Shooting Unicorns

TAGN posted a great contribution to the never-ending MMO payment model debate yesterday. Some of the links are particularly... interesting. I confess I had to google Damion Schubert to find out who he was, which certainly cast his polemic in a different light.

Somewhere in the comments of one of those linked posts a suggestion got made that I haven't heard before. I'd credit the suggester if I remembered who it was. The suggestion itself, that I do remember: lower subscription prices.

The idea was that just maybe what's keeping a lot of would-be players from subscribing to MMOs isn't the subscription model per se but the specific cost of the subscription. Perhaps instead of removing the subscription altogether some plucky developer might try reducing it.

In the past, when people have discussed the future of subscriptions, back when people thought subscriptions had a future, it was always assumed that eventually prices would have to go up. I mean, for what else are you still paying the same price you were a decade ago? Subscription prices never did really go up much, though, did they? They bobbled around a bit, generally from $9.99 to $14.99 with all kinds of complicated multi-month deals thrown in to spice things up but few ever broached that mid-teens barrier.

As everyone always chimes in, $14.99 is a very small price to pay for an entire month's entertainment, especially when compared to other options like movies, concerts, meals out or even books. That's as may be but it still adds up if you play several MMOs. The limiting factor, obviously, is time, but with the current trend that's centering MMO gameplay around frequent content drops, holiday events and discrete chunks of content completable in a few sessions it's becoming far more practical than it used to be for even a fairly casual player to dabble in several MMOs at a time.

If a subscription cost $4.99 a month, well you could have three on the go for the cost of your current single, couldn't you? I would. I might go as high as four or five at that price. Not to mention the prospect of multi-boxing. Of course you do still have the issue of getting people to put in a credit card number, which apparently they don't like to do (and who can blame them given the history of security breaches for online games) but you're going to have to come up with some way to get money off them at some point, so the issue can only ever be stalled. If they're going to balk at the first hurdle, were they ever really likely to get their wallets out anyway?

A small subscription gives the company a guaranteed, known monthly income but it's probably wishful-thinking to imagine it will bring in three or four times the number of players to get you back to where you were, and even if it did presumably managing the extra traffic will up the costs. So, you're going to need a Cash Shop as well.

Most MMOs do have some form of in-game Store these days, regardless of payment model, a trend that's unlikely to go away any time soon. Does anyone imagine that WildStar won't have a Cash Shop as well as a subscription? Which brings us to Wilhelm's very well-observed musings on payment models and their effect on the sense of immersion we used to set so much store by but which he worries is now of interest to maybe half a dozen people: "...it will be flying pig mounts, pinwheel hats, and hotbars for sale all day every day" indeed.  (cf Syp at BioBreak)

Ah, immersion. Those were the days. Count me in as one the six. But then, isn't one man's subscription-based immersion another man's Krazy Kiddie Klown Karnival?

Let me present Exhibit 1: the illustrations throughout this piece, taken from the fully subscription based, no cash shop in sight Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Check out my Cait Sith Doll standing on one leg! See me grooving in my Moogle Hat! Marvel at Carbuncle my Blue Neon Ghostbunny!

Immersion, surely, comes from within. Within the player, within the setting, within the culture of the game. I'm no Final Fantasy expert. I've only played the higher primes (7, 11, 13) and those not for long or all the way through. Still, even I know that levitating fuzzy teddy-bears, giant comical ostriches and a cast of characters that resemble a cross between Where The Wild Things Are and In The Night Garden are entirely in keeping with the ethos of the long-established, much-loved brand.

Transplant Moogles and Chocobos into Age of Conan, however, and you might have a problem (and a lot of roast chicken and barbecued fuzzy-bear). Wilhelm has issues with Mount Creep in EQ2 and Harbinger Zero felt that game jumped the shark when they let players play Fae. I could never take Tyria entirely seriously after the first time someone fired a stream of Rainbow Ponies over my head when I was battering down a keep door in World vs World.

When it comes to immersion we all have our own breaking points but the idea that any of this is made worse by the specific payment model a game employs seems unconvincing. F2P wasn't even a twinkle in Smed's eye when the art designers of the Kunark expansion gave us Rats In Smoking Jackets But No Pants, just to give one example out of thousands and surely I don't have to remind anyone of Slappy the Cool?

Now if you'll excuse me, I think the Moogle Postman is at the door.