ESO - Was Zenimax Stupid Like a Fox?

So here is another article I found this week about the Elder Scrolls Online dropping the subscription fees from a community member named Isaac Knowles on Gamasutra.

I offer up this highly stylized analysis in anticipation of the inevitable “I told you so” stories (and comments) that are already starting to appear regarding Zenimax Online’s move. For example, Forbes offer this tidbit: “Sure enough, the subscription model doesn’t seem to have delivered quite the results that Bethesda was hoping for, and they’re transitioning it to a one-time purchase model…”

But if what I’ve said above about IPD and subscriptions is true, this diagnosis is off-base. In fact, it may be that the subscription has delivered to Zenimax precisely what it wanted, and the move away is a logical step planned well in advance.

The fact is that game publishers have become incredibly savvy at finding, retaining, and extracting value from customers. We should expect future, “failed” forays into subscription-based models. Not because publishers are stupid, or ignoring history, but because they are trying to make the most money they can over the lifetime of the product that they sell.

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More information.

This is exactly what I thought they were doing all along. Exactly.

Issac clearly is either exploiting his reader or doesn't know what he's talking about. There is a difference between making a modest profit despite terrible press than making a good profit based on good press.

Exploiting customers on long term based product, during the internet days is stupid. Look what happened to the forums, during debacle after debacle. There was massive amounts negative press. One such example was requiring pre-release owners and all owners to buy the game a second time, just to be able to post on the Steam forums.

Are there people rich enough and/or stupid enough to do it, sure probably. However in the day and age of the internet customer retribution is fierce. Just because they made sales a corporation would be utterly stupid to try to make the most modest gains based on shitty press, instead of just doing a good job, duh.

Guild Wars 2 is a good example of PR and sales done well, which is who ESO is modeling their system on. Both ESO and Secret World, both did it backwards and lost massive amounts of sales because of the bad faith and press.

Sort of what I was alluding to in an earlier post. Zenimax has been consolecentric for years now (everything post Morrowind). Microsoft was never going to wave their "gold" fee, and I don't believe that Zenimax thought they would for even a second.

Work out the bugs using (and charging) PC gamers, then go to pay once with micro transactions for the consoles. The announcement of this change in strategy gets the product back in the news, makes console gamers think they're getting a "great deal", all while hanging their PC "beta testers" out to dry. This has been a pattern with this company for quite a while now. Timed console exclusives, consolecentric UI's on their PC ports. etc.

Why would you turn away so many months of subscription revenue? It's free money.

Acleacius said:

I
Exploiting customers on long term based product, during the internet days is stupid. Look what happened to the forums, during debacle after debacle. There was massive amounts negative press. One such example was requiring pre-release owners and all owners to buy the game a second time, just to be able to post on the Steam forums.

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This happens on what planet?

Charlemagne3.0 said:

Sort of what I was alluding to in an earlier post. Zenimax has been consolecentric for years now (everything post Morrowind). Microsoft was never going to wave their "gold" fee, and I don't believe that Zenimax thought they would for even a second.

Work out the bugs using (and charging) PC gamers, then go to pay once with micro transactions for the consoles. The announcement of this change in strategy gets the product back in the news, makes console gamers think they're getting a "great deal", all while hanging their PC "beta testers" out to dry. This has been a pattern with this company for quite a while now. Timed console exclusives, consolecentric UI's on their PC ports. etc.

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Consoles is where gaming happens so studios that can are well advised to center their developpment models on consoles.

It is going to be hard to take away from people their capacity to look around and see.
The crowdfunding movement has happened, spearheaded by pc players.
Everyone with the potential to see it and study it might study it. Usually, in firms, people are hired to be dedicated to this kind of studies.
In order to get the most of it, those people are going to developp their own version.

So getting people to pay to test a product, then releasing a more finished product to a milkier market? How crowdfunded.

Big studios were not supposed to sit on their hands while the crowdfunded model was largely adopted and supported by PC players, that model that shift the burden to the risks to the customers and allow censorship of anyone pointing to the faults of a product.
They were expected to try to imitate it.

