All This Can Be Yours - For A Price

This weekend, the Playable Worlds team finally came up with some hard details the upcoming Stars Reach Kickstarter campaign. Not the target itself, nor the inevitable Stretch Goals, details of which we'll have to wait until tomorrow to learn, but we do now have chapter and verse on the Pledge Tiers, their pricing and what your money will get you.

I'll probably have more to say on that after the campaign officially begins tomorrow. For now, if you want the full details, such as they are, Wilhelm has you covered.  

What I will say is that the pledge tiers, as revealed in this weekend's fireside chat, are both better and worse than I expected.  

The first two tiers pretty much say "I have no interest in your game but I would like to express my support anyway". We might as well forget them, except to say it'll be interesting to watch just how much take-up they get. The third tier I'm going to come to in a moment. 

As for the rest, I didn't find anything appealing in any of them. Beyond a certain point it's whales all the way down. Before that, it's quite hard to see the attraction at all. There are some intriguing mentions of spaceships and spacesuits that made me wonder if there was going to be a Star Citizenesque market in imaginary hulls at some point in the future but it's far too early to tell what value something like that might have when the game goes live.

Not, of course, that there was any chance of me spending more than maybe, at the very outside, a hundred dollars. I did spend that much on Landmark and never regretted it so it wasn't completely out of the question that Playable Worlds might come up with something I thought was worth paying that much for. 

They didn't but luckily for me, the only thing I was really interested in - continued, guaranteed access to the testing program - is included in every pledge from Tier Three. That entry level offer is pegged at just $30. So that's what I'll be pledging. It's a bargain. I was expecting to be asked at least $50.

It's one-and-done, too. Pledging gets you into all the tests that are planned up to Live. The rough idea  seems to be to carry on with testing much as it is now until the summer, by when there should be something closer to an actual game, as opposed to a lot of unconnected bits of one. Testing would then move to a beta phase by the end of the year and transition into Early Access sometime in 2026. 

How long the EA phase might last hasn't been mentioned but I don't remember an awful lot of games staying in Early Access for less than a few months. A few years seems more like the norm.

There have also been precious few instances of MMORPGs taking less time to hit their initial development targets than originally suggested. It's hard to think of any that even made the dates they said they would. By far the most common outcome is that everything takes longer than expected - often much, much longer.

That suggests $30 now will probably buy you at least the best part of two years playing the game before it finally declares itself ready and launches. At which point you can just carry on because it's going to be Free To Play... for a very specific definition of "Free".

Here's where things get a little peculiar. Raph and the Playable Worlds team seem to be very concerned not to frighten the horses by using the "S" word, so they're doing everything they can not to suggest the game will require any sort of subscription. 

That's hardly surprising. Subscriptions are still widely considered the kiss of death for a new MMORPG, although I would have to say the demographic likely to be most interested in Stars Reach is probably also the one least likely to have problems with a monthly access fee, if only because they'd like to believe it would keep out the riff-raff and minimize the impact of the cash shop.

It's a difficult balance to strike. Raph has said he doesn't see Stars Reach as a bijou, niche project for nostalgists only. It's meant to be a game with at least a shot at mass-market appeal. That does seem to rule out an old-school, Buy-to-Play plus Monthly Subscription model, even though I'm sure a significant proportion of the current testing phase would love that. Or at least would say they did.

That would also be the power-block least likely to accept a true F2P offer and when the game does eventually go Live they aren't going to get one. The payment model, as I understand it, will be F2P with a Cash Shop, but also with a monthly game pass that quite a few people are going to see as all but mandatory. 

So far, so ordinary. Lots of games have a free tier and an optional paid tier that gives all kinds of perks. Some people always think the game is unplayable without those passes.

Where Stars Reach differs is in the very specific nature of the perks, one of which is so clearly the focus it lends itself to the name of the pass itself. It's called the Property Pass and if you want a house, you have to have one.

Yes, if you want somewhere to live in Stars Reach you're going to have to pay rent. Not in space dollars. In real money. Without this month's Property Pass you don't get to build or live in your own home. Whether or not you can still own a whole planet, just not any of the buildings on it, is unclear.

It's a strange move. In one way it seems like a draconian choice, fencing off a major part of the game  behind a pay-wall. In another, it risks being all but meaningless as an income-driver. A lot of people who play MMORPGs love their houses but I'd bet a lot more really don't care much about housing one way or the other.

What we don't know at this stage, of course, is just how key to the rest of the gameplay housing will be. Thinking of every game I've ever played with some kind of housing, even those with the best versions and the smartest integration with other aspects of play, I couldn't claim that not having a house in any of them would have made all that much difference to anything else I wanted to do.

Short of requiring access to a house to reach other content, housing is always going to sit off to the side of everything else. If you only care about adventuring or combat or exploring, you can pretty much forget about staying at home or even coming back there now and again. As for crafting and the various social activities, the way things have been explained so far, it seems likely you'll need access to someone's home but it isn't necessarily going to need to be yours.

For the time being, though, none of us need to worry about any of that. It will, no doubt, all become clear nearer the time. For now, the Property Pass is just a dot on the horizon. There's no hint or suggestion that Playable Worlds will try, as others have, to charge a fee for access during testing - other than that initial $30 buy-in, that is. Unless I'm missing something, as long as the game is in some form of alpha, beta or Early Access, you'll be able to build your house and live in it for free.

From my perspective, that will most likely be longer than I'll ever want to play anyway. Even on the optimistic timescales given, it looks as though launch is a couple of years away. If I'm realistic, it's been many years since I played any game for that long. A lot happens in two years and games I was excited by a couple of years ago are usually fast vanishing into the rose-tinted distance by then.

The final thing that ought to be said is that, should you be interested in getting a close look at the game as it develops, there's not even any absolute requirement to pledge the Kickstarter at all. Although all but the lowest couple of tiers entitle you to "Priority access" to testing, that in itself more than implies there will also be non-priority access as well. If you're just patient you'll probably get a go. Same as every testing program, really.

Things do change somewhat once the game goes into Early Access. Your Kickstarter pledge will get you in, no questions asked, but if you didn't back the campaign, you'll have to buy a Pass. 

What sort of pass and for how much is unknown as yet although it doesn't look like it'll be a Property Pass. Those only start to feature in the explanatory notes when when the game goes Live. That's why I'm assuming my $30 will get me property rights from now until launch.

As for the EA passes, whether they'll turn out to be more expensive than the $30 pledge remains to be seen but it seems unlikely. It would feel a bit strange if they were cheaper. Then again, you'd have had all that time in testing for the extra money so you probably shouldn't complain.

That's the thing about games in development. The speculation never ends. Until the final launch packages and pricing are announced, anything and everything can change. 

Based on what we know so far, though, $30 seems like a bargain. If you're at all interested, I'd say take it while it's on offer. This kind of access probably won't come as cheaply again.