GotMMOG?

As much as I’m looking forward to APB from Realtime Worlds (and anticipating doing the same thing over and over again, no matter how custom I can make my car will lose its luster pretty quick), I’m not sure what to make of the hourly scheme they’re trying to use for this game. According to the article from Joystiq, you’ll get an initial block of 50 hours to play when you get the game and can buy:

- 20 hours for $7

- 30 days of unlimited access for $10

- 90-day and 180-day discounted packs

Plus you can get playtime by achieving certain goals in the game. Uh, I’ve got to ask: did someone with any sort of business acumen come up with this? Did someone do any market research?

Think about it. Which would you rather do (assuming you actually want to play the game): Pay $7 for 20 hours or $10 for 720 hours. Right.

“You know, I really can’t afford $10. I’d rather pay $7 for 20 hours of time. I mean, if I ‘m playing an MMO, I’m not going to invest more than 2 hours a day…”

Huh? If you’re playing an MMO (or even a shooter), you’re going to play for anywhere between 1 and 4 hours per session on average unless you’re jobless or a student or an addict. So, if you play most days of the week (let’s say 5) and average about 2.5 hours per session, you’re talking about 12.5 hours per week. At that rate, you’re going to be shelling out $17.50 a month at the $7 rate.

Or you could just pay $10 for the 30-days of unlimited action (of which, you’re using effectively 2 days worth at 12.5 hours a week). Why would you want to pay more?

The only reason to pay $7 for 20 hours is if you really aren’t going to play more than 20 hours at a time or in a given month. But then, that’s still $3 short of UNLIMITED hours.

I’m not trying to get them to charge us all more but realistically, what’s the point? Wouldn’t it be better to just offer the following?

- $0.50/hour flat rate no matter how many hours you play

- $12/month for unlimited access (typical monthly sub)

- $33/90 days (effectively $11/month) and $60/180 (effectively $10/month)

Done. Now, if you play all of 20 hours a month, you’re going to pay $10 a month at the hourly rate. Good deal for you but you’re also not exactly hogging a slot on a server at 20 hours a month.

Meanwhile, if you’re one of the aforementioned MMO-jockeys, you’re going for the subs so you can play 24/7 until you die of exhaustion.

As for the developer, they get the higher rate for the infrequent player (the hourly rate) and get a rate similar to other MMOs (even if this really isn’t a traditional MMO) where they’re getting pre-paid for a month of access, regardless of whether the player uses that access or not.

It seems MMO devs are trying a bit too hard to find a new model when they don’t need to…and when they do try, they seem to be trying really hard to NOT screw up the standard subscription model while also trying that “something new”.  Just figure out the economics of it based on typical economies of scale (well, it’s sort of weird because it’s about the customer’s economies of scale, not yours). The more you pay to play, the better the discount. Then throw in microtransactions if they make sense.

In this case, the whole customization thing is perfect for microtransactions. You’ve got to make sure the paying customers still get their own stuff of course but you can assign a few designers to creating individual and packs of skins, designs, car variants, weapon variants and the like that don’t affect game play. You charge $0.50 here, $1.00 there and end up giving those people without artistic talent (right here!) nab some cool designs so we can show it off to the cool kids. Then those cool kids go and grab their own (unless they’re artists). Soon, you’ve sold $10-20 in virtual merchandise from a single sale. Multiply that by thousands of players and you’re golden.

The MMO industry is pretty damned mature at this point (it’s been almost 13 YEARS since UO launched!). There’s no excuse for this nonsense. This sort of thing is leaving the door open for someone to come in with an innovative business model and bank a nice chunk of the market. Stay tuned…

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EA released an official trailer for APB from Realtime Worlds. Like we said before about the whole CrimeCraft vs APB thing, this one looks real good. It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be: GTA in space an MMO shell.

