David Jaffe is doing free-to-play shooter
- Thread starter subversus
- Start date
Scofield94941
Member
I hate strip clubs but I love aspects of it.
Should go back to Eat Sleep Play
Should go back to Eat Sleep Play
he makes fun games, end of story.
Eh.
Hmm, interesting. Love Jaffe, will definitely check it out when it drops.
Because he's the fucking man.
Because he's the fucking man.
Read the first sentence.
Lazy Jones
Member
Let me guess; the titties.
Glass Rebel
Member
"F2P sucks but imma do it right!"
"But Jaffe, Valve already did it right!"
"But Jaffe, Valve already did it right!"
He was bitching about paying your way to the top, and games being effectively over once you've paid with your money instead of your time.
"You can listen to developers all day long tell you it's not pay to win, but you know, it kind of is pay to win... one of the things they like to say is pay with your time or pay with your money.
Well both of those are really shitty" - David Jaffe
I was just wondering this, I mean I have never really played TF2 but I was under the impression it was already set up so you couldn't pay to win and the money stuff was just cosmetic.
Then again, I don't actually play the game so I dunno really.
he used to enjoy Quake Live btw.
edit: at this point he will make a better Quake game than id themselves.
Paying with your time is great if the game is good. I'm guessing he said this quote after play testing his game.
Yea, people don't really mind paying either if the enjoy the game, eg. League of Legends, but I see his point (eg. LoL again). The thing is, I really don't see a way around that, maybe a system like Path of Exile but we've yet to see how successful that scheme will be. Even I think they are giving away too much in hopes people like the game enough to give them money.
FPS kind of makes sense given the shooter elements of Twisted Metal hes spent so much time on.
As much as I enjoyed this last TM, I hope Jaffe can release something a little grander, or something a little more quickly. He certainly needs to step away from everything hes previously worked on and find something new to drive him.
As much as I enjoyed this last TM, I hope Jaffe can release something a little grander, or something a little more quickly. He certainly needs to step away from everything hes previously worked on and find something new to drive him.
And Hawken looks extremely promising.
not really
davidjaffe
The Fucking MAN.
Valve did it wonderfully right. And I'm only guessing with this but my guess is TF2 is a loss leader with the main intent to get people into/onto STEAM. I have a hard time seeing how TF2 makes enough cash with only cosmetic purchases.
I love TF2 and love they are able to create a F2P without ANY gameplay need for monetization but if TF2 (as well as DOTA2 which is also going with the 'cosmetic only/not the LOL' biz model) was not owned and operated by the folks that own and operate STEAM, I wonder if they would be able to sustain it. It's Valve which- to me- is the Apple brand of gaming (i.e. they rarely do wrong and usually give the world amazing stuff) so hell, they probably would figure it out. But at the moment, my guess is that is why TF2 can work with the current biz model.
Most games- and certainly not the one we are making- will have that position.
David
yeah, really
Interfectum
Member
I don't believe TF2 loses money...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-08-valve-team-fortress-2-f2p-switch-a-resounding-success
DashReindeer
Lead Community Manager, Outpost Games
GameXplain's got an interview with him about all this. Jaffe sure loves to talk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQMDYlTjeto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQMDYlTjeto
Yeah, honestly his assessment of f2p seems to involve someone who has decided to make an f2p market without researching the major f2p games.
I'm reminded of when David Doak claimed that every FPS lost money except CoD basically, which did "all right".
davidjaffe
The Fucking MAN.
Yeah, you may be right. Again, it's a guess of mine that it's a loss leader.
That said, while the revenues may be up compared to TF2 box product and Steam downloads- according to that story- it's not telling you if it's profitable ,is it? Perhaps I missed it saying that but I didn't see it upon first read. Revenue can be up but you are still in the red. Also, TF2 probably went as far as it could being a paid download. Going F2P brought in a lot of new players I would imagine and that has been part of the jump as well.
Wonder if it's sustained that bump and will continue to do so.
Either way, I'm a big TF2 fan and glad to see it doing well!
