Cryptic Studios - CEO Jack Emmert On Free-To-Play

Forbes has an interview with Cryptic Studios CEO Jack Emmert about how free-to-play is reshaping the MMORPG market, and Neverwinter.

How was the decision made to go free-to-play with Neverwinter and other Cryptic titles?
The market simply had changed. Subscription games and boxed product were not the only way, and the business model had shifted. Some games were seeing a large degree of success with free to play. We were acquired by Perfect World Entertainment, they are a Chinese MMORPG company primarily, and they do films and other things as well. They are entirely free-to-play. They taught us an awful lot about what to do and what not to do, and we saw how powerful that business model can be.
We saw how their games were performing in the West, in the U.S. and Europe. It was far beyond anything we could possibly imagine. It’s just funny, the magnitude, if people knew the size of Perfect World they would just be astonished. They’re one of the larger MMO players in America and Europe, I’m not talking about China, I’m talking about in America and Europe. Sony Online Entertainment is a household name but it’s amazing to me that given the number of players that Perfect World has how that isn’t better known in the gaming industry. It’s kind of baffling to me.
We listened because we could see how powerful the model was. Neverwinter is our first fully free-to-play game and we have no intent to ever go to a subscription model.
Is there more of a challenge in creating a free-to-play environment? Risking division between a paying and non-paying userbase?
Yes, there’s a challenge in finding where to monetize and how to monetize. It requires a lot of careful thinking because you don’t want to open things up to pay-to-win. In our market, the Western market, that is strongly frowned upon. Before it was just a matter of making a fun game. Now it’s a matter of making a fun game and finding out how to monetize it.
Is free-to-play “the” model? Will there be something after this?
There always will be something after; it’s just a matter of what it will be and what form it will take. I can tell you that free-to-play is going to be a greater business model that gaming follows across the board more and more. That doesn’t mean that traditional box products and games sales won’t exist, but I think you’ll see fewer of them. Free-to-play will tend to dominate. My hunch is that these things change over time and someone will find something other than free-to-play and it will be just as good.

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More information.

…I absolutely loath free-to-play, because it's seldom (never?) true. It's free to download, but pay-to-win, pay-to-paint, pay-to-have-fun, pay-much-more-than-you-would-have-done-if-it-was-not-"free"-to-play. Yuck. Lucky for me I'm not that into MMO's, the single player games are still mainly buy-to-play…

If a game is truly free to play - and many actually are - then the value of the experience will tend to reflect what you're paying for it.

Cryptic, PBE.
Their f2p model means pay-2-win plus gambling.
A proper journalist would tell that to that CEO.

They taught us an awful lot about what to do and what not to do, and we saw how powerful that business model can be.

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Powerful… yeah. Not always so big on ethics, though.

I still can't get over the name at all. The idea that some people are going to be able to play for free just sets up this ridiculous game of hide-the-fee. The game makers have to keep dangling the "you could play for free" carrot around while using every psychological trick in the book to get money out of people. The end result being that people susceptible to those kinds of tricks really shell out a lot of money. I find the whole thing dishonest and borderline-exploitive.

Before it was just a matter of making a fun game. Now it’s a matter of making a fun game and finding out how to monetize it.

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That pretty much says it all right there. <sigh>

P.S. PBE? That translates to Play By Email for me.

i'm not against free to play as long as it actually doesnt mean pay to win or progress or pay-not-to-grind.

League of Legends is the only truly F2P game i still continue to play. Everything else tends to make me lose interest as soon as I realize their version of F2p is the usual one with strings attached.

PoE had me playing for a while too but I decided having skills attached to items instead of the characters was too weird for me to stick with it.

SonOfCapiz, EUW, JoxerTM.
Add me.

So far LoL is the only f2p game that is fair towards everyone, contains no gambling, no area unlocks, no pay2win items, no pay2win skills, nothing.
See… Currently I have 140K IP there. I could and can grab more champs and runepages with it, but since they're fair towards us, I bought RP and unlocked champs from within packs with RP instead of with IP. Okay bought a few with IP, I admit, but just a few.

In the end, I'm throwing away my cash to a game that's trully f2p and is not a fraud. Just because anyone and everyone can play it without paying for anything. I'm not the only one who thinks it's skill of a player that matters, not his wallet. LoL devs earned millions by making a fair game. And are still earning.

I have no problem with F2P, as long as it's not gameplay restricting (Anything art-related is not gameplay for me). If other people pay for my enjoyment with their buying black tint for their armor for $5, I'm perfectly fine with that, even if it means my armor is 'boring' looking, as long as I have access to the same gameplay (classes, races, dungeons, etc)

I hate "f2p" not because it isn't free, but because the developers spend their time working on compartmentalized, monetized, and shallow content rather than painting a world in large immersive strokes. Yes, it's that word again - immersion - and f2p doesn't have it.

It's tragic that Jack Emmert is the same guy that helped bring us City of Heroes, a game I adored until its plug was unceremoniously pulled by NCSoft.

Drithius said:

I hate "f2p" not because it isn't free, but because the developers spend their time working on compartmentalized, monetized, and shallow content rather than painting a world in large immersive strokes. Yes, it's that word again - immersion - and f2p doesn't have it.

It's tragic that Jack Emmert is the same guy that helped bring us City of Heroes, a game I adored until its plug was unceremoniously pulled by NCSoft.

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Yeah, that was kinda what I was trying to say above.

It's the ultimate demonstration of people valuing their money over their time.

But...but Joxer...LoL has RESPAWNING minions!

