PlanetSide Universe - View Single Post - Making this work
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Click here to go to the next VIP post in this thread.   Old 2011-08-09, 02:25 PM   [Ignore Me] #40
Malorn
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PlanetSide 2
Game Designer
 
Re: Making this work


F2P is a business model, it isn't a free trial where you play the role of a drug dealer and say "first one's free, but then you have to pay!" - it completely bypasses the whole point of F2P. You have players, particularly younger ones who cannot pay, don't have credit cards, etc. They'll likely turn into paying customers later. Additionally, you also have people that might take a break from the game. If it's F2P you have plenty of encouragement for them to come back and play again and then start paying again after that.

Point is they are contributing to the game and the people are what makes MMOs work. Without people, the game is boring. It's a positive feedback loop. If you have players, its easier to get more players. The opposite is also true...a dying game only accelerates its decay. If there's little or nothing going on in the game nobody is going ot play it. Its even more true for Planetside which is entirely player-driven. There's no NPCs you can go muck with if you hit a lull.

If you already allow people to play for free for a short time, why not extend it? Why not make them first class citizens? There are ways to make money off of that (see the video I linked above). If you'r ewilling to pay for people to play a free trial why not let them play the whole time?

Seriously watch that video...it explains it a lot better than I can here in text.
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