David
Glass Rebel
Member
Thanks for the reply to my rude remark
I agree that Valve is in a particularily advantageous position but as Interfectum said, Valve didn't hesitate to tell the world that Team Fortress 2 was an astounding success, so much that they let the community create and profit from items. And honestly, I don't believe that they're only successful because they are Valve, that doesn't explain the vastly superior conversion rate.
Anyway, I'm sorry for the snarkiness in my previous post
I wasn't aware you were reading!
TouchMyBox
Member
I would have a hard time believing that valve has not recouped their development costs with the example of TF2, but that's an example of a game which was incredibly successful before it adopted a free-to-play model. After the shift in monetization model, the game has been updated by what appears to be a pretty small team, and Valve has made roughly 10 million dollars on items which they didn't even make, with a 3 million payout to those in the community who did. That's not including the items which they did make themselves.
Dota 2 on the other hand will be fascinating to watch.
davidjaffe
The Fucking MAN.
I'm all ears if you've got some data for me. I fully admit I'm not expert in the space yet. I play all the F2P games (mostly the more Western ones but am starting to get into some of the TenCent stuff as well) and have done a great deal of research to arrive at our business model . But one of the things I love about the space is that because it's service based, the business models can shift in order to respond to the customer's needs and desires. So the only thing I'm married to is making sure our games make money in a way that the players feel that they and the game experience come first and not the business model.
But please, if you know of some F2P biz models that do right by gamers: share!
I am familiar with LOL but that business model won't work for our game design. Also, a game designer friend much smarter than me theorized that the LOL model may not be able to sustain/maintain as more and more character types roll in and the differences between the characters become less and less. Granted, other characters are retired but many folks will have already purchased those and they may get hit with the 'well, this is guy is pretty much just this guy with only minor tweaks' mindset and stop wanting to pay.
I am not terribly familiar with WORLD OF TANKS- only a bit. But my experience so far is that it's pay to win/consumables ala TRIBES (great game, hate the biz model).
David
Agreed.
I wonder how the design of a project like this would start. Does the financial aspect of it influence the genre or leveling system before any real coding or design docs are put together, or do you start making a core game and then look for approaches for your would-be audience.
TF2 likely costs very little to maintain at this point. A few servers, which are ultimately just part of the farm for the rest of Valve's games, some customer service guys (see above), and a few dedicated staff (I want to say as few as three, but I can't find the source for that offhand) to develop and integrate new content, most of which is community contributed.
Meanwhile, they've sold some preposterous number of virtually useless $100 rings.
also Path of Exile is the game that does ONLY cosmetic items. They are still in beta so it may be hard to try it out but I remember them not doing too well.... because they asked players to buy more items to support them or something like that.
I didn't mean that to come off as brash as that probably did, and I think it's actually a really good idea that you're interested in this space since there's some great profit potential here as well as being able to constantly update a game as a reactive service.
I'm also a big fan of your ideal of trying to make a business model that works for gamers.
To give a glimpse of Team Fortress 2 revenue though, modders have been paid $3.5 million in royalties for their workshop items so far, yet they only get an adjusted 25% royalty rate, meaning that Valve has generated $11.5 million simply from cosmetic items that other people made for them.
If we consider the keys and general cost of the items Valve sells, their actual results would seemingly be very significant to the point where it would be rather hard to be unprofitable. I'll see if I can dig up more on that specifically though.
I think this sort of plays into Dave's point that Valve (and by extension TF2) had the brand-name loyalty, install base, and momentum to pull off free-to-play, whereas a no-name company or game has a much harder time making this all work. TF2 certainly didn't start off as free to play. David has cred, for sure, but not the "Apple of gaming" level that Valve has, so there's an uphill battle from the start.
Luckily, the guy's "worst" game was Calling All Cars, which happens to still be a favorite in my circle of friends back home. This is sure to be a lot of fun and it could honestly get some more people interested in trying free to play.
davidjaffe
The Fucking MAN.
I started because I wanted to do great games that were easily accessible (browser and a no cost barrier of entry). I'd love if our games could reach more people and there was very little in the way of barriers or distractions from the thought of 'hey, I wanna play that game' to you sitting there and playing it.
So that was the goal/desire.
