New interview with Geoff Iddison. Two things caught my attention there:
1. Speaking about P2P vs F2P: "About 60 percent of the game content is behind that subscription barrier."
Haven't heard this figure before.
2. Speaking about Mechscape payment model: "But going forward, we are considering in our future MMOs having not just subscription but micropayments too."
I hate micropayments in MMOs...
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Interview with Jagex's CEO Geoff Iddison
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6 comments:
This might be a dumb question, but what's a micropayment?
Companies use micropayments to sell goods, services, skills and such inside their games. For instance, if micropayments would be implemented inside Runescape, Jagex could do something like this:
-- charge $1 for 1M RSGP
-- charge 50 cents for increasing Woodcutting EXP rate on 200% for 2 hours of training
-- charge 75 cents for 20 teleport tablets to some very useful locations
etc.
Basically, people who are ready to spend additional money (apart from monthly subscription) get an easy way to level up and usually occupy all higher ranks and scores.
That sounds terrible. One of the things I love about playing is that you work for everything you get. All those little things add up. I just don't see the point in playing a game, but starting with everything completed.
I take it this is fairly common on other games? Runescape is really the only game I play and I don't have much MMO experience outside of that.
To be honest, I don't know if that practice is very common, but I know several games where it is implemented and I heard about it being quite "accepted" revenue model in the industry.
Vaskor, ty for the explination about micropayments, I was curious what that was also. Sadly what will happen is if this introduced is that alot of players will do it, almost forcing us "real" skillers to follow suit in order to keep up.
Values of some runescape items would go thru the roof, items such as Dragon hide for crafting, or dragon bones for prayer, or even gold ore for smithing, as these are the eaiest (but most expensive) way to level, but if money werent a factor, then it wouldn't matter.
Also prices of such thing like rares would skyrocket. Hope they consider that before implementing it.
Looks like that in the end it's all about money.
00chief00
As for it being an accepted revenue model, I can see that easily. It would generate much more income than the $5/month subscription fee. That said, it seems to be what separates a company that wants to make money from a company that wants to keep the quality of their product.
Interesting stuff. Thanks for the info!
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