Archived from groups: alt.games.neverwinter-nights (More info?)
I know its already been hashed to death, but I've been thinking again
about the assumptions that are made about EQ coming to an end, and why
NWN has already been written off by Bioware (at least they've said there
will be no more expansions, which seems like they don't plan to make
lots more money off it)
Normal practice in CRPGs is to release the game, garner sales, after a
while, release an expansion which sells mostly to original owners of the
game but which might also bring in some new players to buy both. Then
you release a gold edition with the original game plus expansion
combined, hoping to pick up some more of those new players. IF the game
is good enough you might be able to repeat the process with a second
expansion.
By then, your gaming engine is grown old and warty, so you let it lie
fallow for a bit, then you put out CRPG II, which is based on the old
game but with a new shiny engine, and repeat the process.
Revenue in this scheme comes entirely from purchasers, so its definately
publish or perish, and its about selling those boxes when you release
them. It makes little sense to continue to prop up an old game after
its been out there a while, if you can instead sell people on a whole
new one. Every time you come out with an expansion, you find you've
lost some of the original purchasers, and tend not to replace them with
as many new purchasers.
Recently, though, there have been a couple new business models.
Neverwinter Nights is not really a game, its a game engine and module
creator, that happens to have a fairly robust sample module included.
Its not the first to do this by any means, but its an interesting sample
of the idea. Here, sales are still generated by the old school model,
the company only makes money on selling the box, the expansion, the gold
edition, the next expansion. Players, on the other hand, get content
from each other, turning the NWN "multiverse" into a truely vast slew of
modules, not to mention some "persistant worlds" where people can come
and go at will in a MMOG environment with changing content.
NWN, though, is still a dead end, IMO, for the game company selling it,
because just like the old school CRPGs, they sell only the boxes, and
demand tends to drop. The improvement comes in that as time goes on
there are more and more player created modules, which means that new
customers get a better and better "buy", and anyone coming up with a new
game on the same scheme will have very little content available to
compete with the established bulk of already written NWN modules out there.
Look, though, at the subscription model, games such as EverQuest. Here,
in addition to selling boxes of the game itself, they also make money
off everyone who continues to play it, every month, without having to
create anything new or market it. I buy the original box for about the
same price as other games on the shelf, but that only gives me a month
of play. After that, I have to plunk down another ten bucks every month
(I know, its more than that now, but I'm thinking in round numbers) in
order to keep playing. Every now and again, an expansion comes out, or
a gold box, so they have the same revenue stream as other games... but
that subscription money changes the model radically. Of course there's
the cost of maintaining servers and some (getting more and more minimal)
customer service, but by and large its like they are selling me another
expansion box every two or three months.
Suddenly, instead of "how do we get new players to buy this box?" and
"hmm, I wonder if we can get enough of the current players to buy this
expansion?", its a question of "how do we keep those guys playing for
another month?"
I've been playing EQ for roughly four years. Say 40 bucks for the
original game, plus 30 bucks per expansion, more or less, thats $220
spent on boxes... and $480 on subscription fees. Contrast that to NWN's
original box plus two expansions for $100 total. EQ can also look
forward to another ten bucks a month for as long as I continue to play.
NWN can perhaps hope that I'll buy another expansion if they release
one, otherwise they are done making money from me on their game even if
I continue to play it for another ten years. EQ can hope just as
strongly that I'll buy their next expansion (at the moment I don't own
GOD and have little interest in it or OOW, although who knows, perhaps
that will change) but whether I do or not has no effect on that $10 a
month revenue stream.
Why replace your successful game? Well, for old school publishers, and
even for NWN, its because you aren't making any money off those players
anymore, and have reached a point where sales on expansions has reached
a point of diminishing returns.
But for EQ and its ilk, its harder for me to see the point. The
majority of money made off EQ seems to me to be from the monthly fees,
not from the sales of boxes.
Other reasons:
Old game engine. So, replace it. Is this really going to be harder to
do than creating a new engine -and- new races, classes, spells, etc etc
etc? It seems to me that EQ has already done this more than once, at
least on a piecemeal basis.