Business model fell out of that as I personally was really disliking all of the f2p models I had researched. One of the reasons we may go Kickstarter is because publishers may have stratified on the 'this is how f2p works and makes us money' mindset and that's a mindset that I respect and am ok with for them, but really don't want our games/company to follow.
Let's put it this way- our theory is the game should be amazing if you remove the business model. Nothing special about that (as fans of TF2 and LOL point out). But I've been stunned by how many f2p games are less about the game and more about the model. So that's the reason I feel comfortable POSSIBLY going Kickstarter with a f2p game: if a person pays 15 bucks (or whatever), they get full access to the game experience day 1 and their experience should be just as great as those folks who did not Kickstart with us and are paying post launch to support the title.
The other reason is while we do want the game to monetize, we don't want to charge folks tons of money (i.e. games where weapons are way, way too expensive to buy...not that you would EVER buy a weapon in our game) and it's hard to know if publishers will be open to supporting a f2p game like that. Don't get me wrong: they might, I just don't know yet. So far publishers have been really, really open to the f2p space when I've spoken with them and they are clearly exploring new ways to make the games and the biz model play nice and that's been such a great thing to discover. There really is a lot of great stuff F2p offers the industry (be it via browser or full download on console/PC) and it's cool to see big name publishers getting behind it with the desire to use f2p to make money- sure- but to just as importantly make great game experiences.
David
davidjaffe
The Fucking MAN.
Glass Rebel
Member
This could work. Call it Coiled Alloy or something.
That I feel is a fair point. Getting the traffic needed on a higher budget can definitely be a notably challenging proposition.
That said, one advantage f2p games have is that they don't have a shelf life, so quality can often mean a game taking off significantly even if it has very little coverage at first. League of Legends (before it was bought by Tencent) is actually a nice example of this, since it was made by an indie studio and venture capitalists in a fairly haphazard manner, but delivered so much in the end that they were able to amass a large enough audience that someone bought them for over $400 million.
speaking of car combat games and F2P, Activision still sits on Interstate license. They could pull of some open world Interstate '96 and it would do great, I think.
League of Legends has had solid and consistent revenues for three years. Maybe it's not sustainable ad infinitum, but considering your average retail game has a three week tail, it's kind of missing the point to claim it's unsustainable.
I'm also pretty sure their claim is that cosmetics and boosts generate the bulk of their revenue, not character sales.
That's a pretty smart philosophy. I'll agree that most free to play games seem to follow this "carrot on the end of the stick" approach that greatly involves the trade off between money and time to the point where it's somehow part of the "fun," and that's just as odd and uninteresting to me.
The only free to play I've sunk money into was DC Universe online. I bought costumes and enough DLC to get myself the free "Premium" status which gave me three character slots and some other goodies "for free," but it was enough to suddenly double my interest in the game. Having extra customizable characters was only really worth it if the initial game was worth playing and exploring, and for me DC Universe had fun combat, missions, and environments worth discovering. It wasn't about sticking around- I was just having fun with my friends.
DC Universe and TF2 have one thing in common though: an initial period of time when they were retail products ($50-$60). Maybe the Kickstarter idea could somehow take the place of that for whatever you have in mind, something to help build the foundation, get the ball rolling, and keep things afloat when it launches?
@david
While it won't be out for a little bit longer, another interesting game to follow will likely be Phantasy Star Online 2: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...asy-star-online-2s-bold-free-to-play-strategy
They're attempting a similar strategy to what you want in terms of how treat players, and while they do have a brand, I feel it is a notably smaller brand than say the strength Valve has, and given your track record in the industry you can probably generate as much (or more) internet traffic about your title as Sega can with PSO2.
Since Sega is a public company we will likely hear a lot about their revenue streams from the game as well.
While it won't be out for a little bit longer, another interesting game to follow will likely be Phantasy Star Online 2: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...asy-star-online-2s-bold-free-to-play-strategy
They're attempting a similar strategy to what you want in terms of how treat players, and while they do have a brand, I feel it is a notably smaller brand than say the strength Valve has, and given your track record in the industry you can probably generate as much (or more) internet traffic about your title as Sega can with PSO2.
Since Sega is a public company we will likely hear a lot about their revenue streams from the game as well.