I play on asian servers unfortunately. ALso forgot DoTA 2 which is also truly F2P (so far) but have stopped playing consistently as it causes my system to crash regularly and lag terribly. Would've preferred DoTA 2, but LoL plays better so...

Hahah, yes, true. Respawns is a base of this game. But it's MOBA that happens in an arena, it's not RPG.
And those minions are not annoying, in fact they're a minigame within a game (lasthit to win).

Didn't try DOTA2, it's still IIRC in beta testing phase.

DArtagnan said:

If a game is truly free to play - and many actually are - then the value of the experience will tend to reflect what you're paying for it.

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No game is truly free. That would be stupid. It costs millions of dollars to make games and the companies that make them aren't charities - they expect to get their money back and to profit.

F2P is a more profitable model, so companies are using it. Period. Its not about the players, it's about making money. Don't be fooled.

F2P destroys immersion because you have cash hooks or barriers in your face regularly. Game design HAS to involve cash hook considerations instead of just pure game design. I would imagine it sucks for designers too, since they can't just say, let's add this cool new feature, they have to say, let's add this cool new feature and this is how we can hook cash into it to suck the blood out of players.

F2P always - always involves some kind of pay to win. Always. If there is even ONE item you can get for cash thru the store, it's pay 2 win because you SHOULD be earning the crap you get by playing the game, not by opening your wallet. Almost all F2P games have items that are exclusive to the cash shop so the ONLY way you can ever get them is to pay (ie, can't be earned in game).

Games like Neverwinter and GW2 facilitate cheating. Their F2P currencies that you buy for cash can be traded in game, essentially letting you buy in game currency for cash. It's just like "buying gold from the Chinese" except the host company is selling to you directly AND taking a cut off of player to player transactions. Total BS. In any game if you can buy in game currency for cash it is cheating. Period.

F2P offers a limited/crippled/hindered game experience where all too often how much you are willing to pay corresponds to how successful you can be. Want a cool mount? Buy it. Done. Don't even have to play at all. That kind of thing. Sub-based is so vastly superior because ALL players have equal potential untainted by cash (and essentially how willing one is to cheat, because a model where throwing cash to win is basically what cheaters do in sub-based, they buy characters, gold, powerleveling, etc).

Lastly (and I'm probably forgetting some things), F2P yields the absolutely worst communities. Spammers galore. Rude and lame players. People tend to be pretty lame on the web anyways due to the anonymous nature of it all, but in games, if they're paying, and they are at risk of losing money if they get banned/kicked for acting like tools, they might exhibit self control. With F2P, and no financial investment, players have zero reason to be civil and it shows.

Voqar said:

No game is truly free. That would be stupid. It costs millions of dollars to make games and the companies that make them aren't charities - they expect to get their money back and to profit.

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Yes, lots of games are free - in that you can play and enjoy them for what they are - and you don't have to pay anything.

F2P is a more profitable model, so companies are using it. Period. Its not about the players, it's about making money. Don't be fooled.

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I'm not fooled - I just know what I'm talking about.

F2P games don't rely on the entire audience paying up - but PART of the audience.

If they relied on the entire audience paying up - then the illusion would fall apart immediately.

F2P destroys immersion because you have cash hooks or barriers in your face regularly. Game design HAS to involve cash hook considerations instead of just pure game design. I would imagine it sucks for designers too, since they can't just say, let's add this cool new feature, they have to say, let's add this cool new feature and this is how we can hook cash into it to suck the blood out of players.

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This is what I've been saying, basically.

F2P always - always involves some kind of pay to win. Always. If there is even ONE item you can get for cash thru the store, it's pay 2 win because you SHOULD be earning the crap you get by playing the game, not by opening your wallet. Almost all F2P games have items that are exclusive to the cash shop so the ONLY way you can ever get them is to pay (ie, can't be earned in game).

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That's not correct at all. Some games are like this and some aren't. It depends.

Games like Neverwinter and GW2 facilitate cheating. Their F2P currencies that you buy for cash can be traded in game, essentially letting you buy in game currency for cash. It's just like "buying gold from the Chinese" except the host company is selling to you directly AND taking a cut off of player to player transactions. Total BS. In any game if you can buy in game currency for cash it is cheating. Period.

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You're the one bullshitting.

GW2 is B2P - first of all, it's not F2P.

GW2 isn't P2W - because you can't buy anything in the store that you can't easily find by playing - in terms of power.

So, you're 100% wrong there.

F2P offers a limited/crippled/hindered game experience where all too often how much you are willing to pay corresponds to how successful you can be. Want a cool mount? Buy it. Done. Don't even have to play at all. That kind of thing. Sub-based is so vastly superior because ALL players have equal potential untainted by cash (and essentially how willing one is to cheat, because a model where throwing cash to win is basically what cheaters do in sub-based, they buy characters, gold, powerleveling, etc).

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Some games are like this and some aren't. Again, they don't have to rely on the entire audience to make their game profitable.

They just have to motivate enough people to spend money - and there will always be people willing to spend money for small conveniences.

You're painting a black/white picture to fit your agenda - and it's not convincing.

Lastly (and I'm probably forgetting some things), F2P yields the absolutely worst communities. Spammers galore. Rude and lame players. People tend to be pretty lame on the web anyways due to the anonymous nature of it all, but in games, if they're paying, and they are at risk of losing money if they get banned/kicked for acting like tools, they might exhibit self control. With F2P, and no financial investment, players have zero reason to be civil and it shows.

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There will be "lame" people in every game with a sufficient population.

I'd say, personally, that the lower the barrier of entry into a game - the bigger chance you'll have of finding people who're not taking the game seriously.

That's why a game like LOTRO - generally - has a more mature community. The same goes for a game like Secret World.