People tiring of the content. So make new content. Heck, take a page
from the NWN book and make new servers with entirely new and different
content that isn't connected to the old stuff. Use the engine from
original EQ, but a different world. Bet you could sell a lot of boxes
that way... although selling boxes isn't really the point, but new
content also helps keep butts in the seats.
Old graphics. So replace them. They've already done this several times
and forecast doing more of it.
Bad basic game assumptions. I see this as a better arguement than the
rest for change, for an "EQ2". There are a lot of things about EQ that
I feel were poorly thought out. Many of them have been changed
(although in many cases, I think the changes were poorly thought out
too) though, and could be changed again; I'm not really sure what bad
assumptions could exist that can't ever be changed at all.
If I jump ship from EQ, I think it more likely that it would be to some
other sort of MMOG entirely, rather than to an EQ2 (of any sort); part
of the fun of a new game for me is figuring out the new rules, roles,
ways of thinking... I'm not convinced I'd get the same effect with
something designed as a direct decendant from EQ.
Another funny thought occurs to me here. While I've been paying the
good folks running EQ (first Verant, then SOE) my $700, I've largely
stopped buying other games entirely. I can't see paying for more than
one monthly subscription at a time, and since EQ has kept my "butt in
the chair" that means I haven't tried any of the other MMOG's of its
ilk. And I likewise have had little interest in buying the Flavor of
the Week, because I used to buy a game, play it till I "finished it",
then buy another; while I used to spend on average $100 a month on new
games, now I'm down to $10 plus the occaisional $30 expansion.
If I were among the folks at SOE, I'd be hard at work figuring out the
best way to keep butts in seats, and to generate replacement butts for
the people that have decided to get up and walk. Since the majority of
their player base are level 30 to 50, I'd be hard at work on revamping
the 30 to 60 game. Since new players are by definition level 1, I'd be
hard at work on revamping the 1 to 30 game. Admittedly you can't ignore
the high end, where the 65 players live, because they are the ones who
can literally run out of content entirely... but I wouldn't be
concentrating nearly as hard on them, despite the fact that they are by
far the most vocal; gearing two expansions in a row towards that top 10%
of the population makes me wonder if they are the sort of people who
feel that a massive tax cut that helps primarily the top 10% of the
population is a good response to a crashing economy.
If I were the folks at NWN, I'd be trying to figure out a way to package
player created modules up and make cash off of them... but I don't
think I'd succede, because the way they built the game makes them sharable.
Likewise, while I'd love to see player run EQ worlds, if I was in SOE
I'd be working hard to prevent that happening because that would mean
losing the "butts in seats" fees; sadly, I think the very thing that
made NWN great is also what keeps them from seeing people continuing to
play the game as a revenue stream.
Could Bioware put together their own Persistant World, and run it on a
subscription basis? Maybe, but its hard to imagine they'd get
sufficient players to make that worthwhile. An EQ server costs (I'm
told) $24,000 to set up, and can hold about 4000 players at once. Well,
thats potentially $40,000 a month, which can pay for your CS people and
be a nice stream... but EQ works because they have dozens of those
servers, and serve about 200,000 clients; are there 100,000 NWN players
who'd pay ten bucks a month when there are PW's out there already that
are running for free?
Something funny is happening with NWN though. Its quasi open
architecture means that people are coming up with their own content, not
just in terms of modules, but hak paks that alter the game environment
itself; the latest CEP is practically an expansion all its own. Where
EQ is most lacking, in terms of new content generation, is where NWN is
strongest, there are constantly new adventures out there to play with.
I wonder if it would be possible for someone to build a PW good enough,
on a good enough server, that they might be able to get subscription
fees for it. Pay the DM's and maintenance costs with some of the cash
and keep the rest as profit? Or could module writers find a way to sell
their modules, instead of just posting them on the web for free? I'm
thinking here in terms of the sort of "microfees" model the music
industry is working on, where a song costs a buck or less; if a thousand
people buy my module at a buck thats a thousand bucks... almost enough
to make you go Hmm...
