Rog started this line of thought a while ago, and I’m just following up on it a bit.
Much fuss is made over microtransaction and item shop games “nickel and diming” consumers to financial ruin. What about those little chunks of time that games eat up? Do we value our time enough to worry about five minutes here, ten minutes there lost to time sinks? How much do they actually cost when we’re paying for time, not content?
Syp notes that the lack of respecs tends to force altitis, which is a significant time sink.
Nels reminds devs of the command: Respect Thy Player
When time is money, say, under a subscription model, how much do these (sometimes) little inconveniences and time sinks cost? Because there is no monetary fee assigned to them up front, do we ignore them? How much does each griffon ride cost in WoW, in real money? How much does it cost to die (repairs, corpse runs, etc.)? How much does it cost to get Exalted reputation with a given faction?
Of course, the cost changes depending on playstyle. Players who play more will wind up paying less for each death or ride, which is one advantage of the subscription model. Even so, there is a cost. I don’t have good numbers to run with, but just ballparking it, let’s say that an average WoW player plays an insane 20 hours a week. (A lot of time gaming, clearly indicating some level of addictive behavior, but I digress.) How many times do they ride a griffon, zeppelin or boat, or how much time is spent in corpse runs? I’m going to guesstimate that maybe 1 hour of those 20 are stuck in such pure time sinks. So, 5% of the player’s time by one unscientific guesstimate. 5% of their monthly $15 is a mere 75 cents. Five nickles and five dimes.
It adds up.
Of course, with something like Allods Online’s knuckleheaded perfume mechanic, time again costs money. We’re just changing the numbers around a little, and charging in bits and pieces rather than in a lump sum. When you see up front how much it can cost, though, suddenly the little gamer white blood cells get all riled up, causing an allergic reaction to the business model. It seems to me that if either business model can be accused of slipping charges under the radar, the sub model is more pernicious about it by simply making the coin of the realm time, one logical step removed from charging money… a logical step that many players don’t make. We’re already paying the $15, so it’s free, right?
Neither model really makes me happy. I don’t like paying for time. The item shop model is ideal for players with little time to play per month, and subscriptions are ideal for those who play a LOT per month. I firmly fall into the former category, but even there, I don’t like paying for time. Any time that devs are monetizing time spent in-game, the game design will incorporate stupid time sinks to try to cash in.
I’m perfectly happy to pay for content, though. That’s why Guild Wars, Wizard 101 and DDO work for me. To each their own, to be sure, but don’t forget to look at all the costs when you’re doing your value calculations. When making accusations about business models that weren’t made for you, remember that your model doesn’t work for someone else, and it might just be because there are some nickles and dimes tucked away in the dark corners, and the coin of the realm may not be minted in metal.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
I agree with you. The reason I don’t like paying for time is that it penalises you for trying new things out that end up taking longer, or making mistakes.
The last thing I want if I’m playing a new game is to be penalised for mistakes while I am learning. Or even worse, penalised for other people’s mistakes.
Paying for content that you can then consume in whatever time you want is going to be a much more successful model in the west, I feel.
The most customer-friendly model IMO is pay once (for the box), “lifetime membership” included. That’s Guild Wars. But apparently it is not the most profitable model, it did not get copied so far (?).
I think there is nothing wrong with the F2P model per se, but besides Wizard 101, Puzzle Pirates and DDO the list of games that are not extremely casual kinds of games and successful is not very long.
Not online-game related, but similar: DLC – downloadable content (Fallout, Dragon Age – mostly RPGs use this model) is also something that rubs me the wrong way.
They still experiment to find the right price point / content size ratio. The early Fallout 3 DLCs were overpriced bullshit. Little value for still quite some money – in my opinion, of course.
Dragon Age gets its “Awakening” expansion soon, which costs more, but also delivers more than the little extras they sold over the store.
I cannot help, but paying let’s say 50 bucks for a lot of content works better for me than paying 5×10 bucks for 5 smaller chunks of content, though in the end it should basically be the same… hmm.
Food for thought. 🙂
I don’t have good numbers to run with, but just ballparking it, let’s say that an average WoW player plays an insane 20 hours a week. (A lot of time gaming, clearly indicating some level of addictive behavior, but I digress.)
Yes, consuming entertainment for 20+ hours per week is obviously the sign of dangerously addictive behavior and is surely a sign of the end of civilization as we know it.
