Finished with Monthly Subscriptions

This isn’t a condemnation of the monthly subscription model for MMOs.  In fact, I think it is still a great thing, and preferable to the heavy handed item stores than some games use instead of a subscription.  However, over the past couple of months I’ve come to realize that as much as I love MMOs, games with a subscription model are largely a waste of my money.

Why?  Well, back in the day, I started playing Ultima Online and I gladly paid their subscription because I played every day (almost).  The same was true of EverQuest and of all the games that followed.  Some games I didn’t stick with for very long, a few months or a year, but even then when I was paying I was playing.  In the last year or so I have taken up a number of other activities, such as more reading, programming in my off time, writing, playing console games, and more.  The net result is that my MMO playing time has become fairly erratic.  One month I may play an hour or two every weekday and a couple of longer sessions on the weekend, the next month I may not log in at all.

Its the not logging in at all part that ends up bothering me.  I hate paying for something I don’t use.  Sure, I can just cancel and resubscribe when I want to play, but doing that is a hassle.  On the other hand, I didn’t play Wizard 101 at all in November and it cost me exactly zero dollars and I didn’t have to cancel.

I’m not saying that Free-to-Play is the wave of the future and all games need to do that, however there is a disparity in the subscription model.  It’s like going to an all you can eat buffet, paying the $10 and then only eating about $1.75 worth of food because you weren’t really hungry.  I wouldn’t mind seeing some games in the US adopt the pay by hour model used in the Asian markets.  I’d love to be able to buy a block of X game hours for Fallen Earth, and if I don’t log in for a month, I don’t use any hours, and when I do log in, all my hours are still there, waiting for me to use them.  No canceling, no resubscribing, just easy.  It would even be great if a game supported both models.  Let people subscribe for $15 a month for unlimited play if they don’t want to worry about how much or how little they play, let people who don’t want a recurring payment and don’t mind watching their hours buy 75 hours for $15 ($0.20 per hour) instead.

I will say that the one thing the subscription model does is prevent me from maintaining active accounts in multiple games.  I’d love to be able to pop in to EQ or DAoC or any of a number of other games for a couple hours once in a while, but re-upping for a full month of subscription makes the whole thing simply not worth it.  However, if all those old games had a pay by hour model, I’d gladly toss $5 on there every now and then in order to keep some hours available for those days when I just want to go play something different.

All this hoping and wishing aside, however, the fact remains, as of today I am officially finished with monthly subscription MMOs.  I want to play a number of them but I just can’t justify the cost given the amount of time I’ll play and the little spare money I’ve got for entertainment.

From a developer/producer standpoint, consider this.  While the need to unsubscribe might garner you a couple extra months of fees from me before I realize I’m not playing and cancel, the need to resubscribe if I’d like to put my toe back in the water is very likely to keep me from coming back.

Just One Dollar

A little over two years ago, Brian Green laid out why he believes that subscription models for MMOs are doomed. More recently, he touched on money in online games again, and this time hit the reason why I support the subscription model: Gambling impulses.

To use an outside of MMO example that I think illustrates my point well, let’s look at the Lottery. Almost every state in the United States participates in some form of lottery. From scratch off cards to Pick 6 jackpots, and they do it because it has been a proven money earner to fund state projects with. Of course, some people oppose the lotteries for the same reasons I’m about to go into.

Typically, a lottery ticket costs $1. Some scratch off games are more, but we’ll stick with the $1 tickets for now. At that price, I buy tickets now and then, usually when the jackpot goes over $100 million, because really, if I spend $1 and win $100 million or more, that’s a dollar well spent. But I don’t win, or haven’t yet. Looking at the Mega Millions site (the multi-state jackpot Georgia participates in) you can see clearly why. The chances of winning the jackpot are approximately 1 in 175,711,536. Knowing a bit about math, that number is why I don’t buy many tickets and don’t buy very often at all. However, I’ve worked in stores that sold lottery tickets before, and stood in line at gas stations all over, and watched as some people will spend $50 per draw (twice a week) in a quest to win that jackpot, even when its only $12 million.

The kicker to this is that the most money is generally spent by the people who can least afford to spend it. So while I seem moderately immue (though not completely) to the gambling impulse, I’ll spend maybe $20 or $30 in a year on the lottery, but there are people spending much more… $50 a draw, twice a week, that’s $5,200 a year, usually being spent by people who could probably use that money somewhere else to much greater effect.

An MMO with a monthly subscription model is like having a fixed utility bill. It is $15 a month, every month. Of course, some people buy gold and things outside of game, but in general, you could say the overall game design is meant to fit the $15 a month model. Then take a game like Puzzle Pirates. You have the option of paying a monthly fee, or you can play on one of the doubloon oceans (servers). On these servers, certain items, jobs and activities require doubloons which can only be gotten in two ways, 1) buy them from game, or 2) trade for them with other players. If no one does 1, then soon no one will be able to do 2. So, while I play on a doubloon ocean and have never bought doubloons from the Three Rings (the company that makes Puzzle Pirates), my game depends on other people buying doubloons and then needing pieces of eight (the other money in game) which I earn by playing the game. I play for free, my game in unhindered, but requires some effort to get what I want, however it is dependent on someone somewhere willing to pay cash for doubloons.

People with the most time to play are going to, in my experience, be less likely to buy items if there are other ways around them. However, a person who holds down two jobs to make ends meet who likes to game in their little free time is going to feel more of a pull towards buying items to “level the playing field”. So when it comes down to the microtransactions, where you are comparing thirty minutes or an hour worth of time to $1, it begins to slide into that realm of lottery tickets… so much like the lottery, I can easily see myself throwing a couple dollars at it now and then, but I also know there will be people spending fifty to sixty dollars a week.

At the end of the day, I guess it boils down to how much you feel responsible for providing a product that relies heavily on the player’s self-control and restraint not to bankrupt themselves. Personally, I’m not comfortable with it. Overall, while I dislike gold selling and that sort of this, at least it is, for the most part, external to the game design (I hope), but when a game is designed to accept, or even require, cash transactions to advance… I guess its a slippery slope I’d rather not set foot on to begin with.