of success. For some it's merely as long as it's not losing money its success. For others, if it's not making x amount, then it's a failure even though it's covering it's costs. For some, if a game dont have this x amount of players it's a failure, for others, as long there is enough players to cover the bills then it's a success.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Part of that is also due to the online gaming community growing at a stupidly large rate as well. Back in the early to mid 2000's there were *not* all that many people who had PC that were online *and* good enough to game with *and* had the spare money to pay a subscription fee.

Hell, I remember going over to friends houses just to check websites, because they were "rich enough" to be online. And even though I had a laptop when I lived at home, I didn't have the internet.

That has changed obviously, where if you *dont* have the internet you are viewed in a very different light.

You lose scale efficiencies in a small game. There's no way an MMO-style game could work with 800 people playing under the current economics. That'd be $12k/month, or $144k/year.

You could run servers in the cloud, but you would still end up with hardly any development or bug fixes, no updates, and no support.

Now if you could charge them $100/month, you might barely manage to limp along.

No matter how small the business, you need a certain minimum number of customers to make it work.

yeah forgot about that part. There is a minumum threshold.

About what would be the minimum population at about $15/month threshold for income for an MMO in order to survive with development on COX level, decent bug support, updates as often as here and minimum support to keep things going?

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

You have a number of options - a dedicated "elite" server (not the lashup narkfest that Exalted proved to be - the last thing CoH needed was another empty server) but also stuff like this: (perm any from any)

• Free exclusive costume packs (you could get one by become Elite member)
• Dungeons with a Dev - dungeon runs with a Developer once a week or something. Doesn't have to be the same dev, doesn't have to be the same dungeon and you get to do it on a ticket basis. In CoH that would be EASY with the league system.
• Exclusive mission zones - only Elite Members can get into those zones and do the missions and they give a higher incidence of good drops (so it's not pay to win exactly - but boosts your chance.
• Elite Members who make good enough missions in the AE get them added to the game as "real" content (once edited by a Dev for continuity/content purposes)
• Elite Members get XP in the AE (all other members get XP awarded at 12.5% of the PVE game generally)
• Gold Titles that the Player can choose (subject to approval for content and changeable only with a fee)

Think of your own. I'm sure once you put your head to it you can come up with a few suggestions that give added value.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

always thought having internet in 2000 was actually the norm I remember people going on and on about Everquest then so I thought it was common for online gaming. Hell, barely could make a middle/high school research paper without having internet.

But hey what is the norm in one area is totally abstract in another.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

A lot of it has to do with what the proprietors will accept as "profitable" and what the players will accept as maintenance.

One of the reasons large publishers can afford to keep things afloat longer is because their bandwidth costs to their hosting facilities are more or less fixed. And, depending on their server infrastructure, the cabinet space for paid-for hardware is negligible.

As long as said game doesn't directly impact on the bandwidth reqirements or rackspace requirements for more profitable titles, and the basic maintenance costs are covered, a large publisher COULD, theoretically, keep a title on life support indefinitely.

Unfortunately, smaller companies don't have the ability to leverage that type of economy of scale.

Not saying CoH couldn't still be run at a reasonable, acceptable level of profit. I, quite honestly, am convinced that it could. And maintain it's standards for content release and support.

It's would just take some very VERY careful management.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Well, let's see - figuring the development for CoH at 40 headcount, average $70k/year salary, adding overhead, the studio cost is 4.2M/year

Customer support (outsourced), let's say 4 agents 24x7 with one escalation agent. About 0.4M/year. (This is quite light support)

Servers (EC2) 8 shards, each with 12 zone servers and 2 database servers. 0.6M/year. (A fair degree of spitballing here)

Bandwidth, about $5 customer/year. Assumes about 800 connect hours, a client download/year, and about the same as a client download/year in patches.

Add it all together and the break-even point (at $15/month) is 30,000 subscribers.

cool stuff.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Absolutely. I may have a slightly jaded view on that though. I was in SWG when the biggest example of why NOT to care about what other games are doing, hit the fan. The NGE, which is STILL the biggest stain for SOE (and possible for ANY MMO developer), was an attempt at reinventing the game to make it more competitive against WoW. And how did they plan on doing that? What else? By trying to clone it.

Half of the innovations that made the game stand out, were scrapped in favor of copying WoW, including some of the mistakes.

I know there are, but that doesn't mean much of anything from a business standpoint. The same problem exists in Hollywood. "Inception" is an example of a movie that tried to avoid the typical formulas. Christopher Nolan was only finally able to get it funded though as a deal sweetener tied in with the Dark Knight series. Nobody had any confidence in it. It demanded a lot of brain-power from the audience to even understand half of it, making it a "poor bet." The film still made over 800M though, which is nothing to scoff at, especially for a film targeted at a niche genre that didn't even have any random/pointless sex appeal to get the pervs to buy tickets. But it still didn't change anything. Everything went back to business as usual. Sure, anyone else can make a sci-fi movie, but if they want funding for it, they need to pathetically tie it in with a famous board game and have Rihanna star in it. Who cares if she's never acted before? She's hot, so people will go see it, right?

