Monday, March 15, 2010

Subscription Model Idea

I thought of this when I first head of games selling lifetime subscriptions for over a hundred.

I'm assuming they take most of the lifetime sub money and bank it, drawing on interest from it to pay for the player.

So what if you took that to the traditional subscription model?

You pay a subscription as usual per month, but part of it is taken and banked. Once you have paid for a certain amount of time, the game becomes free to you!

'Cept for expansions and stupid mini pets/the usual gouges.

The ironic thing is I think anyone reading this might start comparing that they'd be paying several hundred dollars for a game when other single player games come out at around a hundred or less. So it might not seem like good value if someone presented to you that you can buy the mmorpg lifetime by subscribing for several hundred dollars. But yeah, your already doing that with wow or whatever, anyway.

That's another post I was gunna write - With people who play wow, if you take how much they've paid in subscription then go back in time to just before they started playing, and told them they have to pay all those subs upfront in order to play, would they pay it? Like say they've been playing for two years - before they started playing, if the game asked for them to pay $360 upfront or they can't play, would they have paid it?

I bet the honest answer is no.

4 comments:

  1. Don't forget the effective "lifetime sub" of Guild Wars. The sub guys really are great snake oil salesfolk.

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  2. Well, I am talking a lifestyle model as well - indeed, even more flexible than guild wars, as in you can just pay part of the price/sub a couple of months, then having played, drop out. And start paying it off latter if you want to return.

    But yeah, it'd cost alot more overall.

    I guess I was shooting for a compromise toward the whole subscription model...I dunno, cause I'm a compromise sorta guy.

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  3. I've heard of the "once you have paid enough, you get converted to a lifer" and I think it is indeed a good compromise. It's still too expensive for my taste, but yes, it's a good idea, with a nice flavor of veteran benefits.

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  4. I think it's where mmorpgs will go. From what I heard of city of heroes, they actually expect players to be around for a year and a bit - they don't plan for forever customers, they just plan for a certain return from customers.

    I think once they get their heads together they'll realise not only that, but making that certain return also makes the game a lifer will benefit in the long run (with expansions and suchlike)

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