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Pay to Play

Posted by michael on from the nickel-a-point dept.

nihilist_1137 writes: "Zdnet has a story on how companies are looking at making gamers pay to play online games. It goes over the problem of how to make a game great but yet at the same time appealing to people who pick it up."

2 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Re:they are gonna try this again. by Mahrin+Skel · · Score: 4, Informative
    Here's what you are missing: EverQuest, Ultima Online, and Lineage: The Bloodpledge (state religion in South Korea) are the highest grossing PC games *ever*. Bigger than Starcraft, bigger than Quake 3, bigger than Myst. That $10/month adds up when the typical player sticks around for more than a year. And you don't have to share the subscription revnue with the retailers and distributors (who typically take 3/4 of the purchase price).

    That's why the industry is suddenly waking up. This is a genuinely stronger business model that *works*. Online games are almost certainly going to be a $1,000,000,000 (that's one *billion*) dollar industry in 2003, after the release of Star Wars Galaxies and The Sims Online. It's already worth hundreds of millions in actual revnues companies are collecting *now*.

    --Dave Rickey
    Designer, Mythic Entertainment

  2. Re:Free games! by Mahrin+Skel · · Score: 3, Informative
    It's been tried, it doesn't seem to work. You need to have a full-price unit on the shelves for people to actually buy. Hell, our piece of the retail sale barely pays for the "free" month, we'd *gladly* just let you download it. People just don't do it in enough numbers to make a viable business model.

    --Dave Rickey
    Designer, Mythic Entertainment