The gaming industry has changed quite a bit since Guild Wars first released in 2005. Back then, the primary way that people thought of online games was subscription based MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and EverQuest and it is against those games that Guild Wars competed. In 2010, however, free-to-play games have risen and now compete for time with all games, including Guild Wars. We spoke with Chris Lye, global brand director at ArenaNet, about how changes in the industry have affected Guild Wars and will affect Guild Wars 2.
[a]list: How did ArenaNet initially anticipate that running without a subscription fee was optimal for an MMO?
Chris Lye: I think it comes down to the original three founders and their vision. They had aspirations and they were good network developers – they worked on creating [Blizzard’s] Battle.Net. They wanted to make [Guild Wars] efficient so it would reduce the overhead for net maintenance. Games are about innovation, and if you’re not innovating in both development and business style, you’re dead in the water. They looked at WoW and said, “You can’t compete in that realm, so we’re going to sell a box product that people can play as long as they want.”
If you look at the [list of top] fantasy online games, Guild Wars is on there because there’s no subscription fee. The results speak for themselves, with several million players and now everyone is trickling into free-to-play. As people get savvier, F2P makes sense where players pay for what they want. The way we see it is it keeps us honest, getting direct feedback and having to compete with several games.
[a]list: Trying to compete with World of Warcraft directly seems to be a zero-sum gain.
Chris Lye: You do not succeed by competing with what [Blizzard] does; that’s what we originally thought and still think.
[a]list: Guild Wars games are a unique combination of online content and retail sales. How is that accounted for in marketing the game?
Chris Lye: It’s not a unique marketing challenge but you cannot treat your distribution and retail as separate. If it’s done well, it’s like a good piece of music – the two are interwoven and never separated. They don’t exist in a vacuum from each other.
There’s a calculator for people who have achievements to find out what rewards they get in game [for them]. This has driven a lot of people to use the currency [to help get the achievements] and that has driven 30 percent of our online transactions. If people separate that, you’re doing it the wrong way.
[a]list: When Guild Wars initially released, it was competing against subscription MMOs, but now I guess your main thing is being better than F2P titles…
Chris Lye: That’s really not that hard, to be honest! We don’t refer to [Guild Wars] as F2P – there’s a stigma that comes along with it that we want to avoid.
[a]list: What lessons have you learned in marketing Guild Wars and its expansions that you are applying to Guild Wars 2?
Chris Lye: It’s already [affecting what we are doing]. The original marketing team, they took a tack where they tried to position Guild Wars as a solution to all things that were in MMOs at the time, like waiting for boss queues and competing for [monster] spawns.
So busy talking about what you aren’t, you’re not talking about what you are – it’s action oriented fantasy story; that’s our focus so we’re definitely changing things this time around. The original game was positioned strongly as a PvP (Player vs. Player) game. The reality of it is… the majority of players play it as a PvE (Player vs. Environment) game, and we want to reinforce that if people love a PvE game they’ll like the PvE in Guild Wars.
Guild Wars 2 should look amazing.
[a]list: Will there be micro-payments in Guild Wars 2 right off the bat?
Chris Lye: Yes, and there’s already things like extra storage, costumes, pet unlocks packs, PvP packs in Guild Wars, so there’s a fair amount of stuff in the stores right now.
[a]list: Well, how do you think you’ll enhance the micro-transactions for Guild Wars 2?
Chris Lye: There’s a bunch of categories when it comes to micro-transactions, and we haven’t finalized all of our plans. We do know that stuff that we’ve done in Guild Wars is primarily cosmetic and convenience oriented and we get feedback on the value and quality [of our virtual items] and we’re going to use it for Guild Wars 2. We don’t want to go into micro-transactions cold for Guild Wars 2 and we recognize it is an important thing for the fan-base. Some will be available from day one, though.
[a]list: Would ArenaNet ever consider making the original Guild Wars free to download and supported by micro-transactions?
Chris Lye: We haven’t considered what the business model for what Guild Wars will be after Guild Wars 2 launches, so as for what the model will be, we don’t know. We don’t know what the player patterns will be; many think people will split time between the two games.
[a]list: That’s the nice part about not having a subscription fee – it’s easier to come back to games and there’s no pressure in maintaining a subscription.
Chris Lye: Right, you don’t have to worry about the double jeopardy of MMOs! Once the person has lost interest, it’s hard to win them back.
I think that the subscription fee is viable, but it is not inclusive. You’ll have a dominant company and it locks out all the similar games and that adds to the stagnation of the genre. I’ve heard about game ideas that were really intriguing and could have done well, if it wasn’t subscription fee. But no, they were locked into that because that was the publishing method people knew at the time.
[a]list: How will your experience in the online space affect how Guild Wars 2 is marketed when it releases?
Chris Lye: I can say broadly about the marketing, and you’ve seen it already, that it will be in the social media. I’ve always believed that communities have a big effect; they can support original content and taking your message far and wide. We wish we could give all our ardent fans a megaphone.
[a]list: So a large part of this is, and you’ll have to excuse the poitical metaphor, to “rally the base?”
Chris Lye: Definitely rally the base. We’re going up against people who love to outspend each other, but at the end of the day, it’s about the gameplay. You can outspend each other with your fancy pre-rendered cinematics, but these people are smart – they want to see gameplay and we’re going to show them the game.
[a]list: To conclude, how is marketing Guild Wars different in different parts of the world, like Europe and East Asia?
Chris Lye: When it comes to Europe, the main thing is you never launch in the Summer, because all your key markets are on vacations, so that’s one of the harsh realities in Europe. Our German customers are among the most loyal in the world – in Germany, Guild Wars and World of Warcraft are close in popularity. They’re rabid, we love going to Gamecom; they have a very active community they love to cos-play.
In terms of Asia, we’ haven’t made huge inroads. The original design was not conducive for traditional MMO players over there. We’re looking to do better in Guild Wars 2.
