Freeplay In Mechscape
Written by Xela
Hello, my name's Xela and in this week's MechScape Post I'll be talking about the free-to-play aspect of MechScape, namely what it will be like and how it will affect the way we play. Will it be like RuneScape's freeplay game where membership is an expansion or will it be severely limited in comparison to the members' content? How long will it last? Will you be able to play as a freeplayer indefinitely? Will freeplay be updated regularly or at all? These are important questions to Jagex and a lot of the freeplay community as they will decide who plays and for how long, as well as being important as to whether players progress to purchase membership - if the game is underwhelming from the start then people will abandon it before giving it long enough to get them interested, but if the freeplay game is too good then players won't become paying subscribers.
RuneScape started off as an entirely free game before Jagex introduced membership to support the development and maintenance of their game - more of a donation than a real product. RuneScape creator Andrew Gower stated in an interview that "At this point [the dot-com bubble burst in 2001] I was quite desperate, because I couldn't afford to keep up with the game, and without funding, all of the previous work would have gone down the drain. And it wasn't as if we were offering a lot for subscribers, maybe 10 percent on top of the original game." (Source) Members' content production overtook the company as Jagex grew from a hobby to a business and freeplay updates became infrequent as the company focussed on its main product and stream of revenue - membership: "...there will still be a FREE RuneScape service available. Obviously since this service will be offered for free, we won't be able to keep offering regular updates to non-paying members." (Source) Although freeplayers benefit from major updates and enjoy the holiday events, updates are generally few and far between.
So, will MechScape follow the same path or will it differ, and if so, how? We know it will use the same business model currently found in RuneScape and FunOrb through interviews with former CEO Geoff Iddison to Myth Games and Gamasutra - "The whole business model of Jagex products, and this business model will go forward with our new MMO coming out next year MechScape, is free to play, and if you want deeper content, you pay a subscription." (Source) More recently, Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard has also explicitly confirmed freeplay in MechScape - "MechScape will be like RuneScape with a f2p and p2p section". (Source in Mod MMG Answers Questions.)
MechScape is built from the ground up as a commercial venture meaning there is no legacy content to provide the free game as there is in RuneScape, so that everything has probably been designed with more commercial motives. Jagex want the game to be fun but at the end of the day I believe freeplay will be a vehicle to obtain new players and entice them into paying the monthly subscription - as Andrew stated in 2007 "With the free version, we basically break even, but of course this version is very important to us as it brings in new players and introduces more people to the game" (Source). In contrast, freeplay RuneScape which Jagex and I consider a full game in itself - it is certainly a lot longer lasting than most game demos. For example, World of Warcraft has a time limited trial in which a player does not have access to the full features of the game and will never get the opportunity to experience all of the content which they have access to, making the idea of the demo being almost the full game moot.
This outlook may well lead to a game feeling more like a demo as in FunOrb in which many games claim to be free but really only allow playing of the most basic levels before requiring a subscription. This payment model may make MechScape's freeplay content feel overly pushy and might lead to widespread unhappiness in the freeplay community. This would most likely capture the casual market although it remains to be seen how Jagex will balance the game in respect to how aggressive the selling will be without negatively affecting playability. It's clear that Jagex will try and dissuade players from continuing to play without purchasing MechScape membership for too long as they are first and foremost a company and their main priority must be profitability. Of course, there are other benefits to having more freeplayers - word of mouth advertising, the opportunity to boast about having lots of players and the slight profits that freeplayers still do earn, but Jagex would clearly prefer them to become members.
On the other hand, the legacy content in RuneScape is generally of a poor quality, so while there may be less to do in freeplay MechScape it should be more fun to play. For example, compare the RuneScape quest Romeo and Juliet to one of the recent holiday quests such as Myths of the White Lands; the new quest has a more interesting storyline, more skilful puzzles and useful rewards in comparison to a ripped off plot, simplistic fetch-and-carry objectives and little profit after completing the quest. This shows how Jagex have upped their game when it comes to producing fun, vibrant gameplay even if it is somewhat more commercialized. Furthermore, while MechScape's free-to-play element might be playable for less time than RuneScape's, they might have a similar amount of actual content. For example, grinding takes a long time, but does it involve much actual content? By definition it is repeating the same actions over and over again, so if MechScape involves less grinding it could have the same amount of content even if it is shorter, and it would feel less like filler.
Jagex will also have to be wary of the rush of RuneScape players heading to try out the new game; if current paying members are too impressed by the free content then Jagex might lose subscribers to the new free game - they'd be competing with themselves! A possible solution to this problem is to follow the example of FunOrb's most popular game, Arcanists. Originally, Arcanists was very limited for freeplayers with no online play - only the tutorial was available; however after the original rush had died down and players decided which service they would stick with Jagex opened a limited version of the online game to freeplayers - there was now a very playable free game to entice people to upgrade but with no loss of paying subscribers. MechScape and FunOrb can't exactly be compared like for like but Jagex could well pull off a similar feat with the launch, making a somewhat limited free game when MechScape is first released but augmenting it when the buzz dies down.
To conclude, MechScape will follow a similar pricing structure to RuneScape with some free content and the rest paid for. While it would be nice to get a similar size free game it would be logical to assume that its freeplay game will be shorter than RuneScape's but we can expect that it will take full advantage of the expertise that Jagex never had when originally making RuneScape and it will be a more fun, vibrant experience. Anything more than that is pure speculation, and I doubt we'll find out more about freeplay until the game is released, beta or otherwise.
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What the game probably looks like..
http://www.mechscapeworld.com/joogix...Poster_IMG.jpg
05-06-2009, 03:56 AM
Mechscape f2p.
Linear Mode