Really looking forward to this. There are still many ways they can screw this shit up but so far it’s looking good.

g afk

All Points Bulletin (APB) (EA / Realtime Worlds)

We managed to find (by accident) the part of EA’s booth where they were doing non-playable demos of APB. This is the second crime-based MMO that’s been brewing outside of CrimeCraft (Vogster) which managed to get itself launched just a little while ago.

The game, as you’d expect, is essentially all about cops and robbers. You’re being given a lot of tools to customize your toon including an editor that will allow you to create just about any design you can think of (I’m expecting to see fingers and dicks all over the place…ugh). That design can then be used as a tattoo, a shirt design, a car decal, whatever.

The demo featured Mark Rein of Epic Games/Unreal fame (the same Mark Rein that ignores your inquiries about engine licensing if you’re not either waving a check or coming from a major studio) playing with the Realtime Worlds community manager while a voice over related what they were thinking/doing during gameplay.  Marc Rein was involved because the game uses the Unreal 3 engine.

Strangely enough, though, the engine looked crappy. Maybe it’s because it’s still in alpha or maybe they just couldn’t get the cycles to handle better texture sizes…don’t know. Whatever was going on, the models seemed fine but the skins were pretty simple looking, the animations were stiff, and the ragdoll looked stupid.

Game play seems interesting though despite the graphics. They break down the world into three districts within a fictional city: social, financial and waterfront. The social area is a non-combat lobby like area a la Guild Wars. The financial and waterfront are normal combat areas. Within the districts, there’s a limit of 100 players–50 enforcers and 50 criminals. There are also “1000′s” of civilian NPCs roaming around to add life to the environments.

Your role is as enforcer, if that’s what you choose, is to take down criminals and do missions that act as bait for the criminals. Meanwhile, the criminals are given missions to perform some sort of crime or series of crimes. You can take on missions solo or with a group. You can also call for backup if you run into trouble. This will trigger an auto-generated invite to one or more players or groups in your district. If they accept, they’re given your location and sent on their way. It’s supposedly possible for this sort of backup system to recruit everyone in the district to where you’d have 50 v 50 mayhem. Meanwhile, missions are being lined up to give you and your criminal counterparts excuses to rumble.

Your character does not have levels in a traditional MMO sense. Instead, you have an experience indicator above your head which is a number (and probably could be interpreted as a type of level. There is also a GTA-like heat rating (1-5) that increases as you do missions and take down criminals. The higher that rating, the better the rewards when you complete missions. The price is when you reach level 5, you show up on the map and become a bounty for the other side (criminal or enforcer) to go after.

In a cool example of this, the community manager, after having gone through and demoing the game to Mark Rein, walked around a corner to find 20+ criminals waiting in a street. You could see the chat talking about coordinating but it wasn’t clear what they were coordinating until then. Someone wrote in chat something like “Give him a chance to cry before we get him.” He then went running into the fray all Braveheart-like.

Another aspect of the game is the vehicle support. You can have a vehicle which acts like a mount in a way but a lot cooler, of course. You can customize your car as you build it. There’s even a way to lean out of the window (if you’re not driving) to side saddle the car and do some shooting. And, yes, cars take damage and blow up in GTA-style when in combat. You can also play your own music. The game will actually select a track of music from its built-in library that matches the genre of the music you’re playing in your car for others. This way, if you’re rolling down the road listening to some hip hop song that other players don’t have, they’ll still know, at least, that you’re blasting hip hop.

Speaking of building cars, you can also manufacture several copies of the customized car you designed and sell them in the auction house. Same goes for clothes and other equipment. You can essentially make all your money being a designer/crafter.

For all intents and purposes, the game is looking like a better version of CrimeCraft that’s less about being a glorified MMO lobby for a series of FPS matches (or rather, TPS). APB seems more like the GTA-based cops and robbers sim that I first thought of when I heard about these two games coming out over a year ago.

As APB looks to enter closed beta, it’ll be interesting to see if they live up to this image and end up being the game that CrimeCraft is not.

g afk