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.
In short form, Stockholm Syndrome is where prisoners start to sympathize with their captors, usually because said captors aren’t worse than they presently are, no matter how bad that is. It’s a weird bit of cognitive dissonance that involves a lot of rationalization and psychological trauma, even abuse. Maybe the huge time sinks and grinds in modern MMO design aren’t technically abuse, but they sure skirt the edge of psychological manipulation sometimes. (I think there’s an argument that games embrace it fully sometimes, too, but interestingly, even designers might not notice that, positioned as they are, deep in the bowels of the game industry, suffering their own psychological maladies and warped frame of reference.)
To be sure, each MMO business model has pros and cons. Subs are good for some things, Free 2 Play is good for others, and Single Sale (the Old School model of buying a game once and playing it forever, like Guild Wars… sometimes with expansion packs also sold in single sale chunks) is good for others. Each has good effects on players and game design, each has bad effects. Honest commentators see the differences.
It’s those who blindly suggest that subs are the only way to go that I’m talking about here. (It should be noted that F2P and Single Sale doctrines have their blind acolytes, too, but they seem far fewer in number, and they function differently as they argue for different priorities.) Sub devotees seem to love their grind. There’s also a bit of that old “Sunk Cost” thinking going on as well: players who have sunk time and money into something want to keep up with it to mentally validate what they have done already. When you pay for time to play, you’ve already acquiesced to the premise that you’re paying for access, not content. That’s a significant mental shift that changes the value calculations in game purchasing… and once you’re hooked, it’s hard to make the mental shift back.
Businesscritters naturally exploit this tendency, though they tend to be careful not to draw too much attention to the persistent blood loss, lest they draw too much attention and trigger a response. It’s up to the players to pay attention, but far too many just cruise on and get used to things, then turn to defend the status quo. (This happens in design, too, to both players and designers. Don’t do something just because “That’s Just the Way It’s Done”, pay attention to the “why” underlying design choices. The collapse of the MMO genre’s design potential into DIKU clones is one example of this blinkered thinking… thankfully, one that’s changing, if ever so slowly.)
The simple reality is that more and more people are playing games as time goes on. The bulk of the audience is shifting to those who have grown up a bit (incidentally, not the same as aging), and have different priorities in life, as Chris eloquently notes thisaway (edited to add: or as Syp notes thisaway, with changing priorities leading to different notions of sociality, which is one of the pillars of a good MMO). Games and businesses that rely on a captive audience to defend their unchanging ways will naturally be left with that part of the audience that won’t move on. That’s neither good nor bad, really, just a reality that game devs and businessmen need to be aware of.
Players, for their part, need to watch out for their own needs and pocketbooks. The businesscritters certainly aren’t interested in our welfare. Smart parasites don’t kill their hosts, but if there’s an endless stream of new hosts, that changes the dynamic a bit. We can’t let ourselves get used to the little costs (in time or money) and annoyances that shift our perception. That “Overton Window” paradigm shift almost never works to our benefit as the consumer.
Edited to add: More food for thought from Scott Jennings over at Broken Toys… SOE’s John Smedley: Subscription Model Dead
Tish Tosh Tesh 
I have a feeling I could be one of the targets of the “who blindly suggest that subs are the only way to go that I’m talking about here.”
Just to make that clear: The best business model would ask of each player an amount of money equivalent to the fun he received and weighted by his freely available time and income.
But perhaps you can find someone who claims that monthly subs are the holy grail. Good luck 😉
[…] Tosh Tesh is striking out against the subscription model, saying that people who defend it are suffering from Stockholm Subscription Syndrome – “When you pay for time to play, you’ve already acquiesced to the premise that […]
Actually, I can’t think of any bloggers offhand who do this. It’s mostly been in the comments sections of personal or corporate blogs that I see it.
Really interesting post – I’ve featured it on the Melting Pot as part of our Big Financial Roundup today.
Speaking as a businesscritter myself, I’d say we’re not necessarily just leaning on the “sunk cost” issue (and don’t forget the hidden “I forgot to cancel the sub” issue) – subscriptions lead to more stable and predictable cashflows, which in turn mean that more investment into a going concern is possible. Investors like to see predictable cashflow, and when investors like a games company, that company gets to do More Cool Stuff.
But I agree, the entire thing can also easily turn to the dark side.
Thanks for the link and comment, Hugh!
I took a marketing class in my last year in college, and I did really well with it. It’s a lot of math and psychology, and it’s not terribly hard to manipulate people (mostly because so many people don’t like math and aren’t aware of their own purchasing decisions until it’s too late). I’ve seen the power there, and I think it’s folly for consumers to give up without a fight. Subs are designed to slip under the decision points of consumers, and that’s a subversion that I don’t like. It’s terribly common, not just in games, to be sure, but I don’t like it. It’s like buying a car or house; the focus is on the monthly cost, not the total cost, and that skews perception in a huge way.