Thinking out loud
Lance
I know its already been hashed to death, but I've been thinking again
about the assumptions that are made about EQ coming to an end, and why
NWN has already been written off by Bioware (at least they've said there
will be no more expansions, which seems like they don't plan to make
lots more money off it)
Normal practice in CRPGs is to release the game, garner sales, after a
while, release an expansion which sells mostly to original owners of the
game but which might also bring in some new players to buy both. Then
you release a gold edition with the original game plus expansion
combined, hoping to pick up some more of those new players. IF the game
is good enough you might be able to repeat the process with a second
expansion.
By then, your gaming engine is grown old and warty, so you let it lie
fallow for a bit, then you put out CRPG II, which is based on the old
game but with a new shiny engine, and repeat the process.
Revenue in this scheme comes entirely from purchasers, so its definately
publish or perish, and its about selling those boxes when you release
them. It makes little sense to continue to prop up an old game after
its been out there a while, if you can instead sell people on a whole
new one. Every time you come out with an expansion, you find you've
lost some of the original purchasers, and tend not to replace them with
as many new purchasers.
Recently, though, there have been a couple new business models.
Neverwinter Nights is not really a game, its a game engine and module
creator, that happens to have a fairly robust sample module included.
Its not the first to do this by any means, but its an interesting sample
of the idea. Here, sales are still generated by the old school model,
the company only makes money on selling the box, the expansion, the gold
edition, the next expansion. Players, on the other hand, get content
from each other, turning the NWN "multiverse" into a truely vast slew of
modules, not to mention some "persistant worlds" where people can come
and go at will in a MMOG environment with changing content.
NWN, though, is still a dead end, IMO, for the game company selling it,
because just like the old school CRPGs, they sell only the boxes, and
demand tends to drop. The improvement comes in that as time goes on
there are more and more player created modules, which means that new
customers get a better and better "buy", and anyone coming up with a new
game on the same scheme will have very little content available to
compete with the established bulk of already written NWN modules out there.
Look, though, at the subscription model, games such as EverQuest. Here,
in addition to selling boxes of the game itself, they also make money
off everyone who continues to play it, every month, without having to
create anything new or market it. I buy the original box for about the
same price as other games on the shelf, but that only gives me a month
of play. After that, I have to plunk down another ten bucks every month
(I know, its more than that now, but I'm thinking in round numbers) in
order to keep playing. Every now and again, an expansion comes out, or
a gold box, so they have the same revenue stream as other games... but
that subscription money changes the model radically. Of course there's
the cost of maintaining servers and some (getting more and more minimal)
customer service, but by and large its like they are selling me another
expansion box every two or three months.
Suddenly, instead of "how do we get new players to buy this box?" and
"hmm, I wonder if we can get enough of the current players to buy this
expansion?", its a question of "how do we keep those guys playing for
another month?"
I've been playing EQ for roughly four years. Say 40 bucks for the
original game, plus 30 bucks per expansion, more or less, thats $220
spent on boxes... and $480 on subscription fees. Contrast that to NWN's
original box plus two expansions for $100 total. EQ can also look
forward to another ten bucks a month for as long as I continue to play.
NWN can perhaps hope that I'll buy another expansion if they release
one, otherwise they are done making money from me on their game even if
I continue to play it for another ten years. EQ can hope just as
strongly that I'll buy their next expansion (at the moment I don't own
GOD and have little interest in it or OOW, although who knows, perhaps
that will change) but whether I do or not has no effect on that $10 a
month revenue stream.
Why replace your successful game? Well, for old school publishers, and
even for NWN, its because you aren't making any money off those players
anymore, and have reached a point where sales on expansions has reached
a point of diminishing returns.
But for EQ and its ilk, its harder for me to see the point. The
majority of money made off EQ seems to me to be from the monthly fees,
not from the sales of boxes.
Other reasons:
Old game engine. So, replace it. Is this really going to be harder to
do than creating a new engine -and- new races, classes, spells, etc etc
etc? It seems to me that EQ has already done this more than once, at
least on a piecemeal basis.