Indeed. The huge investments being made in MMO's these days don't seem to ever pay off. Whether this is just a WoW issue or not, I don't know. EA seemed convinced though that just by spending more money than Blizzard did, they'd be able to take the crown. Of course, also their definition of an innovative MMO, was cutscenes that had voiceovers, even though other MMO's have already done it.




Interesting thing too about the Delorean. http://delorean.com/sales/

Though I suppose it's anyone's guess at how popular the Delorean would be now if it weren't for one iconic piece of advertising courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Cars may not fit as well into what we're discussing though because they're a status symbol that you can easily flash around in public. Cars even fit into humanity's version of the peacock mating dance. One can easily think that a Corvette, not only by being an eye-grabber, but also by being known for a bank-breaker, will immediately tell everyone in your vicinity something about you. Our choices in entertainment aren't really capable of that, and certainly not our choice of MMO.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

Yeah, never got that point in the buisness stand point but it seems to work. Havea weak storyline? Oh dont worry just add some "cute" musci artist in there and show some cleavage and people will flock even though the movie feels like it's killing brain cells from the stupidity.

Battleship *smh* that movie could of have been great even without the game tie in and you could tell stuff thrown in there just to appeal to "mass audience" and could tell it probably was done that way just to get funding as you said because it the formula works. The biggest money maker is sex, explosions, and famous name for a movie.

Indeed. The huge investments being made in MMO's these days don't seem to ever pay off. Whether this is just a WoW issue or not, I don't know. EA seemed convinced though that just by spending more money than Blizzard did, they'd be able to take the crown. Of course, also their definition of an innovative MMO, was cutscenes that had voiceovers, even though other MMO's have already done it.

Like big budget films do not gurantee success but some makers think the opposite. More big explosions, more cgi, more visuals, and more and more plots are nearly nill in many movies. It work for movies. Games, not so much and not as often. Gamers even serious ones tend to look for immersion and sometimes good graphics voiceovers and all the gimmicks in the world wont save a game if the storylines and game play it self sucks. The easiest way to beat WoW as it is now is to not to try to be WoW. People will compare that game to WoW and think, Why would I play this WoW clone here but only have 100,000 people when I can go to the real thing and be among millions? They will lose everytime. Innovations is more than just looking good. That may hold someone attention for the first month or two but after that, if there is nothign else, then the player will move on. Another reason many flock to WoW is the old standby reasoning of as long as there is millions there the less chance of the game going under. They feel secure over there while a game that has low population, true or not, is percieved as higher risk, especially a new game because naturally aftera while, the population tends to drop anyways. So if a game is a year old but only have 100,000 players, in about 9 years, there might be half to a quarter of that number while WoW in essence there might still be a few million players. People like to go where the party is at but no one wants to start the party.



Meh I dont think a car tells anything about personality or anything about the person. A car is a car and people have different choices in cars but not really alwaysa reflection of them. The average person right now may drive somethng because that is what they can afford but would upgrade to a more expensive car if they had the money but does that mean their personality changes too? Because first of all that tends to focus only on what that person is driving at the moment and assumption that is their only car. Some people that say drive a Prius cares about the environment, not into status symbols, frugal, down to earth, nice, and not materialistic, while someone that owns a Ferrari is materialistic, self centered, attention hungry, flashy, successful, burns and wipes with hundred dollar bills and etc but I know someone that owns both a Ferrari and Prius. What does that mean?

But you are right about one thing, humans are visual creatures and tend to simply judge others by what they wear, what they look like, what they drive and make assumptions about that person from there and think that shows them what and how a person is up to 75% but in reality it's just a sliver if anything.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Failed how, considering not one of those projects ever reached closed beta stage AFAIK? They certainly didn't reach the stage where it was even revealed to the public, which usually happens before even the closed beta stage with most games. If you're tasked to develop a project and then management changes their mind about it before it even reaches the beta stage that's not a failure on your part. It's not like you actually released something and it bombed, the bosses just decided to drop one project and start another.
Unless you happen to know more about those never completed projects than i've seen anywhere else... Well?

i've worked on several projects where clients changed their minds and redesigned everything and we ended up scrapping most of what had been done so far and starting over. Only an idiot would consider that failing. Or a Brillig, perhaps.

I'm not a huge fan of the 'elite player' concept, but this would have been great. When I made an AE that I was particularly proud of, I would gladly have paid $10-20 to have a dev, not even a big name dev like Posi, spend 10 minutes running through it, send over a few sentences of advice, and maybe, just maybe, be so impressed that it was temporarily made into Real Content, kind of like the SSA. That would have made a bit of money, and help separate the wheat from the chaff.

Only five? Yeah, that's just casual EVE-O player levels.

*goes home alone... plots revenge*

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

I'd bet on Harry Potter, myself.

As much as I would love that, I am NEVER playing an MMO again based on an IP that the developer doesn't have the rights to. Outrageous licensing fees just make the profit demands on the game even harder to achieve.

Oooo. That would be a good one to bet on as well.

I'd still give it to Pokemon though

Considering that Rowling doesn't like MMO's, I'd agree.