I’m also no fan of investors in general. The “bottom line” thinking about maintaining cashflow and making numbers work tends to suck the soul out of products and people on the workfloor. I’d also offer up Minecraft as a counterexample, albeit an aberration, not a new norm. The game is successful less because it was designed for maximum cashflow, and more because it is a brilliant design that was lacking in the market on the whole, and Notch has worked his level best on what seems to be a labor of love. Yes, investors make capitalism tick, but at the same time, innovation drives capitalism. They have to work in tandem, and the focus on a steady cashflow kills innovation and even accountability (subs strangle competition) in game design. When you have an addicted captive audience, you can get away with a lot of design sins. That money keeps coming in, after all, and there’s little reason to question what you’re doing. The feedback cycle is delayed and muted.
I think it all comes down to ‘how much?’
My personal perfect model was free as in free MUDs with volunteer staff. And I find that subs come closer to that because I never ever have to think about paying while I actually play. It’s the way cash shops a) pop up everywhere and b) keep having intricate sales to force you to think about them that bugs me.
I just want to be able to play without having to think about micropayments every 5 minutes.
Spinks – yeah, that’s my one real hatred with LoTRO. The shop doesn’t intrude often, but when it does, it’s grinding-halt-to-immersion time.
I’ve long championed the “Single Sale” plan that Guild Wars uses. It’s hard to get a permanent cashflow with, but I think it’s the least intrusive and most honest. I’m not opposed to paying for hard work, I’m opposed to paying for access instead of content.
Pingback right at ya! ^^
(damn blogger…)
And I LOVED the title, so much cooler than mine. =/
Single Sale proponent here as well, as I mentioned on Tobold’s blog. Not only does it offer the maximum consumer surplus (F2P gamers who don’t spend any money have zero consumer surplus by definition), but it better it aligns designers with the proper incentives, where “proper” is “better for the gamer.”
I will accept a Sub model over F2P though, assuming Single Sale is off the table; it is really more of a case of Least Worst option at that point.
The best business model would ask of each player an amount of money equivalent to the fun he received and weighted by his freely available time and income.
😦
The best business model perhaps, but the worst model for the gamer. I once called that result the Era of Subsistence Gaming, and it is a bleak one indeed.
Tesh wrote:
The businesscritters certainly aren’t interested in our welfare.
I think that’s unfair to apply universally. I think it’s more accurate to say that the businesscritter isn’t as interested in your welfare as you are. So, you do need to look out for your own interests.
As I’ve said before, I really like DDO’s model for the most part. There’s the occasional snag, but I’ve never felt that I’ve had to spend more than I really want to. I know exactly how much money Turbine has gotten from me for DDO, whereas I can only hazard a guess how much money I spent on LotRO or WoW subscriptions.
One size doesn’t fit all, though, so there definitely is room for a variety of options. But, as you point out, Tesh, it does seem that the sub fans are a bit more eager to support their favored business model.
I just deleted 500 words of f2p/sub comparison from this comment box in order to preserve everyone’s sanity. Let’s just say that I don’t know the kind of blind supporters you are talking about (outside of general internet idiocy), but that there are many reasons for someone to greatly prefer the sub model. I am one of those people, but I can’t see any similarities to any form of Stockholm Syndrome in my own decision. Then again, maybe that’s Stockholm calling right there 😉
“businesscritters” … hehe.
Right now we pay more than ever before, F2P or Sub or the latest idea, Sub+Shop.
That’s my problem at the moment! 😦
Funnily people love LOTRO now, now that it costs effectively more as in the years before, as if you would just pay the sub. I see it more as a free trial model than F2P. It is more the sub + shop model that combines the worst of both worlds. 😦
Just ask scrusi above about his LOTRO F2P experience.
I don’t think the games industry is going for “Puzzle Pirates” or somehow “fair” F2P at the moment but really to the pain treshold.
The sudden love for F2P micro transactions who were hated to hell not so many years ago is because Turbine/LOTRO have shown that it makes even more money than a subscription model. That’s all the businesscritter needs to know!
Guild Wars has the most customer friendly model. Or at least my preferred model. The expansions or large chunks of content for a one time fee model is wonderful for players.
But the “businesscritters” see how many players Guild Wars has and how much more money could have been made if a little item shop would have been tacked on top! Richard Garriott, when he was still at NCSoft, stated Guild Wars as failure and retracted this statement a few days later. My speculation is that he meant exactly that: While GW definitely made money the businesscritters probably felt like selling too much for too little money.
This is why GW got fairly late in its existence a vanity item shop and storage slot sales. A slow transition to GW2. GW2 probably expand the store to much much more. They have to earn their money after all. What they plan to do is apparently top secret. Rarely that a snippet of information what could be reaches the internet rumor mill.