I just can’t get upset about “wasting time” in a game. That’s pretty much why most people play the game, no? If I wanted to do something productive, I’d go to work or volunteer. Instead, I log on a game. Perhaps I just want to spend a bit of idle time, or perhaps I want to spend time with friends and loved ones. Yes, I could also be running from problems in my offline (“real”) life. Using my time efficiently isn’t really a concern.
The ultimate question is what you enjoy in a game. Perhaps there’s too much downtime for your tastes, and you can find another game that doesn’t have it. Or, perhaps you might decide that gaming isn’t the hobby you want and that your time is better spent at the local homeless shelter, or whatever your cause of choice is.
For others, they’re happy passing the time in a brightly colored world exploring the far edges instead of playing Windows Solitaire, or they’re happy spending time with friends instead of all meeting at the bar (especially in cases where this isn’t possible).
My thoughts.
Great post, Tesh, and it brings up a really interesting topic and point of view.
I’ve always been against timesinks in any game I play because I want to spend my time “playing” the game, not just doing a meanginless task which, intentional or not, extends my time in the game. Removing all manner of time sinks though leads down the murky path into all sorts of trouble as it’s often connected with the concept of challenge and immersion.
For example, are death penalties in a game there to force us to play longer or to act as a risk factor, making us bond deeper with our character? Are faction requirements there to help build an immersive world with complex relationships between NPCs or just something to make us subscribe longer? And is itemisation and gated content a way to challenge us or merely reward those with the time?
I don’t have the answers but it’s good food for thought!
MOohaha tangent nugget tangents again!
As I may have mentioned before, Jade Dynasty, from Perfect World Entertainment really turned me off F2P.
But it’s more than just my problems with expending willpower constantly, in order not to buy stuff.
TBH, PWE’s development uh.. ideology, if you will, terrifies me.
I played JD for about 2 months or so – got to level 110+ unascended, then I quit.
I quit not because the game was not polished, and lovely, and the cash shop amazingly well done. It is all of that.
As mentioned, I quit because the cash shop was TOO well done. I got tired of having to constantly spend ‘willpower’ so that I wouldn’t spend money.
There are JD players who’ve spent thousands of dollars (USD) evolving just ONE pet.. and still haven’t gotten it to the max rank of evolution. (Yes, I know I’ve said this before…)
JD made me realise, through its amazing, rapacious, slick, cunning marketing and pocket-draining abilities, that I *don’t* want all games to become like this.
JD… polishes everything *just enough* to make you tempted to pay more. And in may cases, more than tempted. You do pay… a lot. I was lucky, with a lot of willpower, I managed to spend only US$30 over 2 months – same as a generic subs. But really, I got less from it than I did from a generic sub game. Way less.
Free 2 Play is really Free to Download – or as they say – Free2Play, Pay2Win.
But the main thing that turned me off PWE (and by extension the F2P model), is that I’m very afraid of their direction.
The difference between something like WoW (let me be clear, I think WoW is a good game, but not really for me. Despite having played it for 3 years, and having quit over a year ago, I do not like WoW)…
But the difference between something WoW, and PWE’s JD is this. When playing WoW (or at least, Vanilla WoW…) (and GW, definitely! ❤ GW), there's a feeling that the studio made this thing because they wanted to make a thing of beauty. THEN they handed it to execs to make it make money for them, hoping that their beautiful thing would get loved for what it is.
In PWE's JD, the sense is that everyone, from top to bottom, dev team *and* execs, were out to make something that made maximum money with minimum quality. This is not to say that PWE doesn't deliver on quality. It does. But it delivers on it in a different way. It delivers *just enough* to incite people to pay insane amounts of money. Unless, of course, you don't think thousands of USD on a SINGLE virtual pet is not insane. In which case, can I has sum plz? XD
And it's that kind of philosophy that fills me with fear for the future, if all MMOs go F2P. Guess I'll spend more time in MU*s and single players again.
I agree about how downtime in a game adds up to a waste of time. It’s a tough issue though, because ultimately playing the game is wasting time. We want to waste time more efficiently, which is paradoxial.
I think downtime can be good though. F2P games are guilty of using downtime as padding, and something to be paid to remove. But good downtime enables players to rest, and prevents burning out: forcing them to go back to town to repair weapons or buy food wastes time in one sense, but gives needed human downtime in the next.
