UO and Free to Play

Last week, a former BioWare design manager, Ethan Levy, gave a talk at the East Coast Games Conference about the business of games. Mixed into his talk was discussion of “Free to Play” (F2P) or “Freemium” content.

He had some interesting comments on the matter, such as:

In a freemium game it’s not a rational decision to pay; it’s an emotional one.

You really should read the whole article at Kotaku as there are many examples listed of how companies take advantage of peoples’ emotions or impatience or desire to be seen as better than others.

Looking at all of the examples – appealing to people’s emotional states, their desire to beat other players, etc. and using that to cash in, got me thinking about UO and F2P, because those of you who follow the UO fansites know that it’s brought up on various forums fairly often. My view has been that changing from one large monthly transaction to a series of smaller transactions is not enough to help UO in the long run. And if players end up paying more under an F2P scheme, they are going to be pissed off, which is not good for player retention.

Because it got me thinking, I wrote another long article.

EA and the Real World
I think that people who push this idea as a way to end UO’s woes never stop to think that EA (or any other company) is not going to push a new method of payment unless they think they can make more money. People toss out games that have went F2P, but I don’t think most of them have actually participated in games that have went F2P. I’ve participated in two different MMORPGs that went F2P, when they made that change, and in both cases I ultimately paid around the same or more than what I was paying under a monthly subscription. People also ignore the fact that those games are a lot more appealing to the general MMO and MMORPG market at this point than UO is.

Dungeons and Dragons Online
A player of one of those games, Dungeons and Dragons Online, put together an analysis of DDO’s payment plans and came to the conclusion that the best value was still ultimately a monthly subscription. That was my experience. Going the “free” route in DDO and just paying for certain content or options gets to be very expensive, very quickly.

Can “Free to Play” or “Freemium” Bring People to UO?
Maybe. Ultimately it comes down to whether the game has a wide-scale appeal to begin with. As much as I love UO, it doesn’t have a wide-scale appeal at this point in time.

Could UO be Converted to F2P?
Sure, if they had a lot more resources (developers). Anything is possible. It would take a long time – UO is a game that’s been around 15 years and has a lot more intricate systems than the largest MMOs that have converted to an F2P model. Development of publishes, bug fixes, etc. would have to stop as the people most intimately familiar with UO’s inner workings would be tied up on this. It would then have to go through many rounds of Quality Assurance as EA is not going to unleash a new payment scheme unless they could make the same amount of money, or more, as they were making under the old system.

All of that development and engineering that would be required, not to mention all of that Q&A testing, would result in UO’s development being put on hold. In that time, more players would leave, and nothing could be done on other things that can attract or retain players.

Alternatives to F2P
It’d be a lot cheaper to make UO a proper 3D game, and it would increase UO’s longevity while making it much easier for the artists and designers to add content. Sure, some people would get upset and leave, but EA wouldn’t care if there were more players playing after the conversion. If 20,000 people got up and left because they were angry at a client or artwork upgrade, but 50,000 people or more came in because UO looked better, you think EA is going to care all that much about the 20,000 who left?

It would also be a lot cheaper to double the EMs and run a lot more events and it would be a lot cheaper to double the number of artists and just crank out new pixel crack for Origin.com, which would increase UO revenue which would make EA happy.

The Timing for a F2P Conversion Just Plain Sucks
Right now the artwork and New Player Experience are just not conducive to attracting and then keeping new players. Converting to UO and then having new players come in and fall flat on their faces because the current New Player Experience is horrid would be sheer lunacy and would doom UO in the long run. Same with the artwork – F2P by itself is not necessarily going to get many people to try UO out, especially with the plethora of free and third party shards that EA turns a blind eye to. Those major MMORPGs that everybody cites as F2P successes are based on game worlds that have active fanbases and they are visually appealing, and they have new player experiences that are much better than UO’s.

UO? It’s been over 10 years since a new Ultima title was developed. It’s been 20 years since Ultima VIII, it’s best property, came out. It no longer has the same level of brand recognition that Dungeons and Dragons or Lord of the Rings has in the gaming world.

I’m for anything that can help UO out in the long run, but F2P is just a means of sidestepping or delaying the confrontation with UO’s larger problems. Fix the larger problems, then talk about changing payment methods.

via Ultima Aiera