While I always vehemently argue against the trinity and DIKU MUD inspired design I don’t have a special preference for payment models. Right now it seems that no matter what model gets used we pay more. It’s just called Free 2 Play. In a few years I see the trend going backwards. This is probably by the time shooters like Call of Duty will go F2P again… sorry, could not resist.
Longasc asked me (in a comment above this one that you can’t see yet ;)) to talk a bit about my experiences with LotRO and F2P.
I played some LotRO back in the old sub days (at launch, and then again a couple of years later when I picked up the expansion packs for cheap.)
A while ago I was then tempted by all the F2P talk and the fact that I still really hadn’t seen much of the game at all. I tried to play for free, but quickly hit my limits. I wasn’t able to quest anymore and the game was generally obnoxious about paying.
I had some 1000 points ($15 or so) left over from the expansion pack purchases which got me one quest pack and some little “niceties” (what others would call elementary features) like the access to the riding skill. Those were spent quickly and left me wanting for more after only a few sessions of playing.
I then contemplated buying points but realized (with Longasc’s help) that purchasing points would leave me spending much more money than simply subscribing. I subscribed, gaining access to all the features. All the features? Nuh-uh, that little store button still keeps popping up in the oddest places asking me to pay even more on top of my subscription fee.
Shared storage? Pay up! Legendary weapon not doing what you want? Credit card information please. Do you want to speed up the grind? You can do that too – if only you pay!
That is what F2P means (to me) these days. I’ll be milked and milked and anyone who promises me that “nothing will change when the game moves from a sub model to F2P with an optional all-inclusive sub” is a liar.
We were recently considering launching a new service to our business network, which looked
positive and had the opportunity to provide benefit. When I asked the person pitching the program what the cost would be to the end user, he quickly replied $29.99 per month. When I aske what that was based off of, he replied ‘research shows that consumers are willing to pay $29.99 for services such as this”.
And therein lies my main issue with gaming and pricing. It’s not based on anything tangible.
You can’t tell me that a $15 sub is necessary for maintenance and development costs, when you don’t have a curve to show it (15 might be necessary to show profit at 200k users, but at 1m users it’s now a gouge). Double shame on you if I’m paying a sub for development costs, and you charge me for a box for your expansion.
I still haven’t figured out why a boxed game costs $50, regardless of development budget.
Until pricing of all methods (f2p, sub, box costs) are attributed to some tangible methodology besides consumer psyche, everyone is going to have their opinion on what fits them best. And there are a thousand ‘right answers’ in that case.
I’ve found that in most cases, if you have self control exceeding that of a five year old, FtP games are considerably cheaper to play for my normal 2-3 month tenure (in most MMOs I’ve tried) than sub based MMOs. No client to pay for, and the fun parts of the game (low to mid levels where everything is new and you advance rapidly) tend to be either free or extremely inexpensive to access.
On the subbing to LoTRO example: all of the items mentioned are on top of the regular game. For $15 a month you get the exact same feature set that was in game before FtP went live, those are only convenience features. Plus, if you really want some of those convenience features, you get 500 free Turbine Points a month with your sub. It’s where that whole “Self control exceeding that of a five year old” thing comes in.
I personally almost never go through my monthly allotment. I’m now sitting on thousands of points due to my lifetime sub. I could have even “bought” the questing content in Isenguard (all the content in the expansion I honestly care about) for free.
I openly admit that the way Turbine advertises their cash shop in game can be intrusive. EQ2X is also annoying. After you have been logged in for a few minutes, it halts your game and makes you click a pop up box to choose “No I don’t want to go gold right now” every single session on a silver account. After that, the item shop isn’t as in your face as LoTRO, however.
DDO and Wizard 101 remain the games that have done the best job of getting FtP right imo.
There’s also a bit of that old “Sunk Cost” thinking going on as well: players who have sunk time and money into something want to keep up with it to mentally validate what they have done already.
See Tesh, this is where you have more points sunk into your diplomacy skill than me – I’l just say “Money pit”!
Spinks
My personal perfect model was free as in free MUDs with volunteer staff. And I find that subs come closer to that because I never ever have to think about paying while I actually play.
Well no, you’ve got plenty of reason to think about paying.
You just don’t.
Which I thought was Tesh’s point. The subscription system is designed much like a credit card is – it stops your brain thinking that your paying. All your doing is logging in or handing over a square piece of plastic – so your brain doesn’t connect the dots between labour and activity. The activity seems entirely devorced from the labour.
And woe to anyone who points that out – the social backlash is often quite acute.
Hugh,
and when investors like a games company, that company gets to do More Cool Stuff.
No, it gets to do more stuff that investors like.
Seriously, that’s the reward structure your in, lets not pretend otherwise. Your not designing for gamers, your designing for investors. To try and do the former is at your fiscal peril.