Thanks to the crowdfunding mentality, Sony even managed to charge players to test (and get a position in the gameworld) a product that is expected to be free at release.
Supposedly, 3 million people volunteered to be charged $20 to try and test H1Z1. And why not?

Their character generator is unique and feels like Daggerfall / Morrowind, but they will need to raise the bar, because of companies like Bioware and Pearl Abyss' Black Desert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQw-8lzyOns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzOXOCssHcw

Reasonable article. I think I've already mentioned it a few times, but the sale price for the game itself was already as high as or higher than for big singleplayer games, which means they should already have their return of investment from there alone. The subscription was just gravy on top of that in the beginning and paid for running costs later.

The point that the whole switch was more or less planned all along with the move to consoles drives this home. They never really committed to the console release and left their potential console customers waiting until they were ready to switch to F2P. Slick.

Nah, I don't think the subscription is "gravy". The game has a full team of developers working quite hard on content updates (more so than WoW - which has 10 million subscribers), and from all the dozens of high profile MMOs I've played - I think ESO is one of the most impressive, if not THE most impressive in terms of significant updates on a tight schedule.

Running a content team on that scale can't be cheap.

Subscription model is the only way to make updates work in the longer term, in my experience. The F2P/B2P models eventually devolve into "deal of the week" affairs - and the content updates become less imaginative. Guild Wars 2 is a great example of how awful this model actually is for the game in terms of significant updates - and yet everyone loved that they didn't have to pay a subscription.

It's just the nature of what happens when you take away the incentive to go out of your way to keep people subscribed, which is a significant investment. Much easier to make people pay a couple of bucks for trivial stuff. The phonegame and tablet markets have served to make this point all too clear. That's what people want from their games - and I guess there's no blaming the suits for taking advantage of that.

So, apparently, that's what players prefer - or they wouldn't celebrate all these great games they don't have to invest in, initially, that have turned into predictable clones of each other.

Oh well, I never held out much hope for the sub model and ESO. In a year or two, the game will likely have stopped evolving (instead, releasing a dungeon or quest pack every two months or whatever) - and it'll be just another MMO to visit for a week or two when the mood strikes. I will probably have to look elsewhere for true evolution and a game to get lost in.

Zenimax wasn't and isn't stupid, they tried what they thought to make would be a great business.

There is a global problem with MMOs and it's there are too many of them out there and all are same shit different wrapping. If your MMO doesn't offer something completely new and attractive, something better from others, something that ain't just nicelooking polygons and textures, what do you expect? Millions of subscribers? Right.

ChienAboyeur said:

This happens on what planet?

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Earth, heard of it? Clearly and easily verifiable, or you would have known had you actually been paying attention or been around the game pre Steam release. Go read the forums, instead of pulling crap out of your ass.

Consoles is where gaming happens so studios that can are well advised to center their developpment models on consoles.

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Like this next choice, turd of logic.

Acleacius said:

Earth, heard of it? Clearly and easily verifiable, or you would have known had you actually been paying attention or been around the game pre Steam release. Go read the forums, instead of pulling crap out of your ass.

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Man, I thought he answered one of my posts about famous (and I bet overestimated) games where I claim to "Never heard of it". Like Banner Saga for example.

Acleacius said:

Earth, heard of it? Clearly and easily verifiable, or you would have known had you actually been paying attention or been around the game pre Steam release. Go read the forums, instead of pulling crap out of your ass.

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What is long term? The Internet has been widely available for more than 10 years now.
It did change the situation in terms of "Exploiting customers on long term based product" but not in a way that should be qualified as stupid.

The Internet only enhanced various patterns like even earlier releases, even more hype instead of substance, even more subsidizing etc

Zenimax does as the Internet commands it.

Zenimax would have done poorly if the Internet has led to a stronger integrity. It has not. That is the reverse.

Exploiting customers on long term based products in the age of the Internet is not stupid, it is highly commended. People who dont are destined to fall behind.

This is what happens on planet Earth.