[continued]
This game developer has the right idea when it comes to multiplayer centric games:
> Now, one thing I think is clear right now is that games will move away from being a packaged product business to becoming a service business. There’s really no need in creating Call of Duty 1, 2, 3, 4 as separate entities anymore - just create a service called Call of Duty and constantly iterate on it, polish it, perfect it, add more features, make sure the balance is perfect - but don’t create yet another game 24 months later that introduces its own share of problems yet again just because you had to redo a lot of things in order to call it a ‘new’ game (which it never really is, since assets, code and so on and so forth are always being re-used).
>
> How many people here glorify Halo: CE? What if Bungie would’ve taken Halo CE and kept polishing it, kept refining it, added more stats, adjusted the graphics to the current standards, made it network compatible and just tried to get it as close to perfection as possible - would you guys have preferred this service over getting Halo 2, Halo 3 and ultimately Halo Reach? Who would’ve rather played an Xbox360 version of Halo CE over Halo 3? Note that I’m talking purely about the multiplayer aspects right now. I think it’s an antiquated idea to ship single player and multiplayer in one product and forcing players to get both if they’re only interested in one component, but that’s another issue.
>
> My thought is that no game is ever going to be perfect - but it sure as hell doesn’t help that we have to re-invent the wheel every 18-24 months because the market still thinks we’re selling packaged products. If you create the next chess and the market loves it, there’s no way in hell your next step after release should be to re-invent chess yet again 24 months later by adding 6 more figures and 12 more squares - that’s not how games work, yet, that’s exactly what the games industry is doing at this point.
>
> And with this comes another problem: Monetizing. Someone will have to pay for the development costs, that’s just the reality of any business. BUT you can change the way people pay for the service they get.
>
> First off:
>
> If there is an entry fee, that fee should be low. The way games are currently being sold is through a ‘normal’ edition (= 60 bucks) or a ‘Limited Edition’ (wihch is never really limited and is being used as an excuse to charge more for the product, means: Limited Edition = A lot more bucks). This makes little sense in todays time, where everything could be digital and just way more efficient. Selling the game for a fixed amount of money also makes sure that you’ll not reach as broad an audience as possible.
>
> So what’s the solution? You give it away for free or you charge a very low entry fee. I’m pretty sure everyone here at some point tried games like Farmville, right? It doesn’t cost you anything, so you can just as well give it a try, just to see what the buzz is all about. Now, you don’t have to like Zynga or Farmville, but this is a very powerful tool to get the word out and I think at this point you probably won’t have a relative, friend or family member around you who hasn’t at least tried Farmville - and why? Because it’s out there and because it’s free. If people are talking about it and it doesn’t cost me anything, chances are I’ll probably also check it out. And chances are I’ll be hooked and discover something I wouldn’t have paid 60 bucks for otherwise.
>
> Now, if the entry fee is low, how do you make money?
>
> By letting the players decide what they pay for and how much they support you. Let me give you a few examples of what that could mean:
>
> Say you’re a clan and you want tools that help your clan to organize, train, schedule, compete and show you detailed stats of each player directly in the game as well as online. That’s an amazing service that pretty much no game on the market offers you, yet this is something that professional gamers would love to have, right? Wouldn’t you love to see how well you performed in Halo: CE over the last 10 years? Just to have this data? Knowing when you were at the top of your game? Knowing exactly how much damage you made with weapon X or weapon Y? Knowing when one of your clan buddies really took off and became a machine?
>
> This is the sort of feature that would never be included in a ‘normal’ product - because of the fear that you’d alienate the more casual gamer. So at this point, the hardcore gamer who spends hundreds of hours with the game already suffers because of a lowest common denominator decision - and that’s bad. A professional gamer wants to know his hit rate, wants to see how many times in the recent 25 games he shot with the railgun and missed, how efficient he was with his build order and micro management, a professional player appreciates this data - and would actually like to pay the developer for it, am I right? Now we would have the best of both worlds: The standard package isn’t ‘complex’ and ‘confusing’, while the professional player can get what he wants. Everybody is happy.
>
> To finish this off, since it’s getting late, let me ask you this question:
>
> Do you think that the World of Warcraft model would work for Shooters like Call of Duty?
>
> I bet most of you at this point would reply with a sound ‘HELL NO!’ - and right you are. There’s no way in hell people are going to pay that much for this service at this point.
>
> Yet, you guys are perfectly okay with paying 60 dollars every year to buy a new Call of Duty. And knowing the nature of software development, not every iteration will be perfect and pristine. So sometimes, you’ll get a turd for your 60 dollars.
>
> Now, let me re-phrase the question:
>
> Do you think it would be okay to charge 5 dollars a month for access to Call of Duty as a service, if the developer promises to focus on polishing the game and listening to the community instead of sending the product to die directly after release, just so you buy the next release 12 months later?
>
> Remember, if you count it all up, 5 bucks a month = 60 dollars a year.