People tiring of the content. So make new content. Heck, take a page
from the NWN book and make new servers with entirely new and different
content that isn't connected to the old stuff. Use the engine from
original EQ, but a different world. Bet you could sell a lot of boxes
that way... although selling boxes isn't really the point, but new
content also helps keep butts in the seats.
Old graphics. So replace them. They've already done this several times
and forecast doing more of it.
Bad basic game assumptions. I see this as a better arguement than the
rest for change, for an "EQ2". There are a lot of things about EQ that
I feel were poorly thought out. Many of them have been changed
(although in many cases, I think the changes were poorly thought out
too) though, and could be changed again; I'm not really sure what bad
assumptions could exist that can't ever be changed at all.
If I jump ship from EQ, I think it more likely that it would be to some
other sort of MMOG entirely, rather than to an EQ2 (of any sort); part
of the fun of a new game for me is figuring out the new rules, roles,
ways of thinking... I'm not convinced I'd get the same effect with
something designed as a direct decendant from EQ.
Another funny thought occurs to me here. While I've been paying the
good folks running EQ (first Verant, then SOE) my $700, I've largely
stopped buying other games entirely. I can't see paying for more than
one monthly subscription at a time, and since EQ has kept my "butt in
the chair" that means I haven't tried any of the other MMOG's of its
ilk. And I likewise have had little interest in buying the Flavor of
the Week, because I used to buy a game, play it till I "finished it",
then buy another; while I used to spend on average $100 a month on new
games, now I'm down to $10 plus the occaisional $30 expansion.
If I were among the folks at SOE, I'd be hard at work figuring out the
best way to keep butts in seats, and to generate replacement butts for
the people that have decided to get up and walk. Since the majority of
their player base are level 30 to 50, I'd be hard at work on revamping
the 30 to 60 game. Since new players are by definition level 1, I'd be
hard at work on revamping the 1 to 30 game. Admittedly you can't ignore
the high end, where the 65 players live, because they are the ones who
can literally run out of content entirely... but I wouldn't be
concentrating nearly as hard on them, despite the fact that they are by
far the most vocal; gearing two expansions in a row towards that top 10%
of the population makes me wonder if they are the sort of people who
feel that a massive tax cut that helps primarily the top 10% of the
population is a good response to a crashing economy.
If I were the folks at NWN, I'd be trying to figure out a way to package
player created modules up and make cash off of them... but I don't
think I'd succede, because the way they built the game makes them sharable.
Likewise, while I'd love to see player run EQ worlds, if I was in SOE
I'd be working hard to prevent that happening because that would mean
losing the "butts in seats" fees; sadly, I think the very thing that
made NWN great is also what keeps them from seeing people continuing to
play the game as a revenue stream.
Could Bioware put together their own Persistant World, and run it on a
subscription basis? Maybe, but its hard to imagine they'd get
sufficient players to make that worthwhile. An EQ server costs (I'm
told) $24,000 to set up, and can hold about 4000 players at once. Well,
thats potentially $40,000 a month, which can pay for your CS people and
be a nice stream... but EQ works because they have dozens of those
servers, and serve about 200,000 clients; are there 100,000 NWN players
who'd pay ten bucks a month when there are PW's out there already that
are running for free?
Something funny is happening with NWN though. Its quasi open
architecture means that people are coming up with their own content, not
just in terms of modules, but hak paks that alter the game environment
itself; the latest CEP is practically an expansion all its own. Where
EQ is most lacking, in terms of new content generation, is where NWN is
strongest, there are constantly new adventures out there to play with.
I wonder if it would be possible for someone to build a PW good enough,
on a good enough server, that they might be able to get subscription
fees for it. Pay the DM's and maintenance costs with some of the cash
and keep the rest as profit? Or could module writers find a way to sell
their modules, instead of just posting them on the web for free? I'm
thinking here in terms of the sort of "microfees" model the music
industry is working on, where a song costs a buck or less; if a thousand
people buy my module at a buck thats a thousand bucks... almost enough
to make you go Hmm...
Thinking out loud
Lance
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