FFXI has an example of what happens when downtime doesn’t exist. At level cap, the best merit parties strive for an infinite chain. They try to stage and kill mobs so fast as to keep an exp bonus per kill. What that means is you have to kill a mob in under 30 seconds.
The pace is brutal, and people have chained mobs up to 500 or more. It’s incredibly efficient, almost to the point of poetry. The human cost though is insane, and the support and healer classes burn out fast.
It’s tough. We do waste time, and yet we need to waste time, but by design and by the needs of being human.
I agree with you that time is money.
But when I am playing a game, which I do to unwind and relax, I don’t want to be thinking about real life money in any way. To me it is really important there is disconnect between the two or else I won’t enjoy either.
Travelling, or resting up, is only wasted time if I would not enjoy it as part of the game. It is part of my immersion and enjoyment. Real life is all about being chasing the dollar and getting ahead. MMOs are for me the escape from that world and a change to life my virtual reality.
I am playing City of Heroes for only 3 hours a week on Sunday afternoon for over three years now. I am happily paying my automatic $15 for that. If I would pay it by the hour or per mission it would have died out a long time ago.
Virtual time is just not equal to real money. Don’t mix the two.
Unfortunately I usually end up in those discussions being the developers advocate, so let me state, that I am not connected to the video game industry in anyway.
I just think, work has to be compensated. And as much as I value my own time, I value the work(time spend) of someone else.
As you said, all three compensation models have their advantages, and work for either group or the other, with none of them being fair to anyone.
Funnily, the most unfair “Full boxed price with high fee” is the most successful one, proving that we customers forget how much we paid, when we do not have to open our purse that often.
If I understood Spinks correctly, I disagree in this case, because the only valid measure in my opinion is played time. Let’s say, we payed for 10 hours, just to find out, that we took the wrong way to endgame highway, it is fine, because we still had fun those 10 hours, or hadn’t we?
To hand out peace cake: I got your point. If you are tricked into spending more time, that’s not fair. But since there are no mutual companies within the video game industry to my knowledge, every payment model can be used in favor of the provider.
Therefore I think Tesh’s “nickle and timing” is a valid calculation, and works in both ways.
Considering his monthly fee approach, progression is a matter of time spend, and can be recalculated into monthly fees.
If Skipping the level process would result in not having to pay for three month, it is obvious, that the developer will not charge the actual “man hours” for the change in its database, but will include those lost 3 month within his calculation somehow.
Consequently, I consider Gold, Experience and Gear-progression sold by the developer himself valid, as long as we are talking about buying time not content, or two class mentality.
By the way, this might sound like an argument for Bots and Gold Seller, but it is actually not. Although third party solutions might solve your personal time to money value determinations, they ruin the developers calculations.
Personally I see no reason for buying gold, experience etc, besides catching up with your friends, so it is just an example how to value your played time.
Nugget, perhaps one question that could be asked, then, is this: “Would -game X- be a great game if you just had to pay a box price for it?” or the corollary: “Is this game only good *because* I’m paying monthly for it?” which addresses the sunk cost mentality. Drill down to which game design choices were made specifically to make the item shop or monthly sub work, and toss them out. What is left, and is it worth playing? Is it a good game?
Dblade, you’re right, but it’s not specifically “downtime” that I don’t like, rather, it’s being charged for it that I’m addressing here. Charging for content, as in a Guild Wars system, means that downtime can be organic and tailored to making the player experience better, rather than trying to extract payment by artificially extending play time. That’s not to say that pacing and downtime aren’t a part of the player experience in a time model, just that when players are effectively paying for time, there is a strong pull from the dev side to maximize the ROI, whether or not it’s good for the players. It’s an adversarial model, in other words, where player and dev are working at cross purposes. Players want to accomplish things, devs want to string them out as long as possible. Better business models align the interests of the producer and the consumer.
A model where you buy content is closer to a meritocracy, where players set their own pace, and devs have to create good games and cut the fat to earn their pay. The game has to stand on its own merits out of the box, as it can’t count on addiction or time investment as a revenue stream or psychological rose-tinted glasses when evaluating game design merit.
