The Secret World is a game that some felt should have launched with a free-to-play model instead of subscription-only. Ole Schreiner, CEO of Funcom, answered the frank question of how the game would be developed if they started on it now rather than several years ago.
“The Secret World was developed as a subscription-based game and the decisions made during planning and production was based on that business model,” said Schreiner. “If we had designed The Secret World as a free-to-play offering we would have made some different decisions along the way, for example in terms of how the in-game store works and how our post-launch content plan would play out. We tried leaving our options open during development so that we could launch with a different model should we have decided during development that’s what we wanted, but eventually we did settle on the subscription model and that’s what informed much of the game’s design.”
“That said we definitely have the tools to turn The Secret World into a free-to-play game – or even hybrid – should we decide to do that somewhere down the line. We did that with Age of Conan with significant success. We all know that trends and expectations in the gaming business, and perhaps particularly the MMO genre, is evolving quickly, and we’re regularly re-evaluating our business model against the changing currents of the marketplace and our own player base as well. Not only in terms of The Secret World, but also our future games.”
All that said, Schreiner is still confident in the subscription-only model. “I believe there is a market for free-to-play, subscription and hybrid business models,” he said. “What’s most viable for your project depends on what sort of game you’re trying to make, what your focus is and how you’re going about putting it together. I do think that as that as free-to-play offerings keep raising the bar in terms of quality and longevity, it’s becoming more and more difficult for subscription games to live up to player’s expectations. If you’re demanding a monthly fee from someone they obviously expect more value than they get from a similar free-to-play offering. There is no way getting around the fact that a growing number of gamers expect MMOs to be free-to-play, or at least buy-to-play (such as Guild Wars 2), so building a successful subscription-based MMO is becoming more challenging.”
Reflecting on the way the industry has changed over the past decade, Schreiner noted that Funcom lead the way for free-to-play in the west. “Free-to-play models have been introduced and Anarchy Online actually introduced the first free-to-play model in a western MMO back in the mid 2000,” he said. “In fact, Funcom has been a pioneer in the MMO business ever since Anarchy Online launched, not only in terms of the free-to-play model, but also digital distribution, dynamic in-game advertisement and more. Not to mention the many innovative MMO design decisions we’ve made, from the combat evolution in Age of Conan to the modern-day setting in The Secret World, or even Anarchy Online which was the first ever AAA sci-fi MMO ever to launch. I’m very proud of the fact that Funcom has been so instrumental in pushing the genre forward through the years.”
“And who would have thought that Facebook would become such a significant gaming platform when it was first introduced Not to mention the dominance of gaming platforms where PC game sales got hit hard as the three big ones – Xbox 360, PS3 and WII – launched back in the 2000. Today we also see a huge increase in digital distribution where the trend is that we move away from physical sales over to more digital sales. There are probably many more changes I could have mentioned, and I’m sure the years to come will be incredibly exciting – not only for the MMO business – but for the gaming business as a whole,” he concluded.
Source: GamesIndustry International
