Veteran game designer Raph Koster has a thought-provoking blog post published in response to the massive controversy over pay-to-win loot boxes in the new online game Star Wars Battlefront 2 from Electronic Arts, which retails for about $60 but requires paying much more to unlock all the game content. (Similar to the gacha controversy in other online worlds.) The problem, as Raph explains in detail, is AAA games like SWBF2 are becoming more and more expensive every year ($120-200 million+, not counting marketing), and it's becoming near impossible for game companies to make a profit just from retail sales.
But how does he think EA could have avoided the imbroglio?
"Not having a box price?" Raph tells me. In other words, go completely free-to-play with no retail box, and make loot box purchases (or whatever) a completely optional payment. "What most angers people, I think, is the perception of double-dipping."
Some MMOs and games like Team Fortress 2 have made quite a lot of money as F2P, though it'd probably be difficult to convince a hidebound company like EA to ditch retail sales completely:
"That’s going to be one of the basic challenges in taking F2P business models over to non-F2P, the perception of unfairness. Of course," Raph adds, "I am no fan of loot boxes in general. I don’t know if EA could have done it successfully, but obviously standard F2P works as a business model for others."
From my perspective, there also needs to be a "come to Jesus" moment where the AAA industry just straight up tells their customer base that the retail model just isn’t sustainable anymore.
Raph isn't so sure that'll happen: "It’s sustainable for a while yet, so I doubt it. Stuff like this tends to shake out."
Read his whole post here and follow him on Twitter for the many updates related to this conversation.
Comments