Phedre, it’s exactly that disconnect I’m addressing. When you pay for the time you’re playing, your relaxation does cost money, whether or not you’re conscious of it. When that $15/month becomes a habit, players don’t think about what they are spending. That allows for abuse. It’s not unlike the credit card orgy that is a component of economic meltdown. Credit cards are seen as “free money”, when they are anything but. They have real costs that add up fast. If you’re not paying attention to that, nobody else is going to be looking out for your interests. Specifically with your CoH example, you could have paid a box cost, like GW, and still be doing the “three hours/week”, but you’d never be paying for that time with anything but your own time (and as Dblade rightly notes, and Brian alludes to, sometimes we just want to fritter away our time; relaxation is healthy). See, you’re already spending more than a dollar an hour, you just don’t notice it because it’s not charged per hour. But you’re still paying for the time. Not thinking about it doesn’t make the cost go away.
Usiel, interesting tangent. Yes, if in-game gold, levels and such are plugged into the ROI calculations, they at least have an internal “price tag” applied to them. It’s part of the business model. Putting them on sale and making those prices visible would be better from a transparency point of view, but really, that’s the heart of what I’m getting at here. It’s opaque on purpose, because if consumers see the prices, as in an item shop model, they often don’t want to pay it. When it’s obscured under a flat subscription fee, players don’t think about it, and wind up paying when they wouldn’t if they calculated the real costs.
I’m certainly not against compensating good work. I work in the industry, remember, and I’m sensitive to paying the intrepid devs. (Not so much the publishers, but that’s a rant for another day.) I’m perfectly happy to pay money for *content*, compensating the devs for the time spent making it great.
Of course, the obvious weakness with the “box price only” model is that you can’t monetize continuing interest (without selling expansions or DLC, anyway), and you still incur maintenance costs that players aren’t absorbing. I’m sympathetic to that, but that’s not the same thing as paying devs for the hard work of creating the world and core game design. I’m happy with paying the dev team, but I think the “live team” and maintenance costs are overblown, misrepresented, and mismarketed. Without transparency from the producers, though, there’s not a good way of knowing just how wrong I am on that, though.
Still, I buy a lot of games (mostly console and DRM-free ones, tangentially). I like paying devs for good work. I don’t like paying for the time I play; as Dblade might agree, it’s time I choose to spend playing. I’m already paying by not being productive in a second job.
Then again, I’m the sort that buys a stationary bike rather than a health club membership, and who is paying for a mortgage rather than rent. There’s a fundamental philosophy at play that drives my purchasing choices. I don’t like to keep paying for things that I’ve already purchased, and I don’t like to pay for time.
@Tesh
“Nugget, perhaps one question that could be asked, then, is this: “Would -game X- be a great game if you just had to pay a box price for it?” or the corollary: “Is this game only good *because* I’m paying monthly for it?” which addresses the sunk cost mentality. Drill down to which game design choices were made specifically to make the item shop or monthly sub work, and toss them out. What is left, and is it worth playing? Is it a good game?”
That’s a bit of a false dichotomy with regards to F2P, at least where PWE’s business models are concerned.
The whole way it’s set up is to make you keenly feel that you have to pour money into it, far more than a box price, to make it ‘good’ for you.
And no one agrees on what a ‘good’ game is anyway. XD
It’s too broad, too vague. I have nothing against people earning money. I mean, I work for money, too!
(Oh, and I have never felt a game is good because I pay a sub for it, I pay a sub for it because I feel that I’m getting enough fun out of it to justify one. If I feel I’m not, I stop paying the sub. So again, wrong direction, at least where directed at me, because it’s totally alien to me. I know people do think that way. It’s just that I can’t answer that question because I really, really, don’t think that way.)
I can go into an incredibly long post about why JD’s marketing is so good, but do you really want me to? Certainly, I’ve learned a lot from them, marketing wise. TBH, they left me in awe.
I probably won’t use what I’ve learned from them… or so I like to think. But then, I also dislike using scare tactics in marketing – and they can be effective. ‘Dislike’ doesn’t mean I never have, it simply means that I prefer not to unless the client dictates that I take that direction.
What frightens me about the very well done marketing on PWE’s part, which is totally integrated with their development – and it really shows… is that it’s driven more by money than by anything else.
I do not believe that that is where product excellence comes from. I do not believe that product excellence comes from a ‘we’ll do as little possible work to milk the customer of as much possible gold as we can’ mentality.
