In Response to Subscription Video Games to Counter Piracy
While short, this article (Id’s Kevin Cloud Says Piracy is Killing PC Gaming)points out an unfortunate problem. Video games for the PC are easy to pirate. Reducing the incentive for people to buy them. Which is leading game developers to make video games for console systems instead of PC’s. I’m not particularly bothered by this trend, since I don’t play alot of video games these days (WoW for the most part…). What bothers me is the idea that a subscription game is the solution. As it’s implemented now in games like World of Warcraft. I pay for game in a box, then I subscribe.
I think there’s a good chance that if it was free to download and all you had to do was subscribe it would be fantastic. A publisher could make a game available by free for a week (depends on the size and theme of the game) people would try before they buy. If they wanted to continue to play they would have to subscribe to the game. For a single player game it would have to either be a small amount of money a month (say $2 or $3), or a full fee at the star for access all the time. SteamPowered actually attempts to do this, but requiring full payment up front. For ANY online game like WoW, it only makes sense to distribute the game for free, give a week free play to get them hooked and then sucker them in with subscriptions. I would of been playing WoW the week it came out instead of waiting 8 months to start.
Anyways, it seems to me that the economy today is all about instant profit, not sustainable income. At some point the markets expendable income will become close to 100% allocated. Would you rather them buy you boxed game once, or pay you a sum each month. I think the answer is obvious. Not to mention I think alot of consumers would think less about paying $12 to try a game for a month, than shell out $70 to find out a game sucks. In the market of games, if you make a good game you shouldn’t have to worry about the number of subscribers you’ll get.
