Edmar, from GlobalGameServers (GGS) joins us again on FBS 6 to talk about the goings on at the 2012 version of the Game Developer’s Conference, this year held at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco.
Edmar was there at GDC and shares with us the highlights of the summit:
F2P
We knew Free-to-Play was hot this year, but judging by all the sidebars, panels and aisle-chat at GDC, it’s on fire!
For example, Edmar tells us that the biggest booth at GDC was from Wargaming.net, makers of the F2P WoT. Gameindustrybiz.com quantifies some of Wargaming’s success in an article this month. Some of the surprises from that article include the fact that:
- World of Tanks is “generating ‘double digit’ million dollar profits a month,” that quote is attributed to Wargaming’s CEO Victor Kislyi.
- WoT has approximately 20 million registered users and about 30% of them actually paying for content in the game – if true, is an incredibly high conversion rate.
- The game is huge in Europe (~85000 online) — and is massively popular in Russia, where they hit almost half-a-million online last month (no surprise given its Russian dev’s roots). The game in China is also big (~150,000 online). Relatively speaking, the game has not caught on in the same way here in North America (only ~25000 online).
- Edmar tells us that Wargaming’s staff now is approaching 800 staff world-wide.
As everyone who reads this blog knows, Wargaming will be offering a new game very soon, called World of Warplanes. Kislyi was at GDC and recorded this interview:
F2P games at GDC
Here are some of the games that were being shown at GDC:
Planetside
MechWarrior
Warface
Great cast, as always it’s interesting to hear what you and your guests think of the topics at hand.
One of the reasons that F2P titles have seemingly exploded out of nowhere over the past number of years, and that they played such a prominent role at GDC this year, is the fact that once they began to approach the same level of quality as boxed product titles, there was a paradigm shift in what slightly more casual gamers were willing to pay for and what studios/publishers could remain profitable with. Many studios and publishers have simply been FORCED to go F2P to have any real chance at successfully launching their game.
In the areas where F2P has traditionally been most dominant in the western world, this new payment model has demolished what was previously the largest barrier to entry (having to fork out money to play a game) and changed the gaming landscape to such an extent that barring a few key IPs, it is now impossible to launch a fixed price product in those genres.
Let’s take a look at the MMORPG and MOBA genres for example, those being the two in which core F2P players have most readily accepted this new monetisation method. Barring the likes of WoW and Star Wars, two IPs which are revered in gaming/geek circles, it’s pretty much impossible for a company to successfully launch a subscription based title in either genre. The titles that tried to launch with either subscription, or once off payments have been forced to switch to a F2P revenue stream in order to remain viable, as evidenced by the numerous MMOs as well as the likes of Heroes of Newrath (a title which most DOTA players favoured over League of Legends) being forced to go F2P simply because gamers no longer accept anything else in those genres. Guild Wars 2 is the only real oddity in that equation, but the quality and uniqueness of that title does seem as though it’s going to surpass most other titles out there by a significant margin, and one must also remember that that title has yet to launch successfully.
While I welcome the fact that studios and publishers are learning how to create F2P titles that are more appealing to the western core audience; one of my chief concerns about so many developers getting in on the F2P action is that we may see such a vast array F2P titles continually streaming into the marketplace that gamers will simply jump between titles, playing them until they reach a point where they feel they should/need to invest $ into the game, and then simply moving on to the next F2P and repeat that process ad nauseam. One must remember that the majority of F2P gamers have traditionally be extremely fickle, trying a game and moving on to the next before they’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of the title. Churn rates in F2P games are extremely high, and that’s only going to increase as more titles make it to the marketplace.
Sure more variety might sound great from a gamer’s perspective, but there’s a little voice in the back of my mind constantly jabbering away about the distribution of paying players in F2P gamers not being sufficient enough to keep new, good quality, F2P titles profitable; and that over the coming year or two many a studio will have to shut down their games with both industry and community based backlash ensuing, possibly to the point of crippling F2P development as a whole.
It’s just a slight niggle, but a niggle nonetheless. Here’s hoping it never comes to that!