And looking at Jade Dynasty, specifically? I find it telling that what I admire most about Jade Dynasty is not the beautiful graphics, or the very nicely realised wuxia atmosphere, even though those things are what induced me to pick it up.
No, what I admire about it, since in my job, I do handle some marketing aspects, as well as UX, etc, is what caused me to put it down. And warn people away from it. Again, as I said, how single-mindedly focused the whole thing is on milking as much cash as possible, while delivering as little quality as possible.
The fact that in terms of graphics and atmosphere, they managed to deliver on quality in heaps – simply means that they’ve realised, down to a T, that that is what people will pay for. People will always pay for e-peen and attendant codpieces.
But that doesn’t make it a good game. It just makes it a game that’s very good at making money. (Which, then rounds back to, well what else do you think is a good game then, NUB! A game that doesn’t make money?!? Well actually, having played those games that don’t make money but are brilliant – yes, I think that a game that makes 0 money can be far more brilliant than a game that makes oodles.)
TL;DR version:
It’s not about the whether it would be good if it came with a box price, because different pricing necessitates different business models.
A related ?analogy? ?metaphor?: As a professional, I want to be paid well for the high quality work I do. I do not do high quality work only because I want to be paid well.
Sorry I can’t be more precise than that. 😦
Perhaps that’s the underlying message, then. Business model deleteriously affects game design, even in the sacrosanct sub model. Before complaining about the warts of a different model, remember that your favorite (whatever it is) also has problems.
It’s too bad that even as devs we can’t focus on the work rather than the money. I’m always happy to do great work; it’s good for the soul. It’s nice that I can make a living at it, but I’m not in the game industry for the money. I make games because I like to. With my skillset, I could be making a lot more money in California working on movies. (OK, and I’m not there because I will not work in California. Personal choice.)
Anyone who thinks making games is the path to the High Life isn’t paying attention. Publishing games might be, but that’s a different thing entirely.
Ha! Yus Tesh! You bomped the nail on the head with the business model statement.
If every business model makes a different type of neurotic game, then it’s just a matter of choosing which neurosis you can live with.
I think you succinctly summed up that I am afraid of one particular neurosis ruling the MMO roost, rather than having lots of different types to pick from…
*dances around wif pompoms made of batter*
Oh and FWIW, I would pay GW a sub… even if they kept their model exactly the same as it is now.
(But it wouldn’t happen, because as discussed… lol =) )
GW model to nugget is : Dream come true that won’t ever happen again.
That’s funny too though. I don’t want to buy their extra storage panels for US$9.99, but I would happily pay a sub!
I’m sure there’s some sort of intriguing mental process going on here, but at 140am with the flu, I’m not sure anything that is processing is other than… mental – in a bad way.
As someone who is still struggling with my affinity for the F2P model you describe in contrast to the handful of P2P games I’ve tried, I am fully in agreement. I certainly know which model I prefer, and hope for more games to follow it in the future!
Brian, well I don’t play to waste time and I doubt you do either. I play to have fun – try staring at a wall and you’ll see that time wasting isn’t the important factor.
fun divided by time. That’s the issue.
Tesh,
Yeah, subscription is a bit like buying a book, and then because you didn’t complete reading it in a month, you have to buy it again to keep reading.
Also, this might be tangentally related – mmorpgs, the myth of cheap entertainment: http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/2009/11/mmorpgs-myth-of-cheap-entertainment.html
I had to look up “opaque” first, but I think you are running against open doors.
It’s exactly what I tried to say, sorry for using my weird kind of dialectic anyhow.
You are absolutely right about hiding the price label for purpose and about bloated monthly fees and I agree with you, that the financial allocation in this case is absolutely misled, its more an emotional cost allocation rather than an economic. The point is, that just because everyone does it, does not mean it is the right mediation.
Take your point for instance, that live administration should receive a smaller compensation than actual creation and fee based models turn this upside down, which is absolutely true.
But then again, let’s take a look at the origin of that pay payment model.
Some guy, started developing an online game, but in the middle of the process he ran out of money.
Therefore he decided to offer access to the early levels of the game at a small charge enabling him to finish the game. Since he was working every day on the game, his customers were able to contact him directly.
Long story short, the original idea of monthly fees was covering the development costs, rather than the maintenance.
Games that demand full boxed price to compensate development costs, consequently result in lower maintenance and content fees, but from our experience they do not.
Coming back to your valid critique on publisher getting more benefits than the actual developers, this is a dilemma of (angle Saxon) investment model. I as the funder, pay you the developer, later on I start selling the product, but since I took the financial risk, I will get the major portion of the profit. Another point is, that even if the producer get’s the full benefits from the sales, you are probably not working for the producer at the time, the sale starts. Due to the contractors mentality in the game industry.
This is by the way, the reason why you hardly find any game forges in Germany, it’s not a problem of the actual labor costs, but our commercial law code strengthens the capital producer base. Meaning as a developer you are considered as a capital creator.
Now you probably understand, why I usually wonder that there are no mutual companies in the video game industry.
Their business model is extremely robust and allows real cost allocation, thus resulting in transparent prices.
But since the “innocent” gaming industry is an Investor market, we probably have to keep on debating about payment models.
Now look at this, another thought turned in a wall of words, never start a conversation about finance when I am around.
Heh, we love tangents around here. Especially relevant ones. 😉
Yes, the underlying financial structure of the economy at large, especially the investor mentality, is a huge consideration. I have some well-seasoned complaints about the investor economy, as it happens. Maybe we’re stuck with it in the MMO space for as long as they are expensive beasties to create… but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Was guild wars terribly expensive to create?
If you occasionally saw another player run past you while playing by yourself in that (even if the program only adds one other player to your instance and removes them to their own instance once they are out of sight) it’d pretty much do for me what these apparently expensive mmorpgs servers do.
Speaking off there was a thread on rpg.net I should have bookmarked that showed wow, for example, isn’t that expensive to run. It was only a small fraction, around 10 to 20% of monthly income IIRC.
Also there’s the torchlight model – formely fate, if I understand correctly. It’s sales helping to fund an eventual mmorpg of some kind (or that’s the idea, anyway).
I think Tesh meant the actual development costs, rather than the maintenance costs.
MMORPGs these days require cohorts of employees.
I looked up the figures of T.e.r.a’s Bluehole Studios. They have 200 employees. Assuming the average salary of 30.000 €, that would be 6.000.000 € pure labor costs per year, resulting in nearly 1.000.000 € interests charged per year.
Assuming it takes four years before they will receive any revenues from the game, that brings us to to development costs of 24.000.000 € plus 4.000.000 in interests.
The reason MMORPGs turn into development beasts, is that they try to cater everything right from the start.
“Bigger” seems to be the catch of the day, resulting in higher development cost, which require more customers to make the product profitable.
Therefore the entry barrier for getting into the market is extremely high.
A possible solution could be, focusing on a niche, reducing your possible key market, but the question is, how far can you reduce your costs and still make a small quality game?
Or in other words, how many people would you actually need and how long would it take them?
For instance, our current national founding program, offers 500.000 € starting funds, for our relevant business model, plus the possibility to raise additional capital through our local seed funds. Which basically means being absolutely independent from the financial market.
Since I have no clue which kind of developers you actually need, I browsed through the recruiting pages of the studios and obviously there is no kind of “Allrounder”, they seem to be highly specialized.
From my point, even if we would be willing to create a smaller MMORPG, we would simply fail, because the sheer number of different professions needed, would blow the calculation. Take my example: We can raise over half a million Euro for a Start-up, that is a lot for an unsecured business model and still it would not be enough.
[…] and a factor in the “game starts at endgame” mindset. Taking time to smell the roses costs money and time, rather than just time in something like Guild Wars or Allods. When you could be progressing and […]
[…] epithet. Games need to be taken on their own merits, balanced against their monetary and time costs, and evaluated for fun. Blind prejudice against games roughly defined by a marketing […]
[…] “offer wall” points from a third party or some such gibberish. Some games ask for both money and time. A rarer game might try to be advertisement-based, running with a network TV/Google approach to […]
[…] Spinks notes, this is possibly the clearest measure yet for how much time in an MMO costs in real dollars. That cost has always been there, but it’s hugely variable. I, for one, welcome a clearer […]
[…] I’ve never been a fan of the subscription model. I find it to be abusive and detrimental to game design, even though I can technically afford a sub these days. What’s more baffling to me are those who reflexively defend the sub model as being the One True Path to gaming goodness in the MMO sphere. It seems to me that these poor souls suffer from a sort of Stockholm Subscription Syndrome. […]